TD Synnex, AWS Sign Agreement To Advance Cloud, AI Adoption

‘This [agreement] is more focused on the long-term impact of driving behavior and building a practice within SMBs, particularly AI practices. It’s building a practice of not only how to implement AI, but also how to use it and how to sell it,’ says Jan Michael de Kok, vice president of global AWS lead and FinOps go to market for TD Synnex.

TD Synnex and Amazon Web Services this week unveiled a strategic collaboration agreement under which the two will work together to help channel partners throughout the Americas accelerate their AI adoption, cloud migration and modernization, and marketplace growth.

Under the agreement, the two companies are investing in resources to connect small and midsize channel partners with an enhanced range of AWS services via the distributor while making it easier for them to gain access to AWS Marketplace programs for ISVs, said Jan Michael de Kok, vice president of global AWS lead and FinOps go to market for TD Synnex, with dual headquarters in Fremont, Calif., and Clearwater, Fla.

De Kok, a four-year TD Synnex veteran who just this month stepped into his current role, said the new strategic collaboration agreement with AWS is different from typical distribution agreements with hyperscaler cloud providers in a couple of ways.

“First, this is not the typical ‘go big’ agreement which basically focuses on measuring incremental revenue,” he said. “This is more focused on the long-term impact of driving behavior and building a practice within SMBs, particularly AI practices. It’s building a practice of not only how to implement AI, but also how to use it and how to sell it.”

Brian Bohan, director of consulting for the Center of Excellence at Seattle-based AWS, said in a prepared statement, “Our collaboration with TD Synnex brings together AWS innovation and their extensive partner network, creating new opportunities for businesses across the Americas on their cloud and AI journeys. We’re focused on connecting more partners with AWS services so customers can achieve faster modernization and the business outcomes that matter most to them.”

De Kok likened the transformation to AI to that of the cloud, when every company and solution provider needed to understand how to consume the cloud and how to change their processes and their finances to leverage the opportunity.

“AI is making that same transformation,” he said. “How to consume it and how to identify real use cases with a return on investment is not easy and needs a lot of support for identifying potential impacts and how to measure the success,” he said. “This agreement is investing in building a practice for downstream sellers to understand how to help their customers’ AI needs and to drive business impacts and not just facilitate technology acquisitions.”

TD Synnex is meeting customers at their own level of competency with AI, de Kok said.

“AWS is pretty much end-customer-focused, and they typically drive behavior for those top partners that are already skilled,” he said. “AWS brings more skills to those partners. They bring AI competencies and things like that. But they haven’t been able to scale or drive behaviors for SMB customers. They don’t have time or resources to do that. That’s where TD Synnex next comes in and says, ‘OK, let’s do co-investment. We have the partner ecosystem relationship and contacts, but we also have the resources and the tools for them to automate that process of building a practice.’”

TD Synnex works with partners to understand their end-customer ecosystem, de Kok said.

“We have visibility into what their end customers are consuming with other technologies, with other IT vendors,” he said. “That’s something AWS doesn’t have. We identify or meet where the partner is and build that practice. Maybe a partner only needs assessment services to identify their customer’s AI. We are OK with delivering just that. Other partners are just starting to understand the opportunity and how they can take advantage of it and how fast they can transact. AI projects typically are not fast and not quick but are more long term.”

TD Synnex already has a framework called Destination AI to support partners not only with enablement but also with all the presales and post-sales structure of AI implementation, de Kok said.

“The great thing about Destination AI is it’s vendor-agnostic,” he said. “This new strategic collaboration agreement with AWS brings AWS to a group of selected vendors and partners within the Destination AI program.”

All three major hyperscalers—AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure—are part of Destination AI, de Kok said.

The new strategic collaboration agreement also simplifies access to the AWS cloud marketplace, de Kok said.

“Some years ago, the feeling was that the marketplace was replacing the role of distributors,” he said. “That was nothing further from the truth. Actually, especially with AWS, the role of distributors including TD Synnex in marketplace adoption and scaling, both for partners or customers but also for ISVs looking to leveraging the opportunities and scale, has been key.”

TD Synnex has made it possible for smaller solution providers to get access to AWS support, said Benjamin Tosado, founder and CEO of Deep Blue Cloud Computing, a Key Largo, Fla.-based AWS Advanced Tier Services partner.

“We’re a small business and self-funded, so we have to be very creative about how we invest in our growth and scale,” Tosado told CRN. “We don’t have as much resources as companies like CDW’s Mission Cloud or Rackspace and so on. … We’ve been able to rapidly acquire customers and grow revenue by being creative in how we invest in growth. And one of the big factors there is our distribution partnership with TD Synnex.”

TD Synnex’s new strategic collaboration agreement with AWS will help spur further growth for Deep Blue Cloud Computing, Tosado said.

“For us to get access to things like AWS funding, to be able to access AWS partner-led support, to be able to get attention from AWS for a variety of different things as a small boutique partner, would be really hard,” he said. “We would need a lot more head count and certifications than we have, a lot more documented success than we have in our three years since founding. We’ve got great documented success, but we don’t have 10 years’ worth as some of our competitors do. TD Synnex gives us an avenue through their relationship with AWS to leverage their track record and success to get access to all of those resources.”

That access will let Deep Blue Cloud Computing approach bigger customers, Tosado said.

“That lets us come to them with the resources like a CDW Mission or Rackspace or some of the huge AWS partners,” he said. “Customers know we’re a smaller business, and the customers we end up doing well with like it.”

Deep Blue Cloud Computing has a number of key vertical plays, particularly in aviation maintenance and manufacturing, where the new AWS-TD Synnex relationship will shine, Tosado said.

“We’re investing in building our own SaaS platforms on AWS for the aviation industry,” he said. “We’re also helping some leading SaaS providers in that industry build additional products for their customers. We’ve got one customer that services 90 of the largest airlines in the world. And we’re helping them build their software to take to market for airplane maintenance. TD Synnex is doing everything from helping us resource those projects to helping us get access to funding for those projects to helping us get more attractive resale rates.”

Solution providers looking to build their AI practices with AWS and take advantage of the new strategic collaboration agreement will not have to make specific financial investments related to the agreement, de Kok said.

“But they will have to invest in time and interest in building the practice,” he said. “I’m going to oversimplify it. The first thing a partner needs to do is raise their hand and say, ‘Hey, I’m interested in building a practice around AI market-based cloud,” he said. “There’s no money investment, such as buying a ticket to be part of the program, but they do need to invest time and effort. It’s not, ‘I want to build my practice. Send me everything I need.’ They actually will sit down with us and invest resources in learning the processes and use cases and customers for us to help them to identify migration paths and modernization paths.”

TD Synnex currently has about 3,900 channel partners working with AWS, de Kok said.