Deft Uses AWS Managed Service Provider Program to Increase Customer Confidence and Deliver Better Technology Solutions

AWS Partner Deft sought to increase credibility with customers, so it qualified for the AWS Managed Service Provider Program. As a result, the company gives its customers more confidence and delivers better technology solutions because it can demonstrate technology expertise and managed services best practices.

Deft (formerly ServerCentral Turing Group) provides cloud, consulting, and managed cloud and data center services to its growing global customer base. Since its launch in 2000, the company has been committed to helping enterprises overcome their technology challenges. Eric Dynowski, Chief Solutions Officer at Deft, says, “We position ourselves primarily as a trusted advisor. We listen to what our customers’ challenges are and then craft the right technology-based solution.” Deft is also committed to its employees, donating money for workers who volunteer, matching donations to nonprofit organizations, and providing ongoing diversity, equity, and inclusion training and resources.

An Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner since 2014, Deft increasingly sought to address its customers’ needs for more structured managed services capabilities. “Our customers were telling us they wanted to work with a managed service provider, but with more of a framework in place that audited our business processes,” Dynowski explains. “To gain more credibility with our customers, we realized that we needed to invest our time and energy in joining a formal AWS program with an audit infrastructure for managed services.”

Deft chose to join the AWS Managed Service Provider (MSP) Program to meet its goals. The AWS MSP Program validates AWS Partners’ business and technical capabilities and MSP best practices.

To qualify for the AWS MSP Program, Deft completed a rigorous AWS audit—performed by a third-party firm—that confirmed the company’s ability to deliver managed services within AWS. Josh Quint, Senior Director of Consulting Services at Deft, says, “It provided validation that we were doing things right when it came to offering an MSP practice and it gave us a framework to ensure we weren’t missing anything.” Dynowski adds, “The audit has requirements that show we’re forecasting and analyzing key business metrics in addition to surveying our customers and generating feedback. As a startup, we didn’t necessarily have all those things in place, so it forced us to start adopting best practices early in the life of our company.” Once Deft qualified for the program, it became one of the first AWS MSP Program participants.

By qualifying for the AWS MSP Program, Deft is building more credibility with its customers because it can clearly demonstrate managed services best practices and capabilities. Deft can now show customers that it has methods of documenting and discovering architecture design while ensuring that these methods are repeatable through infrastructure as code. “The AWS Managed Service Provider Program holds us accountable for running a high-quality business and maintaining high standards for how we run our customers’ AWS environments,” says Dynowski.

This improved customer credibility is also empowering the Deft sales teams. “We have a lot of sophisticated finance and healthcare customers, and in the later stages of deals, they often have due diligence questions about security, for instance,” Dynowski continues. “Because of the AWS MSP Program, it is easier for us to respond to these questions because we have the expertise and evidence to show that we’re doing business a certain way. It’s ultimately helpful in earning our customers’ trust early in the sales process.”

Deft can provide better solutions through the expertise it has gained by being an AWS MSP Partner. “With all our customers, we start any discussion with the question: What are you trying to do and why? That helps us craft solutions that make a difference and deliver results, as opposed to just going in and turning on cloud services. Once we do that, we can really take advantage of the broad range of AWS services available,” Dynowski says.

Additionally, the continuing evolution of the AWS MSP audit framework enables Deft to evolve its own programs. “AWS adds controls and requirements to the MSP audit before customers even ask about certain technologies,” says Dynowski. “A good example is predictive analytics and machine learning. The evolving nature of the MSP audit criteria keeps us on our toes, so by the time our customers approach us about something, we already have a strategy in place to address it. This will help us ensure customer confidence into the future.”