Vertiv marks 10 years of Asia partner summit in Johor

Vertiv gathered more than 300 channel and distribution partners in Johor for its annual Asia Partner Summit, marking the event's 10th year.

The four-day summit focused on how partners can adapt their businesses to demand tied to artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, edge computing and data centre modernisation across Asia. It also gave the partner network a forum to discuss regional opportunities, technology priorities and sales plans.

Held in Desaru, Johor, the gathering drew attendees from Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand. Sessions covered AI infrastructure trends, sovereign and enterprise AI deployments, liquid cooling, modular systems, power and thermal management, and infrastructure monitoring.

The summit comes as data centre operators across the region face heavier computing loads and rising power and cooling needs. That shift has increased demand for suppliers and resellers that can advise customers on equipment choices, facility upgrades and the design of denser computing environments.

Vertiv used the event to highlight the role of channel partners in that transition. Workshops examined reference designs for new and retrofit data centres, coolant distribution units, secondary fluid networks, scalable systems, AI-ready power distribution, thermal technologies, in-rack infrastructure, chiller systems and monitoring tools.

Attendees also visited Vertiv's Johor factory, part of its regional manufacturing base serving customers across Asia. The site visit formed part of a broader effort to connect partner sales activity with local supply and deployment operations.

Partner network

Channel relationships remain important for infrastructure vendors operating across fragmented Asian markets, where local integrators and distributors often manage customer access, deployment and support. In that context, the summit underscored how manufacturers are trying to align product roadmaps with partner sales strategies as AI-related spending reshapes the market.

Daniel Sim, Senior Director, AI Ecosystem Alliances and Channel Partners, Vertiv Asia, outlined the company's message to partners during the event.

"Metamorph is more than a summit theme - it reflects how our industry must evolve with purpose as AI and high-performance computing reshape customer expectations across Asia. Our partners are critical to this transformation, bringing deep market insight, customer trust, and execution expertise. Vertiv remains committed to equipping our partners with the technologies, expertise, and collaboration needed to unlock new opportunities and deliver meaningful business outcomes," said Sim.

Awards

A partner awards programme was a central part of the summit, with Vertiv recognising companies for sales performance, growth, strategic relationships and sector work across the region. The awards showed which distributors and resellers are gaining ground as infrastructure demand shifts towards AI-linked deployments.

NVIDIA and Dell Technologies Asia received 2025 Strategic Partnership Awards. In distribution, Orion Computers of Australia won the 2024 Summit Leadership Award for Highest Sales Achievement, OGX Networks of Malaysia received the 2025 award for Highest Sales Growth, and Tech Data Distribution Singapore won the 2025 award for Highest Sales and Growth Achievement.

Among partners, EON of Korea received the 2025 Summit Leadership Award for Highest Sales Achievement, Opencom of Vietnam won Highest Sales Growth, and IT Usaha Engineering of Malaysia took the award for Highest Sales and Growth Achievement. Vertiv also recognised companies in areas including innovation, emerging partner growth and industry-specific performance.

Regional demand

The focus on cooling, power systems and denser compute environments reflects a wider shift in the region's digital infrastructure market. As AI workloads expand, operators are under pressure to manage heat, energy use and floor space more carefully, creating openings for suppliers with products tied to high-density facilities and retrofits of existing sites.

Johor has become one of the focal points for that investment, helped by its proximity to Singapore and a growing concentration of data centre activity. By holding the summit there and including a factory visit, Vertiv linked its partner programme to one of the region's more active infrastructure corridors.

The event also highlighted the growing importance of sovereign AI and on-premise deployments in parts of Asia, where governments and enterprises are weighing where data is stored and processed. That trend has implications for local system integrators and distributors, which often play a larger role when customers require in-country deployment and support.

Against that backdrop, the summit served as a reminder that the AI infrastructure market is not shaped by chipmakers and cloud groups alone. It also depends on a broad sales and service channel that can deliver power, cooling and physical infrastructure into local markets at speed, with Tech Data Distribution Singapore, EON, Opencom and IT Usaha Engineering among those recognised at the event.