By Megan Amdahl / 23 Feb 2024
Amplify was our time to hit the accelerator and intensify our focus on being the essential partner our clients can’t live without when considering how technology drives their business. And in turn, making sure our partners are fully along for the ride as rapidly evolving technologies like generative AI set a new pace for modernization requirements.
Just like a high-performance racecar requires the best engineering, parts and maintenance, running a business today is fueled by modern infrastructure (most often in multicloud environments), fine-tuned data estates, robust cybersecurity, and revving up how information is consumed through top-notch applications and digital commerce engines.
Insight stands at the epicenter of this new AI-driven digital revolution, which is only just taking off. Perhaps that’s why Amplify attracted about 125 of our partner companies to discuss how to best serve our clients’ evolving needs. Our participating partners — including top executives from Microsoft, NVIDIA, Intel, Google, HP, Cisco, Lenovo, Dell Technologies and AMD — represent about 30% of the $4.7 trillion global IT market. Collectively, we are shaping how this new era of opportunity transpires, and we need to be thoughtful about how we usher the modern enterprise into new ways of working.
“Each of us needs to think like the CEO of the clients we work with to deeply understand their organization’s greatest needs and objectives, then lay out the digital strategy to move quickly to their goals and navigate them to the best technical solutions to achieve it,” Insight CEO Joyce Mullen said in kicking off our three-day conference, held Monday to Wednesday at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge resort.
Kevin Peesker, president of Worldwide SMC & Digital, Microsoft, put it a slightly different way by saying transformation has become a topline imperative: “The CEO is the new CIO. I have never in my career experienced the intensity of energy at the top of the house because this isn't about implementing technology at its base form. This is about the operations of an organization.”
We know that most companies today are more concerned than ever about the capital they invest in their business, and technology is at the heart of optimizing costs (or should be). Our clients are trying to make sense of an abundance of choices and complex digital ecosystems — 76% of enterprises operate today on multiple cloud platforms, with the average having 2.3 clouds in use. As they consider the new promise of AI, companies need to replicate data, apps and workloads across cloud systems to mitigate risks, including vendor lock-in, outages, natural disasters, or cyberattacks.
Amplify 2024 brought a sense of greater urgency to these needs. Guest speakers like NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger and Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Antonio Neri all spoke of moving quickly to adapt in the AI race.
We also recognized the head of the pack of our network of more than 8,000 tech partners during an award ceremony marking the finish line of our three-day conference. Winners of our 2024 Insight Amplify Awards are:
As the term “solutions integrator” suggests, we couldn’t do what we do for our clients without the support of top partners like these. They are the fuel driving us.
“We are customer first in a really unique way,” said Dee Burger, Insight North America president. “We are valuable to our partners because we wrap our arms around our clients to really understand the context of how we can help position the most effective technologies in the most valuable ways. We are way past the idea of let's just sell all the technology we can. Let’s make it useful and make it long-term and ultimately contextualize the technology as part of their strategic planning, part of their budget planning, security strategy and everything else that’s essential to their business.”
That’s our DRIVE this year.
Superstar racer Danica Patrick, who was my guest on stage Wednesday, might have put this into perspective best when I asked who her idols were growing up. She said she didn’t have any — she simply wanted to be the best version of her.
This is how we think of Insight being in a Category of One as a Solutions Integrator. We are building an answer for our client’s most critical business needs that we don’t believe currently exists.
Navigating the complex and high-speed world of technology. With so many options available, choosing the right technology — architecting, purchasing, implementing and managing it — to transform a business is overwhelming for most. As we shift into top gear in 2024, we think we’re better positioned to help our clients do that against the fastest-evolving technology industry we’ve ever seen.
And it’s only going to get faster.
Senior Vice President, Client Experience and North America Chief Operating Officer, Insight
Megan is a leader with more than 10 years of diverse experience in financial planning and analysis, cost reduction, process improvement and technical accounting.
