PTP Aims To Acquire Channel Companies To Drive AWS And AI Growth

‘We’re seeing we made the right decision in the market by picking AWS as our most strategic partner, which is really paying off. Also, we expect to capitalize on being really verticalized with AWS,’ says PTP Managing Partner Ethan Simmons.

Amazon Web Services partner PTP is seeking to acquire several channel companies in 2024 to boost its AWS, AI and life sciences practices.

PTP’s acquisition plan comes after the Norwood, Mass.-based company signed a Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with AWS this month. PTP also received new funding from private equity firm 424 Capital last year. This perfect storm is leading PTP to search for several channel companies—likely AWS-focused partners—to purchase in 2024 in order to take AWS sales to the next level.

“We’re looking at organic growth by putting sales teams into these life science hubs, but also we’re looking at M&A,” said Ethan Simmons, managing partner at PTP. “This year, we’re looking to do two or three new acquisitions to accelerate that growth.”

[Related: AWS Taps Amazon’s Global Operations Leader As New CFO]

As part of PTP’s partnership agreement with AWS, the life sciences specialist is looking to acquire channel companies across the U.S. to geographically expand its customer reach.

“We’re seeing we made the right decision in the market by picking AWS as our most strategic partner, which is really paying off,” said Simmons. “Also, we expect to capitalize on being really verticalized with AWS. It’s going to be an exciting year for us. There’s lot of opportunity.”

PTP Diving Deeper Into AWS AI, Bedrock

PTP is an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner and AWS Life Sciences Competency Partner that provides consultancy and support tailored toward biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.

Simmons said his company is developing an AI practice as it looks to incorporate more of AWS’ new AI tools into the mix.

“We’re already using tools like CodeWhisperer to do some of our development work faster. And then tools like [Amazon] Q, it’s more around assistants and bots,” said Simmons. “At the end of the day, we’ll be incorporating more as AWS develops more solutions around Bedrock. Bedrock will be an important part of the overall AI practice.”

AWS poured millions of dollars last year into creating a brand-new AI and generative AI portfolio of offering that partners can sell.

For example, Amazon Bedrock is the cloud giant’s new flagship AI offering that enables users to build and scale generative AI applications with a wide variety of foundation models. AWS CodeWhisperer is an AI-powered productivity tool that helps users easily generate code. Amazon Q is the cloud giant’s new generative AI collaboration assistant that helps answer questions, provide summaries, generate content and complete data-based tasks.

PTP has specifically hired new employees to drive customer momentum around AWS AI solutions.

“We’ve made hires in that space. We have team members that are working to push that forward,” he said. “We’re really excited about this year.”

Amazon is set to unveil the results of AWS financial earnings for its fourth quarter 2023 on Feb. 1.