AI Special Issue 2024

Welcome to the AI era. In this special issue of CRN dedicated to AI, we are exploring some of the numerous opportunities this amazing technology is opening for the IT channel.

As AI, and particularly generative AI, begins to filter into more and more aspects of how companies run and business gets done, solution providers find themselves at the cusp of an IT revolution that they are in a unique position to shape.

Those that invest now in these early stages stand to reap the rewards as AI becomes an integral part of everything from IT security to the edge to the data center.

Click below for stories on the risks of "data poisoning”, the massive sales opportunities in the AI PC and AI chip markets, the role of the cloud in AI adoption, what some of the industry’s top CEOs think about the impact of AI and some of our latest research on the channel’s involvement in this space.

Top Tech CEOs Agree: The AI Race Is On
As part of CRN’s CEO Outlook project earlier this year, we asked CEOs across the IT industry what impact they expected AI to have on the business they and their partners would do together in 2024. Here’s what some of them said.

Solution Providers Are Helping Customers Navigate Complex AI PC Landscape
AI PCs are garnering a lot of enthusiasm and support across the channel, and solution providers will be key to helping customers navigate a complex landscape.

The AI Transformation ‘Tidal Wave’ Is Coming
Many solution providers are already seeing a positive impact to their overall business from AI with more 10 percent of solution providers calling the impact “significant,” according to a study from IPED, the channel consulting arm of CRN parent The Channel Company.

AI Success Rests On Getting Your Data House In Order
With the cloud being the best delivery option for enterprises to reap the benefits of AI, companies need to re-architect their data and move applications into a centralized, secure place to enable AI to do its magic.

With AI Chips Getting Hotter, Liquid Cooling Vendors See Big Channel Play
AI chips are running much hotter than their predecessors, giving rise to a new class of channel-friendly startups focused on liquid cooling for high-power CPUs and GPUs.

The AI Danger Zone: ‘Data Poisoning’ Targets LLMs
When it comes to GenAI, the security of the AI models themselves is at risk as ‘data poisoning’ is increasingly taking aim at the training data that large language models rely on to generate responses and make decisions.