Advizex CEO’s Five Big Bets On HPE-Juniper, Nvidia, Broadcom And AI In 2025

Advizex CEO and longtime IT executive C.R. Howdyshell breaks down his company’s five biggest bets in 2025 that will drive sales and customer momentum—from Nvidia and HPE-Juniper to AI and XaaS.

Advizex’s fearless leader, C.R. Howdyshell, has huge plans in store for 2025 with big investment bets on HPE’s merger with Juniper Networks, driving Everything as a Service (XaaS) to new heights, and making AI sales represent a large portion of Advizex’s total revenue thanks to an enhanced focus on Nvidia.

“AI could represent as much as one-third of our revenue at some point this year,” said Advizex CEO Howdyshell, adding that AI sales hit $60 million in 2024. “The reason being is, it’s not just about GPUs. It’s about the software. We’re excited about [Nvidia’s] networking. And we think there’s services that we can bring to the table.”

Howdyshell is also hopeful that VMware by Broadcom’s new global channel leader, Brian Moats, can help drive services revenue for Advizex in 2025 with Moats’ revamped partner strategy that includes shifting professional services from Broadcom-led engagements to partner-delivered services.

[Related: VMware-Broadcom Partners Weigh In On New Channel Chief’s Vision And Strategy]

“Our hands are up in the air saying, ‘Let’s go. We’re ready. Tap us on the shoulder. We’re ready to jump in the game when it comes to [VMware-Broadcom] services,’” said Howdyshell.

Advizex Expects Over $320 Million In Sales This Year

Advizex, a Fulcrum IT Partners company, is one of the top solution providers in North America with more than $280 million in revenue generated last year.

The Independence, Ohio-based company expects to increase total sales by 15 percent in 2025 to over $320 million thanks to its bullish bets on market leaders like HPE and Nvidia as well as its own unique services.

Advizex won CRN’s prestigious Triple Crown Award in 2024 and ranks No. 115 on CRN’s 2024 Solution Provider 500 list.

Howdyshell has a vast history in the tech industry spanning over 40 years, including the last six years running IT consulting and services specialist Advizex.

In an interview with CRN, Howdyshell explains his company’s biggest bets in 2025 that will drive sales and customer momentum, including the soon-to-be combined HPE and Juniper Networks, Dell Apex as well as Nvidia’s expanding AI portfolio.

No. 5: Drive Services Margin

Our bet is really taking our services to market in a big way this year.

What you just heard from Broadcom, that’s going to help.

With what Nvidia is talking about, that’s going to help.

With what HPE, Aruba and Juniper are talking about, that’s going to help us.

Then Everything as a Service will help drive our professional services. Obviously, that’s a very enhanced margin opportunity and we want to continue to grow that piece out.

Our Microsoft services are very strong. Our ServiceNow is very strong. We feel like networking services are very strong. We also are seeing a pretty big uptick in colocation when it comes to services.

So our big bets for this year are enhancing our services to more than just infrastructure: It’s the whole portfolio. We want to do the whole wrap-around with Everything as a Service to drive more recurring revenues and value for customers to give them a choice.

No. 4: Broadcom-VMware’s New Channel Strategy And Leader In 2025

We’ve made a substantial investment in professional services around VMware. We’re not seeing a significant uptick, though. It’s pretty steady. It’s good business but not a lot of growth.

But with Moats’ [goal of moving professional services from Broadcom-led engagements to partner-delivered services] we would expect additional opportunities.

IT would be a great opportunity for the channel, assuming there’s some upside. Our hands are up in the air saying, ‘Let’s go. We’re ready. Tap us on the shoulder. We’re ready to jump in the game when it comes to [VMware-Broadcom] services.’

The opportunities are there. Let’s just see how they want to go to market because partners like Advizex are more than capable and ready.

I would say that some of the smaller customers are going to probably get left behind by Broadcom with its current business model. We had one of our larger 20-year customers just tell us they’re not going to renew.

But I will say that I’ve seen their leadership become much more responsive. Some of their sales leadership, when we’ve had some of these challenges, they seem to be much more responsive than they were six months ago. That shows a sense of urgency.

No. 3: Everything As A Service

We’re going to continue a large focus on Everything as a Service.

So consumption, specifically with HPE GreenLake and Dell Apex as a service.

We’ve seen a big uptick with Pure Storage as a service as well, and we love the recurring revenues there.

We feel like our Everything as a Service has really taken off, and the customer responses have been very supportive. We’re excited about the recurring revenues. We’re going to continue that as one of our core areas and big bets this year.

No. 2: HPE-Aruba-Juniper Merger

The next one for us, in general, is networking. I think it’s going to continue to grow regardless of what happens to the public cloud.

Additionally, what OEMs we’re going to bet on there is No. 1: HPE. We like what they’re doing with Aruba.

We also think the Juniper acquisition is going to line up really well with our strategic values.

HPE with Aruba and Juniper and the services we can wrap all around that is a huge opportunity. We have the technical capabilities to sell the front end of this.

The TAM [total addressable market] for networking is significant when you can add in the software and the services that we can do because the margin portfolio is enhanced.

No. 1: AI And Nvidia

No. 1 will be AI. We think we have a leg up with what Fulcrum has done with [recently acquired AI and data analytics company] Razor, which has 50 data scientists who are doing development.

Last week, we had a very successful briefing with Nvidia during an executive briefing in San Jose. It reiterated all of the market opportunities there. I think AI could represent as much as one-third of our revenue at some point this year. It depends on how we do it.

Last year, we did $60 million in AI.

So if we grow to $330 million [in 2025] and we do $120 million in AI—that’s one-third of our revenue.

The reason being is, it’s not just about GPUs. It’s about the software. We’re excited about [Nvidia’s] networking. And we think there’s services that we can bring to the table. If it was just the GPUs, I probably wouldn’t tell you that it’s our big bet, but when you add in the networking and software and services—it’s a huge bet.