AWS Star Innovative Solutions’ Plan To Win 1,000 New SMB Customers

“[AWS channel chief] Ruba [Borno] and [AWS CEO] Adam [Selipsky] see that the role of the partner is to shepherd every one of these small to midsize business customers at scale. They can’t do it on their own,” said Innovative Solutions CEO Justin Copie.

Innovative Solutions CEO Justin Copie

Fast-growing AWS partner Innovative Solutions is planning to hire 200 new employees as the company embarks on a massive customer charge to win 1,000 net new small and midsize businesses (SMB) customers with the help of AWS.

“AWS wants us to, and we’ve committed to it, driving 1,000 net new customers over the next four years—which is a huge lift,” Innovative Solutions CEO Justin Copie tells CRN.

“AWS wants us to build sales teams that go in, understand a customer’s business need, and then help align the right AWS technology that fits that business versus just slam-dunking technology in. We’re going to build these customized technology sales teams to help usher these SMB customers in a very efficient way,” said Copie.

Copie is bullish about AWS partner strategy in 2023 as AWS’ channel chief Ruba Borno and AWS CEO Adam Selipsky push a “partner obsessed” strategy.

“Ruba and Adam see that the role of the partner is to shepherd every one of these small to midsize business customers at scale. They can’t do it on their own,” said Copie. “They need armies of partners that are aligned to the core values of AWS that have been vetted, such as Innovative, and that’s why they’re investing in these partnerships with companies like us.”

AWS Signs Strategic Agreement

This month, the 150-employee Rochester, N.Y.-based company launched a multi-year strategic collaboration agreement with AWS to align their sales, marketing and delivery teams to accelerate the adoption of cloud services targeting the SMB and startup markets.

Innovative Solutions, an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner, plans to build out new practices in data analytics and machine learning to support its customers, while also investing to scale its portfolio and list the company’s solutions on the AWS Marketplace.

The strategic collaboration agreement between AWS and Innovative Solutions comes at a time of explosive growth in the public cloud market, a market where AWS dominated over the likes of Microsoft and Google.

The public cloud market is expected to balloon to $1 trillion by 2026, more than doubling the $460 billion market in 2022, according to a report by Forrester.

In fact, the IT research firm noted in its report that AWS has been responsible for keeping parent company Amazon in the black in recent questions. Forrester estimates that cloud infrastructure services will account for nearly $500 billion in revenue in 2026.

Borno said over the last 24 months, AWS has “seen a significant rise in demand and adoption of cloud solutions” in the SMB market.

“We are excited to expand our relationship with Innovative Solutions and help businesses broaden their customer base and bring new products to market and continue on their cloud migration journey,” said Borno, vice president of AWS’ Worldwide Channels & Alliances in a statement.

Innovative Solutions CEO Copie is more than bullish about his company’s new agreement with AWS.

“I feel like we could achieve probably 2X what we built in this agreement with AWS. AWS thinks that we can exceed these goals as well,” said Copie. “The opportunity is just so massive.”

In an interview with CRN, Copie breaks down his plan to drive massive SMB sales and AWS adoption in the SMB market in 2023 and beyond.

What are the biggest goals in your new AWS strategic agreement and how will AWS help you achieve it?

AWS wants us to, and we’ve committed to it, driving 1,000 net new customers over the next four years—which is a huge lift. And they are going to help us do that.

They want us to use automation to help capture some of those customers.

So build software that helps those customers transact efficiently. That software would be proprietary to us.

AWS wants to help support us by building that software, building automation, and then also building sales teams that are much more business oriented. So not just transactional like, ‘We’ll turn you onto AWS.’

AWS wants us to build sales teams that go in, understand a customer’s business need, and then help align the right AWS technology that fits that business versus just slam-dunking technology in. We’re going to do build these customized technology sales teams to help usher these SMB customers in a very efficient way.

Lastly, they would like us to focus on migrating 200 customers through their migration acceleration program, specifically 200 net new customers, which is another big lift.

The 1,000 new SMB customers means Innovative will have to win 250 customers per year. How many do you have now and how will you achieve that?

We have about 750 customers now. So sort of just shy of 1,000 existing small to midsize business customers right now.

As part of this initiative, we will hire 200 people. That’s part of the commitment with the strategic collaboration agreement.

AWS and Innovative agreed that we will hire 200 people over four years to support these customers. We will hire in both sales and pre-sales, coupled with service delivery, because we’re going to need obviously more people to deliver the services. So it really is a well-rounded mix of people.

One of the things we’re so proud of is that every employee here is AWS Certified. So every single employee including our executive administrative staff.

As part of this SCA (strategic collaboration agreement), AWS said, ‘We want you to not only hire great salespeople for this strategic collaboration agreement, but we want you to make sure they’re all certified on AWS.’ So all of our sales, people first and foremost will become certified.

Another thing that they’re asking us to do, is they want us to make sure that our salespeople are working hand-in-hand in market with the AWS sellers.

Why do SMBs need AWS and do you think Innovative will succeed your goal of 1,000 new SMB customers?

I feel like we could achieve probably 2X what we built in this agreement with AWS. AWS thinks that we can exceed these goals as well.

We have a high likelihood of doubling our customer base by bringing 1,000 net new customers on within two years, not four years.

When we built the goals for the strategic collaboration agreement, we were working hand in hand with AWS. The opportunity is so massive.

The opportunity is massive partially because, in the economic climate that we’re currently seeing that’s foreseen over the next 24 months, most economists say, ‘The next two years, we’re going to continue to see some turbulence.’ That’s pretty much agreed on a global basis.

When you think about small to midsize business customers: they need to be nimble, they need to get to market quicker, and they need to be more competitive. There is no better technology solution than leveraging cloud based solutions.

The problem is SMBs don’t have the skill set on staff.

They either can’t afford it or they’re not technically inclined enough—or they’re buyers, not builders, by nature. They’re to buy technology, not necessarily build it.

So the role of the partner becomes galvanized. Because SMB customers can’t go it alone.

What gets you pumped about AWS in 2023 and beyond in terms of their partner strategy?

In 2023 and beyond, what AWS plans to do is carve out additional groups of customers that are what are going to be what’s called partner-lead. Meaning the partner will be focused on driving the success for that customer, more so than an AWS salesperson.

Ruba Borno and [AWS CEO] Adam [Selipsky] and other folks have talked about there’s a lot coming by way of being partner-led. This is the start of that.

They’re really looking to see where their most strategic partners can lead customer journeys, instead of AWS leading those journeys. The motion is called partner lead.

For example, they want to make sure that we have enough salespeople that we can go through these partner-led motions with AWS certified people that are driving business outcomes.

Again, AWS realizes that if we just hire a bunch of salespeople, we get certified, and they’re selling bits and bytes—that’s not going to work. They want us to make sure that our salespeople are driving business-oriented conversations.

So there’s a whole business training aspect of this for our salespeople and our pre sales engineers, that’s also going to be built into this. Then there’s this whole collaboration with AWS on the back end to make sure that those customers have what they need along their journey.

Why should SMB’s pick Innovative if their thinking of moving to the cloud or AWS?

If you’re a small to midsize business customer and you’re thinking about migrating to the cloud, Innovative is going to have resources and bandwidth to take those customers on—probably more so than another partner that doesn’t have an SCA because they’re not going to have the same amount of resources and dedicated support from AWS.

The second thing is we have been given the opportunity as a partner to demonstrate some of our technical ability through these practice areas like life sciences, retail, fintech, etc.

So we’re going to become much more specialized, which is really cool.

If we didn’t have the SCA, we probably wouldn’t be able to do that. We would have to still be a little bit broader in SMB. This gives us the ability to be focused.

AWS will probably do additional strategic collaboration agreements along the way in the future, but for us, this gives us a tremendous head start and it gives us a lot of tailwinds to help as many customers as possible. It is really shining a spotlight on Innovative.