Yax is bullish on Stargate. He called it “an accelerant” for the channel to advance AI by giving MSPs a chance to provide essential expertise to customers trying to figure it all out.
“I think it's a huge opportunity, not only for the advancement of AI, but from a channel perspective,” he said. “What it opens up for the MSP community is to be able to serve in the readiness aspect of AI. Businesses right now don't really have the necessary capabilities or the infrastructure and security to jump into AI effectively. That's an opportunity for MSPs to take advantage of.”
He said customers rely on MSPs to guide them through implementation of new technologies, and many are just coming to grips with AI. A recent Canalys poll found 61% of partners struggle to get AI projects out of the proof-of-concept stage with customers even as AI is being rapidly adopted in some form by partners and customers.
“When anything new technology-related comes up, our clients go to us to ask, ‘What do I do? How do I do something with this? How can I take advantage of it? Is it right for me?,’” Yax said. “We're still in the very beginning of what AI can do. Everyone thinks it's the Terminator, it's going to be self-aware. We don't even know how to get there yet. It's so far away.”
The investment and attention Stargate brings to AI can help, but not everyone is bullish on Stargate. Elon Musk has already publicly doubted the validity of the funding numbers, and many industry watchers are asking for more details. One analyst, Scott Raynovich of Futuriom, wrote in his Forbes column that he is skeptical of the partnership between government and tech leaders.
“But if you dive deeper into Stargate, as we did, the details are murky and they also reveal the potential conflicts of co-mingling the massive wallets and egos of the AI market in the halls of the White House,” Raynovich wrote. “The details involve a collision of money, politics, and egos—with many potential conflicts down the road. And many of the details of how Project Stargate will work and who will pay for it aren’t clear.”
Awecomm’s Yax takes a brighter view of the government involvement with AI. He said Stargate will free external capacity for AI compute that businesses can leverage, or drive down cost of compute and energy. Both are positives.
“It's similar to one of the last really big projects that the government got involved in with the private sector, the interstate [highway] system,” Yax said. “It didn't mean it put small companies out of business. What it meant was, once the infrastructure is there, it increased business everywhere. And the same thing's going to happen with AI. If we can get rid of some of these regulations, we can fast track the building of data centers, and it will grow our entire industry. It's extremely exciting.”
(You will find a wealth of AI sessions Channel Partners Conference & Expo March 24-47. Read about some of them here.)
