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Artificial Intelligence has quickly moved from future concept to boardroom priority. Across Ireland, organisations are exploring how AI can improve productivity, automate processes, enhance customer experiences and unlock new insights from their data.
For many resellers, the conversation naturally starts with software, applications and cloud services. But there is another discussion that is becoming increasingly important – and one that many customers have yet to fully consider: is their infrastructure ready?
AI is more than a software project
Much of the attention surrounding AI focuses on what it can do. Less attention is paid to what it needs.
Whether organisations are deploying AI-powered applications, increasing data processing capabilities, expanding edge computing environments or introducing more intelligent automation, the demands on the underlying infrastructure increase significantly. More processing power requires more energy. More energy generates more heat. More critical workloads increase the need for resilience, monitoring and uptime.
For many organisations, especially those operating across multiple locations, these challenges cannot be solved by software alone.
The hidden infrastructure challenge
Many businesses today are operating with infrastructure designed for yesterday’s requirements.
Server rooms, branch offices, network cabinets and edge locations were often deployed to support traditional workloads. As AI adoption grows, these environments may face increased pressure on power availability, cooling capacity and operational resilience.
A question we often ask is simple: “If your organisation doubles its processing requirements over the next three years, is your infrastructure ready?”
In many cases, the answer is uncertain. This creates an opportunity for resellers to shift the conversation from products to strategy.
The rise of distributed infrastructure
AI is not only changing data centres. It is changing the edge. Many organisations now operate complex environments spanning head offices, branch locations, retail outlets, warehouses, manufacturing facilities and remote sites. As these environments become more dependent on technology, the impact of downtime increases.
A server failure in a branch office may seem minor, but if it prevents customer transactions, disrupts operations or impacts employee productivity, the costs quickly add up. Traditionally, resolving these issues often required sending engineers to site.
Today, organisations are increasingly looking for ways to monitor, manage and troubleshoot infrastructure remotely. Visibility, control and resilience are becoming just as important as performance.
Why business continuity matters more than ever
AI initiatives are raising expectations around availability. When businesses become more reliant on data, automation and real-time decision-making, downtime becomes increasingly costly.
This is why conversations around power protection, environmental monitoring, remote access and infrastructure resilience are becoming more strategic. Customers are no longer simply asking: “What UPS should I buy?”. Instead, they are asking: “How do I ensure my business remains operational?”
That shift in thinking presents a significant opportunity for the channel.
A new opportunity for resellers
The most successful resellers won’t be the ones talking about AI the loudest. They will be the ones helping customers understand the practical implications of AI adoption.
That means asking different questions:
- Is your infrastructure capable of supporting future workloads?
- Have you reviewed your power and cooling capacity?
- How do you manage infrastructure across multiple sites?
- Can critical systems be accessed and controlled remotely?
- What happens if a key location experiences an outage?
These conversations elevate the reseller from supplier to trusted adviser. More importantly, they often uncover opportunities that customers had not previously considered.
Turning strategy into infrastructure
At Memory Bank, we’re already seeing these conversations take place across Ireland. Working alongside Vertiv, we help resellers and end users address the infrastructure challenges associated with growth, digital transformation and AI adoption.
Our focus spans critical power protection, including the Vertiv Liebert UPS portfolio, intelligent rack power distribution units (PDUs), infrastructure monitoring, environmental monitoring, and Avocent out-of-band management solutions that provide secure remote access and control of critical systems.
These technologies help organisations improve resilience, reduce downtime, gain visibility across distributed environments and, importantly, minimise costly engineer call-outs to remote sites.
Imagine a bank with dozens of branches across the country. If a server or network device fails in a remote branch, the traditional response is often to dispatch an engineer. With secure out-of-band access, IT teams can remotely access, diagnose, reboot and recover systems without leaving their desks, reducing downtime and significantly lowering support costs.
As AI adoption accelerates, organisations need more than just processing power. They need resilient infrastructure capable of supporting increased power demands, cooling requirements, remote management and business continuity.
Start the conversation now
The organisations that will benefit most from AI are those that prepare their infrastructure before it becomes a constraint.
For Irish resellers, this presents an opportunity to engage customers in meaningful discussions around resilience, visibility, business continuity and future readiness.
AI may be the catalyst, but the conversation is ultimately about ensuring the foundations are in place to support whatever comes next. Because while AI may be changing the way businesses work, it is also changing the infrastructure required to support them. And that is a conversation worth having today.
Tommy Byrne is sales manager with Memory Bank
To support partners having these conversations, Memory Bank and Vertiv are currently running a Spin to Win promotion. Resellers placing qualifying Vertiv orders over €8,000 can spin the wheel for the chance to win prizes worth up to €500.
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