AWS Strategic Collaboration Agreements Catalyze Partners’ Growth and International Expansion: Automat-it Case Study

By Tauseef Afzal, Senior Strategic Partnership Leader – AWS
By Asaf Shirazi, VP Global Operations – Automat-it

In the rapidly evolving cloud computing landscape, Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers diverse and innovative set of cloud solutions for customers and partners. Through its robust AWS Partner Network (APN) programs and other strategic initiatives, AWS supports its partners in strengthening their business to enhance value for customers. Strategic Collaboration Agreements (SCAs) are one of the most powerful tools in the AWS toolkit to support partners in their growth journey. SCAs are underpinned by multi-year business plans and investments through which AWS equips partners with the resources, support, and funding needed to thrive in the competitive cloud market and to scale their business globally.

Figure 1. What is a Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA)

AWS and its partners offer industry-tailored business outcome solutions for customers of all types including public sector, startups, SMBs, and enterprises. Startups are known to be the engine of innovation as they play a vital role in bringing new ideas, products and business models to fruition. Because of the nature of their disruptive activities, startups operate in a very fast-paced, uncertain and resource-constrained environment. Hence, they require specialized partners which understand their business challenges and requirements and can offer them customized solutions. Automat-it is one such AWS partner, empowering startups with DevOps, FinOps, migration, generative AI, machine learning and serverless computing solutions. Over the years, Automat-it became a successful AWS Consulting Partner in Israel by developing a differentiated set of capabilities, solutions, and value-added services for the startup segment. During 2022, Automat-it and AWS recognized the opportunity to expand this successful collaboration and jointly developed a plan to enable Automat-it to expand to other markets across EMEA. AWS and Automat-it then signed a Strategic Collaboration Agreement to support Automat-it’s ambitious international growth plans.

Within two years of signing this SCA, Automat-it has successfully expanded their business to the UK and Ireland, France, Iberia, DACH, CEE, and the Nordics and is now serving 300+ customers in these markets. Automat-it’s success has come from tailoring its services, processes, capabilities, and payment terms to startup customers in each market, enabling it to build a compelling value proposition for an underserved customer segment. AWS local teams in each market have been instrumental in supporting Automat-it’s expansion and jointly delivering for customers.

Growth of AWS partners such as Automat-it gives customers the freedom and choice to select from a larger pool of partners who are better suited to service their requirements. Case in point is Natterbox, a UK-based company that provides AI-powered contact center solution integrated with Salesforce. Natterbox faced challenges with on-premises data centers that hindered its growth and efficiency. Natterbox partnered with Automat-it to migrate to the AWS cloud, resulting in a 25% cost reduction and a significant increase in bandwidth. This migration also improved security, operational efficiency, and scalability for Natterbox.

How Partners can Expand to New Markets: Best Practices and Learnings

Automat-it’s successful expansion demonstrates the value of APN programs and SCAs in helping AWS partners to expand to new markets; with AWS providing guidance, strategic investments and hands-on support. This also highlights the following best practices that AWS partners can follow when planning for their growth and international expansions:

1. Identify your target customer segments and build a distinct value proposition that differentiates you from your competitors targeting the same customer segments.
2. Tailor your workforce, solutions, processes, capabilities, and payment terms for each of your target customer segments as Enterprise, SMB, Startup and Public Sector customers each have different requirements.
3. Build a proper plan for expansion into each new market. This plan should include detailed market analysis to identify the target customer segments and their needs, competitive landscape analysis, understanding the market entry requirements, availability of resources for expansion, ability to hire local talent, establishment of your brand in the new market and a timeframe for generating positive ROI.
4. Senior management should be closely involved throughout the expansion process, including identifying target markets, establishing local entities, hiring talent, marketing activities, developing sales propositions, and targeting initial customers. Senior management should be able to decide and act quickly.
5. When expanding to new markets, initially target the same or similar customer segments which are your core focus area so that you don’t wander too far away from your main strengths and delivery capabilities.
6. Be fast, nimble, and ready to adapt to local requirements. This may include customizing your value proposition, services and processes according to local market needs. Do not assume that the same processes and working practices that brought you success in your home market will make you successful in the new market as well.
7. Plan to hire suitable local talent aligned with local culture, language, expertise and other requirements, for example, hiring for AWS, target customer segment and industry experience.
8. Identify and benefit from the resources, co-sell support, guidance and strategic investments provided by AWS through the various APN Programs and SCAs for various markets and industry segments. Get support and guidance for growth from your relevant AWS contacts such as Partner Development Managers (PDM), Partner Consultants (PC) and Strategic Partnership Managers (SPM).
9. While expanding, continuously enhance your organization’s knowledge level, technical capabilities and skill set to match the changing needs of your target customers. Establish a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) with guidance from AWS; leveraging the AWS trainings and certifications will help you in achieving this.
10. Adopt a One-Team approach by aligning with the goals and plans of AWS teams in those markets and work very closely with them. Collaborate with AWS marketing and sales to raise brand awareness in new markets and participate in joint events to generate leads and opportunities.
11. Do not underestimate the efforts required to enter and establish business in a new market, and do not underrate the time and resources required to hire local talent. This can vary greatly from market to market and may impede starting and scaling operations. Work with your relevant PDM, PC and SPM contacts to understand the requirements and plan accordingly.
12. Do not be overly aggressive or spread yourself too thinly, especially at the beginning of your expansion journey. Adopt an iterative “Plan → Execute → Learn → Improve” approach to continuously learn from your successful actions as well as from your missteps, to be able to improve your strategy and execution for subsequent expansions.

Giuliano Serventi, AWS, Director, Partner Core said:

“AWS supports our partners’ growth through various partner programs and Strategic Collaboration Agreements. AWS provides consultation, strategic investments, local market know-how and dedicated resources to strengthen our partners’ solution portfolio, develop joint go-to-market plans and to help them expand internationally. This empowers the partners to serve new customers across various industries, market segments and geographies. With Automat-it’s successful expansion across EMEA enabled by AWS SCA, we’re now jointly meeting the needs of customers in these markets as well, thus a Win-Win-Win scenario for customers, partners, and AWS.”

Ziv Kashtan, Automat-it CEO said:

“The invaluable support, guidance and strategic investments provided by AWS via the SCA have enabled Automat-it to expand successfully to key European markets. The combination of the strategic support provided through the SCA and advice on how to enter a new market, who to hire and how to execute, have enabled us to work very closely with AWS teams in these markets. This has helped us to achieve our common goal of supporting our customers to transform and expand their business with AWS. We look forward to further strengthening our partnership with AWS and expanding in other markets.”

Conclusion

Successfully enabling Automat-it and other partners’ international expansions shows that AWS empowers partners to grow their operations. APN Programs and AWS SCAs help partners by providing training and enablement, strategic guidance, go-to-market support, joint marketing campaigns, co-sell motions, participation in AWS events and strategic investments. With this, AWS enables its partners to upskill their workforces, innovate and enhance their product offerings, understand local market dynamics, identify customer requirements, increase brand visibility, generate leads and penetrate new markets. These AWS initiatives help partners to be well-positioned for success, who are then able to expand their horizons to make an impact in the global digital economy. Please visit the AWS Partner Network website and reach out to your AWS contacts to learn more about the various programs and support offered by AWS.

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Automat-it – AWS Partner Spotlight

Automat-it is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner with complex DevOps, FinOps and hands-on services with a focus on GenAI, AI/ML, cloud security, and cloud migration and modernization. Automat-it has guided hundreds of startups to leverage AWS smarter throughout their growth journey, and has run hundreds of Well-Architected Reviews, with the goal to make sure that AWS usage is done right. DevOps born and bred; Automat-it builds cloud solutions from the DevOps perspective for practical applications. Automat-it’s solutions have built-in efficiencies that save customers significant time to market and optimize their cloud performance and cloud economics.

Contact Automat-it | Partner Overview | AWS Marketplace | Automat-it Website