In this Channel Partner TV (CPTV) interview, Danny Benedetti, VP of partner success at Lumen Technologies, discussed the company's strategic investments in the AI economy. He emphasized the need for increased bandwidth to support growing network demands. He also talked about how the changes are impacting Lumen internally, and helping it attract more MSPs as partners.
“Over the last few years, I really feel Lumen has made a deliberate investment in the AI economy and where it's going,” he said. “It's been something that's been really exciting. It's also been something that's really challenging internally. You try and prep your entire company. Not just your company and your workforce, but the entire network, all that infrastructure for this boom that's happening with the AI economy.”
Lumen sells networking, edge cloud, collaboration, cybersecurity solutions and managed services. To expand its backbone to prepare for AI networks, Lumen promises to add 34 million new fiber miles by the end of 2028 for a total of 47 million intercity and metro miles.
“Customers are going to need more and more bandwidth to run these networks,” Benedetti said. “The partners are in prime position to advise them. And so when you talk about change and you want to talk about revolution, 2020 to 2025 was prepping us, especially in the Covid times. The whole workforce changed, and we're about to see that again with the AI revolution and the bandwidth demand. So things are really accelerating inside of Lumen.”
Danny Benedetti
He said as part of this change, Lumen is attracting more MSP partners than it has had historically.
“The change really is driven by the customer,” Benedetti said. “The customer just doesn't need a product or a traditional network. They need somebody who can come in and really offer a solution. Customers’ needs are changing rapidly. The AI economy is accelerating that starting at the high-end enterprise. And what we're seeing is [customers] need an expert that can come in and create a solution that has the backing of the right supplier to come in, that understands what my enterprise needs, and to bring the right resources to co- create that together.
Benedetti talked about making the transition from a telecom to a tech co, but he used a different term to explain it.
“The term that we use internally is cloudifying telecom,” he said. “Going from a telco to a tech CO, which means AI is great, cloud is great, but you need the infrastructure there to transmit the bandwidth. What we've done is we've created an environment there where the infrastructure can give the customers the bandwidth on demand that they need, getting to the hyperscalers, getting to the data centers, allowing customers to dial the bandwidth up, dial it down, and then be able to route their cloud traffic at the edge is super critical.”
Watch the video at the top of the page for more from Benedetti.