Ankercloud Uses APN Customer Engagements Program to Double its Public Sector Business

Ankercloud used the APN Customer Engagements (ACE) program to work closer with AWS sales and marketing to drive customer engagements in the public sector. Through ACE, Ankercloud is co-selling with AWS account managers and gaining AWS support to win more deals in the public sector. As a result of ACE, Ankercloud has doubled the size of its public sector business, reduced the length of its sales cycle, and boosted pipeline conversions.

Germany-based Ankercloud is an AWS Advance Partner. The company, which launched in 2018, is expert in providing artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), high performance computing (HPC), and data analytics solutions based on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Since 2020, it has achieved an annual rate of growth of 300 percent across all its operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA).

Ankercloud identified a growing number of opportunities for AWS-based AI, ML, HPC and data analytics solutions in higher education and other parts of the public sector across EMEA. Many universities were expanding their research capabilities through AWS, using services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), AWS Lambda, and Amazon SageMaker, which Ankercloud specializes in.

To realize the new opportunities, Ankercloud looked to optimize the way it engaged with AWS customers. It wanted to work more closely with AWS sales and marketing teams when it came to collaborating on leads, managing joint opportunities, and co-selling solutions. Ayan, cloud engagement manager at Ankercloud, says, “We needed a framework that helped us work with AWS to advance customer opportunities in the best way possible.”

To drive its public sector business, Ankercloud used the APN Customer Engagements (ACE) program. Working with its AWS public sector partner account manager, Ankercloud began planning customer strategies and identifying the best technical competencies and AWS services to maximize wins.

It increased its use of the ACE Pipeline Manager, as part of the AWS Partner Central portal, to access tools and sales and technical support. Through ACE, Ankercloud simplified engagement with resources such as AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP), AWS Well-Architected framework, and the AWS Application Discovery Service. Ayan remembers, “By submitting opportunities through ACE, it was easier to gain assistance on sizing AWS environments and managing support requirements.”

Using ACE, Ankercloud co-developed engagement strategies that offer customers greater value by reducing deployment times and costs. For example, the company recently won a major HPC deal with a research institute in Austria. Ankercloud was able to receive funding that reduced the expense of an AWS proof of concept, and it simplified deployment through the expertise of AWS Solutions Architects with experience in research HPC environments. Says Ayan, “Getting to the testing phase in an HPC project like this in the public sector would normally take six months, but we completed all tests in 4–6 weeks with the support of ACE.”

As a result of ACE, Ankercloud has increased the size of its public sector business by 100 percent. It has also reduced the length of its sales cycles by 50–60 percent, boosted pipeline conversions by up to 33 percent, and increased the number of AWS projects launched by up to 75 percent. “Half of our business wins in the public sector are through the support of ACE, which shows a great return on investment,” states Ayan. “ACE is the perfect way to coordinate our plans with AWS so we can offer better deals and more comprehensive solutions to our customers.”