Interactive hosts Dicker Data Cisco AI kit in Sydney

Interactive will host Dicker Data's Cisco AI Rally Kit in its Sydney data centre, giving Dicker Data's partner network access to dedicated AI infrastructure in Australia.

The setup is designed to let eligible partners test and validate AI use cases before committing to production environments of their own. Dicker Data's AI Accelerate programme will use the kit, which combines Cisco infrastructure with NVIDIA GPUs and 120TB of storage from Everpure.

The system will be housed in Interactive's sovereign Sydney facility, providing a local environment for partners to trial workloads involving data privacy, latency and sovereignty considerations. It is aimed at organisations exploring private AI, as well as those undertaking proof-of-concept work.

Partners will be able to test AI ideas and assess the infrastructure needed to support them in practice. Industry-specific use cases will also be available as a starting point for organisations still deciding where AI may fit into their operations.

The arrangement reflects growing interest among Australian businesses in testing AI projects on dedicated local infrastructure rather than moving straight to production. It also points to demand for environments where companies can assess operational and compliance issues alongside technical performance.

David Leen, Head of Product - Cloud at Interactive, said the main challenge for many organisations is not interest in AI but identifying practical uses. "There is no shortage of interest in AI. The harder question for many organisations is understanding where AI can genuinely create value and what it will take to make a use case work in their environment. It means organisations can learn more about what their use case demands before making bigger decisions about the infrastructure required to support it in production," he said.

Testing Demand

For technology partners, access to shared infrastructure can reduce the cost and complexity of early-stage trials. Rather than building their own environment from the outset, partners can use the hosted system to run tests, develop proofs of concept and assess whether a use case is viable.

Interactive's role in the project places its data centre business at the centre of a broader market shift towards sovereign AI services. In Australia, the term is increasingly used to describe AI deployments in which data, infrastructure and operations remain under local control.

Lizzy Jones, Head of Data & AI at Interactive, said infrastructure access is only one part of moving from experimentation to broader adoption. "Successful AI adoption starts with understanding the problem you are trying to solve and the outcome you want to achieve. The ability to then test that thinking against real infrastructure helps organisations understand what works, where the gaps are and what they need to address before moving further," she said.

Jones added that private AI projects require companies to weigh broader design choices before launch. "For private AI in particular, decisions about infrastructure can't be separated from questions around data, security, latency, privacy and sovereignty. Testing a real use case gives organisations a much clearer picture of those requirements before they commit to a production approach," she said.

Sovereign Focus

Dicker Data said the hosted model is intended to help partners explore customer applications across different sectors without additional investment. That may appeal to resellers and integrators looking to shape AI offerings for industries with tighter regulatory requirements or stricter data handling rules.

The project also underlines the role distributors are taking in helping channel partners navigate AI adoption. By combining vendor infrastructure with hosted access and pre-built use cases, they can offer a lower-risk path for partners that want to develop AI services without making large capital commitments upfront.

Vickie Madeleine, General Manager, Cisco at Dicker Data, framed the initiative around security, compliance and operational risk. "Sovereign AI continues to gain momentum with the need to manage data security, compliance, and operational risk more critical than ever. Dicker Data is proud to partner with Interactive, leveraging its sovereign Sydney data centre to deliver secure, scalable, and high-performance infrastructure for AI innovation. We believe this practical and accessible way of experiencing Cisco and Everpure infrastructure and AI-specific use cases will help partners unlock AI opportunities, accelerate their learning journey, and build confidence in deploying AI solutions for their customers," she said.

Interactive, an Australian-owned technology services company, supports more than 2,000 customers across 46,000 locations in Australia and New Zealand. Its business spans cloud, cyber security, data and AI, network services, data centres and hardware maintenance.