GDT's Cisco Award: Building the Unseen Highways of the AI Revolution

SAN DIEGO, CA – November 24, 2025 – At Cisco's recent Partner Summit 2025, a notable award pointed to a foundational truth of the current technology boom: the artificial intelligence revolution is built on pipes. GDT, a $1.4 billion IT solutions provider, was named Americas I&MI (Infrastructure & Mass-Scale Infrastructure) Partner of the Year, a recognition that moves beyond flashy AI applications to spotlight the critical, high-stakes work of building the digital bedrock required to run them. The award underscores a major industry shift where ultra high-capacity networking, once the exclusive domain of telecommunications giants, is now a non-negotiable requirement for enterprises racing to deploy data-intensive AI workloads.

The AI Engine's Insatiable Thirst for Data

For years, enterprise networking has focused on connecting users to applications and data. The rise of AI, particularly generative AI, fundamentally inverts this model. The challenge is no longer just about user access but about enabling massive, parallel communication between thousands of high-performance processors (GPUs) as they train complex models on petabytes of data. These workloads create unprecedented east-west traffic patterns within the data center, an environment where traditional network architectures quickly become bottlenecks.

Industry analysts have quantified this seismic shift. Gartner, for instance, predicts that by 2027, over 70% of new data center networking deployments will be driven by AI workload requirements, a staggering increase from less than 10% in early 2023. This is because AI training is not a steady, predictable process; it involves intense, synchronized bursts of data exchange. A delay of microseconds can cascade, leaving expensive GPU clusters idle and extending model training times from days to weeks. This has given rise to the concept of the "AI Factory," a purpose-built infrastructure where the network fabric is as crucial as the compute power itself. Success in this new paradigm requires a network that is not only fast but also lossless, with low latency and the intelligence to manage massive, concurrent data flows efficiently.

From Telecom Giants to Enterprise AI: The 'Carrier-Grade' Advantage

This is the challenging environment in which GDT has distinguished itself. The company's deep experience with Tier 1 carriers provides a unique and powerful differentiator. These telecommunications providers have long demanded networks built for extreme reliability, massive scale, and uncompromising performance—a standard known as "carrier-grade." GDT is now translating this specialized expertise to the enterprise market, which finds itself facing similar infrastructure challenges for the first time.

"Earning Cisco's I&MI Partner of the Year award is a strong reflection of the trust our customers place in us and the incredible work our teams deliver every day," said Shawn O'Grady, Chair & CEO of GDT, in a statement. "Ultra high-capacity network infrastructure has long been a cornerstone for our Tier 1 carrier clients. However, with the growing demand driven by data-intensive AI workloads, we're seeing this technology become essential in new and expanding markets." O'Grady's comments pinpoint the core of GDT's strategy: leveraging a battle-tested methodology for a new and rapidly growing customer base. This 'carrier-grade' approach involves meticulous design for resiliency, proactive management to prevent outages, and the ability to scale infrastructure without performance degradation—qualities that are now paramount for any organization making a serious investment in AI.

Cisco's Partner Ecosystem as an AI Catalyst

This award also illuminates the strategic importance of the vendor-partner relationship in the AI era. Cisco, a dominant force in enterprise networking, has made AI a central pillar of its strategy, aiming to provide the foundational components for "AI-ready data centers." However, technology alone is not a solution. Customers need partners who can design, deploy, and manage these complex, integrated systems.

Cisco's Partner Summit awards are a mechanism for signaling which partners are most effectively executing this vision. The selection criteria go beyond sales figures, focusing on innovation, business growth, and, crucially, strategic alignment. By honoring GDT for its work in Infrastructure & Mass-Scale Infrastructure, Cisco is endorsing the company's capability to deliver the robust networking fabric that its own AI solutions depend on. This symbiotic relationship is critical; Cisco provides the powerful tools and portfolio, while partners like GDT provide the architectural expertise and on-the-ground execution needed to turn those tools into tangible business outcomes for customers. It's a recognition that in the age of AI, success is not delivered in a box but through a deep, collaborative partnership.

Navigating a Competitive and Complex Landscape

The market for AI infrastructure services is intensely competitive. GDT contends with other elite Cisco partners, global system integrators, and the formidable in-house capabilities of hyperscale cloud providers like AWS and Microsoft Azure. In this crowded field, winning a top regional award from Cisco is a significant achievement that speaks to a highly differentiated value proposition. GDT's 30-year history and its portfolio of over 450 technology certifications provide a foundation of trust and broad technical acumen.

However, it is their focused expertise in the specific, challenging domain of high-capacity networking that sets them apart. While others may offer a broad suite of AI services, GDT's award highlights its mastery of the foundational layer where AI initiatives are most likely to fail. As more organizations move from AI experimentation to production, the importance of this underlying infrastructure only grows. The ability to build and manage these digital highways is rapidly becoming the key determinant of success, making specialized partners the indispensable architects of the AI-driven future.