AWS, Mission Cloud Sign Deal To ‘Accelerate’ Generative AI

‘Customers are all really looking for how they can use the new AI technologies and embed them into their applications, better user experience, more efficiency and that sort of thing,’ says Simon Anderson, CEO of Mission Cloud. ‘This will really help us accelerate that.’

Cloud managed services provider Mission Cloud is ready to take generative AI to the next level through a multi-year strategic collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services.

Mission Cloud, which is on CRN’s 2023 MSP Elite 150 list and has been an AWS premier tier partner, is recognized for its host of AWS certifications and capabilities delivered through managed and professional services for AWS customers. The collaboration accelerates the pace of customer cloud innovation and drives faster adoption at scale by deepening capabilities and distribution across strategic initiatives.

“At the beginning of this year, we prepared a new five-year strategic plan for Mission,” Simon Anderson, CEO of Los Angeles-based Mission Cloud , told CRN in an exclusive interview. “It included things like industry vertical solutions and focus because that’s something that public cloud players, including AWS, have really started to do much more deeply, like delivering solutions for industry verticals. It also included international expansion outside of the U.S. and then continuing to go deeper in our customer segments, particularly the enterprise segment.”

[Related: Why AWS-Backed Tailwinds Is A Generative AI ‘Game-Changer’]

It was also important to continue to build software and get Mission Cloud’s cloud services platform Mission Control into the AWS Marketplace. Mission Control is a platform that represents all of Mission Cloud’s different products and services in a singular interface.

“We developed it for ourselves and our customers to collaborate and for AWS to collaborate with us,” Mission Cloud CTO Jonathan LaCour told CRN. “But over time, we’ve been creating quite a lot of value there and there is starting to be some really interesting capabilities that could be applicable to the broader market.”

Those capabilities include an easy on-ramp to AWS, getting aligned with best practices and transitioning into services with Mission Cloud so customers can partner with them to help them succeed. The MSP does integrate other vendors into Mission Control.

The three-and-a-half-year partnership offers Mission Cloud grant funding to add 150 people to its approximately 320-employee workforce as well as help with research and development, go-to-market and specialized consulting. The funding will also go towards pushing use cases around GenAI. Anderson would not disclose the exact sum of the grant but said it’s tens of millions of dollars.

“Customers are all really looking for how they can use the new AI technologies and embed them into their applications and have better user experience and more efficiency,” he said. “This will really help us accelerate that.”

He said there are tens of thousands of AWS customers who “just can’t keep up with the pace of knowledge and understanding of the complexity of AWS” around all the services they offer.

“A lot of what AWS is wanting us to do is make sure that we have the capacity to be able to engage with those customers and help them be successful,” he said.

Another area is at rearchitecting and reengineering how MSPs are running on AWS to be more efficient and modern.

Mission Cloud stands out as an independent AWS partner due to its organizational and go-to-market alignment around AWS’s leadership principles and services and dedicated focus on AWS.

“Mission Cloud consistently delivers for our joint customers in providing ground-breaking innovations, modernizations and outcomes,” Chris Sullivan, general manager of worldwide system integrators at AWS, told CRN. “Their success has inspired Mission Cloud to dive into generative AI, where they have already demonstrated an aptitude for using Amazon Bedrock ( AWS’ fully managed service that makes foundation models from Amazon and leading AI startups available through an API).

“Through this new agreement, AWS is excited to support Mission Cloud as they scale their reach into expanded enterprise and greenfield segments (a large-scale business transformation project) while also accelerating their growth on AWS Marketplace with the expansion of Mission Control as an offering now available to customers,” Sullivan added. “There are exciting times ahead and we look forward to working even closer with Mission Cloud.”