These Are The Top 10 Nvidia Partners Driving AI Adoption

The GPU juggernaut announces the winners of its 2019 Nvidia Partner Network Partner of the Year awards in the Americas. ‘What you‘re seeing is a full architectural approach from these NPN partners, and then they’re able to deliver to those customers full-stack AI solutions that are ready for real-time deployment,’ an Nvidia exec says.

Nvidia has named 10 partners as the cream of the crop in the Americas for their investments in driving adoption of Nvidia-based GPU solutions for artificial intelligence.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company announced the winners of its 2019 Nvidia Partner Network Partner of the Year awards Friday, recognizing Americas partners that have not just driven meaningful revenue for the chipmaker but have also made big investments in Nvidia‘s AI playbook.

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Craig Weinstein, vice president of Nvidia‘s Americas partner organization, told CRN that the 10 top Nvidia partners, who cover a variety of industries and specialties, are “bringing transformational impact in AI and expanding our footprint and their own footprint in those industries.”

“These award winners are bringing remarkable drive and expertise to advancing the industry that they‘re in,” he said. “And they’re delivering practical value to customers across the globe in the process. One thing that we’re noticing is that collective contributions of these partners are foundational to our success as a company.”

Many of the AI projects driven by the top 10 Nvidia partners have successfully transitioned from proofs of concept to commercial deployments, according to Weinstein. But while the revenue partners brought in for Nvidia was one consideration for the Partner of the Year awards, the executive said the biggest impact came from their investments in product enablement, marketing, demand generation, software, hardware expertise and relationships with independent software developers.

“When you combine all that together in combination with the hardware and the software, what you‘re seeing is a full architectural approach from these NPN partners, and then they’re able to deliver to those customers in those industries full-stack AI solutions that are ready for real-time deployment,” he said.

Eliot Eshelman, an executive at Microway, one of the 2019 NPN winners, said Nvidia has become a key partner for the high-performance computing system integrator and that its GPUs along with its Mellanox interconnect technologies have become increasingly prevalent in deployments.

“We‘re seeing a lot of interest and a lot of movement on Nvidia’s products, in the DGX in particular,” said Eshelman, referring to Nvidia’s purpose-built DGX systems for deep learning workloads.

Eshelman said Nvidia‘s strengths aren’t just in hardware but also in software as well as subject matter expertise across several areas.

“They‘ve got PhDs that focused on particular applications or specific research avenues, but they also have a big software team,” he said. “So for certainly all of the common deep learning applications and many of the common HPC applications, they offer pre-optimized containers. And that’s another place where they’re seeing success. When you buy into an Nvidia solution, you aren’t just getting the hardware, you’re getting software stack as well. You turn it on, and it’s got all of that that optimized software from their [Nvidia GPU Cloud] hub.”

The following are Nvidia‘s 2019 Nvidia Partner Network Partner of the Year award winners in the Americas, with descriptions provided by the company:

— Booz Allen Hamilton (Leader: Horacio Rozanski, Headquarters: McLean, Virginia) — “named Global Consulting Partner of the Year for an unmatched commitment to providing the U.S. federal government with AI consultation services.”

— CDW (Leader: Christine A. Leahy, Headquarters: Vernon Hills, Illinois) — “named HPC Solution Provider Partner of the Year and vGPU Partner of the Year for its contributions in driving GPU solutions in several strategic industries.”

— CDW Canada (Leader: J.D. Hupp, Headquarters: Etobicoke, Ontario) — “named Canada Partner of the Year for driving sales and broad adoption of data center and NVIDIA DGX systems across many key industries.”

— Future Tech Enterprise Inc (Leader: Bob Venero, Headquarters: Holbrook, New York) — “named Professional Visualization Partner of the Year for the massive expansion of its NVIDIA Quadro business since joining the NPN in the beginning of 2019.”

— Government Acquisitions (Leader: Jay Lambke, Headquarters: Cincinnati, Ohio) — “named Public Sector Partner of the Year for driving AI within the U.S. federal government through sales enablement, marketing and engineering.”

— Microway (Leader: Stephen Fried, Headquarters: Plymouth, Massachusetts) — “named Higher Education Partner of the Year for providing support and delivery of NVIDIA GPU accelerated servers to higher education institutions throughout the Americas.”

— Penguin Computing (Leader: Sid Mair, Headquarters: Fremont, California) — “named HPC Preferred OEM Partner of the Year for its successful deployment of large-scale hybrid NVIDIA GPU accelerated servers to large, high-profile customers.”

— SFL Scientific (Leader: Michael Segala, Headquarters: Quincy, Massachusetts) — “named Service Delivery Partner of the Year for delivering AI consulting and development services to partners and customers, enabling development of new AI tools and solutions that use GPUs.”

— Thinkmate (Leader: Arthur Ataie, Headquarters: Waltham, Massachusetts) — “named HPC Solution Integration Partner of the Year for several critical customer wins in the HPC market.”

— World Wide Technology (Leader: Jim Kavanaugh, Headquarters: Maryland Heights, Missouri) — “named Deep Learning AI Partner of the Year for the significant investments it has made in AI research and development programs.”