In a recent interview with CIO&Leader, Anurag Singh Director of Advanced Solutions at Ingram Micro, discusses the integration of AI in their service offerings, and emphasizes the importance of high-performance storage solutions in response to AI-driven data growth.
Newer content is being created with generative AI, requiring sizeable data storage capabilities both on-premises and on the cloud, as per Anurag Singh of Ingram Micro.
Anurag Singh, Director of Advanced Solutions at Ingram Micro, oversees the company’s Advanced Solution business in India and SAARC. With over two decades of experience, including 18 years at Ingram Micro, he drives P&L management, technology partner relationships, and regional business development.
In a recent interview with CIO&Leader, Anurag Singh Director of Advanced Solutions at Ingram Micro, discussed the integration of AI in their service offerings, and emphasized the importance of high-performance storage solutions in response to AI-driven data growth.
CIO&Leader: How do you integrate AI within your service offerings to enhance digital transformation for your partners and customers?
Anurag Singh: Ingram Micro offers a different set of service offerings to partners and customers. With partners, we have integrated our digital twin – Ingram Micro Xvantage – that uses differential AI algorithms and generative AI capabilities to create a platform-type experience for partners to transact and interact. Partners can use Xvantage’s unique AI-based insights and recommendations engine to get the best solutions for their customer requirements. This digital transformation enables them to uniquely position varied products and services to the customer as a unique proposition.
With customers, as a part of our service offerings, we are enabling them to get in order on their digital transformation journey through our association with leading OEMs. The unique AI offerings both in terms of hardware (GPUs, compute and storage infrastructure) help them create the required infrastructure for their AI enablement journey. This is supported by a strong set of technical competencies around AI-based Professional Services on application developments and different Ingram Micro onboarded AI ISVs’ offerings.
CIO&Leader: With the exponential growth of data, what are the key trends and technologies in data storage that Ingram Micro India is focusing on? How is AI affecting the way enterprises are looking at Data Storage?
Anurag Singh: A key trend that is currently being witnessed is the demand for high-performance storage which is now becoming a standard along with high-performance computing on a Nvidia GPU architecture. To cater to these key trends and the allied demand, we carry the most comprehensive storage portfolio in the industry cutting across all the storage solutions and OEMs. This again is supported by our Professional Services capabilities around storage technology.
By the virtue of advancement of AI on an everyday basis with us hearing news about the new LLM models coming in with the help of generative AI and higher GPU capacities, the data growth is expected to be at the same pace as the AI growth. With generative AI, newer content is being created which will require sizeable data storage capabilities both on-premises or on the cloud. We are focusing on catering to these high-volume storage demands by our storage OEM ecosystem catering to all sets of customers.
CIO&Leader: Given the evolving nature of cyber threats, what strategies does Ingram Micro employ to keep the organization and its employees safe? Can you elaborate on how you choose and integrate offerings from different cybersecurity vendors to build comprehensive security solutions?
Anurag Singh: Ingram Micro, being a global leader in the technology distribution space fosters some of the most comprehensive cyber security policies to safeguard IT systems against any kind of cyber threats. As we do get exposed to lots of sensitive customer and partner data, it becomes imperative for us to have the latest IT security and policies in place. We take pride in being one of the few organizations globally to have a comprehensive Ingram Micro Privacy Statement and Notice of Collection of data on our website.
With the rise in cyber threats especially with the advent of AI, being a technology leader, it becomes our responsibility to have the best of the products and solutions available for our partners and customers in the cybersecurity space. With a comprehensive set of cyber security vendors, we cater to each element required to make an organization safe from any type of cyber threat.
As a part of our Professional Services offerings, we offer a comprehensive set of VAPT assessments to trace out any vulnerability in the customer IT infra and provide logical products and solutions to mitigate those risks.
CIO&Leader: As artificial intelligence becomes more integral to cybersecurity solutions, can you discuss how Ingram Micro India leverages AI to enhance threat detection and response? Any advice for enterprises on how to keep themselves safe?
Anurag Singh: With our thriving vendor ecosystem, we offer customized cybersecurity solutions to our customers catering to their needs. Assessing a potential cyberattack or a vulnerability in the network or infra can now be diagnosed more effectively using AI. With vendor solutions leveraging AI capabilities, threat detection and response now can be a proactive mechanism rather than a reactive mechanism. This can save customers from a high-risk scenario considering the data at stake.
While technologies will continue to evolve using AI to make the IT environment safe for customers to use, so is the threat concern. To safeguard an organization apart from cyber security deployment, customers must always follow the bare minimum below 3 things:
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- Secure your Network, IT Infra and Database.
- Employee education and awareness over the threats looming due to the evolving nature of cyber-attacks.
- Create proper and customized security policies and practices.
- Secure your Network, IT Infra and Database.
CIO&Leader: What tech trends do you see emerging in terms of cybersecurity?
Anurag Singh: Our diverse Vendor ecosystem portfolio exposes us to the latest tech trends and to chalk out a few key trends in the cybersecurity space, I would say the top three are:
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- AI & ML in cybersecurity – the top trend. AI-powered threat detection, anomaly detection, and automated response systems will become more sophisticated in identifying and mitigating cyber threats.
- Zero Trust Architecture or ZTNA: ZTA’s principle of “never trust, always verify” will become more widespread to secure sensitive data and resources.
- Privacy Regulation and Data Protection: Taking a cue from the DPDP (Digital Personal Data Protection) Bill by the Government of India, laws around privacy and data protection will become paramount and products and solutions that the market will demand will revolve around these regulations and corresponding compliance.
- AI & ML in cybersecurity – the top trend. AI-powered threat detection, anomaly detection, and automated response systems will become more sophisticated in identifying and mitigating cyber threats.