AWS Star Innovative Solutions Bets On Red Hat OpenShift, AI And Cloud Migration In 2023

Innovative Solutions CEO Justin Copie explains to CRN his vision to drive sales in 2023 by creating new practices and services that customers are demanding.

Innovative Solutions CEO

Red-hot AWS partner Innovative Solutions is looking to take a chunk out of the $450 billion public cloud market by providing next-level cloud services to customers in 2023 via new investments in artificial intelligence, modernization and cloud optimization.

In a move to continue increasing AWS sales at a triple-digit rate next year, Innovative Solutions CEO Justin Copie is looking to generate millions of net-new services dollars by accelerating customers’ cloud migration process via automation and creating new practices for AI, data, modernization and DevOps.

“There’s going to be this huge wave of customers that need good management of those cloud-based services next year because they don’t have the IT skills on staff,” Copie told CRN. “Partners who offer managed services like us are going to be well positioned to be able to catch those customers and help usher them into the future.”

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The West Henrietta, N.Y.-based company expects a “huge wave” of customers will want Innovative Solutions to lift and shift them into the cloud in 2023.

Following their cloud migration, customers will need to start focusing on modernizing and optimizing their cloud spend going forward, which will lead to high-margin modernization and management services.

“Customers are going to start to question over the next two years, ‘All right, I moved all this stuff to the cloud. But all we did was we lifted, and we shifted. We get the benefits of the cloud so we can burst and scale, but is there a better way for me to re-engineer the software? Is there a better way for me to use things like micro-services? Is there a better way for me to use different areas of compute, like AI and ML?’” said Copie.

New Modernization And Cloud Migration Practices

Copie expects many of his SMB customers to begin modernizing their IT environment next year after migrating to the cloud.

The SMB-focused AWS Premium Partner is looking to take its cloud services business to the next level in 2023 by developing a new modernization practice.

“We’re building an entire modernization practice that includes things like artificial intelligence and machine learning and also includes a data practice,” said Copie. “Because you’re going to see data just continue to increase like crazy.”

In addition, Innovative Solutions is building a migration practice with the goal of driving automation for customers during the cloud migration process.

“So instead of having people actually pulling levers, we’re going to use software and Terraform scripts that basically are automating a lot of this migration work,” Copie said. “That’s going to drive the cost of migration down for a customer. So if a customer was spending $100 on a migration today, in a year from now, our goal is to get that to $75 or $50 or even less, based on more automation that we can build in.”

Lastly, Innovative Solutions is building a DevOps practice to automate most of the testing and deployment customers need for their cloud journey.

“The DevOps practice and the migration practice really go hand-in-hand. It’s all in the vein of helping customers get there quicker, get there at less cost—because SMB customers tend to be cost-sensitive—and make sure that we’re doing that at the highest level of quality because you only migrate once,” said Copie.

Bringing Red Hat OpenShift To Customers

This year, AWS and IBM formed a new strategic collaboration agreement to better enable partners and customers to sell, buy and procure IBM’s popular software portfolio, including having dozens of IBM products available on the AWS Marketplace.

Innovative Solutions is leveraging this new AWS and IBM partnership to drive SMB customers to AWS and increase IBM-Red Hat sales.

“We have this relationship with IBM and Red Hat to actually foster more modernization,” Copie said. “Red Hat has a very specific product called OpenShift that’s like containers for dummies. It’s a turnkey solution to get to containerization. You basically can modernize in a flash.”

Innovative Solutions’ plan is to bring Red Hat OpenShift to its customers who want to modernize immediately.

“When you look at that recipe—that’s winning. That’s where we’re all going to see this massive momentum,” said Copie.

Public Cloud Market To Reach $1 Trillion

The public cloud market, which is led by AWS, is expected to balloon to $1 trillion by 2026, more than doubling the current $450 billion market in 2022, according to a new report by IT research firm Forrester.

Forrester estimates that cloud infrastructure services alone will account for nearly $500 billion in revenue in 2026, which is what Innovative Solutions is betting on.

Public cloud growth rates will continue to climb, in part due to data analytics, AI and cloud cost services that businesses of all shapes and sizes are demanding. As customers seek AI and ML for greater operating efficiency, database and analytics services revenue will rise threefold to $89 billion by 2026, Forrester predicted.

Innovative Solutions’ annual AWS sales increased north of 300 percent in 2022.

“We’re excited about 2023,” said Copie. “I think we have a winning recipe.”