Lenovo is present in one in three superorders worldwide, including the last Marenostrum of Barcelona. These machines represent the spearhead of the avant -garde in high computing and AI, which then transfer to the rest of the areas (PCs, services …) we talk to Alex Bento, which directs the area of infrastructure and high computing solutions of Lenovo in Iberia, where he arrives now after a decade in VMware. “There are three legs necessary for any implementation to work: processes, technology and, of course, people,” he explains.
Q. In the last results of Q2 they have managed to increase revenues year by year globally (3.3 billion dollars), but instead the benefits still take longer to arrive …
A. We have been very close to obtaining benefits, but we must bear in mind that it is an area in which investments in innovation are very high. To be well located and obtain the ‘pole position’, it is necessary to invest a lot in innovation. As fortunately in Lenovo we have an important umbrella with other well -sanitated business areas, we have the possibility of betting strong in a division that is gaining weight and we consider fundamental. We see it, in fact, as one of the main engines of its diversification towards technological infrastructure solutions.
Q. They are more focused on achieving market share than benefits …
A. We are focused on offering the best product, by the hand of our partners (Nvidia, Nutanix …) and from there we know that everything else will come.
Q. How would you draw the current role of Lenovo in high computing?
R. Lenovo designs and manufactures those high computing modules for the most powerful supercomdators in the world, which are usually used for scientific purposes and large projects. But we also manufacture modules to feed Azzure or target servers, which have their own data centers. And finally, for companies we offer software defined infrastructure. The conjunction of these three businesses is the one that has promoted growth 65%.
Q. Much of that growth is also due to the demand for hybrid infrastructure enabled by AI. Is that cloud trend change confirmed?
A. Yes. Until two years ago, the strategy was based totally on the cloud. Since then, the vision has changed to hybrid and, at the moment, Spanish companies, both public and private, seek how to adapt their business applications for the future, without ruling out a reversal of a possible contingency of the business.
Q. What role do they assume in the construction of these high performance equipment?
A. On the one hand, we have to talk about infrastructure and computation, where Lenovo is a specialist. Then, we find the infrastructure software, in which our partners enter -nutanix among them. Next, there is that part of the connectivity network and the circle is completed with the storage system, which can be in the cloud, in hybrid or in local mode.
Q. Is that high computing available for any company?
A. It is one of the objectives that we set: the democratization of high computing. When we talk about the supercommunters, their main work is related to research and scientific institutions. Large companies also benefit from these resources. For example, an oil company has historical information and needs the information provided by satellites, the orography of the land and that computation capacity can facilitate access to new deposits in a faster way. Investing in it has a direct reflection in your results account.
Q. And those of smaller size?
A. Those who cannot invest five million euros in servers of that level, can access by the mode of SOBTWARE ASS A SERVICE (SAAS) always according to their needs. If an industrial company needs three years to design, develop, produce and sell a product and these computers can expedite all the work, surely it is worth it. It has a direct impact.
Q. Is the Edge Computing mode more timely for smaller companies?
A. Of course. Let’s think for example, a network of gas stations in Extremadura. He wants to sell more and offer better services to his customers and for this he has loyalty cards, informative and advertising screens, sensors in the suppliers … surely it should be analyzed all that information at a point close to the business rather than send it to a center of data in the cloud, then recover it to re -analyze it … it is a matter of efficiency and cost savings.
Q. What are the main concerns they detect in companies?
A. We see that, from the pandemic, the Administration councils understand that the investment in technology was a key part of the business. Thic responsible report to the Council, and they no longer see them as cost, but as a business generation. In the public sector, the digital agencies that have been created have allowed to provide horizontal services to the government, with centralized contracts for all ministries, and that has also descended to autonomies (Murcia, Basque Country, Catalonia, Madrid …).
Q. And what sectors push the rest?
A. In the private company, the financial sector, highly regulated, as now with the DORA, is at the head in implantation of technology, which later affects and infects the rest of the sectors.
Q. What will AI offer us in five years?
A. It will help us in the development of medical treatments, in the weather forecasts, it will help us with predictive models … They are the great aspects in which this technology can help us. There will be more and more benefits and we also hope that there are better people formed to take advantage of them. And as all that also lands in the private world, the potential will be huge.
Q. On the catastrophe of Valencia, what was the use of those predictive models, sensors and alert systems if later the one in charge of activating them did not even know that they exist?
A. In the development of any technology, as important are those tools and solutions as processes and, of course, people. If everything does not go in communion, the implementation can be spoiled.
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