Schneider Electric VP Gordon Lord On The ‘Huge’ AI Edge Boom And Why Partners Need To Embrace The Larger Portfolio

Schneider Electric Vice President of U.S. Channels Gordon Lord tells CRN that partners need to look at Schneider Electric as a “consultant and true business partner” that can support their AI and sustainability businesses.

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.”

Here is an edited transcript of the conversation with Lord.

What kind of investments is Schneider Electric making to help partners drive power and cooling savings for customers in the AI era?

I'm super excited about the investments that Schneider has made. As you know, I’ve been in the role [of U.S. channel chief] for a little over a year and in the channel for 28 years coming up at the end of August.

I was thinking about this in preparation for our discussion, and the investments that we've made to start to build more demand in the midmarket is significant.

We’ve really started to look at end customer acquisition and expansion specifically in the midmarket and the small enterprise to help us drive incremental demand for and with our channel. I’m super, super excited about that.

The nice part of that is I have such a strong working relationship with my counterpart that runs that organization. So we are spending a lot of time with channel partners to look at what customers we are going after together.

Right now when you think about AI, so much of the compute is going to cloud and service providers. But we see in the coming months that being deployed closer to the customer. We see more and more of that coming back on-premises. You’ll see the build out in the hyperscalers, cloud and service providers, but you are going to see much more of that on-premises in the midmarket and the lower end of small to medium enterprise.

What are some of the details of that midmarket investment that Schneider Electric is making to drive the AI power and cooling solutions revolution?

We refer to it as the Artemis team. Artemis is the is the [Greek] goddess of hunting. That team [represents] a multimillion-dollar investment to go look at customer expansion for and with our channel partners.

But it doesn’t stop there. A lot of our partners and customers know us as a leader in uninterruptible power supplies, racks and PDUs (Power Distribution Units). But we've also made significant investments in software and services as a bigger part of our portfolio with our partners. So we've actually made investments there where we have software specialists now that we're aligning to, not only our largest national solution providers but also to our regional partners as well. We are now building Schneider software into the business practices of many of our partners.

APC was acquired by Schneider back in 2007. Since then, Schneider has made significant investments to unite all of our different business units together. What unites all of the business units within Schneider is our EcoStruxure platform, and that is where we are making investments with our partners to see how do we do more around EcoStruxure IT. That is the version of EcoStruxure that is very relevant to our IT channel partners today.

Where are you seeing the greatest opportunity with regard to partners building out practices around the Schneider Electric software portfolio in the midmarket?

One of the biggest areas that we see right now is with our EcoStuxure IT Expert software. We recently integrated that with ConnectWise PSA (Professional Services Automation). So for partners utilizing ConnectWise as their managed services platform, Schneider’s [EcoStruxure] IT Expert snaps right into that. That looks specifically at the efficiency of the infrastructure that they have today.

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.

Are you seeing partners build out sustainability practices to capture the energy efficiency opportunity?

We're getting a lot of questions about it. There's a lot of questions about sustainability and how partners engage. It starts with the end customer. You have a lot of end customers coming back to partners and they're looking at what their carbon footprint might be. And they are looking at how they become more sustainable. So they're looking to partners to do that.

We actually have an executive channel summit coming up where we are going to have senior leaders from some of our biggest national and regional partners coming in to talk with some of the other entities within Schneider.

We actually have a sustainability business organization. So we are going to be having conversations about that organization with our partners where we’ll answer questions about what we are seeing with sustainability.

We are seeing a lot of it in the enterprise now, but that is certainly coming down into the midmarket. It’s certainly something that all of us as consumers are looking at today.

We believe that we are a resource for our channel partners to help them engage their customers as more of those customers ask and inquire about sustainability metrics, goals and ambitions.

What are some of the big themes and topics at the upcoming partner summit?

I've been on the road for the last year engaging many, many partners and the No. 1 question I get from partners is: ‘What’s new at APC?’ And my response is usually the same. ‘Well, we're not just APC anymore. We're Schneider Electric.’

The whole point of the summit is to really start looking at what does the future of our relationships with both our national and regional partners look like with Schneider. Most of our partners know us as a UPS vendor or rack vendor or PDU vendor. That’s a huge part of who we are together. But we see sustainability as a big focus for a lot of customers. So we are going to look at how do we work with our partners in the coming months and years to make that a little bit more mainstream as part of their go to market.

We see the same thing with AI. Our data center business has been growing like gangbusters as customers build out their cloud. Now you layer on top of that AI, and you are going to see that continue to expand for years to come. But now it becomes even greater.

Look at the deployment of AI servers and the power and cooling that is going to require. That is going to become a real struggle for many end customers who are going out and buying new AI servers. It’s not only about how do you bring power down to the rack level with densities like 50 KW, 60 KW and 70 KW per rack, but how do you cool that.

So we’re looking at things through our sustainability business as well as our Microgrid practice where we are looking at time to energy and time to power as customers deploy these servers.

These are the things that customers and partners are challenged with today, and we believe Schneider Electric is poised to support them in a big, big way.

What kind of opportunity do you see at the edge given that more AI solutions are being deployed at the edge on-premises or in the field?

In the 2000s, we were building out lots of on-premises data centers with integrated power rack and cooling solutions. And in the midmarket, especially with our channel partners, we certainly saw that decrease, but now with AI we’re seeing more and more of that move to the edge,

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.

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.

That means looking at can the grid support the needs of some of these customers, and that's where we have an entire Microgrid team that is looking at alternative energy, not only in a sustainable way, but as a way to increase speed to power, as we refer to it.

How do you see this AI edge opportunity with regard to the evolution of the channel over the last three decades?

Over that timeframe, you saw waves of growth. In the late ’90s and 2000s, we saw the convergence of IT with IP phones. That was a huge wave for the IT industry. Then we saw the build out of on-premises data centers. Then you saw the cloud boom.

Now when we look at AI, I wish I could quantify it. But I can tell you it is where we are placing a lot of our bets. We are making a lot of investments in resources, software and services to really help partners capitalize and monetize on AI moving forward. This is going to be huge wave.

As I said earlier, we've seen a tremendous boom in our data center business, and that's going to continue, and now you're going to see this accelerate at an even faster rate.

You are going to see the modernization of existing data centers, and really the build out beyond that at the edge. Much of what we've seen on the edge over the past bunch of years has really been edge networking. Now we're really going to see edge compute on-premises. That's what's going to drive more integrated rack, power and cooling solutions with much higher densities,

Look at some of these AI servers. For latency concerns, these processors need to be close to one another. The closer they are, the denser it becomes. So it comes down to how do you get more power and cooling to make sure our customers can deploy these solutions in an efficient manner.

What kind of impact are we going to see on partners from the Schneider Electric agreement to collaborate with Nvidia on AI data centers?

That is huge. Many of our partners are already working with Nvidia. Our collaboration with them is going to help our partners deploy more efficient and sustainable infrastructure so they can build a transformative future for their customers powered by AI.

One of the key phrases with these AI solutions is time to power. Customers are buying these AI servers, but you need to look at how do they bring power to the rack and the power to the building to support them. Those are things that Schneider Electric and Nvidia are working on with these new reference architectures.

What is the message to partners as they look at the AI opportunity and what they need to do to align with Scheider Electric?

I would say don't just look at us as APC anymore. APC is a product brand. And that's why I get so excited when I sit down and talk to partners about this.

A lot of times we meet with a partner and thank them for selling APC. We are looking forward to that next wave of growth with our partners around the larger Schneider Electric portfolio. When you look at Schneider, it is about sustainability. It is about AI.

We have a digital buildings practice. So what can we do around buildings together? What can we do around data centers? What can we do with targeted customer segments like SLED and K-12. These are all areas that are specialties for many of our partners.

A lot of partners go in and they sell APC, but how do we start looking at consulting with our customers around their sustainability ambitions as well as the deployment of AI? So let’s look beyond APC into the greater Schneider portfolio. This is about helping partners address real business outcomes with their end customers by monetizing the greater Schneider portfolio for both revenue growth and profitability for them.

How would you characterize the difference for partners between pre- Schneider Electric APC and post Schneider Electric APC?

I would encourage partners to think beyond UPS, racks and PDUs. They should think of APC as a product brand and think about Schneider as a consultant and true business partner that can support them around sustainability and AI.

So when you look at that broader portfolio, where do partners start to drive that broader Schneider partnership?

It really comes down to the software that unites all the different business units at Schneider. You have EcoStruxure for IT and data centers. We have EcoStruxure for building management. We have had many conversations with partners on how they can start selling some of the other entities under the Schneider umbrella.

To me it really starts with software. Let’s become proficient together on things like [EcoStruxure] IT Expert. As we become more proficient there, the natural evolution is to start looking at the other flavors of EcoStruxure: EcoStruxure for buildings, EcoStuxure for data centers, EcoStruxure for edge.

What are you seeing with regard to partners stepping up on the broader Schneider Electric portfolio?

We certainly have some partners that have really invested in the portfolio. We have spent a lot of time helping them really integrate into their software practices. We have some large national as well as regional partners where we have started to build out managed power as an offer to complement their managed service provider practices.

What kind of work are you doing to build out that managed power partner model?

We have actually worked with all of our national distributors to build out managed power as well as UPS as a service. We see more and more customers that are looking at both Capex and Opex models in terms of the budgets they have. So we have actually set up programs with our largest distributors, Ingram [Micro], TD Synnex and D&H, to deploy UPS as a service. So the customer can now amortize that over 36 or 60 months. They get the UPS, the management of the UPS as well, and they can do it on an Opex model versus Capex. As we engage more and more customers, we are looking at accessing IT budgets in a different way. When we look at managed power, that ties into the EcoStruxure IT Expert offer.

What kind of growth are partners seeing in that managed power market?

There is a lot of excitement around it. This is one of the new things we are working on. It is not mainstream now. But this is the future of our relationship with many of our channel partners.

We want to build upon that strength we have together around the hardware—UPS, racks and PDUs. And then we want them to look at how does this become part of their management strategy. As they try to sell more as a service, it is all about how do they bring power to it. Think about customers with multiple locations or buildings on site. Think about universities and a K-12 school district. A lot of times they don’t have the IT professionals to go out and service all of the different [IT] closets they have. So partners going in and trying to sell more as a managed service to the customer cannot forget about power. That’s a real challenge for customers. That’s where we see things like (EcoStruxure) IT Expert being incorporated into the business practices of several of our large solution providers.

A lot of times the partner doesn’t think about it. That’s why we have invested in the resources to start to really build that practice with some of our big national as well as regional partners.

What are you most proud of as you look back at your first year in the new position?

I'm most proud of the team. The team really embraced change in a big way. We did some things that were probably a little difficult at first, but now I feel like we have the segmentation of partners and the organizational alignment so that we can go deeper with some of the customers we have been working with around software and services.

Also there are some partners that maybe we hadn't really focused on before. So I'm excited that now we're having new conversations with partners that have sold us but maybe hadn't seen us as much before. So I'm super excited about that.

I can tell you the energy we have with the team is really something to see. A lot of our inside sellers are in Nashville, and they bring a ton of energy. I am most proud of my team and the ability to adapt to change.

From an organizational standpoint when I think of Schneider, I am super proud of the investment we are making to go out and acquire new end customers and expand into existing customers with our channel partners.

I can’t stress enough the collaboration that I have with my counterpart [Vice President Secure Power National Sales & Software] Suzanne Soper (pictured), who runs our national sales organization. We’re doing this together. It gives me goosebumps. It’s been an awesome, awesome year with a lot of support, from our senior executives all the way to our inside sellers.

Besides the midmarket expansion, what kind of investments are you making in SMB?

That is where we are investing in programs that many of our distributors are leveraging to go out and work with more of the longer-tail partners.

Anyone that is selling APC, I want to thank them. They have an opportunity to sell many different vendors, whether they are selling one or two products of ours a year or thousands of products a year, it is all very, very important and relevant to us.

How do you feel about the opportunity for the future that Schneider Electric is bringing to partners?

It is nice to see a wave like this coming with the power of AI. When you look at the investments that we've made as an organization in both the midmarket and small enterprise and you combine that with AI at the at the edge, I couldn’t be more excited about the future.

This is a whole new wave back on-prem with our partners. We can’t do it without them, and they can’t do it without us. That is why we have made all these investments in resources, programs and tools. And we are not done yet.

We are having strategy calls every week to talk about what is next. We are looking at what can we do with our programs to support our partners more and make them more profitable, and what we can do around enablement. We just hired a new channel enablement person to build out a team to look at how do we enable our partners knowing that this wave of AI is about to happen on-premises. We don’t have all the answers yet, but we have all the resources to help us get there.