The world’s largest PC manufacturer, Lenovo, has been going all in on AI investments. Last year, the company committed to investing $1 billion to advance its AI innovators program, which earlier had an allocation of $100 million. Lenovo’s Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG), which is the world’s leading provider of supercomputers, has also been accelerating its commitment to data centres and cloud infrastructure with a special focus on India.
Lenovo’s India Plans
“India is absolutely one of the most important markets that we serve,” said Vladimir Rozanovich, SVP-Lenovo ISG, in an exclusive interaction with AIM. “We know there’s value in making sure we build infrastructure products here in India; we know there is a market here to sell those too. But, we also know there’s a market here to export those to other countries in the Asia Pacific region,” he added.
India’s potential and adoption prowess positions it as a crucial player for Lenovo. “I think India, because of traditionally being a strong back-office to the world, is in a wonderful position to actually drive the market on what AI does, and what AI in the infrastructure space looks like,” said Rozanovich.
The availability of talented software engineers has been Lenovo’s draw towards local hiring to generate value-added jobs across various business sectors such as PCs, mobile and servers. India not only serves as an opportunity for manufacturing and software development but also for revenue opportunities. “I think some of China’s sentiment is that companies are looking for alternatives other than build in China,” said Rozanovich.
Collaborative Forces
Key AI player NVIDIA has been a strong collaborative force for Lenovo. Last October, the two giants announced their partnership and expansion plans to bring generative AI accessible to enterprises. Lenovo is one of the exclusive partners of NVIDIA’s digital twin product, OVX, that offers both on-prem and cloud deployments. As software providers, Microsoft is a crucial partner as well.
“Partnership is in our DNA, and just about everything we do across the organisation,” said Sumir Bhatia, president – Asia Pacific, Lenovo ISG. “If you look at delivering an AI solution to a customer, it’s a journey, and I don’t believe there’s one company that can actually provide a solution. This is where partnerships come in,” he said.
Enabling India Hyperscalers
Continuing on collaborations, Lenovo is already providing infrastructure to all the major data centre players in India. “Hyperscalers in India are a big, big business. If you see the overall server business in India, 50% of it is hyperscalers,” said Amit Luthra – MD India – Lenovo ISG. “Eventually, any hyperscaler and every cloud service provider needs infrastructure to run their service. That is where we partner with them.”
However, scaling hyperscalers comes with its own set of difficulties. India has to address the infrastructure demand in India before expanding to other markets. “I think for hyperscalers the challenge is ‘India for India’, said Luthra.
Data localisation or data sovereignty has been driving growth, and Luthra believes there is no organisation that can afford to not have data in India. “Some of them who had backshore offices in India and no data centres here, now have them here. They eventually turned out to be our large customers,” said Luthra.
Bhatia said that the situation has led to a number of startups wanting to switch from cloud to on-prem services, as they “need to be with the AI services and want to be in a hybrid environment”. “A major growth will be the next wave of cloud service providers here in India,” he said.
Future Hype and Trend
Rozanovich spoke about the evolving infrastructure to fit into the recent market. “Instead of CPUs and GPUs, you’ll hear about NPUs or neural processing units, which companies like AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm are starting to develop. Those are going to be higher horsepower-type silicon that will now actually start going into devices too. These will have the capability to do all of these computations in the background,” said Rozanovich.
Speaking about the future, the ISG leaders predict increasing growth and development, especially in the AI space. “I think you are going to continue to see us invest in this AI journey from devices to cloud,” said Rozanovich.
The company also has ambitious goals in becoming leaders in mobility. “Today we export more Motorola phones out of India to the US than are actually even consumed here in India. We have goals for being number three in the world, from a mobility standpoint. You’re going to see us continue to make investments here,” said Rozanovich.
“If we can create a situation where India is an exporter of technology for Lenovo, that would be a wonderful thing,” he concluded.
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