Accelerating AI Adoption: How a Bank Gained Early Insights from WWT's AI Proving Ground

The challenge of validating complex AI hardware

Looking to accelerate digital transformation, a U.S.-based bank invested in the NVIDIA DGX platform, a proven AI data center solution designed to power everything from predictive analytics to automated customer service applications. The Bank needed its DGX infrastructure to be fully operational and its engineers trained on the platform by early 2024 — when leadership had committed to launching several high-value AI initiatives.

Integrating new technology can be challenging, particularly in highly regulated industries. In this case, before the Bank's DGX infrastructure could be deployed into production, it needed to pass a rigorous internal certification process designed to ensure the incoming technology met both the industry's and the Bank's high standards for security, reliability and regulatory compliance.

The Bank's team needed a new process for validating and installing the deployment — one that would require augmenting their team with outside expertise on this new type of high-performance architecture (HPA). Additionally, the Bank's timeline to finalize its internal certification of the DGX deployment was also tight, meaning the multi-month certification process needed to begin immediately to avoid delays.

Given the timeline and a lack of immediate expertise among its technical team, the Bank needed a way to secure immediate access to the DGX infrastructure to begin testing. Finding the right partner was critical, as any delays in certification could jeopardize leadership's ability to execute its ambitious AI roadmap heading into the new year.

Solution: WWT's AI Proving Ground

Given our longstanding relationship with the Bank, our status as one of NVIDIA's top AI partners, and our unique AI Proving Ground lab environment, WWT was well-positioned to help the Bank accelerate its certification process.

As one of the first technology partners to integrate DGX infrastructure into a fully composable AI lab ecosystem, WWT proposed using our AI Proving Ground to give Bank engineers access to the same DGX infrastructure they would later deploy in their IT environment, so they could start the certification process and hone their skills.

In late 2023, a team of Bank engineers virtually accessed the AI Proving Ground to get started. WWT consultants worked closely with the Bank to onboard and orient its team to the NVIDIA DGX infrastructure. This included provisioning network connections, assisting with the installation of a new operating system (OS), and providing documentation on system maintenance and management.

WWT and NVIDIA also worked with the Bank to address functional testing and validation.

This AI Proving Ground engagement enabled the Bank to certify its incoming NVIDIA DGX infrastructure remotely, helping its leadership stay on track to roll out a series of strategic AI initiatives in the new year. Moreover, WWT's real-world training environment gave Bank engineers the hands-on experience they would need to hit the ground running when their own system eventually went live.

Accelerating AI success

With its NVIDIA DGX infrastructure now in production supporting AI workloads, the Bank can focus on driving clear business value and benefits to its customers and employees. Advanced analytics and machine learning are already helping power new predictive services aimed at enhancing customer experiences and reducing fraud. The initial results also indicate that the NVIDIA DGX infrastructure is accelerating workloads by three to four times the speed compared to the Bank's legacy systems, facilitating more experimentation and faster insights.

Thanks to WWT and NVIDIA's strong partnership, the Bank has established itself as an early adopter of AI — one well-positioned to drive competitive advantages across the industry. Moreover, Bank customers will benefit from the development of new AI-powered services designed to deliver enhanced experiences, around-the-clock support and increased security.

Looking ahead, the Bank plans to continue to rely on WWT as a strategic AI partner and leverage the AI Proving Ground as a playground to accelerate its exploration of AI use cases related to trading, lending and wealth management.