WWT CEO Jim Kavanaugh: 'We Are An AI-First Company'

by Mark Haranas, CRN

When Ken Moreano witnessed the "world change" as generative AI's impact began to spread across the globe, he understood his colocation company needed to pivot to the AI future.

Moreano, co-founder, president and CEO of Scott Data Center, envisioned a new revenue stream for the Omaha, Neb.-based colocation provider through which customers could easily access on-demand or long-term leased GPU resources to accelerate AI research and GenAI development on their own terms.

"We knew about the AI technology, but we weren't aware of who was ready to deliver it today," Moreano said. "Every data center is probably going to have to do something in AI, but how do you actually get started?"

To find out, Scott Data Center turned to high-flying solution provider World Wide Technology.

After spending just eight hours inside WWT's advanced AI labs, Moreano knew the answer. The company hired WWT to manage the project, provide AI consulting expertise and build out proofs of concept for the design and installation of a new GPU-as-a-Service offering featuring NVIDIA and Supermicro hardware at its core.

"They took us under their wing. We began having serious conversations around a private, secure GPU offering with storage, network and managed services wrapped around it," said Moreano. "We leaned on the high-performance architecture of what WWT had done, both in their labs and in the high-performance computing world."

St. Louis-based WWT, No. 7 on the 2024 CRN Solution Provider 500, engineered rack configurations tailor-made for the AI era while also mapping out the data center provider's AI future.

"I could give you 15 examples where there were real problems and we're like, 'OK, how are we going to solve this?' And WWT was right there for us," Moreano said.

Even when Scott Data Center deviated from NVIDIA's reference architecture, WWT successfully built custom IT stacks that now power and support the company's AI mission while also significantly helping on ROI.

Thanks to WWT, Scott Data Center was able to launch a cloud-based GPU-as-a-Service offering that gives customers on-demand access to the powerful GPUs needed for the AI era.

"We'll have 816 NVIDIA H100 GPUs for GPU-as-a-Service thanks to WWT's expertise," said Moreano. "A real catalyst around this was not only WWT's knowledge of the architecture and design of these components but coupling that with the challenges of supply chain and the right AI vendors to work with -- they were so instrumental in each of those pieces."

The data center provider's GPU-as-a-Service proof of concept was a huge success, marking a milestone in Scott Data Center's transformation from traditional colocation services to a cutting-edge GPU-as-a-Service provider. Customers can develop and deploy their own AI applications, with Scott Data Center now focused on scaling its AI infrastructure and capabilities with WWT's guidance.

Success stories like WWT's project with Scott Data Center illustrate that the company, like its co-founder and CEO Jim Kavanaugh, knows what it takes to win in the AI era.

In his former life as a professional soccer player, Kavanaugh absorbed important lessons and habits that he has since leveraged to mold WWT into a $20 billion IT dynamo at the cutting edge of the AI revolution.

"It taught me grit, teamwork, determination, failure, being able to take constructive input -- I took all those things and built them into how I wanted to live my life," said Kavanaugh. "These values and behaviors are really important, especially when you're going through massive transformation and change, which is exactly what AI is."

Just six years after Kavanaugh represented the U.S. on the men's national soccer team in the 1984 Summer Olympics, he co-founded WWT with now-Chairman David Steward as a small IT reseller in 1990.

In the 34 years since, WWT has successfully transformed and restructured itself during every major technology transition -- from the internet and cloud computing to machine learning and digital transformation.

Now Kavanaugh is transforming WWT again into an AI and GenAI global powerhouse with a $500 million investment in technology, infrastructure and personnel for its AI lab, all without private equity funding.

"We are an AI-first company," said Kavanaugh.

In addition to building out the AI lab in its Advanced Technology Center, WWT has revamped its 10,000-plus strong workforce into AI experts; created homegrown GenAI products to take employee efficiency to the next level; forged groundbreaking partnerships with the leading AI vendors like Nvidia; and provided innovative end-to-end AI solutions to its customers.

"Fortunately, we have been working in the big data and AI space for 10-plus years. The generative AI innovations that have happened over the last 15 months have taken the world by storm and have allowed us to build on our own platform and capabilities," he said. "We're basically dumping gas on the fire that we already had lit, and now we're accelerating that."

With those investments, the company is now competing for huge enterprise accounts against the largest systems integrators on the planet such as Accenture and Deloitte.

"We're competing more and more with the established global consultancies than ever before," said WWT CTO Mike Taylor. "Competing and winning."