Chandra Panipali: Scaling GSI Partnerships with Purpose at AWS

Chip Rodgers   0:01  
Chip, Hey, everyone. Chip Rodgers, Chief partner officer at work, span and we are here day three for incredible reinvent I mean, it's just taken over Las Vegas, and we're in the Venetian a lot of people sort of wandering around, going from session to session. It's been fantastic.

Chandra Panipali  0:23  
Chandra, thank you, Chip and Nero for firstly, coming to the reinvent and spending your time and meeting all our partners and customers. Super important. So thank you for doing that.

Chip Rodgers   0:35  
Yeah, it's been, it's been fantastic. So far, just super busy and so first of all, I'm super excited also to to welcome Chandra Panipali. Chandra is Global Director worldwide, Director for global si and GSIs for strategic partners for AWS and and managing about 20 plus

Chandra Panipali  1:07  
GS most eclectic and interesting partners of AWS, for sure,

Chip Rodgers   1:11  
some of the largest Yeah, yeah, also joined by Nirav Desai. Nirav is our with WorkSpan and our Vice President and and general manager of the GSI segment. And welcome Nirav,

Nirav Desai  1:24  
Excited to be here, and so much of energy. Chandra right after maybe the largest reinvent ever, and amazing announcements, Yes, yesterday Andy Jassi was here, and just so much of buzz and all the good things that you're doing. So excited to talk to you about all of these. Yeah,

Chandra Panipali  1:41  
it only keeps getting bigger and bigger, right? And interesting to you call out Andy jazzy, because he was here as the customer of AWS, right? I love that, yeah. So that always resonates with being our culture of being customer first, right? Like so Andy coming back as customer and introducing the amazing Noah yesterday,

Chip Rodgers   2:04  
it was, it was amazing. So much, so many incredible innovations around Gen AI and and to hear Andy, Andy Jasse talking about some of the use cases right to the larger Amazon business. So it was really cool. Correct?

Chandra Panipali  2:18  
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And also, Matt also talked about how it's even more important to make sure that the customers always have the tools not just to innovate on the Gen AI stack, but also help them get out of the legacy workloads, like whether it is mainframe or VMware or do better at what they're already doing, right? So, in a way that, going back to the builders route, what makes Amazon such an our AWS such an amazing place for all our customers and partners to innovate, right? I think it's so, it's a it's a very good balance, I would say, like, in terms of what AWS is really, really good at both providing the building blocks, but also staying very, very fast innovation around the general all exciting general space.

Chip Rodgers   3:12  
Yeah, and there's so much happening. It's happening so fast. And we got, like,

Chandra Panipali  3:16  
lot of customers as well yesterday, including some of the big ones, like Apple coming in and talking to us, yeah? So, it's amazing. And today now we have Dr Swami keynote going on as well, right? Like, so lot more, lot more going to come through that. Yeah, yeah.

Chip Rodgers   3:34  
So, Chandra, tell us a little bit about your role managing, you know, 20 plus. You know, these are large strategic partners. Tell us a little bit about what your role is and what are some of the opportunities and challenges. Yeah.

Chandra Panipali  3:51  
So within the AWS specialists and partner organization, we have consulting Coe, headed by Brian Bohan, the consulting COE has two chat two charters, right like one, we manage some of our most strategic and largest partners. Directly manage them globally, in concert with our Geo colleagues, we also have the responsibility of building this consulting partner strategy for all of AWS. So those are the kind of two broad charts, and within that, I have the privilege of managing and leading a portfolio of all of our consulting partners, what we call as the GSPs global strategic partners. They are, as you said, 20 plus partners. They are range from some of our largest to some of the most dynamic and innovative partners. And that's a very, very exciting and interesting job, in the sense that I have the opportunity to both understand. And what the partners want to do, tie that up with what our customers want, and bring AWS innovation and our investments and other things to make those big bets that help move the needle for our partners as well as for our customers. So it's a very interesting and exciting job that I have, and it's a privilege that I am very, very conscious of

Chip Rodgers   5:25  
as well. Yeah, a big and a big role. Yeah, yeah, it's

Chandra Panipali  5:29  
an interesting and interesting so,

Nirav Desai  5:33  
you know, 2024 is coming to an end. I've been reading a blog post, been following you, working with the largest partners for CO innovation, going to market together and delivering, you know, amazing value. What have been the key highlights for you working with these top 20 partners? And if you could also maybe give some examples as well around some of the customer value or customer use cases as well, I would love to know,

Chandra Panipali  5:57  
yeah, so I think we operate our own set of priorities kind of define the strategy, right? Like, obviously, as you said on my blog post as well, right? Like, focusing on line of business users, stakeholders of our customers is a big priority, obviously, because ultimately, the technology should deliver business outcomes, right? And that means that should translate to what the line of business stakeholders within our customers care about. That's what all technology should ultimately do. So that's a big priority, focusing on line of business owners in our customers. Then we can talk about all the generative innovation and everything. But if you don't move the workloads to cloud, if you don't move the data to cloud, you can't actually innovate much. So driving migrations and modernizations to Cloud is also a big priority. Is a second big priority for us. The third one, I would say, is about all about data and AI, right? Like so, once you get line of business, once you focus on line of business stakeholders, when you move the workflows to cloud, then you get the data, then you start being able to innovate as well, right? And we also want to look at new customers and new partners and new geographies, right, like so go beyond like our traditional partners and traditional segments where we operate and open up new areas for growth is also another big priority. So we try to build a strategy around these priorities. And when we make investments with partners as well, we make sure that these, these are some of the priorities, that if they align with the partner priorities as well, then it's a win, win, right? And that's how we execute the strategy. So this year has been firstly landing this strategy with all our partners and then helping them in a way, in a way that it makes sense for them, their business is profitable with AWS thereby delivering value to the customer. Ultimately, you have to build a business that is profitable to the partners as well, right? So we want to look at it from that lens and while not losing sight of being relevant to our customers. So ultimately, we have to work back from customers and treat also partners as our customers. So that's how we think about that's amazing.

Chip Rodgers   8:24  
That's fantastic. Chandra, you know, AWS this year has had a huge emphasis on and sort of reorganize everything around industries, 24 industries and and system integrators are always, you know, have really organized that way, and have very deep, you know, industry expertise on use cases and everything. We're getting a little some horn, horn beeping back there. So, so how does, how do the these global strategic partners fit into that industry strategy for AWS, yeah,

Chandra Panipali  9:00  
as you rightly said, lot of our partners have been doing, have been focused around industry and good market industry for a very, very long time, right? So like, for example, I think we read a stat somewhere, like some of our partners, like Deloitte as an example, or PwC, they've always been industry focused for a very, very long time, right? Or even our partners like TCS or Infosys or New Age partners like EPAM, all cloud, all of them have got a very strong Industry Focus. So I think when AWS pivoted at least reorg from an industry perspective, I think it was a very well received by most our partners. Now the good market organizations can align very well, and we can talk the same language right as well. So that actually is a 10. Will win to our partnership as well, and that is landing really well. And then, as I talked about our first priority, about focusing on line of business, so it becomes much more easier if you have an industry centric conversation right. Ultimately, line of business stakeholders are different in different industries, and then you can pick and choose where you want to focus.

Nirav Desai  10:24  
Fantastic. And you know this is exactly meeting the customers, where they are right. You know, their use cases, their problem statements. And if you weave in the Gen AI as well, not just focus on efficiency and productivity, but you know, a lot of transformation and innovation as well. So how does 2025 look for you, you know, some very big announcements by some of your partners. Large SC is focused on Gen AI focus on agents. And of course, you know, you have joint business plans. And I was reading some news articles and announcements. Many of them are doing multi billion dollar businesses with you, right? And which is great, right? All for end customers, right, delivering end customers in the journey Ayurveda. So give us a view into you know, what does this mean for you? What does it mean for partners and for customers? Of course, yeah,

Chandra Panipali  11:11  
yeah. So, as you rightly said, right? Like, so there are multiple areas that we focus from SES. Ses are help us get not only focused, but also drive investments, where the outcomes that are tied to outcomes, right? So both of us can be very true to each other in terms of how we are executing a business plan, right? So the SES can be varied, and it typically depends upon where the partner wants to focus with us, right? We just like we work back from customers AWS. We also work back from the partner priorities and where they want and what their strengths are. We also help them build those capabilities as well, right? Like, as an example, compass, one of our partners wanted to expand in North America, right? Let's say they're very, strong partner of ours in Brazil, and now they want to expand in North America, Mexico and other geographies as well, right, like so we are building an SCA with them to precisely help them, but also more focus on certain segments that we want, also growth in those areas, right? So that is one example. Another example could be with Capgemini. We did an SCA that for that builds on their strengths in the auto manufacturing industry, right? So that goes back to the lob focus that we talked we also talked about, we also have SCS around some of the pain points around vmwares, right? A lot of customers are wanting to kind of modernize their VMware workload, but also make it easier for them. So we have ACS around them as well. So obviously there are a lot of generative ACS as well, right? Like, but we want to tie the generative ACS around these priorities right, like, and what the partners want to do right, like, whether it is an industry specific generative ACA, or whether it is like data and AI specific SES as well. So that's, that's how the SES are executed.

Chip Rodgers   13:10  
That's, that's terrific. Chandra, thank you so much for taking some time with us this morning. A lot still happening today. A lot of great some keynotes and announcements still on tap. So thank you.

Chandra Panipali  13:24  
One shameless plug. Don't miss Dr Ruba bonus keynote this afternoon. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers   13:31  
this afternoon.

Chandra Panipali  13:35  
That's That's exactly why I want you guys to watch that.

Nirav Desai  13:39  
We'll cover that as well. And thank you so much for your partnership. You know we love working with you. We love working with your partners and enabling the collaboration between you and them as well. So wish you all the success here, and let's work together to build amazing 2025

Chandra Panipali  13:53  
as well. Thank you for the partnership, and thank you for all that you do to our partners, customers as well as AWS. Thank you,

Chip Rodgers   14:06  
fantastic. Thank you Chandra, thank you Nirav, and thank you all for joining and we'll see you. See you next time bye.

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