DEVOPSdigest

Innovative Solutions (Innovative) entered into a multi-year strategic collaboration agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS).

As a result of this collaboration, Innovative Solutions and AWS will tightly align their sales, marketing, and delivery teams to effectively accelerate the adoption of cloud services in the small- and medium-sized business (SMB) and startup industry segments with a key focus on software, fintech, life sciences, and retail industries. Innovative will enhance their customer's cloud journey experience through managed services offerings as well as the company's ability to support customers through the full digital transformation lifecycle; migration, modernization, data strategy, and machine learning (ML).

The agreement between Innovative and AWS drives key investments in several areas that address the growing demand for AWS products and services across Innovative's base of SMB customers, as well as with new customers in US and Canada. Innovative will expand their migration and modernization practice, managed services offerings and build out new practices in data analytics and ML to support the advanced stages of its customers' journey to the cloud. Innovative will also invest in the development and scale of its portfolio, listing the company's solutions in AWS Marketplace to help SMB customers quickly procure and further accelerate migration to AWS.

"Talent acquisition and growth is a central part of our strategy," said Jaime Eisenhauer, Chief People Officer at Innovative. "We provide our customers with proven experts, so we have aligned both our recruiting and training programs to provide our services with the best talent in North America. It starts with a solid foundation, and every employee at Innovative – from administrative support to accounting to sales to the executive team – has earned an AWS certification. From there, we go deep with AWS Solutions Architects, DevOps engineers, and specialties that match the needs of our customers. Working at Innovative is like getting a graduate degree in the cloud."

As an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner, Innovative has rapidly expanded by adding specialized services for businesses wishing to migrate their server infrastructure to AWS and managing a customer's cloud operations thereafter. With this new agreement, Innovative Solutions plans to accelerate growth and customer satisfaction by creating four practice groups: Migrations, Modernization, Data Engagements, and Machine Learning. Each will serve as their own lines of business and be responsible for increasing the depth, scale, agility, and reach to provide the best customer experience to Innovative and AWS's mutual customers at all stages in their digital transformation.

Innovative's growth plans include the expansion of its Managed Cloud Services (MCS) line of business. MCS customers are more confident when growing on the cloud because their infrastructure is managed for cost, security, and compliance with a combination of tools and services. One foundational capability included for all MCS customers, at no additional charge, is CloudCheckr, a cloud management product in Spot by NetApp's portfolio for cloud operations. In concert with Innovative's cloud experts, CloudCheckr provides visibility and intelligence to better manage costs, make infrastructure more secure and in compliance, and optimize resources in use.

"Over the last 24 months, we have seen a significant rise in demand and adoption of cloud solutions as small and medium size business businesses look to grow their digital offerings," said Ruba Borno, vice president of Worldwide Channels & Alliances at AWS. "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."

Next year, Innovative is on track to continue hiring and opening offices in both the United States and Canada while remaining headquartered in Rochester, New York, where it was founded. As part of its commitment to the regional economies of its offices, Innovative recently announced that the Rochester Red Wings will now play at Innovative Field, with more investments expected in the future in other regions as well.