IBM, AMD, Dell, HPE, VMware, Intel CEOs: Key 2023 Investments

CEOs from AMD, IBM, NetApp, Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Nutanix, Pure Storage, Red Hat, VMware and Intel explain their big investment plans in 2023.

Ten CEOs from some of the world’s largest technology companies tell CRN where their key IT investment dollars will be spent in 2023.

From providing more data to channel partners and as-a-service offerings to artificial intelligence and quantum computing innovation, CEOs from AMD, Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Intel, NetApp, Nutanix, Pure Storage, Red Hat and VMware have bold investments plans in store for 2023.

“AMD is bringing AI engines across our product portfolio to power even larger models and create the next generation of AI experiences,” said AMD CEO Lisa Su.

CEOs responded to the question, ‘What are the key technology investments you plan to make in 2023?’ for CRN’s 2023 CEO Outlook special report.

HPE CEO Antonio Neri said he expects to invest heavily in HPE GreenLake as-a-service, while Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami will invest in providing more data to channel partners to accelerate customer adoption.

Other CEOs like Intel’s Pat Gelsinger and IBM’s Arvind Krishna are focusing on investing millions in 2023 on innovation.

“We continue to make steady advancements in quantum computing,” said IBM’s Krishna. “Building on our progress of a 127-qubit quantum computer currently in our cloud, we recently unveiled our most powerful quantum achievement to date; a 433-qubit processor called IBM Osprey. This will help us move forward on our roadmap to deliver a 1,000-plus qubit system this year and a 4,000-plus qubit system in 2025.”

Here are the responses regarding their key investments in 2023 from tech CEOs Lisa Su, George Kurian, Antonio Neri, Rajiv Ramaswami, Pat Gelsinger, Arvind Krishna as well as Red Hat’s Matt Hicks, Pure Storage’s Charlie Giancarlo, VMware’s Raghu Raghuram and Dell Technologies’ Michael Dell.

AMD

CEO: Dr. Lisa Su

Big 2023 Investment: Artificial Intelligence

AMD CEO Lisa Su said artificial intelligence (AI) is the biggest megatrend in technology today and is where her company is “making significant investments” in 2023.

“We are at an inflection point for AI and we are now seeing adoption across a broad set of applications and workloads, with AI often working behind the scenes to make computing even more powerful and data even more actionable,” Su said. “AMD is bringing AI engines across our product portfolio to power even larger models and create the next generation of AI experiences.”

Su said the full potential of AI can only be realized when artificial intelligence is widely available and can be used across a range of devices—from intelligent endpoints to the edge and cloud.

“Our next-generation AI accelerator combines a CPU, GPU and memory into a single, integrated chip that delivers 8x more performance and 5x better efficiency in AI workloads compared to the accelerator powering the world’s current fastest supercomputer,” she said. “MI300 will be able to reduce the amount of time request to train large language models, like the GPT-3 model used by ChatGPT, from months to weeks.”

Intel

CEO: Pat Gelsinger

Big 2023 Investment: Product Innovation, Capacity

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said his company is investing in areas that will have the “biggest impact” on Intel in 2023 as well as continuing to accelerate its open ecosystem strategy.

“This includes: bringing incredible products to market such as 13th Gen Core, 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, Intel Data Center GPU Max Series, and new graphics, networking, and software products,” said Gelsinger. “[Also] building better transistors to enable future breakthroughs, supporting five process technology nodes in four years.”

Intel’s CEO said the company will invest in a software-defined silicon to deliver software and hardware. “Nearly all our customers benefit from the extensive software optimizations that are tuned to the differentiated features in our hardware,” he said.

Lastly, Gelsinger will invest in the capacity needed to support long-term demand for semiconductors. “The world needs a more secure, sustainable, and resilient semiconductor supply chain, and Intel is playing a critical role in making this a reality,” he said.

Nutanix

CEO: Rajiv Ramaswami

Big Investment: Providing Data To Channel Partners

Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami said 2023 investments will revolve around channel partner success.

“In order for our partners to drive customer success, we have to enable them with insights into how their customers are using and adopting our products in their organization,” said Ramaswami.

“To do this, we plan to invest more resources into getting this data to our partners so they can have meaningful, data-driven interactions with their customers to drive more adoption, expansion opportunities, and better success in landing renewals,” Nutanix CEO said.

The goal for 2023 is to increase customer usage and adoption working alongside Nutanix channel partners.

Dell Technologies

CEO: Michael Dell

Big 2023 Investment: Dell Apex

Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell said his company will invest this year in Dell Apex, the company’s as-a-service and cloud services portfolio.

“We’re focused on growing and modernizing our core businesses, winning the edge and leading with Dell APEX, from the way we sell and deliver solutions to how we support partners and customers,” said Michael Dell.

He added that Dell will continue to invest heavily with its channel partners.

“Our partners are critical to our success, which is why an omni-channel business model with a robust partner ecosystem is at the core of our strategy,” he said.

Dell also said “critical investments” in 2023 will be around “priority growth businesses including multicloud, edge, telecom and cyber recovery.”

IBM

CEO: Arvind Krishna

Big 2023 Investment: Hybrid Cloud, Quantum Computing

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said 2023 investments will be around hybrid cloud.

“Hybrid cloud has become the leading architecture for global enterprises across industries seeking to digitally transform their organizations,” said Krishna. “IBM’s sustained investments in software, cloud infrastructure, and consulting are enabling businesses to build and run their critical business applications while helping to meet complex regulatory and security requirements.”

IBM will also invest in infrastructure which powers hybrid cloud environments—including IBM’s z16 mainframe and LinuxOne platform— as well as AI and quantum computing.

“We continue to make steady advancements in quantum computing. Building on our progress of a 127-qubit quantum computer currently in our cloud, we recently unveiled our most powerful quantum achievement to date; a 433-qubit processor called IBM Osprey,” IBM’s CEO said. “This will help us move forward on our roadmap to deliver a 1,000-plus qubit system this year and a 4,000-plus qubit system in 2025.”

VMware

CEO: Raghu Raghuram

Big Investment: Multi-Cloud Services

VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram his company will focus investments in 2023 on multi-cloud services to help customers with their complex, and sometimes costly, multi-cloud environments.

“Customers need a set of multi-cloud services that provides abstraction layers to simplify multi-cloud environments and unify their ability to take advantage of the unique value of any cloud environment. This is the value we bring with VMware Cross-Cloud services,” said Raghuram.

“Will continue to invest in delivering an app platform customers can use to build any type of application, for any cloud in a repeatable, consistent, and secure way,” VMware’s CEO said. “We will extend cloud management to deliver a multi-cloud operating model and provide financial transparency. We will continue to evolve our cloud and edge infrastructure so customers can run applications on any cloud or edge location, consistently.”

Raghuram said VMware will also invest in its workforce solution Anywhere Workspace, which combines VMware Workspace One and Horizon.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

CEO: Antonio Neri

Big Investment: HPE GreenLake

HPE’s CEO Antonio Neri said he’s already delivered on his promise of making his company’s entire portfolio available as-a-service via HPE GreenLake.

“In 2023 and beyond, we will continue to make key investments across our HPE GreenLake platform and portfolio of cloud services to extend our hybrid cloud leadership,” said Neri. “Our innovation and pipeline of new HPE GreenLake offerings in 2023 is stacked across our entire product portfolio from compute, storage, supercomputing, AI, data analytics, private cloud enterprise and networking.”

Neri said HPE also plans to double down in 2023 on HPE GreenLake edge offerings as well as introducing new offers in Private 5G, IoT and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE).

Other investments this year will be around cybersecurity, data center switching and artificial intelligence.

“Recognizing the importance of unlocking the value of data to our customers’ competitiveness, we plan to make further investments in AI at scale,” said Neri.

NetApp

CEO: George Kurian

Big Investment: Cloud Storage, Data Protection

NetApp CEO George Kurian said investments this year will revolve around cloud storage to drive simplicity and value for customers and their data.

“We will prioritize this across every aspect of our portfolio, including our flash storage product and our first-party cloud storage offerings with AWS, Azure and Google Cloud,” said Kurian. “We also are executing on an opportunity to improve data center economics and sustainability with the industry’s most comprehensive cloud integrated capacity flash products.”

Kurian highlights NetApp’s recent BlueXP SaaS launch to help customers manage and optimize their hybrid and multi-cloud environment.

“You’ll also see us continue to double down on automation software, which helps businesses cut costs and optimize their outcomes while remaining agile, flexible and competitive,” said NetApp’s CEO. “As cybersecurity remains a top-level concern for customers, we’ll also continue to make investments in technologies that ensure the security of our customers’ valuable data.”

Pure Storage

CEO: Charlie Giancarlo

Big Investment: Flash Storage

Pure Storage CEO Charlie Giancarlo said his company is focused squarely on investments in storage innovations aimed at helping customers better leverage their data.

“We are focused on delivering innovative and disruptive storage technologies and services to redefine and simplify the way organizations consume and interact with data, and truly enable them to maximize the value of data to reach their customer, financial, and sustainability goals,” said Giancarlo.

In 2023, Giancarlo said NetApp is “doubling down on our investments to replace inefficient and environmentally unfriendly hard disks with highly efficient Flash technology to deliver the fastest, most powerful, reliable and cost-effective data storage in the industry.”

Red Hat

CEO: Matt Hicks

Big Investment: Cloud And Edge Computing Flexbility

Red Hat CEO Matt Hicks said his company will invest in 2023 on where its customers need to tranform the most: cloud and edge computing.

“Our key focus areas are going to continue to center on cloud services, edge computing and hybrid cloud infrastructure,” said Hicks. “Our approach to investing in cloud services is all about choice. We want our customers to consume our technologies in the way that best makes sense for them, whether that’s on-premise, at the edge, in a cloud environment or as a service.”

Red Hat will invest in 2023 on customer flexibility and choice.

“Take cloud services, as an example: As we design and deliver new cloud services, we keep each of these scenarios in mind - if a customer needs to shift their operations from one footprint to another, we want to make sure that we shift with them with a minimal complexity,” Hicks said.

Red Hat’s goal is to offer a common platform, experience and tools, “no matter the cloud, the hardware or the footprint our customers choose to run on,” Hicks said.