TD Synnex wants to become the “go-to distributor” for AI acceleration as it ramps up its Destination AI programme.
That’s the message of Simon Bennett, UKI MD of the US-based broadliner’s Advanced Solutions division.
Having launched Destination AI in 2024, TD Synnex has “really lit it up” in 2025 after moving to appoint a dedicate head to lead the programme in February, Bennett said.
“Large percentage” of partners still at “day zero”
Destination AI has four tenets, starting with ‘Awareness’ and moving through to ‘Enablement’, ‘During Sale’ and finally ‘After Sale’.
A “large percentage” of partners are still at “day zero” when it comes to AI maturity, Bennett said of the first phase.
“If they are, we need to move them relatively quickly into the second phase, which is enablement,” he said.
“We’ve taken a lot of the training we’ve done in our organisation and made it available to our partners. That could be fundamental AI principle, it could be training on large language models, or it could be vendor training.”
The third tenet sees TD Synnex support partners with proof of concepts and access to experts during the sale, while the final element aims to help them after the sale where they lack scale in areas such as implementation and ongoing support.
“Too many partners ask me, ‘how do I monetise AI’?” Bennett said.
“My feedback is that’s already happening; in fact, I would go as far as saying it’s already happened. It’s not necessarily that they’ve missed the opportunity, but they shouldn’t also believe that it’s a wave that we’re waiting for because that’s not the case.
“Start by looking inside your own business, be super curious, put a head on it and find a win case, because if you can find a win case you’ve got a damn-good opportunity to make something repeatable and take it into your own customers.”
“There’s definitely a link to our industry”
Partners should be thinking about what last week’s ‘Tech Prosperity Deal’ – which saw US tech CEOs such as NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang pledge to make the UK an “AI superpower” – means to them, Bennett claimed.
“There’s definitely a link to our industry, and what we’re going to do with two of our leading vendors,” he said. “We will produce an AI factory that our partners are able to utilise in a proof-of-concept environment using multiple vendors,” he said.
Destination AI now has a dedicated UK leader in the shape of Andy Brown, who Bennett said had “grabbed hold of the programme”.
“It’s one of the only programmes in my 15 years I can put my finger on where it spans all vendors, all resellers and all technology segments,” Bennett said.
A Destination AI event TD Synnex is running on 14 October has already had 200 registrations, Bennett said.
“We’re not having to drive attendance; we’re pushing at an open door,” he concluded.
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
