From AI to cybersecurity, WWT focused on enabling customers

by Aaron Raj, CRN Asia

World Wide Technology's presence in the Asia Pacific region started as an extension of its global financial business which predominantly ran out of the UK and the US. But in the last decade, the technology services provider and systems integrator has built its local presence in the region. Today, WWT has a strong presence in Singapore, India, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and Australia.

In a conversation with CRN Asia during WWT's AI Day in Singapore, Jason Brouwers, Vice President, Head of Asia Pacific, Japan and China stated that WWT now has the capability to not just deliver globally for customers but also deliver for local customers globally outward.

"It's interesting because a lot of the initial deals that we did, the business that we did with the local logos, was helping them expand into other countries, and then we grew the business back into Asia as well. There were a few Singaporean companies that we started doing that with, where we helped them build data centers in the US and South America, etc, and then we brought back a bit more business here in Asia as well. And now we're at the point where we're a fully functioning, very successful business on our own, here in Asia Pacific, with the local business," said Brouwers.

Echoing Brouwers' sentiments is Eric Helfer, Area Vice President, Asia Pacific. For Helfer, WWT's global accounts are equally as important as the Asia outbound accounts.

"Our Asia outbound accounts are growing at a tremendous rate at the moment across the region. From a go-to-market perspective, WWT has really come in as a breath of fresh air to a lot of these places. There's been partners that have been in place for 10, 15, 20 years, and when we come into a new market, or we start to see new customers, they look at us like a sounding board. What are we doing globally out of the US? What are we doing globally out of Europe? Please tell us what's happening, and please teach us what they're doing! And we're trying to bring a local flavour of that into the market, and that's where we're seeing a lot of our success as well," said Helfer.

Brouwers also highlighted that the key differentiator that WWT has in this market is its global integration centers. WWT has a large integration center in Singapore, another in Mumbai, and they're building others in the region. He added that WWT will also start to expand the supply chain, which is critical for some of its global customers to be able to run their business.

"The second major differentiator we have is our advanced technology center, where we have the multitude of the biggest and best technologies in the world, all in one place. Our customers can run proof of concepts, demos, but more importantly, they can get great engineering insights into the technology stack that they want to build and test for their environment," added Brouwers.

In fact, Brouwers said what excites him most about APAC is that the region is starting to lead the world.

"For many years, it's a very exciting growth area, but you're now seeing massive opportunities for Asia Pacific, from Australia up to India all the way up to Korea. There are opportunities everywhere, from the skills of the people to the opportunity and the fact that things aren't necessarily a geographic limitation anymore. Even when you look in the field of AI, the ability to export tokens is the new commodity that will become extremely valuable and Asia Pacific has the opportunity within the AI to own that space, just through the nature of the different geographies throughout the region and the skills of the people and the ability to execute on that," said Brouwers.

The AI opportunity

Tim Brooks, Managing Director & Chief AI Advisor at WWT, who was also in Singapore for the customer and partner event, explained that AI has been part of their offering even before the technology became mainstream.

Brooks also pointed out that AI represents the fastest growing dimension for WWT currently. He added that the growth of AI is also fuelling the demand of both cybersecurity as well as security for AI infrastructure.