How NVIDIA Is Taking 'This AI Revolution By Storm:' WWT CEO
by Mark Haranas, CRN
Jim Kavanaugh, the longtime CEO and technology guru of $20 billion IT powerhouse World Wide Technology, believes NVIDIA is holding a winning hand in the new AI era as WWT is placing a "significant investment" in its partnership.
"NVIDIA is just an amazing company that's doing amazing things that are literally taking this AI revolution by storm," said WWT's CEO.
"What they have had in place today—the technology, the chips, the platforms, the software, the integrated platform—and what they're building, is quite impressive to say the least. That's creating an incredible opportunity for NVIDIA, but also NVIDIA partners," said Kavanaugh. "NVIDIA is partnering with a lot of different organizations and making a lot of different connections. So that's a big opportunity for us."
Kavanaugh said the AI chipmaker superstar is continuing to take the market by storm in 2024 by forming partnerships with cloud hyperscalers such as Microsoft and Amazon Web Services as well as AI infrastructure players.
"NVIDIA Cloud Providers are new, emerging organizations that are funded by private equity and venture capital around building out their own AI-as-a-Service capabilities and data centers," Kavanaugh said. "We have been actively working with NVIDIA and with those different companies who are building out data centers to provide AI as a Service."
WWT Driving AI Enterprise Wins With NVIDIA
WWT won NVIDIA's Americas AI Enterprise Partner of The Year Award for 2024.
The St. Louis-based company won the newly introduced AI enterprise award for its expertise in advancing the adoption of AI and increasing AI sales alongside NVIDIA's portfolio.
"We're really leaning in very, very aggressively around AI and leveraging AI as a major go-to-market initiative for World Wide [Technology]. We're placing significant investment in our partnership with NVIDIA," said Kavanaugh. "NVIDIA really hit this inflection point and what they've been building behind the scenes was brought to life with generative AI. We are in a very nice position with them."
In March, WWT committed $500 million over the next three years to spur AI development and customer adoption. The investment included a new AI Proving Ground lab environment, which is a collaboration ecosystem that leverages solutions from partners like NVIDIA.
An Elite partner inside NVIDIA's Partner Network, WWT provides joint customers with AI, machine learning, virtual desktop infrastructure and networking solutions.
For example, WWT's Data Analytics and AI team has earned 80 deep learning certifications from NVIDIA.