SHI International on Dell, Palantir, VMware, OpenAI and hot market trends
Ryan Sheehan weighs in on “tight” partnerships with VMware and Dell during a supply chain crisis, OpenAI and Anthropic’s channel push
A top SHI International executive tells CRN he is “incredibly bullish” about the firm’s position in the global market as the $16bn (£11.9bn) IT powerhouse leverages its scale and broad technology portfolio to support customers navigating AI adoption.
“Our size, scale and ability to invest as a private company really sets us apart,” says Ryan Sheehan, SVP of Advanced Solutions at SHI International.
“Sometimes partners can view large-scale partners as lacking value, and we view that as untrue in today’s market,” he says.
“What really resonates with customers is, very few, if any, can provide the global scale that a company like us has with the value and technical expertise and service delivery.”
The 7,000-strong global SHI International workforce is providing customers with insights to make better decisions around technology spending, AI plans and broader business growth.
“In a world changing so fast with AI and cybersecurity, I’m incredibly bullish on SHI’s position to help customers navigate all of this,” Sheehan tells CRN.
In an interview with CRN, Sheehan discusses partnerships with Dell Technologies, VMware and Palantir, as well as market trends and how SHI is helping clients navigate supply chain constraints.
What is SHI doing to help customers with the market’s memory and compute supply chain issues?
"We’re a top partner with almost all the major OEM hardware vendors, so we have a very tight relationship and we’re able to be in constant communication. Then we help communicate that reality back to customers.
"Initially it was like, 'Hey, don’t panic buy. Let’s see how this thing goes.'
"And then it’s, 'Whoa, this thing’s going to be around for a long time. So let’s adjust. Let’s talk about how you’re allocating investment, how you’re allocating capital.'
"This is going to be here for a while.
"Customers can’t wait two or three years. What’s the best time to figure out your workload, and let’s figure out the infrastructure that it sits on, and how you can actually get it and deploy it in a reasonable time inside your budget cycle.
"It’s a tricky one, but we’re navigating it well with customers."
What vendors is SHI teaming with to help alleviate customer concerns regarding memory and hardware shortages?
"As it ties to VMware, we’re seeing a lot of success with customers saying, 'How do you use technology features like NVMe tiering to maybe free up existing infrastructure in a better way, so you can deploy some new workloads without stretching the budget?'
"So that’s a lot of it.
"On the OEM side, we’re a very strong Dell partner.
"Dell seems to be navigating that really well with its supply chain management.
"Dell is an interesting company because it’s not just a server OEM, it has devices and all kinds of different hardware. So it gets some benefits of scale.
"The Dell team has learned through many previous supply chain constraints and the impact of that, and adjusted, and have been ready for this latest one.
"Dell has seemingly put itself in a very good position."
OpenAI and Anthropic are starting to form a channel partner ecosystem. What is SHI’s take on those two AI stars entering the channel?
"They’re killing it in the industry.
"It’s interesting because the skillsets are new so they can probably pay a lot for top talent.
"We’re exploring those partnerships.
"We’re excited to see Anthropic and OpenAI develop partner programmesand try to standardise that because it was always, “Where is the channel’s place in this part of the ecosystem?”
"To see them investing in the channel is good, and we’re exploring those avenues as well."
What about another standout in the AI era, Palantir?
"We have already partnered with Palantir.
"We have a separate agentic business that we’re standing up, really specifically helping healthcare and commercial customers bring a Palantir platform into an agentic model that really can benefit there.
"We’re absolutely looking at them and helping.
"We’re not doing a bunch of deployments for them right now. It’s still really new in their partner programme.
"We are looking at and exploring all of them."
What are some of the positive market trends SHI is seeing in 2026?
"Everything revolves around cybersecurity.
"The change that we see in all of our infrastructure conversations is that cybersecurity is now included.
"It’s no longer just, 'Hey, it’s a private cloud.' It’s got to be a secure private cloud.
"If it’s an end-user device, it’s a secure end-user device. So the cybersecurity space is incredibly hot right now.
"There are so many good technology platform providers. A lot of those providers are doing some good things around forming new alliances together.
"The more those alliances are formed between different platforms, the customer benefit is really strong.
"AI is obviously the topic du jour all the time, anywhere from productivity AI using Copilot Cloud to private AI clouds for custom workloads. We’re seeing great wins there.
"Lastly, we’re seeing a lot of spend optimisation.
"If you look at SHI’s services around how we help a customer take budget and stretch that as much as possible through our FinOps services, tokenomics assessments and storage assessments, that is really giving customers the data to make really good decisions."
This article originally appeared on CRN UK sister websiteCRN.