AWS’ Ruba Borno On IBM, Cisco And AWS Marketplace Growth

AWS’ channel chief Ruba Borno talks to CRN about Cisco “cloud-enabling” its channel partners via the AWS Marketplace, its newly enhanced IBM partnership and her message to AWS partners.

Amazon Web Services’ worldwide partner leader Ruba Borno is bullish about the $80 billion cloud giant’s future as its IBM partnership is taken to a new level and AWS Marketplace growth is soaring.

Borno spoke to CRN at AWS re:Invent last week, which saw more than 50,000 customers and partners flock to Las Vegas.

“We’re really excited not only about our own innovation, but we’re enabling many of our partners to innovate on top of our technology as well,” said Borno, vice president of Worldwide Channels and Alliances. “We’re doing that with small ISVs and large companies that are 111-year-old innovators like IBM, because we believe in the value that it brings to customers.”

AWS Marketplace

One key strategy that’s top of mind for Ruba Borno is the growing number of AWS partner interactions and sales coming via the AWS Marketplace.

In fact, she said Cisco—the longtime dominant leader in networking—will leverage the AWS Marketplace to “cloud enable” Cisco’s vast channel partner ecosystem.

“Cisco’s Oliver Tuszik, who leads the partner organization at Cisco—Cisco gets over 90 percent of its revenue through channel partners—they want to have the AWS Marketplace be how they cloud-enable their channel partners. That is a direct quote from Oliver,” said Borno, who joined AWS in 2021 after a six-year stint at Cisco.

The AWS Marketplace is an online software store that allows partners to market and sell their software and services to AWS customers around the world.

At AWS re:Invent 2022, AWS also doubled down on its IBM partnership by adding new IBM solutions on the AWS Marketplace.

“We will see more and more channel partners leverage AWS Marketplace,” Borno said. “There’s absolutely an opportunity for channel partners to take advantage of putting their services on AWS Marketplace.”

The Seattle-based cloud market share leader will continue to strengthen partnerships with vendors, ISVs and channel partners of all shapes and sizes.

“To get from service or product to a business outcome, it’s up to 15 products or services for a customer to get to a [successful] business outcome,” said Borno. “So we’ve got a lot of opportunity where we’re working multi-party deals that we are taking to market together to support our customers and delivering those solutions.”

In an interview with CRN, Borno explains her company’s IBM partnership, channel strategy and the growing importance of the AWS Marketplace.

Give us your vision for the AWS Marketplace? Do you expect, for example, 50 percent of a partners’ AWS business to go through the Marketplace over the next couple of years?

It’s still day one. We celebrated our 10 year anniversary, but we’re still at the very beginning of the potential.

Cisco’s Oliver Tuszik who leads the partner organization at Cisco—Cisco gets over 90 percent of its revenue through channel partners—they want to have the AWS Marketplace be how they cloud-enable their channel partners. That is a direct quote from Oliver.

The reason I’m answering it in that way is it almost doesn’t matter what I think because I’m sharing with you what I’m hearing from our partners about how they’re viewing how the AWS Marketplace will enable their channel and will be a new route to market for them to reach customers.

What are some of the benefits of the AWS Marketplace today?

One key benefit is that customers can draw down on EDP [Enterprise Discount Program] spend, and that’s absolutely a key benefit. But there’s also so many other additional benefits.

One is being able to procure multiple services in one place and getting one bill from AWS.

We’re launching a new service called Vendor Insights, which will allow customers to have a view of the security, compliance, and risk assessment posture of the solutions that they’re procuring on AWS Marketplace.

From a customer perspective, there’s a lot of value there. And as a result, that drives efficiency for the partners as well. When we have partners like Cisco saying that they want to use that to cloud-enable their partners and their channel—we’re really excited about that potential.

How much of channel partner sales go through the AWS Marketplace?

We don’t disclose the number of how much goes through channel partners on Marketplace, but we are seeing growth there.

There are many examples of channel partners who are putting their services on AWS Marketplace to support their customers.

So we have Slalom, Presidio, Accenture, SHI—all have solutions like cost optimization, certain vertical optimization use cases, on the Marketplace.

We’re seeing Presidio making the largest strategic collaboration agreement for them with AWS. Presidio has 15 services that they are selling through the AWS Marketplace—that’s their services. We signed that agreement at the beginning of this calendar year and already there are now 15 services on AWS Marketplace. It’s really exciting to see that momentum grow.

So there’s absolutely an opportunity for channel partners to take advantage of putting their services on AWS Marketplace. I think we will see more and more channel partners leverage AWS Marketplace. We will learn what’s working and invest in that.

Talk about the importance of some of the new IBM solutions and the opportunities for partners?

When customers come to AWS, it’s because of our pace of innovation. We feel that IBM is of similar ilk in terms of constantly coming up with new innovation to delight customers.

We’re really excited that IBM and AWS share similar values in terms of constantly striving to delight customers with new innovation.

So by augmenting our strategic collaboration agreement and expanding it to include the IBM Envizi ESG suite, the IBM Planning Analytics with Watson, IBM Content Services, IBM App Connect Enterprise—all of those [are] now adding more value and providing more value to customers through IBM innovation. That’s what we’re really excited about.

We’ve proven that we can do it quickly, based on how we’ve been executing on our partnership so far. So we’re really excited to continue to expand it.

How does the go-to-market work between AWS, IBM and channel partners?

To get from service or product to a business outcome, it’s up to 15 products or services for a customer to get to a [successful] business outcome.

So business outcome—whether it’s cost reduction or some modernization of a workflow that they’re trying to do—that’s where our system integrators are really key, as well as IBM consulting—in being able to bring all of those services and products together to deliver that outcome for the customer.

So we’ve got a lot of opportunity where we’re working multi-party deals that we are taking to market together to support our customers and delivering those solutions.

What we have been spending a lot of time on is our AWS Solutions Library.

So having a curated list of solutions that we can take to market that customers or partners can actually reference, that have been validated in certain spaces so we can then deliver to customers together.

So we’re seeing a lot more tri-party, if not multi-party activity out there.

With [channel partner] Innovative Solutions, for example, they are largely focused in a specific region of North America. But they’ve got those relationships with customers. They have the technical depth. They have a lot of AWS certifications. [They] know the AWS portfolio and work really well with IBM. And then supports a customer on what should that end solution be, whether it’s helping them migrate their workloads to the cloud, helping them determine what their architecture should be, et cetera.

What’s the goal right now for AWS after initially forming this IBM partnership earlier this year?

In May, we signed a strategic collaboration agreement to SaaS-ify on AWS their top 19 software products. It was to do that over the course of 18 months.

Within the first quarter, we have several of those already generally available on AWS Marketplace. … The list of 19 that we went after, we knew there was customer demand there and we intentionally went after them based on the ones that had the biggest customer demand.

So we’re really excited in terms of the speed that we are operating and working on together as a team. Obviously, that’s building on multiple years of a relationship. It isn’t just something that started in May. But it just really shows how IBM sees the value of working with AWS for our joint customers.

And absolutely, AWS sees the value of working with IBM and taking these important solutions and putting them in the cloud to support our customers’ transformations.

For example, Inter is a bank that had about 100,000 subscribers in 2017. This year, they have over 20 million. All of that growth was happening with IBM and with AWS.

Whether it be SMBs or enterprise customers or even verticals, is there any one market that you’re targeting with channel partners with the IBM partnership?

We do see the opportunity across multiple verticals. We are definitely being thoughtful about joint go-to-market and joint account planning, but it’s across multiple verticals and horizontal use cases as well.

One area that we’re also excited about is in terms of the capability that IBM brings. We touched on the software piece that IBM is bringing to this, but IBM consulting now has nearly 16,000 AWS Certified [professionals]. It’s been growing dramatically. I mean, the investment in the technical depth is absolutely there.

So IBM Consulting is also now expanding their mainframe application modernization support. [A] partnership that we have been working on for several months now is mainframe modernization between AWS and IBM around IBM Z and Cloud Monetization Stack.

It’s really exciting that the talent now is backing that up to help deliver that modernization for customers. So it’s not just the technology—whether it’s mainframe or the software assets—but it’s also the IBM consulting team members that can help those customers.

What’s your message to channel partners looking into 2023, specially with this IBM relationship and the growing AWS Marketplace?

We’re really excited about providing an amazing partner experience for our channel partners because we know that [AWS Marketplace] can deliver a better customer experience.

At AWS, we’re really excited not only about our own innovation, but we’re enabling many of our partners to innovate on top of our technology as well. We’re doing that with small ISVs and large companies that are 111-year-old innovators like IBM, because we believe in the value that it brings to customers.

We know that channel partners will be a critical player in helping bring that value and that innovation to customers.