AWS GSI Partners Help Customers Drive Innovation-Led Business Transformation

By Chris Niederman, Director, Strategic Alliances at AWS

Cloud is on the business transformation agenda for customers all across the world, as it enables digital transformation regardless of industry.

Customers lean on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and our community of partners to jointly navigate through business transformation areas and cultural changes. Leading the way for their customers as innovation anticipators, AWS Partners translate business insights into future actions.

At AWS, we see our Global System Integrator (GSI) partners offer customers advisory services along with the skilled resources required to take these ideas to completion.

Whether it’s developing an artificial intelligence (AI)-based drug solution to save human lives, or leveraging AWS services to improve the claims processing experience for millions of end customers, GSI partners continue to work jointly with AWS teams to delight our customers.

In my role at AWS, I work closely with 16 GSIs globally that employ more than 3 million people and generate over $320 billion in annual revenues. Together with these trusted AWS Partners, we are helping customers in every vertical drive innovation-led business transformation.

AWS Skills Training and Enablement is Foundational

Customers embark on their cloud journey due to one or many business imperatives. This includes exiting data centers, increasing business agility, improving workforce productivity, gaining transparency in operational costs, and reducing risk.

Customer CIOs tell us how critical it is for them to have partners with the right set of skills to achieve the desired pace of transformation. AWS Partners who have taken a lead in setting up a dedicated Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) supported through various AWS Partner Network (APN) programs find themselves more prepared to address the challenges of a complex customer migration.

AWS GSI partners benefit from these differentiated partner programs—like the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP)—that are designed to help them meet customers’ most pressing IT needs.

GSI partners are doubling down on their investments to augment their teams’ AWS skills through the expansion of a Cloud Centers of Excellence. Organizational change management is central to business transformation, and effective CCoE teams can provide partners with the knowledge and expertise needed to help customers leverage the AWS Cloud.

Our GSIs have mastered the art of training their employees at scale, and customers are looking to capitalize on these best practices and learn from them. Infosys, for example, has built a next-gen learning solution on AWS called Wingspan that is helping organizations like Siemens accelerate their talent transformation journey.

“As trusted advisors, we guide our clients on multiple fronts; most importantly around driving business transformations, leveraging the newer capabilities enabled by cloud,” says Ambeshwar Nath, SVP, EMEA – Consumer, Retail and Logistics at Infosys, an AWS Premier Consulting Partner and Managed Service Provider (MSP).

“To do this effectively,” adds Nath, “we have planned for continuous investments in getting our frontline sales leaders and client partners skilled and certified on AWS, and a significant number of our leadership team members are now AWS Certified Cloud Practitioners.”

Innovating to Help AWS Customers Succeed

Together with our GSI partners, we have helped customers transform their business through the implementation of Savings Plans. This provides customers the flexibility to choose the compute option that best suits their needs, while delivering up to 72 percent savings.

This kind of customer and partner obsession has never been more relevant than it is today. With COVID-19 upending various aspects of our lives and businesses, customers need their partners more than ever to accelerate innovation cycles that achieve key business outcomes.

AWS Partners often face decision points when working with their customers in terms of which set of platforms and applications to migrate to AWS, and how to accelerate value delivery to customers. It’s exciting to see our GSI partners building industry-specific capabilities on AWS through solutions, platforms, and investments.

Our aim is to focus on industry solutions that GSIs have built and will build to meet discrete needs within customers’ lines of business, both vertical (Core Banking, Smart Factory) and horizontal (HR, Contact Centers).

Accenture & Takeda

Accenture and AWS collaborated to accelerate Takeda’s cloud-driven business transformation by modernizing platforms, accelerating data services, establishing an internal engine for innovation, and equipping Takeda’s employees with new skills and ways of working.

As a result, Takeda will see cost optimization through migration, as well as benefits to their pipeline development, manufacturing process, and patient outcomes.

Deloitte & Peloton

Deloitte and AWS worked together in supporting Peloton’s mission to bring immersive and challenging workouts into people’s lives in a more accessible, affordable, and efficient way.

Deloitte led a five-month SAP proof of concept, running SAP in their AWS Open Cloud Solution. This gave Peloton the assurance and confidence to deploy the SAP S/4HANA platform that’s mission-critical to support their long-term business growth.

Wipro & Aviva

Another GSI partner, Wipro, supported Aviva to address high data center hosting and operational cost, technology debt accumulation, and slower time to market. Wipro helped Aviva migrate their life insurance business from a legacy and distributed scenario to a more cohesive and integrated environment on AWS.

Wipro worked alongside AWS to deliver a reduction in infrastructure capital costs to the tune of 30 percent, while reducing an SLA from 9 days to just 2 hours.

HCL Technologies & Ericsson AB

HCL Technologies worked with AWS to enter a 5-year IT outsourcing agreement with Ericsson AB that will transform the company’s data center footprint, application landscape, and workplace modernization.

For HCL, this is a net-new win that was made possible due to early engagement with AWS and collaboration on the field. It’s also an endearing example of how AWS can effectively partner to bring in market expansion with our strategic customers.

Together We Can

Businesses today have a strong desire to be agile and move faster. AWS GSI partners perform traditional functions such as cost and risk management across their customers’ IT portfolio, but they also offer domain expertise to help customers unlock the value of their AWS investment.

Working closely with our valued AWS GSI Partners, together we can drive innovation-led transformation and long-term value for customers.

AWS re:Invent Recap for Partners

Thank you for joining us at AWS re:Invent 2020. All of the keynotes, leadership sessions, and breakouts from re:Invent are now available on-demand, including our Global Partner Summit sessions. To watch, log in using the credentials you created during registration.

If you missed anything from re:Invent or just want to recap, we have rounded up the most relevant launches, program updates, and educational content available for AWS Partners.

Check out our re:Invent recap on the APN Blog >>

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		Chris Niederman Chris Niederman is Director, Strategic Alliances at AWS.
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