AWS showcases partner-first genAI strategy at 2024 summit
The vendor highlighted AI opportunities as partners discuss monetisation challenges
Taking over the Tobacco Dock in Shadwell, this year's AWS Partner Summit London brought together hundreds of partners, with generative AI taking centre stage and how the channel is pivotal to AWS' genAI strategy.
Ruba Borno, VP of worldwide channels and alliances at AWS, opened the event with a strong message for partners: "AWS has a partner-first generative AI strategy - we don't launch generative AI solutions without partners across every layer of the stack."
She said AWS is investing heavily in skills training. "As genAI will transform every industry and job, it's crucial to upskill your teams with the free resources available."
The AWS Marketplace was also highlighted as a powerful route for partners to reach more customers faster with bigger deal sizes – Borno said partners see 27 per cent higher win rates, 40 per cent faster sales cycles, and deals 80 per cent bigger.
"We're continuously enhancing the Marketplace with features like public APIs for integration, CRM connectivity, and more."
AI revolution
Tanuja Randery, EMEA MD at AWS, told partners there's a $3.4tr opportunity by leveraging data, AI, machine learning, and cloud technologies, with $600bn attributed to AI alone.
"However, to sustain the momentum we've seen in the past year, where one in three businesses now leverage AI, we require our partners to drive scale and innovation.
"And three key points stand out here: Firstly, there's a need for continued innovation from us. Over the past year, we've made remarkable strides in AI development and core data foundations, and we're committed to maintaining this trajectory.
"Secondly, we rely on you, our partners, because this transformation requires collaboration with C-suite and line-of-business leaders. It's imperative that we dive into industry-specific use cases rather than approaching this solely from a technological standpoint.
"Your expertise, skills, and relationships with key decision-makers are invaluable in this regard. For instance, the work with Burberry in the UK by Capgemini around their SAP systems exemplifies this approach, as does our collaboration with Accenture and Tropics in highly regulated industries," she explained.
"Lastly, addressing the digital skills gap is crucial. The challenge today isn't solely technological; it's the shortage of digital skills. A staggering 61 percent of businesses struggle to find the skills required to harness transformative technology.
"Therefore, it's essential for us to focus on skill development and scale."
Read on to find out the view of AWS partners...
AWS showcases partner-first genAI strategy at 2024 summit
The vendor highlighted AI opportunities as partners discuss monetisation challenges
The view from partners
CRN spoke to AWS partners at the event to find out their takeaways and how genAI is impacting their business.
Richard Nunan, AWS EMEA lead at Deloitte, told us: "I'm amazed at the varying levels of maturity across industries when it comes to cloud and AI.
"Deloitte has always had an industry lens, so we're interested in how AWS is now reorganising around industries. We need to inject our industry expertise and offerings into this growth area."
He said Deloitte is looking at how generative AI can transform its own internal delivery and ways of working.
"We have global delivery centres, assets, and engineers that can benefit from these capabilities.
"The key is being data-ready - having the right data foundations and guardrails for responsible AI. We need to put AI in the hands of business leaders to drive internal transformation."
But according to Nunan, the biggest challenge is still people and skills.
"While the technology is progressing rapidly, enterprises are struggling to find people that can adopt modern cloud practices like agile, resilient ways of working. Shifting traditional IT talent to a cloud mindset is very difficult.
"We're tackling this through comprehensive workforce transformation strategies encompassing training, talent acquisition, and new ways of working."
MSP DoIT has been working with AWS for the last six years and have recently signed a $5bn strategic collaboration agreement with the vendor, promoting new opportunities over five years.
James Moore, VP of EMEA sales at DoIT, commented on the event, saying he was impressed by AWS's commitment to the partner ecosystem and the customer-partner-AWS relationship.
However, Moore explained there are still unanswered questions to capture value from AI, such as balancing revenue opportunity against the cost of building and operating the AI models and infrastructure in a sustainable business model.
"AWS is promoting industry solutions by understanding success stories and learnings that can be applied more broadly across customers, even competitors in some cases," he explained.