Presidio’s AWS Collaboration ‘The Biggest’ In Its History

Solution provider superstar Presidio just formed its ‘biggest collaboration agreement’ in its history with AWS. Here’s what to know about it.

Solution provider powerhouse Presidio just formed a new strategic collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services that is not only next level but is the biggest collaboration partnership in Presidio’s long and successful history.

“It’s honestly the biggest collaboration agreement that we’ve signed, and I believe it’s one of the biggest that AWS has entered into,” said Chris Cagnazzi, senior vice president and general manager of digital business at Presidio, in an interview with CRN. “They’re investing not only resources, but actual dollars to help further advance the enablement within Presidio from presales to delivery. … AWS is also helping with people and dollars around go-to-market, demand generation and a lot of those things.”

Founded in 2003, New York-based Presidio is now generating upward of $600 million in cloud sales, backed by a team of 500 cloud professionals and nearly 1,000 AWS certifications, with AWS as its preferred cloud partner.

[Related: 5 AWS Services And Money-Making Tips For Partners]

Presidio unveiled a huge multiyear strategic collaboration agreement with AWS this week to drive adoption of AWS cloud solutions as well as develop innovative new services and products. Cagnazzi said AWS has made a huge commitment to support Presidio.

“This really aims to advance the adoption of cloud-based solutions, outcomes and innovation for our customers—whether they’re existing customers or net-new customers,” said Cagnazzi, whose $3.1 billion solution provider made CRN’s 2022 MSP Elite 150 list. “What I really like about it is AWS committed to it at the executive level—all the way up to the top—and we’re committed to it. So it’s a joint effort to make sure that we’re successful in the execution of it.”

Although Presidio still plans to partner with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, AWS will be leading the company’s cloud adoption and digital transformation charge.

Three Major Presidio-AWS Collaboration Highlights

There are three major areas Presidio and AWS will invest in with the ultimate goal of accelerating cloud solutions.

AWS plans to increase training and enablement of Presidio’s entire sales and technical teams to become cloud practitioner-certified and expand AWS delivery capabilities to help medium and large enterprises in both the commercial and public sector segments on their cloud journey.

Another initiative is to expand Presidio’s MSP business model with AWS to help customers achieve operational efficiencies with the adoption of more AWS solutions.

The Seattle-based public cloud global market leader is also extending AWS solution practices across Presidio, including Rapid Migration and Modernization, Application Development, Data and Analytics, DevSecOps and Cloud Center of Excellence.

AWS channel chief Ruba Borno said Presidio has the right depth, expertise and understanding of AWS to drive cloud adoption.

“We’re excited to expand our relationship with Presidio as they’re committed to learning, innovating and solving challenging business problems that drive customer outcomes,” said Borno, vice president of worldwide channels and alliances at AWS, in a statement.

The increased collaboration between Presidio and AWS aims to address the skills gap many organizations face when modernizing their legacy IT platforms to cloud-native services.

Public Cloud Services To Skyrocket 22 Percent In 2022

IT research firm Gartner predicts that public cloud services will increase 22 percent globally in 2022 year over year, due to broad acceleration of cloud adoption.

Presidio’s AWS push comes as enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services soars, while data center hardware and software spending remains relatively flat, according to market data from Synergy Research Group.

Enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services reached $178 billion in 2021, representing an annual increase of 37 percent compared with 2020, as enterprises are investing in cloud leaders like AWS versus products inside their own data centers.

“We chose AWS because of the leadership that they are having the marketplace, the innovation and the understanding of partnering to solve those business outcome problems for customers,” said Cagnazzi. “It’s not like we’re saying that we’re not going to continue to sell on-premises. We are. It’s a hybrid world. We strongly believe that, but our focus is ‘How do we continue to be relevant with those clients that do live in a hybrid world or are thinking about how do they migrate workloads and applications to the cloud?’”

Presidio’s global team of engineers, architects and developers have achieved AWS’ highest levels of certification such as the AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Professional; AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, Professional; and AWS Certified Security, Specialty.

“We certainly do support Microsoft Azure and GCP, but our main goal and our main functions and all of our motions are around this joint partnership with AWS because we do believe that they are a leader,” said Cagnazzi. “We’re excited about our future with AWS.”