Every major tech company has a largely unique partner program, and NVIDIA is no exception. Partners are critical to the operation of any company providing sales, installation, and service support, as well as dealing with most of the customers in countries where the vendor lacks its own sales or support structure. Partner events are designed to reassure loyalty, and get the partners fired up about selling new vendor products. Some of those events can get a tad out of hand, but it’s all in good fun.
This month, NVIDIA had its big partner event where it recognized not only its top performers but those smaller companies growing at impressive rates. Partners can be very competitive, so a well-designed reward that conveys status and recognition can go a long way to ensuring a partner sells your products over your competitors.
This year’s awards were focused on several of NVIDIA’s growth areas, including recommender systems, conversational AI, and Computer Vision.
Let’s talk about these segments and who won.
Why these segments are important
Recommender Systems, particularly for vendors with complex lines, like large companies that sell appliances, cars, or PCs. Recommender engines assure a prospective buyer is pushed to the product or products that will best fit their lifestyle and interests. These systems can significantly impact sales close rates either by assisting a sales rep to make a custom offer or for online services that do this automatically. Amazon, for instance, uses them aggressively. Facebook seems to use them as well but, at least with me, they clearly don’t know what I like, or they think I can be easily fooled by scams.
Conversational AI has been used effectively in Telesales where current-generation conversational AIs regularly outperform people and have even been asked out on dates in the past. But these systems go beyond sales and can include customer interface and helplines, medical support lines, and potentially even emergency lines to make sure calls are picked up and questions answered quickly and correctly. These systems are likely how many of us will begin to form relationships with AIs, and while it is doubtful you can date them, because of their programming, they may be more concerned about what you need than many of your relatives.
Computer Vision is critical to autonomous robot and car efforts, advanced security efforts, and in both military and law enforcement. This technology will eventually be key to creating realistic avatars, fully autonomous robots and cars that can safely operate around lots of people, and future efforts to improve your digital image and office automatically on a zoom call.
When taken together, these three technologies form a foundation for the coming wave of autonomous machines interacting with people, the heart of the autonomous robotic movement. Clearly, assuring leadership in this emerging market was NVIDIA’s focus for this latest partner event.
Who won?
Here are the companies that won and what they do:
- Cambridge Computer – awarded 2021 Americas Higher Education Partner of the Year for its continued focus on the higher-ed market, resulting in broad growth across platforms and NVIDIA DGX AI infrastructure solutions.
- CDW Canada – awarded 2021 Canadian Partner of the Year for fostering extensive growth of AI in the Canadian market through strategic collaboration with NVIDIA and customers.
- Colfax – awarded 2021 Americas Networking Partner of the Year for driving end-to-end NVIDIA AI solutions through a skilled team with robust resources, enabling the company to become a leader in the NVIDIA networking space across industries, including manufacturing, higher education, healthcare, and life sciences.
- Deloitte Consulting – awarded 2021 Americas Global Consulting Partner of the Year for building specialized practices around Omniverse Enterprise, NVIDIA Metropolis, and new NVIDIA DGX-Ready Managed Services, plus adding the NVIDIA DGX POD to its Innovation Center.
- Future Tech – awarded 2021 Americas Public Sector Partner of the Year for leading the federal government through the world’s largest AI transformation. Future Tech is the first company to bring Omniverse Enterprise real-time 3D design collaboration and simulation to federal customers, helping to improve their workflows in the physical world.
- Insight Enterprises – awarded 2021 Americas Software Partner of the Year for the second year in a row for broad collaboration with NVIDIA across AI, virtualization, and simulation software, with leadership in making continued investment in NVIDIA technology with proof-of-concept labs, NVIDIA certifications, sales, and technical training.
- Lambda – awarded 2021 Americas Solution Integration Partner of the Year for the second consecutive year for its extensive expertise and commitment to providing the full NVIDIA portfolio with AI and deep learning hardware and software solutions across industries, including higher education and research, the federal and public sector, health and life sciences.
- Mark III – awarded 2021 Americas Rising Star Partner of the Year – a new category added to recognize growing excellence in innovation, go-to-market strategies, and growth in the AI business landscape. Mark III won for creatively setting the pace for NVIDIA partners as they guide clients toward architecting AI Centers of Excellence.
- PNY – awarded 2021 Americas Distribution Partner of the Year for being a value-added partner and trusted advisor to the channel that has delivered NVIDIA’s accelerated computing platforms and software across the media and entertainment and healthcare industries, and many other vertical markets, as well as with cloud service providers.
- Quantiphi – awarded 2021 Americas Service Delivery Partner of the Year for its diverse engineering services, application-first approach, and commitment to solving customer problems using NVIDIA DGX and software development kits, positioning itself to capitalize on the rapidly growing field of data science enablement services.
- World Wide Technology – awarded 2021 Americas AI Solution Provider of the Year for its leadership and commitment in driving the adoption of the complete NVIDIA portfolio of AI and accelerated computing solutions, as well as continued investments in AI infrastructure for customer testing and labs in the WWT Advanced Technology Center.
- World Wide Technology – also named 2021 Americas Healthcare Partner of the Year for expertise in driving NVIDIA AI solutions and accelerated computing to healthcare and life sciences organizations, demonstrating strong capabilities in end-to-end scalable AI solutions and professional development to support biopharma, genomics, medical imaging and more.
I share NVIDIA’s congratulations for the awards winners.
Wrapping up:
NVIDIA clearly focuses on the future and assures it not only has a seat at the coming autonomous machines revolution, but will hopefully go a bit differently than this one, and its partner event showcases that critical focus and interest. The winning partners each stepped up to this critical challenge and performed well above average to their credit, becoming the superstars of NVIDIA’s channel and the champions of that coming robotic transformation. As we move forward to our ever more automated future, these are the companies that are stepping up the most to get that job done.
Congratulations! Now, get back to sales so I can say nice things about you next year!
