The rise of expensive, next-generation AI equipment is creating a big opportunity for the channel, but some deployments “haven’t been up to scratch”.
That’s the view of Gareth Meyer, CRO of channel-centric datacentre migration professional services specialist Technimove.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen during an exclusive video interview (see above), Meyer said large resellers now have their “foot forward” on the acquisition of AI equipment.
But despite the devices costing up to £500,000 a piece, Meyer said he had seen some deployments go wrong.
“You’ve got a big shift where we’re seeing some of the larger resellers win these opportunities,” he said.
“But [it’s about having] the engineers to actually deploy it.
“It’s very new technology. It’s very expensive. You have to own the end-to-end process when you’re deploying it, which has really helped our migration business because we own the end-to-end solution.
“We deal with the pre-configuration work, the DOA testing to make sure the equipment is working and is capacity prior to going to site. We then have the logistics element and own our own fleets. And then you need certified engineers to deploy it.
“We’ve seen some instances in datacentres where the deployment hasn’t quite been up to scratch.”
Repatriation across the nation
Reflecting on his key takeaways from the recent Data Centre World London, Meyer said he’d had “a lot of repatriation conversations”.
More customers are bringing their data and core applications back from the public cloud, with the aim of reducing costs and embracing next-generation AI, Meyer indicated.
Sustainability was another prominent topic, particularly around how best to tap into greener datacentres in regions like the Nordics and Spain, Meyer said.
On that note, resellers are increasingly leaning on Technimove’s engineering reach outside of the UK, Meyer said.
“We have engineers in the Nordics and right across Europe – Spain is another big location being spoken about due to its hydroelectric power plants. And then we’ve got a huge amount of engineers in the East and West Coast [of USA],” he said.
Working with “very large, heavy infrastructure” is “all Technimove has done” throughout its 27-year-history, Meyer said.
“We’ve always focused on that datacentre migration piece, working with high-level enterprise organisations. Essentially we migrate physical datacentres from one location to another, whether that be virtual migration or migrating applications into the cloud,” he concluded.
This article was produced in association with Technimove and is classified as partner content. What is partner content? See more here.
