AWS SUMMIT
Partnering to Scale
Following quarterly revenues of over £120 billion in March, AWS addressed partners in London with a key message: “We need you.”
Standing on stage in Westminster’s Central Hall, Jeff Johnson, AWS Director for UK&I Commercial Sales, signed off a Partner Summit that would give hope to anyone in the channel. Throughout the day, representatives from AWS arrived with one simple message, ‘we rely on partners’. It may not be as cut and dry as that but the substance is the same. Throughout every presentation, in every department, the common theme was working with the channel in order to provide innovative solutions to businesses. This is something attendees were able to find out as Johnson spoke to his own directors as part of the final session of the day. Jeff Johnson (JJ): Tell us more about the partner strategy for SMB? Amanda Sleight, Director, UK&I SMB Lead: “If you look at the government national statistics, there are 5.7 million SMBs in the UK, making up over 61% of organisations in the UK. That’s a huge opportunity, and as we think about that my team’s mission is to help each and every one of those customers innovate and use technology to drive better business outcomes and to achieve faster and more exciting results than anyone anticipated. “If we are going to extend our engagement we need organisations with experience, expertise and vertical knowledge to help companies to use technology. Our strategy is a partner first strategy, we fundamentally believe that we need partner expertise to deliver projects on time and improve the experience for our customers.” JJ: How can partners operate most effectively with the enterprise customers segment in the UK? Jyoti Ball, Enterprise Sales Manager: “One of the key trends that we’re seeing across enterprise is that 50% of tech buyers no longer sit in IT, they sit within our lines of
business. When we talk to them, they want to buy a solution from us, they don’t want to build their own solutions, and their priority is accelerating time to value, which is where partners are absolutely crucial. “At AWS, there’s three things that we see partners that are operating effectively across enterprise do. The first one is thinking about and investing in delivering incremental value on top of AWS. The second is embracing partnering, not trying to go it alone and thinking about how to bring in AWS. Third is working out how to bring together the capabilities of consulting and integration partners, the solutions that ISV partners are bringing and the native services.” JJ: What role do partners play in building and growing the startup ecosystem? Tricia Troth, UK&I Startup Sales Leader, AWS: ”If you think about the startup quandary, the greatest challenge is actually how do we speed and how do we scale. Ultimately, they need to grow their customer base, and expand into new markets at pace whilst managing costs and keeping investors at bay, all against the backdrop of being extremely time and resourcing-poor. “The unique role that partners can play is twofold. One is on the go-to market side of things, helping them to acquire new customers and expand into new markets via different channels and platforms. “Secondly, every single founder and startup that I’m speaking to at the moment is asking where the expert technical resources are right now, because they are trying to scale but are struggling to do so. “Where I see partners leading successfully is deploying resources on an augmentation model, or they’re providing short discrete packages and projects that work on DevOps, modernisation, migration, and re-architecting to make sure platforms are able to scale efficiently and securely.”
Jeff Johnson AWS Director for UK&I Commercial Sales
Amanda Sleight Director, UK&I SMB Lead
Jyoti Ball Enterprise Sales Manager
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