InterVision CEO On AI Wins, Innovating With AWS And Cisco’s ‘Speed’

InterVision CEO Jonathan Lerner talks about his MSP company building alongside AWS, ‘racing’ to adopt Cisco innovation and creating an AI strategy that is winning customers.

InterVision Systems is winning artificial intelligence deals thanks to tight partnerships with AWS and Cisco as the all-star MSP is weaving AI and intelligent automation into nearly everything the company does.

“We’re working with the best AI builders, building the best tools, the best automation, with AWS embracing partners like InterVision to really complete a successful customer outcome—it’s not all just the technology, but how does [AI] change and impact lives?” said Jonathan Lerner, president and CEO of InterVision.

“We’ve woven AI and intelligent automation in all its forms—such as RPA [robotic process automation], bots, etc.—into everything we do,” Lerner said. “We often think of ourselves as a product developer, really an orchestration of offerings company. It’s not about reselling other people’s things. It’s about weaving them into logical bundles of services and solutions.”

InterVision’s AWS And Cisco Partnership

InterVision is an AWS Premier Tier Services partner and one of AWS’ leading midmarket partners in America. The St. Louis-based company holds over 125 AWS certifications, delivers over 250 professional services and owns AWS accreditations across seven disciplines.

InterVision is also a Cisco Gold Provider and Cisco Gold Integrator partner with over two decades of collaboration with Cisco.

“The rate of innovation we’re seeing, the actual enhancements to every version and release that they’re bringing out now—that’s at the clock speed of urgency at the pace of the customer,” said Lerner. “Maybe in prior years, we’ve been asking for more. Now we’re racing to adopt the innovation they’re bringing out in their solutions.”

InterVision ranked No. 94 on CRN’s 2024 Solution Provider 500 list as the MSP specialist continues to climb the ranks thanks to over 30 years of experience with a top-notch managed service offering portfolio.

InterVision CEO Lerner has an IT career that spans over 25 years of working in top executive positions at SAP, Verint and ACI Worldwide.

In an interview with CRN, Lerner explains InterVision’s AI strategy, AWS joint innovation and Cisco momentum heading into 2025.

Talk about InterVision’s AI strategy.

We’ve woven AI and intelligent automation in all its forms—such as RPA [robotic process automation], bots, etc.—into everything we do. We often think of ourselves as a product developer, really an orchestration of offerings company.

It’s not about reselling other people’s things. It’s about weaving them into logical bundles of services and solutions.

We even do it under our own brand, our InterVision As-a-Service offerings. For example, we have Ransomware Protection As-A-Service, and we bring market-leading technologies in MDR and XDR and GRC with our managed and professional services. Then we serve those back as outcomes that are fully managed services to the midmarket and enterprise. We wrap it all with AI and intelligent automation.

Our view is that our customers need to continue to absorb innovation, otherwise they become stagnant. So we help them with innovation around every one of those.

Is InterVision building offerings on top of AWS AI infrastructure or platforms?

We’ve embedded AI into every one of our COEs [Centers of Excellence]. That concept of augmenting offerings and being a partner that develops around the platform applies to how we help Amazon with the most successful feature they’ve ever brought out called Amazon Connect.

It’s a Contact Center As-A-Service (CCaaS) solution. It competes with Cisco in their WebEx space or competes with Five9.

We’ve orchestrated other elements that augment that core engine of CCaaS, and we’ve built our own on top of that. We call it ConnectIV CX. So powered by Amazon Connect as the engine, but this is where Amazon has put their brand around SaaS versus just storage and compute and AI. It’s augmented with AI, but it’s a customer outcome.

So we’ve developed our own platform to orchestrate an offering. And we bring that to market to enhance Amazon in AI, for instance like chatbots and quick starts: How do you get and embrace a faster go to market and faster ROI? … Now that’s truly a managed service offering we can bring to market.

So we’ve done that on the platform of Amazon. It leverages AI, it leverages a core function of SaaS around a CCaaS solution. We’re managing some of the most complex Amazon Connect deployments on the planet right now.

We’re embracing client experience, or in this case, citizen experience for the public sector. Embracing agent experience around, ‘How do we make agents more productive?’ Not replace them necessarily but augment their ability to serve more in multiple languages using some of Amazon’s AI.

How is InterVision leveraging GenAI to drive sales and customer adoption?

We approach it from two angles: automate or augment.

It can be just GenAI. It can be developing LLMs [large language models] and taking advantage of third-party platforms for how you introduce AI. But it may be as simple as leveraging RPA, and how do we bring automation into more repetitive, transformational journeys.

How do we use technology to augment, for instance, in the contact center: How do we make agents happier? How do we provide the data for them to be able to serve their customers, their patients, the citizens of the states they live in, by predictively providing that information to know them better—their journey, their history, etc.

To date, a lot of the investments have been around helping customers develop a use case and to help them quantify what the benefits are to automation. Our advisory services begin before then, it’s around data readiness and where does the data live? How do we actually prepare the data? We believe that those discussions on the advisory side are really, really important now.

We actually start from the advisory side on data readiness, creating a data fabric or data warehouse. What’s the state of that data?

What are your thoughts of Cisco heading into 2025?

By putting infrastructure, security and collaboration under Jeetu Patel [executive vice president and chief product officer at Cisco] who’s a direct report to [Chair and CEO] Chuck Robbins—we like that.

By putting those under one leader, we view that as a major step toward actually integrating those journeys from the customer, backward.

Cisco’s always been a great builder of technology and a great innovator. I think this is the next level for them to actually articulate that vision on how those interact. That’s a very bold move of combining those businesses. It makes Cisco an easier partner to understand that cohesive journey.

Also, the Splunk acquisition was brilliant. I mean, it’s going to change the game for Cisco and its clients. We’re going to be in the middle of that helping them on their journey.

Cisco is definitely modernizing and moving faster and it’s becoming a very, very interesting partner for us.

The rate of innovation we’re seeing, the actual enhancements to every version and release that they’re bringing out now—that’s at the clock speed of urgency, at the pace of the customer. Maybe in prior years, we’ve been asking for more. Now we’re racing to adopt the innovation they’re bringing out in their solutions.

How do you like AWS CEO Matt Garman’s (pictured)channel strategy so far?

We’re able now to have a voice, whether it’s on product road map and decisions on innovation that the builders are building in or being a part of how they view their growth in their markets.

If they’re going to dynamically grow, they have to have partners who are equally committed.

A key element of the type of partnerships at Amazon we’ve seen that Matt and Ruba [Borno, vice president of worldwide channels and alliances] are looking for is what we call, ‘a partner for life.’

We celebrate partners for life, customers for life, and employees for life—it’s just how we operate. They’ve come to recognize that that’s a little bit of a different approach. So there’s a partner advantage that we always try to promote that says, ‘Here’s how we’re different and better.’ We demonstrate that really, really well.

That’s the type of partnership we’ve seen Matt and Ruba look for. Helping not just understand why you’re another name on a list, but what’s different and better about how you go to market? What customers do you represent? What’s the focus of your go-to-market coverage and your segmentation so that we understand you and we can actually fit you in and promote you?