D&H’s Jason Bystrak To Partners: Microsoft Copilot Great Way To Talk AI, Storage And PC With Customers

With a huge portfolio of hardware and software products, Harrisburg, Pa.-based D&H Distributing has been at the heart of AI deployments to the channel and has experienced “massive growth” of well over 200 percent in its infrastructure business this year, according to D&H’s Jason Bystrak.

Microsoft Copilot is the easy button for businesses of all sizes who are hoping to get started in their AI journey, says Jason Bystrak, senior vice president of D&H Distributing’s modern solutions business unit.

“So many of the partners we work with, thousands of them, have already implemented Microsoft cloud solutions such as Microsoft 365 or Azure that Copilot is kind of a natural add-on to that, and it really is a very well-finished product that allows a lot of productivity benefits to the end customer,” he told CRN.

With a massive portfolio of hardware and software products, D&H Distributing has been at the heart of AI deployments to the channel. The Harrisburg, Pa.-based company has seen “massive growth” of well over 200 percent in its data center infrastructure business this year.

Bystrak said given the pick-up in sales around IT infrastructure, the opportunity for partners is huge.

Bystrak said one of the first steps, and a great way for solution providers to start the conversation with the end user about AI, is to talk about data preparation.

“As soon as you start to get into that Copilot discussion, you want to implement it, the first step is really around data readiness,” he said. “It also helps the partners have a discussion around what they are going to do around storage infrastructure, and security and basically things like that to prepare that Copilot environment so you’re serving up the proper information into your Copilot engine.”

Bystrak said one of the last steps of an early AI strategy — and where the end user is most likely to experience the productivity benefits of AI — is with the AI PC. This has been a massive year for PC sales as consumers and organizations prepare for Windows 10 end of life and upgrade devices.

“It’s been a really busy year when it comes to the PC business. You see so much happening with Windows refresh opportunities, this really helps partners be able to upgrade to a premium AI PC and optimize that AI experience for the clients, just a logical last step in the sales cycle,” he said. “There’s certainly a lot of hustling happening right now. We’re expecting a busy fourth quarter.”

Already the global leader in PC sales, Lenovo has been the chief beneficiary of the refresh, according to the most recent statistics from industry tracker IDC. The Needham, Mass.-based market research firm reported that Lenovo has grown its share of the PC market some 15.1 percent year over year and now accounts for 24.6 percent of all PC shipments worldwide. Coming in second is HP Inc. with 20.8 percent, followed by Dell, which has 14.2 percent of all PC shipments globally.