Cornelis is expanding its global partner ecosystem to give more resellers, systems integrators, and MSPs access to its CN5000 networking product family, the company's latest generation scale-out networking product. The company has added ASI Corp., CTG Federal, and TVAR Solutions as partners. ASI expands distribution in North America, while CTG Federal and TVAR Solutions bring a stronger reach into public-sector and federal markets. The focus of the company is to make Cornelis networking easier to source, deploy, and support for AI, high-performance computing, research, government, and enterprise workloads.
Partner Expansion Matters
AI and HPC deployments are putting more pressure on the network layer. As clusters get larger, networking can affect performance, cost, and how efficiently compute resources are used. Cornelis is positioning CN5000 as a 400-Gbps scale-out networking family for workloads that need low latency, high throughput, and predictable performance across distributed systems.
Partners are not only helping Cornelis reach more customers, but they are expected to become technical advisors and service providers around AI/HPC infrastructure. For channel partners, that creates an opportunity beyond resale. These projects often require architecture planning, integration, deployment support, and ongoing optimization.
Mike Lafferty, Strategic Partner Relations at Cornelis, told ChannelE2E, “Partners help us scale globally, but they’re also becoming trusted advisors. AI and HPC environments are complex, and customers need more than just hardware. They need guidance on architecture, integration, and optimization. We’re enabling partners to move up the stack and deliver that expertise so they can both extend our reach and provide real technical value.”
From Infrastructure Sale to Services Opportunity
Cornelis said its partner program includes joint go-to-market support, sales enablement, training, access to networking experts, and technical work around validated solution architectures.
That matters because AI and HPC networking is not a simple plug-and-play sale. Partners that can help customers design and support these environments can turn infrastructure deployments into longer-term service work.
“We’re focused on enabling partners to build out their end-to-end services business with CN5000 as a core part of the solution,” Lafferty said. “Fabric implementation is complex, which naturally creates an opportunity for partners to lead on design, deployment, and ongoing support.”
Lafferty said Cornelis supports partners with joint design and engineering, repeatable architectures, and lifecycle services, including extended warranties and ongoing support.
“Our Level 2 support acts as an extension of their team, helping them confidently deliver and support these environments,” Lafferty said. “Together, these positions CN5000 as part of a repeatable, services-driven offering, not just a one-time sale.”
Federal and Research Markets Need More Choice
The federal and research markets are a key part of the expansion. Agencies, defense organizations, and academic HPC centers are working with larger data volumes and more compute-heavy workloads. They also need supply reliability, security alignment, and infrastructure that can scale over time. Cornelis said CN5000 delivers 400-Gbps end-to-end networking, sub-microsecond latency and high message rates for demanding AI and HPC workloads. Those capabilities matter most in large cluster environments, where network performance can influence job completion times and overall infrastructure cost.
For partners selling into federal, research, and enterprise HPC accounts, Lafferty said the clearest opportunity is the combination of performance and flexibility.
“CN5000 delivers the performance these environments demand, but the bigger differentiator is giving customers more choice,” Lafferty said. “Partners can support heterogeneous environments across CPUs, GPUs, and accelerators, which helps avoid lock-in and build infrastructure tailored to their needs. That flexibility also drives better cost efficiency over time. So it’s not just about speed, it’s about high performance with more control and long-term value.”
A Channel Opportunity
AI infrastructure is becoming a channel opportunity beyond GPUs and servers, especially for MSPs, resellers, and systems integrators. As customers build larger AI and HPC systems, networking becomes part of the performance and cost conversation. Partners that can advise on architecture, deploy complex fabric environments and provide ongoing support can play a larger role in these projects. Cornelis’ partner expansion gives those partners another route into AI and HPC infrastructure work, especially in federal, research and enterprise accounts where scale, performance and long-term support matter.
