On April 1, Lenovo Group's 2024/25 Fiscal Year Pledge Conference was held in Beijing. At the meeting, Kirk Skaugen, Executive Vice President of Lenovo Group and President of Infrastructure Solutions Business Group (ISG), said that although the past year was full of challenges, ISG has broken records, set many new milestones, and won new customers and partners, making ISG a new growth engine for Lenovo.

Over the past year, ISG adjusted target priorities in a timely manner in line with market changes, focusing on business health, and is now ranked among the top three in the world in the field of artificial intelligence infrastructure. In the first three quarters, ISG achieved rapid growth in storage, software, and service revenue, reaching record highs.

Furthermore, ISG's leading position in high-performance computing and Poseidon warm water cooling technology continues to win recognition from leading customers: Lenovo x86 servers have been number one in the world in reliability for 9 consecutive years, topped the global supercomputer TOP 500 list for 6 consecutive years, and number 1 on the Green 500 list for 2 consecutive years.

“Our goal remains to become the world's fastest growing and eventually largest end-to-end infrastructure solution provider, while continuously improving profitability every quarter,” Kirk Skaugen said. ISG will fully seize the opportunity of the industry to shift from traditional infrastructure to artificial intelligence infrastructure, drive product, service and solution innovation with artificial intelligence, and strive to take a leading position in the field of hybrid artificial intelligence infrastructure while becoming a new growth engine.

Focus on the four strategic directions and become the most trustworthy partner

While reshaping the entire industry and market innovation, artificial intelligence is also driving growth opportunities in the ISG market. According to Statista forecasts, AI servers are expected to double in 2024, and the market share of edge infrastructure will exceed 30% in 2027. At the same time, the global data volume will grow exponentially and is expected to reach 181 ZB by 2025. As enterprises use artificial intelligence to make real-time decisions, these new workloads will open up new opportunities for computing and data management businesses.

At the meeting, Kirk Skaugen proposed ISG's four strategic directions for the new fiscal year: leveraging the “One Lenovo” strategic advantage and working with partners to diversify the customer base; focus on profitability and aim to resume growth; use a unique ODM+ model to respond to the largest cloud services to reach customers faster; and accelerate the hybrid artificial intelligence strategy.

Kirk Skaugen said that ISG is positioned not only as a hardware supplier, but also as a trustworthy partner in the intelligent transformation of enterprises. Lenovo's global services, proven expertise, and industry-leading solutions will help customers fully tap the potential of artificial intelligence and remain at the cutting edge of the industry in this rapidly changing field.

Accelerate hybrid artificial intelligence innovation and lead industry transformation

The large public model currently running on public clouds is limited by network speed, cloud efficiency, and cost considerations, and has inherent deficiencies in data security and privacy protection. Hybrid artificial intelligence will be the general trend. It will not only run on public clouds, but will also operate in local data centers, private clouds, hybrid clouds, and even on the edge side and end side, effectively meeting the needs of enterprise users in terms of operational efficiency and data security.

With a new IT architecture of “end edge - cloud - network - smart”, Lenovo is committed to building hybrid infrastructure and hybrid artificial intelligence. For example, Lenovo has used edge artificial intelligence computing solutions to build smart cities for Barcelona and Madrid, Spain; it is also combining edge computing with artificial intelligence to analyze data produced by Jin Zhiwei in real time using the ThinkEdge SE350 server to ensure regulatory compliance and protect customer data.

Facing the opportunities of artificial intelligence, ISG has launched a series of innovative artificial intelligence products and solutions in the product matrix, including large-scale language artificial intelligence model solutions to be launched soon, using more smart server products, new solutions that are cost-effective and competitive in the Chinese market, and ODM+ model customized solutions for the world's largest cloud services.

Kirk Skaugen pointed out that Lenovo's competitive advantage in the field of hybrid artificial intelligence infrastructure is remarkable: Lenovo's self-developed Poseidon warm water cooling technology further expands industry-leading liquid cooling solutions; the ThinkEdge product matrix promotes the spread of artificial intelligence around the world; provides customers with an end-to-end product portfolio through a 3S strategic path integrating storage, software, and services; for the local Chinese market, Lenovo's self-developed MagnaScale data management platform uses independent intellectual property rights to expand software-defined storage.

Looking ahead, ISG will continue to empower China while deploying globally, using the ODM+ model to achieve the scale of cloud service business, increase profits from enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises and channel departments, and develop storage, software, and service portfolio products.

Kirk Skaugen said with confidence that artificial intelligence has brought unprecedented changes and opportunities, and ISG will become a leader in the AI infrastructure market under the guidance of the “One Association” strategy.