The Six Five team discusses Lenovo AI Announcements.
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Transcript:
Patrick Moorhead: So Lenovo came out with some new AI announcements, they’ve been coming out with announcements every quarter. So as you know, Dan and I go to these big tent vendor events, and I believe that Lenovo had their biggest tent event in December, Jensen got up on stage. But it’s been around six months, and again, I forget the exact month. And then we saw Jensen get on and do a group hug with Michael Dell and also Bill from ServiceNow. And then recently we saw Jensen get up on stage in the Sphere, gosh, was it… Yeah, last… No, week before last with HPE. So it’s always important for competitors and tech companies in the ecosystem to keep it top of mind. So Lenovo did make some affirmations, and they did make some announcements. And one of the affirmations was just a, “Yes, hybrid approach is the way to go.”
That’s music to my ears. I mean, I’ve been talking about that on standard computing for a decade, and hybrid approach is leveraging the best of the public cloud and the best of the private cloud. The second thing that we saw is the services team is optimizing. And I got to tell you, I’m impressed with what the service team has done here. And they have some new AI advisory. They have fast track, they have fast track, they call it fast start for NVIDIA Enterprise, for NVIDIA NIM, and for AI innovators. This is just a fast way to get up and running on these, which I think is music to everybody’s ears. I’m hopeful that part of that is there’s a data management portion in there. The other thing was liquid cooling.
I mean, Lenovo has been doing liquid cooling since it acquired the IBM assets of the X line I think a decade ago. But as we’ve seen from Dell and HPE, liquid cooling is cool now. And everybody is coming out, and this is just the fundamental trend that we need to bring in water cooling to be able to properly cool the AI infrastructure. There’s the sustainability element, there’s a power draw element, there’s a heat element. And Lenovo talked a lot about their sixth generation liquid cooling, they believe that they’re literally quote, unquote miles ahead of everybody else.
I’d love to do a Signal65 analysis to match these claims, they have cold plates on-memory cooling, warm water cooling across pretty much all categories. And I had somebody from Lenovo share this with me, a pretty high point, the install for Digital Realty… And Digital Realty is a little bit similar to Equinix, a little bit not, but a place that enterprises can go to stand up their own infrastructure without having to have their own data centers on site. And it was a high-end liquid-cooled POC, about one and a half million dollars with Exalted. And I’m just interested to see, once this get fully installed, I’d love to send the Signal65 team in there to see if there’s some there.
Daniel Newman: Look, Pat, you hit the topical. I like the campaign and the concept. We just got to spend some time with the leadership team, the ISG CMO, Flynn Maloy, leading the charge on this smarter AI. And they’re really focusing on the for everyone part. And by the way, this is a trend line of a theme that these companies are going to have to battle. You mentioned the Dell conversation, you mentioned the HPE keynote, you mentioned what Lenovo’s… They’re all battling for this idea that they can democratize and simplify the deployment of prem-based or hybrid cloud-based AI that can be integrated quickly for enterprises 50 through 5,000. The biggest companies are going to figure this out, they don’t need help. They got teams, they got the people, they got the access. But as you move down to even companies in the hundreds down to the thousands, there’s a lot of work to be done, and this is really complicated.
And so you heard three clicks to launch, you’re hearing instant fast start opportunities to take a proof of concept using NIMS and using AI enterprise and putting this thing together, server storage, software, services, consulting. How do we deliver this stuff fast? How do we make this stuff seamless? How do we drive more value? And how do we get it out super-duper quickly? So looks like I just lost Patrick, hopefully he’ll be coming back soon. But the overall impression that I have… Oh, hey, you’re back, I thought maybe I’d lost you forever. I thought that was so good, you’re like, “You can do this alone.” I don’t even need you here.
Patrick Moorhead: Did you miss me? Did you miss me, bestie?
Daniel Newman: I was getting nervous, because I was like, “I’ve almost said all I’m going to say, and we’re going to have to move to the next topic, and we don’t have a host. And I’ve barely ever done this before, first time ever on a podcast.” How am I doing, everybody? Am I doing okay? I appreciate you. But look, I mean, in Lenovo, they’re aggressive, they’re ambitious. What they’re trying to accomplish, they’ve done really good on overcoming some of the international challenges, domicile-based challenges they have, they’ve gotten some of those the right sort of approvals from a security clearance level. They’re working with the biggest enterprises, they’re competing, and they’re selling into hyperscalers too, which is something that’s been pretty unique from the OEM perspective.
So look, this is going to be played out in the public over the next several quarters. But making it easy, making it accessible, and doing so in a way that helps companies get off the ground very fast with their AI ambitions is what the market is going to be looking for. So now it comes down to one thing, Pat, results.
Author Information
Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.
From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.
A 7x Best-Selling Author including his most recent book “Human/Machine.” Daniel is also a Forbes and MarketWatch (Dow Jones) contributor.
An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.
