Blue Pearl’s BLUEAPP solution reinvents skills-matching with help from First Distribution

When Blue Pearl was building their BLUEAPP platform on AWS, they knew they needed a partner with the right expertise quickly and efficiently.  AWS Partner First Distribution offered the skills and knowledge necessary to help Blue Peal confidently launch a well-optimized application.

Blue Pearl, an AWS Partner, identified a unique opportunity to address the skills gap in the local IT market. They quickly realized the value of AWS in building a comprehensive software solution that IT stakeholders could use to find individuals with specialized skills and capabilities for complex IT projects and initiatives.

The resulting solution was BLUEAPP – a user-friendly online platform that allows skilled professionals from businesses of all sizes to share and procure IT skills and resources in an easy and secure way.

Working with First Distribution, an AWS Authorized Distribution Partner, Blue Pearl was able to develop a solid go-to-market strategy and tap into advanced AWS expertise to ensure early traction and available funding mechanisms, paving the way for the launch of BLUEAPP.

BLUEAPP addresses a significant gap in skill sharing and recruitment across various markets for a wide range of businesses and customers. To perform that role, BLUEAPP needed to be efficient, secure, compliant and user friendly. In addition, Blue Pearl had to ensure that their solution could deliver maximum uptime. Sourcing cost efficient, robust, secure cloud infrastructure that could automatically scale was essential.

Considering the need for resiliency, security, cost effectiveness and efficiency, BLUEAPP was planned from the start as a software solution hosted in the cloud. Blue Pearl selected AWS Cloud to architect, build, deploy and manage BLUEAPP in the cloud because of its depth and breadth of services and offerings.

Workload optimization would be essential, and ensuring that the architecture adheres to AWS best practices was non-negotiable. In addition, taking the subscription-based solution to market would require a winning strategy backed with appropriate funding.

To help achieve these prerequisites, Blue Pearl selected First Distribution as their distribution partner for BLUEAPP.

The ability of Blue Pearl to leverage First Distribution’s technical expertise allows their architects and engineers to build AWS solutions with confidence, knowing that they have their Distributor to support with architecture and best practice validations.

As an AWS Well-Architected Partner, First Distribution supported Blue Pearl in validating and optimizing the workload to ensure the architecture adhered to AWS best practices.

First Distribution’s AWS Professional Services team is on standby to support engineers and architects on architecture validation, solution design and reviewing the workloads against AWS best practices, thus ensuring that BLUEAPP remains an agile, secure and cost-effective platform.

And with support from First Distribution, Blue Pearl was able to advance to become an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner this year, allowing them to unlock even more APN benefits to help grow their business.

With First Distribution’s support and AWS expertise, developers, business and sales stakeholders, architects and marketing teams had access to a wealth of resources, benefits and incentives to assist in building, testing and taking the solution to market.

First Distribution assisted in navigating funding benefits and programs to source consumption credits and marketing funding. These incentives, facilitated by First Distribution, helped to manage cash flow at critical times of development, especially at the inception stage.

Teams had originally estimated that it would take over six months just to build the solution, but thanks to the combined efforts of Blue Pearl and First Distribution, architecting and implementing BLUEAPP on AWS only took four months.

To date, in excess of 250 consultants have subscribed to the platform and over 30,000 technical service hours has been sold across various customers. The platform boasts over 500 marketed skill sets covering SQL, AWS, IBM, Java and Android, and more.

First Distribution was essential in helping Blue Pearl design and launch its BLUEAPP solution three months ahead of schedule. As an AWS Distribution Partner, First Distribution provided go-to-market support and guidance on AWS best practices that helped Blue Pearl optimize their solution and grow customer satisfaction.