BlazeClan is a born-in-the-cloud consulting company who provides customers around the globe with advisory, cloud migration, Big Data and analytics, product development, and cloud managed services. The company is dedicated to helping customers embrace agility and automation to transform their businesses on the cloud. Headquartered in India, BlazeClan also has a strong presence in ASEAN, Europe, and North America.

The company has been an AWS Partner Network (APN) Partner since 2011 and is a Premier APN Consulting PartnerAWS Managed Service Partner, and holds the AWS Big Data Competency. The company has been recognized by AWS as a Customer Obsessed Partner in 2014 and 2015, ASEAN Partner of the Year in 2015, and Fastest Growing Partner West India, 2014.

BlazeClan’s journey on AWS began as a startup in India in 2011. “We became a customer of AWS when we started our organization,” says Varoon Rajani, Co-Founder & CEO, BlazeClan. As a startup, the BlazeClan team found great benefit in not having to invest in infrastructure, and being able to move quickly on AWS. The team became deeply versed in product development on AWS, and identified an opportunity to help other companies with similar use cases. “When we started out, AWS was a real differentiator for us, both because of the cost-effectiveness of the platform and the speed to market building on AWS afforded us. We built a deep understanding of how AWS worked and helped us. And over time, we started helping some of our friends in the startup space migrate to AWS. It was a time when the startup market in India was growing quickly, and whenever we discussed our use case on AWS, we saw a lot of similar need across startups,” explains Rajani. “We thought, ‘if we’re facing certain challenges and are able to address those using AWS, then there are likely tens of thousands of companies around the world who could benefit from AWS, and we could help them.’”

With support from the AWS Partner Network (APN) team in India, the BlazeClan team quickly grew their consulting business, and has been focused on helping customers realize the benefits of AWS ever since. “Every day, we want to help customers solve their problems, make them more agile, help them look at applications and infrastructure from a different perspective, and ensure that whatever we do for them contributes to the growth of their business,” says Rajani.

Sean Tay, Director, BlazeClan Malaysia, and CEO, Matrix Connexion Sdn Bhd, joined the BlazeClan team in early 2015 through a Joint Venture between BlazeClan and Matrix. As a software as a service (SaaS) cloud-based company, Matrix has always been driven by a desire to, as Tay explains it, “help customers sleep better at night.” In both BlazeClan and AWS, Tay looked for the same commitment to put the customer first. “When I first did the JV, I was evaluating not only BlazeClan, but also AWS,” says Tay. “In one of the initial engagements with BlazeClan, I received interesting feedback from a very large customer in ASEAN, who said, ‘The AWS team has an answer to every question I’ve had. AWS has already thought on behalf on the customer about what the customer may need to know, and they have a ready answer for everything’ – when I heard that, I thought, AWS is the right provider for us to engage.”

“Through our relationship with AWS, we are choosing to work with a company who provides a strong technology and has a deep customer focus. This gives us further credibility as a trusted partner for our customers,” explains Tay.

BlazeClan works with customers across industries, and has been increasingly engaging with Media and Internet companies. “These customers are really focused on transforming their businesses,” says Rajani. BlazeClan offers five major services for customers: advisory, migration, Big Data and Analytics, product development, and cloud managed services. “We’ve seen a lot of enterprise analytics and enterprise migration interest, and we’ve done some very big all-in migrations. We’ve led a couple of big SAP projects, where we’ve completed SAP HANA migrations for enterprise customers in India, and in Malaysia,” says Deepak Kagliwal, Director – Sales & Marketing, BlazeClan. In the Big Data and analytics space, BlazeClan works closely with customers to help design predictive analytics frameworks.

In 2015, BlazeClan became an official AWS Managed Service Partner (MSP) after passing the third-party audit that AWS requires of AWS MSPs. “Being an AWS MSP is something that sets us apart for customers,” says Kagliwal. “The requirements are very stringent, and the audit process helped us identify certain areas where we were able to improve and ensure we had services in place end-to-end. Since passing the audit and becoming an AWS MSP, customers look at us in a very different way.”

“I believe what differentiates us in our work with customers is our strict focus on going beyond infrastructure with our customers,” explains Rajani. “We want to talk about agility, DevOps, and building and transforming business applications on the cloud. And we’ve built ourselves into a company that is agile and lean. We want to make sure that what we follow, our customers follow as well, and we stress the importance of converging operations and deployment.”

Since becoming an APN Partner, BlazeClan’s business has grown substantially. “We’ve seen year-over-year growth of 100 – 200 percent over the past 3-to-4 years,” says Rajani. As the company has grown, the team has worked closely with the APN, in particular AWS Partner Managers, to help connect with team members across AWS and connect with customers. “We’ve received tremendous support from the AWS Partner teams in India and ASEAN,” says Rajani. “It’s really helped us scale our business.” Since establishing the JV with Matrix in Malaysia, Tay has worked closely with AWS, and has experienced a high level of support. “My journey over the past year with the AWS team has been fantastic. Our Partner Manager has been crucial in terms of making sure that we are connecting to the various stakeholders across AWS sales, marketing, and partner organizations,” explains Tay. “The broader APN funding programs, such as the AWS Proof of Concept (PoC) and Market Development Funding (MDF) programs, have also been very helpful. Finally, I’d say that the culture of AWS is something we’ve really tried to adopt internally, and I think it’s helped us raise our team to a higher standard.”

In 2015, BlazeClan became a Premier AWS Consulting Partner, joining an elite group of consulting partners worldwide. “Being a Premier Partner has really helped us gain visibility worldwide,” says Rajani. “We’ve seen a lot of customer interest because we’ve reached this level. The way the customer sees us is different, and we’ve noticed the entire engagement with the customer changes. It’s really helped open a lot of doors.”

Another key benefit experienced by the BlazeClan team has been connecting with other partners in the AWS Partner ecosystem. “Through the APN and different AWS events, such as AWS Summits, we’ve been able to identify good partners for us to engage,” says Kagliwal. “For example, we’re now a big partner for Trend Micro (an Advanced APN Technology Partner), and we’re using Trend Micro for all of our security services. We want to make sure our offerings are complete with complementary technology partner offerings. APN has helped us come together with the right technology partners.”

Finally, the BlazeClan team has invested significantly in AWS Training and Certification. The company has seen an enormous benefit stem from its investment in AWS Training. “When initially engaging with a customer, it not only helps for us to be able to tell the customer how many Associate and Professional Certified resources we have on the team, but it changes the entire conversation with the customer,” says Rajani. “When our AWS Certified resources engage with the customer, they have a different level of conversation. And it brings a different level of credibility to our company.”

As BlazeClan continues to grow and expand to new markets, the team hopes to continue to differentiate the company to customers through its alliance with AWS. “We want to keep innovating, remain customer obsessed, and be a leading born-in-the-cloud provider for customers around the globe,” explains Rajani.

“Our plans include gaining new Competencies on AWS to differentiate ourselves and give customers deep confidence about our capabilities and experience on technologies,” continues Rajani.

To learn more about BlazeClan, please visit the firm’s Partner Directory Listing.