Arrow Electronics establishes experience centres worldwide to hasten AI and cloud uptake and monetisation
Arrow Electronics has launched a network of networked experience centres in Alpharetta, Georgia, and Stockholm, Sweden, designed to accelerate technology adoption among its channel partners by helping them bridge the gap between opportunity and implementation. The centres serve as strategic hubs for vendors, channel partners and end customers across Europe and North America, and form part of the company’s broader commitment to remaining at the forefront of advances in artificial intelligence, cloud computing and cybersecurity.
Bridging the gap from concept to deployment
Nick Bannister, president of Arrow’s enterprise computing solutions business in Europe, said the centres were built to “simplify technology, enabling our channel partners to use it with confidence to solve real-world problems”. Through what Arrow calls “global connectivity” between its two sites, the company can test use cases, create demonstrations and help partners understand how to run and secure workloads anywhere in the world, creating new business opportunities in the process.
Support at the experience centres is structured around three core areas. The first, hybrid infrastructure, involves creating and demonstrating multi-vendor hardware and software solutions — infused with vendor-focused capabilities — that meet the demands of organisations seeking secure, on-premise cloud and AI deployments. The second, cybersecurity, risk and resilience, helps partners build solutions that protect critical systems, data and operations from an increasingly complex threat landscape, reducing risk and driving organisational resilience. The third, services and consultancy, provides training, enablement, guidance and knowledge exchange to help identify potential gaps and opportunities with solution implementation.
Within the centres, Arrow’s channel partners gain access to more than 100 pre-built and tested solutions, or can create custom solutions with support from Arrow engineers and technicians, ensuring proven and adaptable use cases suited to each partner’s or customer’s business.
Making high-growth technologies tangible
A central purpose of the experience centres is to demystify high-growth technologies such as AI — including machine learning, modelling and data science — and help partners understand how these tools can be integrated into real IT environments. Arrow has invested heavily in this area, enhancing its ArrowSphere Cloud platform with AI capabilities that allow channel partners to create custom AI assistants using their own data, workflows and vendor-specific information. The platform, called ArrowSphere AI, now contains hundreds of ready-to-use cases and prompts designed to fast-track customisation and boost go-to-market strategies.
Beyond the platform, Arrow offers a global AI Accelerator Program that includes an AI Academy for training, a suite of AI tools powered by ArrowSphere AI for practical application, and an AI Factory for developing and deploying AI projects. The experience centres are specifically equipped to support these initiatives, offering solution design, integrations, demonstrations and proof-of-concept capabilities. The company is also focused on hybrid cloud environments, helping customers design deployments that split AI inference and training across on-premise, edge and public cloud — a strategy it pursues through partnerships with companies such as Cloudera to scale enterprise AI across hybrid clouds, with a focus on data management and AI strategy.
Cybersecurity is another key pillar within the centres. Arrow has established distribution agreements with CrowdStrike to bring its Falcon platform to channel partners, aiming to modernise security operations and address challenges such as consolidating vendor costs and closing protection gaps. The company has also integrated Check Point Software Technologies solutions into its ArrowSphere Cloud platform, offering automated provisioning and consolidated billing for partners across EMEA, and collaborates with PSA Certified to provide platforms that align with cybersecurity standards using trusted silicon and engineering services.
Arrow’s broader strategic focus on AI, cloud and data-centre demand is reflected in its recent financial performance. The company reported full-year 2025 sales of $31bn, with fourth-quarter 2025 sales of $8.7bn, a 20% increase year-on-year. In the first quarter of 2026, net sales reached $9.47bn, up 39% from the same period the previous year.
“Partnering with Arrow and their global experience centre has been a game-changer for us,” said Kateryna Wikstrom, chief product officer at Oxide AI. “Arrow helped us understand the technology, infrastructure, and gave us invaluable access to a network of vendors and channel partners that enabled us to scale and hone our AI product. This collaboration has not only helped us enhance our AI agent’s ability to interpret user intent, but has also opened new doors, empowering us to create more AI-powered solutions on a global scale.”
