‘This really is all about velocity and reducing that time to value from when we figure out a use case for the customer to when they are able to start realizing value out of it,’ says new Presidio Vice President of Product Solutions Engineering Chad Dunn.
Presidio has hired Chad Dunn, an 18-year Dell veteran who was most recently vice president of product management, AI and data management, to lead a new solutions engineering organization chartered with accelerating AI, cloud and hybrid transformations for customers.
Dunn told CRN that he expects the new centralized engineering organization, which is already hiring engineers to drive AI-based solutions in key verticals, to be able to deliver groundbreaking solutions to customers twice as fast.
“There’s no reason we can’t be delivering things twice as fast as we were in the past for a given use case, or maybe even more,” said Dunn, who takes the new position of vice president of product solutions engineering for Presidio. “When you’ve got a catalog of these solution accelerators with solutions that have been prebuilt, already tested, interoperable, ready to deploy in an automated way, clearly you are going to get some big acceleration. I don’t think 2X is a stretch in a lot of cases.”
The new engineering organization represents a fundamentally new approach for Presidio to accelerate customer transformation. “This really is all about velocity and reducing that time to value from when we figure out a use case for the customer to when they are able to start realizing value out of it,” said Dunn, who will report to Presidio Chief Innovation Officer Chris Cagnazzi. “Having a lot of that work done using common sets of tools, common architectures, common building blocks across multiple solutions, it just makes us more efficient and it gets customers to their destination much more quickly.”
Dunn said the new organization is already in the process of hiring individuals to drive AI-based solutions in key verticals including health care, SLED telco, media and entertainment, gaming and sports.
Dunn said the velocity at which AI is reshaping the market requires a new approach to engineering transformational solutions for customers.
“AI is sort of the marquee poster child for this,” he said. “It’s the thing that’s driving this level of velocity. If you look at the entire stack of things we’ll be delivering, there’s certainly going to be components that are not AI, but it’s really AI creating the velocity and the need in the market for us to do something like this.”
Dunn said his tenure at Dell provided “incredible preparation” for the new role at Presidio. “Exposure to the customers on their AI journey was invaluable to me [at Dell],” he said. “I would see common stumbling blocks and common challenges that customers faced as they tried to adopt AI. I would also see the common challenges that IT encountered as they tried to support those lines of business in adopting AI.”
Dunn garnered a reputation as a seasoned executive taking on big challenges during his Dell tenure, most recently overseeing what he called on LinkedIn a “turnaround” of Dell’s AI factories. “I implemented a product management discipline, rebuilt stakeholder trust, and established a new leadership/team structure, reinforcing operating principles of engineering collaboration, direct customer engagement, and technical fluency,” Dunn said on LinkedIn.
Dunn wrote on LinkedIn that he also expanded Dell’s data management focus, increasing the pipeline of customers by a factor of five times, increasing storage drag and overall blended margin by more than 50 percent.
From 2022 to 2024, Dunn was vice president of product management for Dell’s Apex consumption as-a-service offering. In that role, Dunn wrote on LinkedIn, he helped grow Dell’s Apex revenue from $1 million to $2.5 million.
Dunn’s hiring is just the latest move by Presidio to accelerate sales growth with new hires and initiatives.
Last month the company hired Punish Malhotra, previously chief growth officer at IT services and consulting firm Innova Solutions, to lead its managed services operations as senior vice president.
Malhotra is now leading the transformation of Presidio’s managed services portfolio, unifying capabilities across cloud, managed security, collaboration and infrastructure services, while positioning the practice for the AI era.
Prior to Innova, Malhotra was senior vice president and global head of cloud and data for fellow IT services and consulting company Virtusa. He also held executive roles at Wipro, EPAM Systems and HCL Technologies.
In December, Presidio appointed former Citrix Systems CEO David Henshall to its board of directors as an independent director.
Henshall now works closely with Presidio’s leadership team to advance the company’s long-term strategic AI vision and strengthen its commitment to client-centric innovation.
“Presidio has built a strong reputation for delivering measurable outcomes through deep technical expertise and a client-first culture,” said Henshall. “I am honored to join Presidio’s Board at such an exciting moment for the company.”
Presidio has made significant investments over the past few years to transform its cloud managed services and operations capabilities to position itself to support clients through their AI journeys.
Just this week, Presidio launched a new Adaptive Cloud Services offering, a suite of AI-enhanced cloud solutions built on AWS.
Presidio’s new services aim to provide tiered options that scale with customer needs while delivering an outcome-driven approach.
“The word ‘adaptive’ is intentional,” said recently hired Malhotra in a statement. “Our customers are dynamic—they’re growing, changing, and facing new challenges constantly. They need a partner whose services grow and change with them.”
For example, the new Cloud Accelerate offers clients a fully optimized CloudOps and FinOps program with AI-driven automation, dedicated technical advisory hours, and SLAs for incident response, resolution and request fulfillment.
