AWS Partner Network (APN) Blog
How AWS Partners Can Grow Their Cloud Business with AWS Distributors Like Redington Gulf
By Saad Khan, Sr. Partner Solutions Architect – AWS
By Said Fezazi, Sr. Strategic Partnership Manager – AWS
By Janees Reghelini, Communications and Media Manager – Redington Gulf
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| Redington Gulf |
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As a trusted AWS Distributor, Redington Gulf helps AWS Partners grow revenue by reselling Amazon Web Services (AWS) solutions and services. To understand more about how Redington supports AWS Partners in their cloud journey, we sat down with Nehal Sharma, VP of Cloud Business at Redington, and Alam Shaikh, Redington’s AWS Practice Lead.
Redington is an emerging markets multinational distributor with a presence across 38 markets, and its strategy is defined by three main pillars: innovation, technology, and partnerships.
As a distributor of IT products, from hardware and software to specialized cloud services, Redington has more than 290 brand associations, serving more than 39,500 channel partners across the globe. This demonstrates the company’s expansive network and strong enduring relationships.
Redington Gulf is an AWS Specialization Partner whose mission is to re-imagine tomorrow and integrate their re-imagined concepts across the board. This includes embracing digital transformation, focusing on innovation, developing local talent, leveraging partnerships, offering affordable solutions, and enhancing customer experiences
AWS: Can you give us an overview of Redington’s collaboration with AWS?
Redington: Redington and AWS have fostered a strong and strategic relationship that has been instrumental in accelerating AWS adoption across the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa region. On April 1,2022, Redington announced a Strategic Collaboration Agreement with AWS. The goal of this agreement is to:
- Recruit, enable, and activate its partner community to accelerate cloud adoption across Middle East, Turkey, and Africa.
- Stimulate business expansion into new markets.
- Enable small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to realize greater value from AWS services.
Redington is a key player in the AWS ecosystem, helping customers of all sizes adopt AWS services. We have a reach of over 168 transacting partners across 13 countries and 608 end customers in the AWS ecosystem, and have recently been awarded the AWS Distributor Partner of the Year-EMEA award during AWS re:Invent in 2023.
AWS: Can you tell us how you can help AWS Partners grow their business and build an AWS practice?
Redington: Partners grow their business on AWS in multiple ways via the distribution strengths of Redington. We have curated a partner development program in alliance with AWS called the Accelerated Partner Development Program. This program is split into five milestones: APN Enablement, Cloud Enablement Engine, Technical Validation, Sales Readiness, and GTM Readiness.
- APN Enablement comprises all of the prerequisites an AWS Partner needs to complete to advance their partner tier upgrade. This includes training sessions to build the knowledge, experience, and customer success side of the business on AWS Partner Network (APN).
- Cloud Enablement Engine involves setting up dedicated workshops with the partner’s technical teams to provide suggestions and best practices to build their own cloud center of excellence (COE) so they can communicate and address technical challenges faced by their customer and build a cloud practice for themselves. We support partners in building their practice by providing technical workshops, trainings, Immersion Days, and helping them achieve AWS Certifications.
- Sales Readiness educates the partner in responding to customer queries, pre-sales and sales support, and complex request for proposals (RFPs) using best practices.
- GTM Readiness involves helping partners create a go-to-market strategy tailored to their customers. We support them in building GTM solution offerings, marketing collateral, websites, social media channels, and more. Other activities include account mapping sessions, creating a dedicated battle card/playbook, and assisting in creating a business plan to execute for that financial year.
- Technical Validation helps AWS Partners achieve AWS Specializations like AWS Service Delivery and Competency, as well as the Foundational Technical Review (FTR). By doing so, we help AWS partners differentiate themselves from other partners. These programs help AWS partners validate their technical knowledge, experience, and proven success in delivering AWS expertise to customers.
In addition to Redington’s Accelerated Partner Development Program, we support AWS Partners in other ways to help grow their business. We help them with better margins and offer competitive pricing on AWS services, and our team is available for partners to leverage technical and pre-sales support.
Partners can also participate and leverage several AWS programs such as Migration Acceleration Program (MAP), Well-Architected Reviews, AWS for SAP workloads, Optimization and Licensing Assessment (OLA), and associated funding from these programs through Redington.
Partners can also take advantage of our ready-to-sell offerings, which they can effortlessly offer to customers and take advantage of all the strengths of a value-added distributor like Redington.
Figure 1 – Redington’s Accelerated Partner Development Program.
AWS: Can you walk us through how you support AWS Partners in building a sales pipeline?
Redington: Redington plays a key role in supporting channel partners in building their sales pipeline. Some of the key activities include:
- Account mapping exercise: For existing accounts where the partner have a strong relationship with the customer, we dive deep with the partner on identified accounts, their customer workloads, and potential opportunities to support the customers in their AWS journey. We do this account planning exercise with AWS sellers and AWS partner sales teams.
- Segment-focused: Depending on the focused segment in which the partner operates, we perform different joint campaigns, route to market plans, and packaged solutions to help their customers in the AWS journey.
- Joint marketing plan: We create joint marketing plans with partners to help grow their business. These campaigns can be in form of in-person events, webinars, summits, and partner premier league campaigns to ensure the partner generates new sales leads and opportunities.
AWS: Can you tell us in which ways you can support partners to win deals?
Redington: There are many ways in which Redington can help partners to convert deals:
- Redington’s solution architects can help provide and review architecture designs for the partner’s customers. We have extensive experience optimizing costs, and making sure that architectures are compliant with the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
- We can add professional services to the partner’s offer if they don’t have the skills in-house. Our professionals have extensive experience doing cloud implementations, and we are used to working with downstream partners.
- By working with Redington, partners enjoy benefits that we pass to them, therefore making their offers more competitive and increasing their chances to win. Partners can also offer more creative financial options to their customers with simplified billing through Redington.
AWS: After a partner wins a deal, can you tell how you support them in delivering services for end customers?
Redington: We help partners build an AWS practice and enable them to progress in the AWS maturity cycle with our capabilities and unique initiatives. We also have a delivery arm that can support partners delivering complex migrations, acting as one with the partner, and building out their skills so they can independently deliver in the future.
Redington is together with the partner at every step of the way during the deployment phase. We offer different packages for managed and professional services. Post-deployment, we support them with cost optimization, security posture, Well-Architected Reviews, and ongoing managed services.
AWS: Are there any resources where partners can find more about Redington’s offerings and solutions?
Redington: We run multiple webinars and events every month on our solutions and offerings. AWS Partners and customers can find more information and register for their interest on our Key to AWS website.
AWS Distributor Success Story
Redington is proud to support our long-term partner, Integra Technologies, on their journey to building strong AWS cloud expertise. We assisted Integra by enabling them to offer customers flexible payment terms throughout their cloud migrations journeys. Additionally, our co-marketing efforts, including marketing campaigns and events, helped generate new opportunities for Integra. The combination of Redington’s marketing reach and Integra’s AWS proficiency proved to be a powerful force. This comprehensive support across finance, marketing, and technical enablement empowered Integra to overcome obstacles and consistently deliver wins for their customers on AWS. Redington remains committed to empowering valued partners like Integra to help build their cloud expertise.
Partner quote:
“Over the past 10 years, we have built a strong business relationship with Redington as a trusted distributor. We appreciate the support they provide in facilitating our growth as their partner. Their value-added services and initiatives around cutting-edge technologies have helped us to increase our profitability. Redington is always willing to go the extra mile to help us succeed. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Redington in the years to come and growing it to new heights.” – Rajesh Soman, Chief Executive Officer, Integra Technologies FZE
Redington Gulf – AWS Partner Spotlight
Redington Gulf is an AWS Distributor that enables AWS Partners to grow revenue opportunities by reselling AWS products and solutions. AWS Partners work with AWS Distributors to leverage their go-to-market support, offload billing and operations, receive funding benefits, and gain technical expertise.