While the technology that delivers AI is being deployed at enterprises and in hyperscale data centers, the down-market business use cases are only just emerging, according to CNWR Inc President Jason Slagle.
Toledo, Ohio-based solution provider CNWR Inc. sees “a ton of” demand for AI-focused, ready-made products by large providers like Microsoft, but customers in the small and midsize business space are not yet ready to deploy the hardware needed to run it on premise.
“There is a ton of demand for AI. Not a ton of demand for running AI locally,” said Jason Slagle, president of CNWR Inc. “Most people want Copilot, from the Microsoft 365 suite. Maybe they’re playing with ChatGPT, but I haven’t seen a ton of demand to run local AI models. Small businesses just don’t have the expertise on staff to care and feed that.”
While the technology that delivers AI is being deployed at enterprises and in hyperscale data centers, the down-market business use cases are only just emerging, said Slagle, who recommends organizations begin experimenting now.
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At CNWR Inc., — which partners with Lenovo, VMware, Nutanix and other leading infrastructure vendors — Slagle said there are huge advantages to spinning up large language models on premise.
“I run locally to keep my data out of the hands of the big companies,” he told CRN in a recent interview. “That’s a lot of it, is data locality. The other thing is you get is a little more flexibility.”
He said users can get an ease of development and added speed from not sending queries back and forth online.
“It gives you a lot more tinkering ability,” he said.