SHI Fall Summit 2025 | Tyler Webb, SHI

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Tyler Webb

Diector, AI Sales

SHI

play_circle_outline Tyler Webb: Leading AI Sales at SHI to Enhance Customer Experience for 17,000 Clients with Innovative AI Concierge Services

play_circle_outline Accelerating AI Adoption: SHI's Strategic Partnerships and Innovative Approaches to Enhance Solutions with HPE and NVIDIA

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Tyler Webb, SHI

Tyler Webb

Diector, AI Sales SHI

In this SHI Fall Summit interview, Tyler Webb, director of AI sales at SHI, joins theCUBE’s Paul Gillin to unpack how SHI is helping enterprises move from AI experimentation to production outcomes. Webb outlines his team’s “concierge” model supporting SHI’s business units and ~17,000 customers, powered by more than 120 AI/ML experts, enterprise architects and an AI & cyber lab for rapid prototyping. He details SHI’s three-phase framework – Imagine, Experiment, Adopt – to identify high-impact use cases, prototype full-stack solutions and scale with change mana... Read more

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Paul Gillin

>> We are back at the SHI Summit, fall Summit 2025. We're talking about AI. I'm Paul Gillin. I'm here in Somerset, New Jersey, and we've been talking to a variety of people today that are affiliated with SHI and with HPE and its AI programs. One thing we've not heard yet from is someone from SHI, so we have that opportunity now. Joining me is Tyler Webb, who is the Director of AI Sales for SHI, and thanks for being with us.

Tyler Webb

>> Thank you, Paul. I'm happy to be here.

Paul Gillin

>> What does the director of AI sales do?

Tyler Webb

>> Well, I lead a team of eight individuals. We support all the business units within SHI, and so, that roughly accounts for 17,000 customers across SHI's business. We essentially are concierges for our customer's AI journey. Our main goal is understanding what business problems they're trying to solve today? And how can we help accelerate the outcomes that they're looking to achieve when it comes to AI, while realizing that time to value and ROI that is possible?

Paul Gillin

>> How did you come to be in this position? What special skills do you have to lead a strategic initiative like this?

Tyler Webb

>> A lot of it comes down to just being innovative and forward-thinking when it comes to helping customers, and really understanding truly what challenges that they're running into. I believe with our team, understanding what the business problems that are trying to be solved is critical, and how does that translate to different AI use cases that we're helping our customers achieve on a daily basis? It's a lot of listening. It's a lot of understanding. A lot about the customers or industry, the vertical that they're in, what others are doing that have proven success, and really how we can leverage the advanced capabilities and resources that SHI brings to the table between our 120 AI and machine learning experts, as well as our enterprise architect teams. And AI and cyber lab facility that can help customers rapidly prototype these use cases and bring them to life.

Paul Gillin

>> What are some of the most common questions customers ask you? Why do they bring you in to talk about AI?

Tyler Webb

>> Well, we really cross the gamut across anywhere a customer is. When it comes to AI, it's everywhere from, customers just trying to wrap their heads around it and how do we get started? To the customers who are more advanced in their journeys and they're really trying to accelerate innovation and create that next competitive differentiator for their business. A lot of customers are asking, what are use cases? What are industry use cases that we're seeing success in? And where are other companies focusing their time and efforts? But there's also a huge people aspect to it as well. It's really aligning the organization and addressing pieces like the change management and adoption that goes into making any of these AI initiatives successful and is a critical piece of every strategy.

Paul Gillin

>> What are the areas where your customers are seeing success right now?

Tyler Webb

>> Well, Paul, we really have a three-phased approach. It's a framework called Imagine Experiment Adopt. And so, we really start with that imagination phase where it's understanding the business problems that our customers are running into and how could AI create some of those improvements or efficiencies that they're looking to achieve? And then that drills into what are the use cases that will impact specific processes or workflows, that we can quantify results in? And a lot of the results on the surface, it will be tangible ROI from day one, but a lot of the benefits of these AI initiatives could be seen further down the road. Helping create those milestones and getting customers into the experimentation phase, in which we actually prototype a solution. We're talking about full stack development, full stack design, container, everything below, everything above, and bringing a solution to life. And then with the adoption phase, getting back into the change management pieces, how do we scale this in at an organization and truly create something that's sustainable, scalable, it's going to be secure, compliant, governed, and it's going to be something that helps them advance into the future?

Paul Gillin

>> There's been a lot of talk lately about high AI failure rates, most notably an MIT study that came out recently on this topic. What are you seeing out in the field? Are failure rates really that high?

Tyler Webb

>> Well, if you took the studies at face value, like 95% they said were failing to reach production, meaning only 5% are actually achieving value. And other studies cite 80% of AI projects are failing. There's a couple key pieces to that. I think, a lot of it is the lack of alignment between the organization. It's not happening in a silo, it's not a technology problem, it's really a combination of the people, process, and technology, and aligning that triangle. When we're talking to customers, it's critical that we have representation not only from the IT department and the IT leadership, but from line of business owners as well as the users and the people who manage the data. Because, it truly is a problem of solving the data gravity, right? Getting the data to the GPUs and accelerating that so the customers can truly achieve the value of AI, and it's also focusing on the right use cases. And where I see a lot of customers maybe failing to inspect as closely as we help our customers is really understanding, what are the metrics? What are we going to measure success by? And to do that, you really need to start with, where are you today? What's the baseline? And then be able to track improvements over those key milestones as you scale, adopt, and advance AI.

Paul Gillin

>> You need to take a methodical approach to it.

Tyler Webb

>> Absolutely.

Paul Gillin

>> All tech companies are AI companies now. What does SHI uniquely bring to the market?

Tyler Webb

>> Well, we bring a lot of things, Paul, but first off, it comes down to our partnerships. We have amazing partnerships with players like HPE that we are developing some cutting-edge solutions. For instance, the Digital AI Ambassador as well as initiative with HPE and Kamiwaza around 508 compliance. This is affecting every federal entity, every state, local, government agency, municipality. And so, that and compounded with our ISV relationships and network of partnerships, and of course our partnership with NVIDIA, and the resources that we've brought to the table there. And in addition, it's our people, right? Our expertise, and I mentioned earlier, over 120 AI and machine learning experts at our disposal, can help our customers really accelerate that time to value. Partnerships, expertise, portfolio, and really understanding what our customers are trying to accomplish and solving business problems.

Paul Gillin

>> What is a Digital AI Ambassador? You just mentioned that.

Tyler Webb

>> Digital AI Ambassador really is transforming the customer experience. If you think about any setting, whether you're going into a retail store or you're walking into a bank, you're dealing with a customer service agent, it creates that human-like experience, but does it through an AI-powered avatar. This is something we've debuted. We have one internally, we've named Kira, but very life-like using natural learning processing. We can have those conversations, they're emotionally intelligent. They can pick up on the sentiment. We're having a pleasant conversation right now, but let's say that a client or a constituent is maybe getting a little bit frustrated. It would be able to pick up on that and bring in a manager, keep a human in the loop, but ensure that you have that 24/7 consistency that's really representing your brand. At the end of the day, customers are going to remember your organization by the experience that they have working with you. And a Digital AI Ambassador is a way to create that consistency in AI-powered digital world.

Paul Gillin

>> Well, you only have to walk through the innovation center next door here to see the importance of partnerships. That room is full of partners, SHI partners, some of the biggest brands in the world. And so, obviously, you're doing a good job.

Tyler Webb

>> It's some really exciting stuff and it's just a pleasure to be part of this, but more so a pleasure to help our customers achieve their goals and just be at the cutting edge of everything that SHI and our partnerships like, NVIDIA, HPE, and all the ISVs and solutions that we have in our portfolio have been able to provide to our customer base.

Paul Gillin

>> Tyler Webb, Director of AI Sales for SHI. Thanks so much for being with us today.

Tyler Webb

>> Thank you, Paul. I appreciate the time.

Paul Gillin

>> I'm Paul Gillin. This is theCUBE. The leader in technology news and analysis.