Advizex Names Sales Superstar Steve Kucker As New VP, GM For High-Peformance Compute And AI

‘Advizex is very uniquely positioned to take advantage of this AI opportunity because of our global partnerships around AI and high-performance compute,’ says new Advizex HPC and AI VP and GM Steve Kucker. ‘AI is part of every IT solution conversation right now from the board of directors to the CIO level.’

Advizex, No. 123 on the 2023 CRN Solution Provider 500, is stepping up its AI sales offensive by naming Steve Kucker, a 26-year sales superstar who has been a vice president and sales manager for the company’s Northeast business, as its first vice president and general manager for high-performance compute and AI.

C.R. Howdyshell, CEO of Advizex, a Fulcrum IT Partners company, said the appointment will result in a sharper focus on bringing Advizex customers business-outcome-focused AI solutions.

“We feel this is the right investment to make [to deliver] business outcome benefits for customers. This provides us with the leadership and the team to make sure customers get a big return on their AI investments.”

Howdyshell said Kucker will team with longtime Advizex CTO Chris Miller and Advizex Senior Vice President of Consulting Services Scott Rhyan to help close an AI sales pipeline of $50 million to $100 million. “We are making a big bet on AI and believe it will result in a big first-mover advantage for Advizex,” he said.

Howdyshell said he expects the sharper focus on high-performance compute and AI to accelerate the company’s fast-growing Everything-as-a-Service consumption business.

“This ties right into our Everything-as-a-Service business,” he said. “A consumption-based AI offering gives customers the opportunity to build an AI solution in a pay-per-use model without a massive capital expenditure.”

Kucker, an 11-year Advizex veteran who has held top-level sales positions at EMC, LeftHand Networks, HP, Solidfire and Tegile Systems, said AI is a $400 billion market opportunity with a compound annual growth rate of 30 percent to 40 percent.

“The industry went through a journey of virtualization with VMware and then the cloud journey and now we are into the high-performance compute and AI journey,” he said. “This is 10X the opportunity we saw with virtualization and cloud.”

The new high-performance compute and AI organization ties the main pillars of Advizex—Consumption as a Service, Everything as a Service and industry vertical alignment—and creates a business-outcome-focused powerhouse for customers, said Kucker, a U.S. Navy veteran who sits on several vendor advisory boards.

Advizex already has a formidable AI go-to-market focus with strong partnerships with Nvidia, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Dell Technologies, said Kucker. In fact, Advizex has already won a number of significant AI solution deals.

“Advizex is very uniquely positioned to take advantage of this AI opportunity because of our global partnerships around AI and high-performance compute,” he said. “AI is part of every IT solution conversation right now from the board of directors to the CIO level. Boards of directors are looking for AI time to market, ROI and TCO recommendations.”

Advizex’s industry vertical focus along with its partnership with Fulcrum sister company, Razor, a pioneering AI and data analytics provider based in the U.K., is a big differentiator for the company, said Kucker.

“Advizex has a big AI advantage as part of Fulcrum and the big AI solutions investment in our people,” he said. “We are taking the risk out of the AI equation for customers. This is all about our consultative approach to this business with a vertical market focus on software, which leads to customer success. That is what leads to growth.”

Kucker said he could not be more excited about the potential for AI to help businesses of all sizes be more successful. “This is all about leveraging AI to deliver game-changing business outcomes to customers,” he said. “It’s a great time to be helping customers take advantage of the big benefits from AI and high-performance compute.”