Schneider Electric Vice President of U.S. Channels Gordon Lord is urging partners to prepare for the coming on-premises edge computing AI boom by embracing the full portfolio of software and sustainability offerings from the $40 billion power and cooling behemoth.
“We’re absolutely going to see a huge boom in the coming months and years of the modernization of on-premises data centers with the power densities that are going to be required,” said Lord, who was this week selected on CRN’s 2024 Top 100 Executives list as one of the Top 25 Channel Sales Leaders. “We do see this as another wave of on-premises buildouts of edge data centers. That is going to require us to provide the right tools, consulting services and, quite honestly, with the amount of power that’s going to be on-prem, we’re actually going to have to look at alternative sources of energy in some cases with customers.”
In fact, Lord said, Schneider Electric has a Microgrid team that is looking at sustainable alternative energy sources to power the edge AI offerings in cases where the grid can simply not support those on-premises edge data center deployments.
To prepare for the coming edge AI boom, Lord said partners need to look at Schneider Electric as a “consultant and true business partner” that can support their AI and sustainability businesses. That means focusing on the broader Schneider Electric software portfolio, including EcoStuxure IT Expert software, which is integrated with ConnectWise PSA (Professional Services Automation), said Lord.
“That looks specifically at the efficiency of the infrastructure that they have today,” said Lord. “We actually can start to look at the carbon footprint of some of the infrastructure through some of the software tools that we have. We also have AVEVA (digital twin solutions and device management software), which a lot of our enterprise sellers are having conversations about with their customers. There is a lot going on in terms of investing in resources to engage both customers and partners around the full Schneider software portfolio.”