ASI, VST ECS spearhead tech event focused on Servers, networking
Advance Solutions Inc (ASI) staged on March 13 its first info tech event for 2025 in a gathering of IT experts at the Luxent Hotel in Quezon City. The event was in partnership with VST ECS Phils and in cooperation with ASI brand partners including Lenovo, APC, Extreme Networks, and AMD. Entitled “Building the Future,” the seminar tackled tech trends on intelligent IT or AI, resilient power of servers, and seamless networking. Participants were ASI and VST’s stakeholders both from the government and the private sector.
In the morning program, Lenovo’s John Michael Tabuada, Presales Engineer, started off the discussion with the theme “Smarter AI for All.” He began with the notion that current popular AI solutions include ChatGPT, Copilot, Meta AI, among others are on a roll and Lenovo is bringing AI to data of organizations existing today. AI revolution is radically changing the IT landscape transforming how people live and work. AI stimulates creativity, improves productivity, and reinvents innovation. In fact, a new wave of AI innovation drives competitive advantage for businesses across many vertical markets.
JM went on to talk about the 5 AI transformations or imperatives to get into the race: Competitiveness; data insights; location matters; LLMs and beyond; responsible AI. He also presented Lenovo servers which are ideal for remote purposes or when personnel are far from your data center. These AI-powered servers deliver optimized solutions geared toward data management; machine learning and data analytics; deep learning training. Lenovo has 165 plus AI innovator solutions across industries including finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail.
Nutanix came next in the presentation delivered by Mark Sanchez, Senior Systems Engineer. His theme was “Navigating the Future: AI & Kubernetes Innovation with Nutanix.”
He introduced Nutanix as a company delivering a multi-cloud native platform that facilitates AI operation. He started his discussion with the Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) that simplifies platform engineering by reducing operational complexity and establishing consistency across any environment. Built to solve the toughest kubernetes management challenges, NKP also delivers flexible deployment in the public cloud, on-premises or at the edge with or without Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure.
Mark further noted that with a unified, efficient and simple-to-use platform that works across clouds, datacenters and edge, Nutanix breaks down the barriers that keep you from achieving your cloud goals. And with Nutanix enterprise AI, your path to AI is accelerated by enabling you to overcome common challenges such as infrastructure complexity, security, compliance, and lack of AI expertise. Nutanix effortlessly extends AI to wherever you want to go―on-premises, the cloud and the edge―while reducing complexity, strengthening security and lowering your TCO (total cost of ownership).
For the afternoon session, Sophia Beatrice Salandanan, who is Product Application Engineer at APC Schneider began with the presentations. Her theme was “Innovative Solutions for Modern Infrastructure: All-in-One Solutions for Data Centers.” She started her discussion with the idea that the “edge of the future” is all about new digital and electric world as well as sustainable and renewable solutions. Since everyone is digitizing, mega tech trends require modern solutions such as hyper converge edge solutions. Data centers are now essential for organizations but there are challenges in meeting client demands:
Latency – due to lack of data centers in the Philippines
Bandwith – that needs to generate large amount of data
Security – to avoid risk and breach of data
Autonomy – for centralized solutions
Local service – need for simple and integrated solutions
She further mentioned the need for micro data center applications for sectors such as healthcare (hospitals); branches of military sites; warehouse and manufacturing; media and entertainment.
Next in line was Extreme Networks represented by Marlon Bardinas, Systems Engineer, with his theme “AI-Driven Networking for Advanced Automation.” He started with what he called “Big 4” inflection points: Internet –> Mobile à Cloud à (Gen) AI. He talked about the succeeding development in technology that began with the introduction of the Internet until AI came and networking becomes AI-driven which also elevated the systems of automation. Marlon mentioned that the emergence of Cloud technology enables applications such as Netflix, YouTube, among others.
He believes AI reimagines every technology experience in terms of customer level. AI also replaces the knowledge acquisition experience, but more importantly it creates new experience for personalized insights. Marlon then introduced the Extreme Platform One, the all-in-one platform that radically simplifies the way you manage and secure your network to deliver great experiences to your customers. This platform seamlessly combines networking, security, and AI into one powerful experience. Manage alerts, assets, licenses, security, and more from one workspace with one login without having to jump between tools, credentials, and jobs.
For the last presentation, but not the least, AMD took the spotlight. AMD Philippines Commercial Lead Michael George Lee delivered his talk with the theme “High Performance and Adaptive Computing – Creating solutions to the world’s most important challenges.” He declared that in terms of digital innovation, AMD powers the daily lives of billions. For instance, the US exploration project with NASA on planet Mars is using AMD technology. AMD is at the forefront of transforming the world through non-stop innovation for creators, researchers, innovators and explorers.
Michael introduced the 5th Generation AMD EPYC processors now the world’s best CPU for enterprise AI. He said that many data centers are already running at or near capacity in terms of available space or power or both. AMD EPYC processor-based servers offer leadership performance and efficiency to enable material workload consolidation, allowing more space and energy to support new AI workloads in your existing data centers.
The whole day event was capped with a Q&A portion, where participants interacted with the speakers. The games and prizes in the raffle draws added more fun to the occasion. Most importantly, the event became a source of knowledge from emerging trends in the field of information technology.
