The IT Nerd

Park Place Technologies will showcase solutions designed to help organizations scale AI and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure more efficiently at SC26, The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, November 15-20 at McCormick Place in Chicago.

Visitors to booth #5301 will see how Park Place Technologies is helping OEMs, ODMs, AI cloud providers, and enterprises deploy, operate, and extend service capabilities globally. With a global engineering and logistics footprint, Park Place provides the field execution behind complex AI and HPC environments, including GPU infrastructure deployment and maintenance, liquid cooling support, RMA and logistics infrastructure managed services, and full lifecycle services.

Attendees can learn how Park Place can support their data center infrastructure in two booths:

• Booth #5301 for global site readiness, deployment, full lifecycle support and Infrastructure Managed Services to maximize uptime.
• Booth #4044 to explore AI GPU server maintenance and liquid cooling solutions in collaboration with Green Revolution Cooling.

SC26 is the premier annual gathering of the high-performance computing community, bringing together thousands of attendees from industry, academia, government and research organizations. This year’s conference, themed HPC Unites, features a technical program of keynotes, papers, panels, tutorials and workshops alongside an exhibit floor showcasing the latest in HPC, networking, storage and analysis.

Park Place Technologies today launched “Rack in Peace,” a three-part Halloween video series that stages a mock funeral for three widely deployed pieces of IT infrastructure reaching end of service life (EOSL) on Oct. 31, 2026: the Cisco Meraki MX84 security appliance, the Veritas NetBackup 5340 appliance, and the Cisco Catalyst 3650 switch.

Each video follows a grieving procession of mourners delivering tearful eulogies for a device whose OEM support is ending. Each time the grief peaks, a Park Place field engineer steps in with a calm, practical reminder: the hardware is still running, and Park Place still supports it.

The videos debut one per day on Park Place’s social media channels from Oct. 28 through Oct. 30, ending the day before all three devices pass their OEM end-of-support date.

THE SCHEDULE

• Oct. 28 – Cisco Meraki MX84. The branch security appliance, sold by Cisco until 2021, reaches its end-of-support date on Oct. 31, 2026.

• Oct. 29 – Veritas NetBackup 5340. The backup appliance, which Veritas stopped selling in September 2021, leaves vendor support on Oct. 31, 2026.

• Oct. 30 – Cisco Catalyst 3650. The access switch found in wiring closets across many enterprise campuses reaches its last date of Cisco support on Oct. 31, 2026.

WHY IT MATTERS

When OEM support ends, many organizations feel pressure to replace hardware that still meets their needs, often on the OEM’s timeline rather than their own. Third-party maintenance gives IT teams a way to keep stable, proven equipment in service while they plan upgrades around budget and business priorities.

Organizations running any of the three devices can find EOSL details and coverage information in Park Place’s EOSL library at parkplacetechnologies.com/eosl, or contact Park Place to discuss support for hardware past its OEM end-of-support date.

The “Rack in Peace” video series is available on Park Place Technologies’ LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and X channels using #RackInPeace.

The newest release of Entuity Software™ from Park Place Technologies offers users unprecedented oversight of GPU and cooling infrastructure – the only infrastructure monitoring and management solution capable of doing so across three major vendors.

Entuity V23.0 P03 now monitors GPUs from AMD^®, Intel^®, and NVIDIA^®, alongside the servers, interconnect fabrics and liquid cooling systems that keep AI computing environments running.

According to Gartner research on top AI and Gen AI Infrastructure Barriers, a rack full of AI servers can draw 30kW to 120kW or more, compared with 5kW to 15kW for a standard server rack. The resulting heat load is why power and cooling rank among the top barriers to deploying AI infrastructure on premises. Entuity is designed to help IT teams manage this challenge.

Newer AI chips increasingly rely on direct-to-chip cooling, and when cooling conditions degrade, GPUs can throttle or go offline. Monitoring the cooling systems alongside the GPUs gives teams the context to act early, which is why this release extends GPU monitoring to cooling infrastructure, making Entuity the only platform to do so.

Previous versions offered OS monitoring, but Entuity V23.0 P03 allows customers to specify an IP address within an OS and connect to GPUs for more detailed infrastructure insights.

Entuity also delivers switch-level visibility into the interconnect fabrics linking GPUs together, helping enterprises get ahead of the link failures that are a leading cause of GPU cluster downtime. Entuity can flag early signs of link degradation, so IT teams can act before a failure occurs.

Entuity V23.0 P03 helps IT teams identify issues that have been difficult to detect previously, including:

• Expose “gray failures” that traditional monitoring can miss, including hardware conditions that may not trigger availability alarms but can gradually reduce AI infrastructure performance over time.
• Detect GPU hardware degradation before it causes workload failures by monitoring memory health indicators, ECC errors, and other accelerator telemetry that can reveal emerging problems before a GPU goes offline.
• See thermal conditions before they become production issues by correlating GPU temperatures, power consumption, and cooling-system telemetry to help teams detect conditions that can lead to throttling, instability, or downtime.
• Reveal underutilized AI infrastructure through visibility into GPU partitions, accelerator instances, memory usage, and utilization metrics that can uncover stranded accelerator capacity.

Entuity customers with active maintenance contracts can upgrade to V23.0 P03 at no additional cost, while new users can be onboarded directly to this latest version of the software.

Entuity V23.0 P03 Highlights:

AI Accelerator/GPU Monitoring

• Observability for three GPU vendors on one platform; AMD^®, Intel^®, and NVIDIA^®
• Five object types beneath the server: GPU Device; GPU Instance (MIG, AMD partition, SR-IOV); Compute Instance; GPU Link (NVLink, xGMI, Xe Link, Gaudi); and GPU Fabric Switch
• In-band plus out-of-band Redfish through iDRAC and iLO (In-band takes priority, so no GPU is counted twice)
• Monitor ECC corrected and uncorrected; link CRC; replay and recovery; fabric fatal errors; enforced power limit; and PCIe throughput
• 14 thresholds enabled by default

Liquid Cooling Monitoring

• Out-of-the-box support for top vendors including ACCELSIUS™, GRC^®, nVent^®, and ZutaCore^®
• Monitor pump flow, speed, and feedback; supply and return coolant temperature and differential; system and manifold pressure; reservoir level; valve position; and leak detection
• Roughly 415 telemetry streams across accelerators and cooling

To learn more about Entuity Software and how it can enhance enterprise infrastructure observability, visit www.entuity.com.

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Park Place Technologies will showcase solutions designed to help organizations scale AI infrastructure more efficiently at Gartner IT Symposium / Xpo 2026, October 19-22 in Orlando.

Visitors to booth #449 will experience a live liquid cooling demonstration and connect with experts on GPU-powered infrastructure, data center optimization and strategies for supporting AI growth without increasing IT spend. Park Place Technologies is a leading global IT infrastructure services firm.

On Tuesday, Oct. 20, 12:05 p.m. EDT at Stage 2 Atlantic Hall, Stock will lead a special vendor presentation entitled, “How CIOs are Funding AI Without New Spend.” He will address the challenges many organizations face in optimizing AI utilization while facing budget constraints alongside growing infrastructure demands. Stock will share practical strategies for identifying and redirecting existing infrastructure savings to support AI initiatives.

Attendees visiting Park Place Technologies can:

• Experience a live demonstration of liquid cooling technology designed for high-density AI workloads.
• Meet with company leadership, including CCO John Stock and CTO Chris Carreiro, to discuss infrastructure modernization and AI readiness strategies.
• Explore how Park Place helps organizations maximize uptime, performance, and lifecycle value across GPU-powered AI, analytics, and HPC environments.

Gartner IT Symposium / Xpo is one of the largest annual gatherings of CIOs and IT executives, drawing thousands of senior technology leaders. This year’s program, themed Ignite Intelligence, focuses on how enterprises move AI from experimentation to production at scale.

To register with Park Place’s exhibitor discount, visit Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo™ 2026 Conference in Orlando, FL and use Park Place’s code SYM36EDC to save $575.

Additional 2026 Appearances

Following Orlando, Park Place Technologies will exhibit its AI infrastructure expertise to Gartner Symposium / Xpo events in Barcelona, Spain (Nov. 9-12) and Yokohama, Japan (Nov. 4-6). Attendees can meet with Park Place experts to discuss data center modernization, infrastructure lifecycle management, AI readiness, and support strategies tailored to today’s evolving IT landscape.

About the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2026

Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo is the world’s most important gathering for CIOs and other IT executives. IT executives rely on these conferences to learn how to amplify the impact of the technology, insights and trends shaping the future of IT and business. Follow news and updates from the conferences on X using #GartnerSYM, and on the Gartner

Park Place Technologies has extended its Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) capability for Microsoft Azure to customers across the United States and Canada. This extension brings a cloud practice already established in Europe to two of the company’s largest and fastest-growing markets.  

Park Place Technologies is now able to license, provision, support and manage Microsoft Cloud services for customers throughout the United States and Canada, with support for Microsoft 365, Azure, Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and Microsoft’s broader business, data and AI platforms. 

The significance of this expansion is what it enables for customers: a more direct, accountable path to Microsoft cloud and applications. It also empowers customers to make enhanced infrastructure decisions with the support of a partner that already understands their estates.  

Park Place has built its reputation by supporting complex, business-critical infrastructure for more than 35 years, a foundation that remains a key advantage as customer estates become more hybrid, distributed and outcome-driven. The company’s cloud practice is underpinned by a firm commitment to continuously innovate, expand and add new routes to value without losing sight of the infrastructure realities customers depend on daily. 

Bringing CSP capability in-house removes a layer of complexity for customers and puts Park Place’s own engineers and account teams behind every Azure engagement, from design through ongoing support.  

For customers in the U.S. and Canada, Park Place’s CSP capability includes cost optimization and management, security and identity services and managed cloud operations across Azure Virtual Desktop, Microsoft 365, SQL, Dynamics and Copilot. This complements the company’s broader Microsoft competencies, supporting the full journey from migration and modernization planning to ongoing Microsoft environment support. It also strengthens Park Place’s broader Infrastructure Managed Services and Software Technical Support portfolio solutions, allowing customers to leverage a single partner for cloud, Microsoft environments and the infrastructure that supports them. 

Park Place’s expanded Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider CSP capability is available now to customers and partners across the United States and Canada. Organizations interested in learning more can contact their Park Place representative or visit ParkPlaceTechnologies.com. 

ParkView Asset Intelligence, an AI-powered platform that shows IT managers the health of their infrastructure and insights to act on it, launched today from Park Place Technologies.

Called ParkView Asset Intelligence^TM, the new proprietary platform provides a detailed view into the condition of hardware devices, including servers, storage, network, security appliances and hyperconverged infrastructure, at a level previously only accessible to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Each lifecycle health score, expressed as a 0 to 100 rating, is built from three streams of data – Park Place’s own hardware maintenance records, spanning more than 35 years and a million serviced assets across every major manufacturer; regional spare-parts availability; and customers’ own asset performance and service history.

A score of 66 means something very different once a team can see that comparable devices in the same model family average 92, Adams gave as an example. The result is designed to help experienced IT teams decide whether to refresh, repair or retire a specific piece of hardware.

What ParkView Asset Intelligence Does

The platform combines hardware telemetry, Park Place’s service history and live supply-chain data into a single view of fleet health:

• Scores every asset, 0 to 100 – Hardware-level data is collected out-of-band from enrolled assets, independent of the operating system, so scoring continues even when the OS is unreachable. Each score is paired with a confidence indicator.
• Reads failure patterns no single customer can see – Park Place service records across nearly one million of hardware assets reveal how specific models fail, and at what age. No individual enterprise runs a fleet large enough to detect those patterns on its own.
• Factors in whether parts actually exist – data on spare-part stock by geography feeds directly into the score, so an asset’s supportability in its own region is part of the reading rather than a separate calculation.
• Surfaces risk before it becomes a failure – Configuration problems, firmware gaps and deteriorating component trends move the score before they generate a support ticket.
• Benchmarks against the peer group – Every score is set against aggregated data from comparable devices across Park Place’s global customer base, showing whether an asset is performing above or below the expected range for its model.
• Rolls up to the whole fleet – A portfolio dashboard breaks health scores out by OEM, product family and location, making it possible to spot trends across thousands of assets and concentrate attention where it matters most.

For organizations running hardware past OEM support on a third-party maintenance contract, the scores supply the documented evidence needed to justify that decision internally — or the early warning needed to act before a failure forces the issue.

Availability

The beta version of ParkView Asset Intelligence is available now to all existing Park Place customers and will close on October 31. New customers of Park Place can receive the full version of ParkView Asset Intelligence immediately.

For more information about ParkView Asset Intelligence, visit https://www.parkplacetechnologies.com/parkview-asset-intelligence/.

Generative AI has crossed the line from experiment to return on investment for roughly half of enterprises, but the infrastructure that runs the rest of the business is still waiting for its budget. That tension is the subject of the newest episode of The Savvy CIO, the podcast from Park Place Technologies, available tomorrow wherever you get your podcasts.

Host Bradd Busick sits down with Rob Brothers, an IDC analyst who has spent nearly four decades on every side of the infrastructure lifecycle market, as a value-added reseller, as a third-party maintainer and now as an analyst covering the space. The conversation is built around a decision nearly every IT leader faces on a fixed calendar: what to do when the OEM warranty expires.

Brothers points to research showing a sharp turn in AI outcomes.

“Forty-five to 50% of enterprises are now beginning to see an ROI on their generative AI initiatives, which is great,” Brothers said. Busick notes that the same conversation a year earlier put that figure closer to 10 to 20%.

But the same budget that funds those initiatives has to come from somewhere. “A lot of the studies that we’ve done recently show that customers are really trying to use budgetary dollars for AI initiatives,” Brothers said. “And that doesn’t leave a lot for everything else.” Meanwhile, the price of the new gear has changed the math entirely.

David Kramer, President of Service Delivery at Park Place Technologies, warns that the sticker price is only the visible part of a refresh. “Your teams have to learn the new technology. You have to pay for installation and configuration of the new technology. You need time to let the new technology bake in and test in your systems and in your environments,” he said. He also notes who tends to be driving the urgency: internal campaigns for the latest hardware are “aided and abetted by the salespeople from the OEM itself, because the OEM is incentivized to sell more hardware.”

Brothers’ guidance for CIOs is to narrow the AI aperture and keep the existing estate supported while they do it. Expect 50 internal use case ideas, he says, cut to about six, and plan on two producing real outcomes, while acknowledging the constraint that outlasts every hype cycle: good quality data. “The data is generally what bogs everybody down,” he said. “It’s the same thing that bogged us down in AI is the same thing that’s bogging us down in gen AI.”

Episode 6, “The Renew, Refresh, Replace Dilemma with Rob Brothers,” is available on September 30 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music.

Computer hardware comes with a price tag you can see, but increasingly, the rest of the IT budget does not. In the newest episode of The Savvy CIO, hosted by Bradd Busick, Mark Dunkerley, VP of Enterprise Technology Services and CISO at Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Sales & Services, said, “I don’t think anybody knows how to calculate AI costs.”

Dunkerley, who supports nearly 60 Coca-Cola bottlers across North America, traces a 20-year arc in how hidden spend shows up. It began with, “I need a server, I need storage.” It moved to the cloud, where shadow IT and consumption costs are hard to govern even with a mature cloud team. Now it has moved again, and this time, he argues, the industry does not yet have the math.

That uncertainty collides with a planning process built for a slower era. Dunkerley makes the case that the three-year roadmap still has a role for lifecycle and technical debt work, but that no leader can credibly forecast AI three- to six-months out, which makes transparency with non-technical executives, reserved project budget, and strong business relationships the real controls. “Hidden spend,” he said, “is as much a governance problem as a finance one.”

The episode also pushes back on the assumption that AI is a shortcut past foundational work. Dunkerley points to two constraints no model resolves on its own – unreliable data and unexamined processes.

Both leaders land on the same prescription – bring data and facts to the executive table, shift accountability for risk and spend from a single CIO or CISO to the broader business, and treat governance, risk, and compliance as the mechanism that makes it stick.

The Savvy CIO is produced by Park Place Technologies and explores the budget pressures, AI adoption challenges, and security concerns facing today’s IT leaders, along with the people solving them every day.

Episode 5, “Managing the Spend You Can’t See,” is available now on Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

Park Place Technologies, the leading global data center and networking optimization firm, today announced TekWurx as an official partner for Entuity Software™, Park Place’s award-winning network observability and performance monitoring solution.

This strategic relationship brings together Entuity’s powerful network monitoring and observability capabilities with TekWurx’s expertise in operational data, service modeling, CMDB optimization, and IT operations transformation. Together, Park Place and TekWurx will help organizations gain deeper visibility across their IT environments, improve operational trust, accelerate incident resolution, and make more informed business decisions.

As enterprises continue to navigate increasingly complex hybrid infrastructure environments, IT operations teams are under growing pressure to maintain visibility, understand service dependencies, and respond rapidly to issues before they affect the business. By combining Entuity’s intelligence with TekWurx’s operational data expertise and uControl platform, customers can achieve a more complete, trusted, and actionable view of their technology estate.

“This partnership reflects Park Place Technologies’ commitment to delivering greater value to customers through a strong ecosystem of trusted partners,” said Case Allin, GM, Software Solutions, Park Place Technologies. “TekWurx brings deep expertise in transforming operational data into meaningful business insight. As a partner for Entuity Software, TekWurx is well positioned to help customers extend the value of network observability into service intelligence, automation, and operational resilience.”

Through this relationship, customers can move beyond simply monitoring infrastructure to understanding the real-time business impact of operational events. The combined capabilities of Entuity and TekWurx will help organizations improve service awareness, reduce risk, and drive more efficient IT operations.

Customer Benefits

Organizations working with Park Place, Entuity, and TekWurx can expect:

• Improved visibility across network, infrastructure, and service environments
• Faster incident detection, investigation, and resolution
• Reduced operational risk through more trusted operational data
• Improved CMDB and service model accuracy
• Better understanding of service dependencies and business impact
• Increased operational efficiency through automation and intelligent workflows
• Stronger decision-making through contextualized operational intelligence

For more information about Entuity Software and Park Place Technologies, visit www.parkplacetechnologies.com.

For more information about TekWurx, visit www.tekwurx.com.

Park Place Technologies released the third episode of The Savvy CIO, “Why do AI Buildouts Fail?”, in which host and former National CIO of the Year Bradd Busick and guest Skylar Roebuck, CTO of Solvd, examine why most enterprise AI programs never survive the trip from a controlled demo.

The numbers are stark. A widely cited MIT study put the AI initiative failure rate at 95%, a figure Roebuck says was repeated by “every vendor in the world” at AWS re:Invent despite flaws in how the study was run. Solvd ran its own survey and found a similar result, with nearly 80% of respondents reporting AI initiative failures.

Roebuck’s diagnosis is that enterprises are still scoping AI work like software projects. In earlier technology waves, he argues, the transformative idea could be separated from the organizational change required to absorb it. That separation no longer holds.

Throughout the episode, Roebuck shares practical guidance for technology leaders looking to scale AI successfully across the enterprise while avoiding common pitfalls that derail transformation efforts.

The Savvy CIO is produced by Park Place Technologies and explores the budget pressures, AI adoption challenges, and security concerns facing today’s IT leaders, along with the people solving them every day.

Episode 3, “Why Do AI Buildouts Fail?,” is available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.