Computacenter builds on AWS relationship

The dust is settling after AWS’s 2021 Re:Invent, but the hard work continues for its partners as they prepare to work with a fresh approach from the public cloud giant towards its channel.

At last month’s event, AWS announced that it was moving away from operating with a partner-type approach that gave the channel the choice to be in the technology and consulting buckets. The firm would replace that with five paths: software, hardware, training, distribution and services, which represents consulting, professional, managed or value-add resale services.

Andy Lancaster, group director for AWS at Computacenter, said that the firm had been an advanced consulting partner for AWS since 2018 and was on the path to becoming a premier partner.

The channel player has already picked up four competencies: the migration competency this year, as well as security, DevOps and Microsoft as it puts more muscle into the AWS relationship.

He said that the moves by AWS to move to the five partner streams would add more clarity and make it easier for customers to identify partners based on their areas of expertise.

“For the customers, who...need services, go to a services partner first. If they want other types of solutions, they can look and navigate a partner network more simply,” he said.

Computacenter is on a clear strategy with AWS to get to the top of the partner tier, and the recently announced changes will not affect the timetable that the channel player is already working towards.

“We’ve got our strategy, our three-year plan, our growth trajectories. We’ve made deviations along the way as we’ve picked up additional solutions, and slightly focused on some areas and brought some of the competency focus forwards or left them out a based on what our customers are telling us,” said Lancaster.

Computacenter was one of the first partners across Europe to sign a restack strategic collaboration agreement with AWS, back in April 2020, and the relationships between the vendor and partner has continued to strengthen.

“We have the desire to continue the journey towards a premier partner. We are getting very close and the competencies is a key thing – the next competency will be key to that [journey],”Lancaster added. “We’re not stopping in the acceleration of skill services and professional services or in offerings around managed services.”

Rob Selby, group AWS technical lead at Computacenter, said that it had already demonstrated its ability to help customers achieve their objectives and would continue to develop the skills to gain competencies that would support the business.

“The way we’ve grown our cloud centre of excellence, and the people that support helping our customers articulate what they’re looking to achieve, is really important. You’ve got to have the right people that understand customer problems, the application-centric approach, the cloud platforms and what options are available to them,” he said.