AWS, TD Synnex Expand Channel Distribution Relationship

AWS’ new strategic collaboration agreement with the IT distributor and solutions aggregator covers North America, Latin America and the Caribbean.

TD Synnex will increase its offerings of Amazon Web Services resources and cloud computing solutions to help channel partners grow under a new distribution pact that covers North America, Latin America and the Caribbean.

The IT distributor and solutions aggregator, created by the $7.2 billion merger of Synnex and Tech Data that closed in September, said its new strategic collaboration agreement with AWS will ramp up investments to help small and medium-sized and public sector partners expand their offerings by leveraging a larger range of AWS cloud services.

“We see this announcement as a real statement of intent from AWS to engage indirect in the channel,” said Reza Honarmand, the global senior vice president responsible for the hyperscale cloud business at TD Synnex, one of AWS’ largest partners. “We are equally investing in the way we are working with AWS. That means increased capacity to support our channel partners. We really want to be the party that makes it easy for them to engage. We are lowering their costs, we are lowering their barrier to expand their footprint or start with AWS.”

The value of TD Synnex is evidenced by the sheer amount of announcements that AWS makes at its annual re:Invent conference for partners and customers, held this past year from Nov. 29-Dec. 3 in Las Vegas, Honarmand said.

“If you consider the world of a partner or a reseller for us — depending on their size, of course — their challenge of absorbing and then prioritizing where they invest, how they invest (is) not small,” Honarmand said. “Our job is to simplify, structure, clarify and present opportunities to our partners in a way that they can accelerate their investments and their engagement towards AWS. It’s helping them determine where there’s the best fit in terms of the technologies that they want to engage with AWS.”

Partners’ technical skills gaps and capacity to fully leverage AWS to meet market demand and operational efficiencies are among the top challenges that partners face, according to Honarmand.

“Creating more AWS cloud experts in the channel is critical, because that equals capacity to grow,” he said. That is absolutely one of our big priorities. We outpace the natural growth that our vendors have, so our partners are growing quicker. The second area is operational — it’s around how can we help them really be slick and low-cost and optimal so that they can focus themselves on technology as opposed to a high SG&A (selling, general and administrative) cost base.”

TD Synnex’s agreement with AWS provides for increased personnel commitments to help partners implement cloud technology — including additional marketing, sales, technical and project management support — and AWS-specific enablement resources for partners.

The announcement comes as AWS has vowed to ramp up its use of distributors to help on-board solution providers and expand globally, and builds on the success of a similar agreement between AWS and Tech Data that covered Europe in 2020. Jeremiah Jenson, formerly AWS’ North America resale partners leader, has taken on the newly created role of global leader of distribution for AWS with reach, scale, global expansion as his priorities.

“Partners are asking how they can service their customers and help their customers transform and migrate to AWS in faster, more meaningful ways,” Jenson said. “They also have very strong and deep partnerships with distribution and wanted to leverage the capabilities and value-add of their partnerships…whether that’s operational billing, technical or other value-add that distribution provides.”

Honarmand said he’s “delighted” that AWS is making an “entire team investment” with the agreement.

“We’re going to have a far bigger organization that we are going to be working with,” he said. “What that means is…we can accelerate the pace at which we improve our operation towards our channel.”

Honarmand would not disclose the dollar value of the investments being made or quantify the increased personnel commitment, but characterized them as “very significant.”

“This is not a point-in-time announcement, and you’ll see us walk away,” Jenson said. “This is about really long-term thinking and how we can accelerate the transformation of these partners and how we can leverage AWS to positively impact the business of the customers that they have for the long term. A good proof point of that is we’re thinking globally. It started with (Europe) with TD Synnex, and now it’s expanding beyond that, and we’re thinking beyond that with a number of these partnerships.”