Chip Rodgers’ Post

Transcript

Hey everyone, Chip Rogers, Chief Partner Officer at Work Span and we are here day three. For. Incredible reinvent. I mean, it's just taking over Las Vegas and we're we're in the Venetian. A lot of people sort of wandering around, going from session to session. It's been fantastic. Yeah, Thank you, Chip and Niro for firstly coming to the Reinvent and spending your time and meeting all our partners and customers Super important. So thank you for doing that. Yeah, it's been, it's been fantastic so far, just super busy. And so first of all, I'm super excited also to, to to welcome Chandra Annapaola. Chandra is Global Director, Worldwide Director for. Global SI and GSIS for strategic partners. For a WS and and managing about 20 plus yes, GS most eclectic and interesting partners of a WS for sure some of the largest Yeah, yeah. Also joined by Nirav Desai. Nirav is our with work span and our vice president and general manager of the GSIS segment and welcome Nira excited to be here and so much of energy Chandra right after maybe the largest reinvent ever. An amazing announcements. Yes, yesterday Andy Jassy was here. And just so much of bars and all the good things that you're doing. So excited to talk to you about all of these. Yeah, it only keeps getting bigger and bigger, right. And interesting to you call out Andy Jassy because he was here as the customer of a WS, right? I love that. Yeah. So that always resonates with being our culture of being customer first. So right. Like so Andy coming back as customer and introducing the amazing Noah yesterday. It was, it was amazing. So much so many incredible innovations around Jen AI and and and to hear Andy, Andy, Jesse talking about some of the use cases right to the larger Amazon business. So it was really cool. Alright. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And also Matt also talked about how it's even more important to make sure that the customers always have the tools not just to innovate on the Gen. AI stack, but also help them get out. Of the legacy workloads like whether it is mainframe or VMware or do better at what they're already doing right so in a way that going back to the builders route or what makes Amazon such an RAW such an amazing place for all our customers and partners to innovate right I think it's so it's a it's a very good balance I would say like in terms of what AW is really really good at at both providing the building blocks but. Also staying very, very fast, innovation around the Gennai, all exciting, generous space. Yeah. And there's so much happening. It's happening so fast, Yeah. And we got like lot of customers as well yesterday, including some of the big ones like Apple coming in and talking to us. Yeah. So it's amazing. And today, now we have Doctor Swami's keynote going on as well, right? Like so lot more, lot more going to come through that. Yeah. Yeah. So Shandra, tell us a little bit. That your role managing, you know, 20 plus, you know these are large strategic partners. Tell us a little bit about what your role is and what are some of the opportunities and challenges. Yeah so within the AWS specialists and partner organization, we have consulting Coe headed by Brian Bohan. The consulting Coe has 2 chap. Two charters, right, Like one, we manage some of our most strategic and largest partners, directly manage them globally in concert with our Geo colleagues. We also have the responsibility of building the consulting partner strategy for all of WS. So, so those are the kind of 2 broad charters and within that, I have the privilege of managing and leading a portfolio of all of our consulting partners. What? Call, as the GSP's global strategic partners, they are as you said, 20 plus partners. They are ranged from some of our largest to some of the most dynamic and innovative partners. And that's a very, very exciting and interesting job in the sense that I have the opportunity to both understand what the partners want to do or tie that up with what our customers want and bring. A WS innovation and our investments and other things to make those big bets that help move the needle for our partners as well As for our customers. So it's a very interesting and exciting job that I have and it's a privilege that I, I, I, I'm very, very conscious of as well. Yeah, big and a big role. Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting and interesting. What about, you know, 2024 is coming to an end? I've been reading A blog post, been following you working with the largest partners for Co innovation going to market together and delivering, you know, amazing value. What have been the key highlights for you working with these top 20 partners? And if you could also maybe give some examples as well around some of the customer value or customer use cases as well, I would love to know. Yeah, so I think for we operate around set of priorities. Kind of define the strategy, right, like obviously as you said on my blog post as well, right like focusing on line of business users, stakeholders of our customers is a big priority obviously because ultimately the. Technology should deliver business outcomes, right? And that means that should translate to what the line of business stakeholders within our customers care about. That's what all technology should ultimately do. So that's a big priority focusing on line of business owners in our customers. Then we can talk about all the generative innovation and everything, but if you don't move the workloads to cloud, if you don't move the data to cloud, you can't actually innovate much. So driving migrations and modernizations to cloud is also a big priority, Second big priority for us. The third one I would say is about all about data and AI, right? Like so once you get lineup is once you focus on line of business stakeholders, when you move the workloads to cloud, then you get the data, then you start being able to innovate as well, right? And we also want to look at new customers and new partners and new geographies. Like so go beyond like our traditional partners and traditional segments where we operate and open up new areas for growth is also another big priority. So we try to build a strategy around these priorities. And when we make investments with partners as well, we make sure that these these are some of the priorities that if they align with the partner priorities as well, then it's a win win, right. And and that's how we execute the strategy. So this year has been. Mostly landing this strategy with all our partners and then helping them innovate in a way that it makes sense for them, their business is profitable with AWS, thereby delivering value to the customer ultimately or to build a business that is profitable to the partners as well, right. So we want to look at it from that lens and while not losing sight of being relevant to our customers. So ultimately, we have to work back from customers and treat also partners. As our customers. So that's how we think that's amazing. That's fantastic. Chandra. You know, ABS this year has had a huge emphasis on and sort of reorganized everything around industries 24 industries and and system integrators are always, you know, have really organized that way and have very deep, you know, industry expertise on use cases and everything. We're getting a little some horn horn beeping back there. So, so how does, how do the the these global strategic partners fit into that industry strategy for a WS? Yeah, as you rightly said, a lot of our partners have been doing. Have been focused around industry and go to market via industry for a very, very long time, right. So like for example, I think we read a stat somewhere like some of our partners like Deloitte as an example or PwC, they've always been industry focused for a very, very long time, right? Or even our partners like TCS or Infosys or or new age partners like EPAM, all Cloud, all of them have. Had a very strong industry focus. So I think when a WS pivoted at least reached on from an industry perspective, I think it was a very well received by most of our partners. Now the good market organizations can align very well and we can talk the same language right as well. So that actually is a is a tailwind to our partnership as well and that is landing really well. And then as I talked about. Our first priority is about focusing on line of business. So it it becomes much more easier if you have an industry centric conversation, right. Ultimately line of business stakeholders are different in different industries and then you can pick and choose where you want to focus with your fantastic. And you know, this is exactly meeting the customers where they are, right. You know their use cases, their problem statements and if you even the JNA as well, not just focus on efficiency and productivity, but you know a lot of transformation. Innovation as well. So how does 2025 look for you? You know, some very big announcements by some of your partners, large SCA's focus on Jenny, I focus on agents and of course, you know, you have joint business plans and I was reading some news articles and announcements. Many of them are doing multi billion dollar businesses with you, right? And so which is great, right? And all for end customers, right? You know, delivering end customers in the journey. So give us a view into, you know, what does this mean? For you, what does it mean for partners and for customers? Of course, yeah. Yeah. So as you rightly said, right, like so there are multiple areas that we focus from a. �� SISSISAA. Help us get not only focused, but also Dr. investments where the outcomes that are tied to outcomes, right? So both of us can be very true to each other in terms of how we are executing a business plan, right? So the CSS can be varied and it it typically depends upon where the partner wants to focus with us. Like we just like we walked back from customers a WS, we also work back from the partner priorities and where they want and what their strengths are. We also help them. Build those capabilities as well, right? Like as an example, Compass, one of our partners wanted to expand in North America, right? Let's say they're very, very strong partner of ours in Brazil and now they want to expand in North America, Mexico and other geographies as well, right? Like so we are building an SCA with them to precisely help them, but also more focus on certain segments that we want also growth in those areas, right? So that is one example, another example could be. With our CAP Gemini, we did an SCA that folk that builds on their strengths in the auto manufacturing industry, right. So that goes back to the lab focus that we talk. We also talked about we also have a CS around some of the pain points around VMware, right. A lot of customers are wanting to kind of modernize their VMware workload, but also make it easier for them. So we have ECS around them as well, so. Obviously there are a lot of generative ACS as well, right? Like, but we want to tie the generative ACS around these priorities, right? Like and what the partners want to do, right? Like whether it is an industry specific generative ACA or whether it is like data and AI specific s s as well. So that's, that's how the s s are executed. That's that's terrific. Chandra, thank you so much for taking some time with us this morning. A lot still happening today. A lot of great. Some keynotes and announcements still on on tap. So thank you. One shameless plug. Don't miss Doctor Ruba bonus keynote this afternoon. Yeah, yeah, this afternoon. Yeah. Partners are getting awards as well. Absolutely, absolutely. That's that's exactly why I want you guys to watch. That will cover that as well. And thank you so much for your partnership. You know, we love working with you. We love working with your partners and enabling the collaboration between you and them as well. Wish you all the success here and let's work together to build an amazing 2025 as well. Thank you for the partnership and thank you for all that you do to our partners, customers as well as AWS. Thank you. Fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you, Shandra. Thank you, Nirav and thank you all for joining and we'll see you see you next time.