AWS, Slalom Partner to Help Enterprises With Cloud Efforts
Companies to create joint Launch Centers worldwide to accelerate business transformation
Consulting firm Slalom is working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build joint centers around the world that will help enterprises more easily migrate workloads and data to the cloud and modernize their IT services.
The Lowdown: The first of the new AWS/Slalom Launch Centers, which were announced this week at the AWS Re:Invent 2019 show in Las Vegas, will open in Seattle, Chicago, and Atlanta, with additional ones being built over the next three years.
The Details: The Launch Centers will combine AWS Professional Services with business transformation, software engineering, and analytics expertise from Slalom to help accelerate enterprise efforts to grow their cloud environments. In addition, mutual customers of both companies will be able to temporarily enable their own IT teams to work from the Launch Centers so they can work alongside and learn from experts from AWS and Slalom.
Through the centers, organizations will be able to accelerate their initial efforts in the AWS Cloud, develop a customized approach for growing their own processes and skills regarding the cloud, and work with experts on taking steps to migrate to the cloud. That includes defining business strategies, creating road maps, and optimizing what they’re doing in the cloud.
AWS and Slalom – an 18-year-old Seattle-based company with more than 7,500 employees – also will provide training to organizations so they can manage their infrastructures and help figure out how businesses need to reorganize their management for the cloud.
The Impact: Enterprises continue to embrace public clouds as an increasingly large part of their IT strategies. Flexera’s RightScale report about the cloud earlier this year found that 84% of enterprises have a multicloud strategy but are looking for help from partners and the cloud service providers themselves in making the move. AWS is the dominant player in the space, with more than 40% of the market, but it’s competing with such companies as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
The Buzz: “For more than a decade, we’ve been collaborating with AWS and have supported their vision, betting the future of Slalom on the cloud,” said Mike Cowden, president of Slalom Build. “Our expanded relationship with AWS is a differentiated approach to building and operating solutions in the cloud, helping our customers experience the value of modern technology first-hand while accelerating business outcomes.”
“Enterprises are looking to achieve their target business outcomes faster by transitioning to a modern, optimized, cloud-based model,” said Todd Weatherby, vice president of professional services at AWS. “The AWS/Slalom Launch Centers will help enterprises around the world to transition their organizations, processes, applications, and infrastructure quickly, using best practices and a unique, immersive experience. The Launch Centers offer enterprises the tools to make the transition to the cloud, with the confidence of having Slalom’s proven consulting and technical skills and AWS’s leading cloud services and migration experience supporting them.”
“Slalom is a great partner with deep expertise building cloud-native systems on AWS,” said Sang Yeob Park, build center leader at LG CNS, a subsidiary of LG Electronics. “Working together with Slalom in their immersive model helps businesses leverage the cloud to realize and accelerate a digital first strategy.”
“Once you get both feet into this kind of an offering, you feel, for the first time, like you are limitless,” said Christopher Cerruto, vice president of global architecture, analytics, and business intelligence at Avis Budget Group, “Business is driving the decisions and technology is helping us get there quickly. The Slalom team was instrumental in helping us build on AWS.”
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