Pankaj Kumar: Driving Industry Co-Sell with AWS at Kyndryl

Chip Rodgers   0:01  
Hey everyone. Chip Rodgers, Chief partner officer at work, span and, gosh, my coach, we are. We have just, this is a great event today. Yeah, day two. Day

Pankaj Kumar  0:11  
two. And absolutely, I think it's been a great event. I've already been meeting a lot of customers, partners, analysts, media folks. And great to meet you as well. Chip, I think really looking forward

Chip Rodgers   0:21  
to that. Yeah, Likewise, likewise. So I am so excited to be joined by Pankaj Kumar. Pankaj is vice president and Global Head of the AWS Alliance, strategic alliance, with for for kindred, and we're here in the Kindred booth, and a lot of meetings and things happening here, on the on the show floor at at reinvent and Pankaj, just great to have you. Have you on, let's, let's talk a little bit about, I mean, this is, this is it for the for if you're heading the AWS Alliance, this is the place to be. And so many meetings, I'm sure, all week. Yeah, absolutely,

Pankaj Kumar  0:59  
I think. And as we all know, AWS reinvent is the one of the largest technology events on the planet, right and for us in kindred the AWS partnership is really strategic for us. And I think we all really look forward to this event in terms of making the right relationships. You know, looking forward to empower all of our team in terms of looking at various aspects of the go to market strategy, with AWS, meeting our customers, partners, and in one platform, you also get to meet all of the technology vendors, the ISVs. So lot to look forward. I actually took over this role at Kindred about a month back, so this is great timing for me to make sure that I'm meeting all the right teams, cross functional teams. We have a large contingent from Kindred at the event. So really looking forward to also connect internally within, you know, the organization, as well as meeting my old friends and colleagues, because I was at AWS for four years as well. So I think it's great to, you know, come back to reinvent and really force those relationships, at the same time, strategize in terms of how we can take our partnership between Kindle and AWS to the next level. So really looking forward to that. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers   2:11  
yeah, that's it's amazing. It is a great place to reconnect with people and build all those relationships. You have a really interesting background for your for your role, you know, as you mentioned, AWS and, you know, having been with a with the cloud provider AWS and Google and and also with ISV and GSI, so you got you bring a lot of those experiences to to the role. Yeah,

Pankaj Kumar  2:37  
absolutely. I think partnership is a function which I believe there's a lot of value that could be added into the organization. So I've been in the partnership and sales motion for the last two decades, and I'm, I would say, in a kind of a unique position, because I started my career with GSIs, and then in between, I was with ISVs, like automation anywhere and data miner, and then with hyperscalers, work with AWS and Google Cloud. So I've seen the world from all those three aspects, and I understand the challenges that I think a lot of times we have when we are working between these different entities, when you have a GSI and ISV and a hyperscaler working together. So I think I'm really very excited to take this opportunity, because here I can again, go back and work with my old AWS team members at the same time, collaborate with the ISVs that are really very key, especially on the AWS Marketplace. And then, of course, Kindred as you know, it's the largest IT infrastructure services player. We became an independent company about three years back. Our relationship with AWS is less than three years, and in this three years, we actually have got, like, more than 12 competencies, more than 10, you know, service validations. Just last week, we got the competency for smart city. And there's a lot of action happening with AWS globally. I'm really excited to actually take that relationship to the next level, making sure that we focus on all aspects of go to market, you know, from sales, marketing, solutions, training and enablement. And we have a great team here, I think, in kindred our focus, if you see even our CEO in all of the quarterly reports and quarterly releases, we talk about our hyperscalers, signings, our growth. So there is, like, one of the top three strategy pillars for us, like all the three A's that we have, alliances really form a key pillar for us. And I'm not seeing a lot of organizations like especially GSIs that have that strategy right up front. And the kind of collaboration that I see with AWS, I'm quite confident that we are poised to take this relationship to the next level as we go ahead. And there's a lot that we can go you know, do, to do together. There are a lot of announcements that will be made during the course of this week, so I think there's a lot of really enthusiasm within the organization, as well as within our AWS partner teams to take this partnership to the next level and to realize our true potential of the partnership going forward

Chip Rodgers   4:57  
well, and it shows in results. Do, I mean, Kindred is huge. Part of your book of business with AWS is, is massive and growing. So, so it's a, it's, it's a lot to cover.

Pankaj Kumar  5:12  
Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a, there's a, there's a lot, lot to cover. We have more than 11,000 AWS Certified professionals within our organization, and we have to keep all of them busy, right in terms of AWS projects, and we have got this in the last three years, so it has been a really fast ramping of our capabilities, of our competencies. I think we have a great team internally. We are looking at areas where we can even grow further. So I think right now, my focus is to look at those regions where there's a huge potential for us to grow together even faster, like in Europe, in Latin America, in APJ region. So I'm trying to identify those areas where we can really take this growth story that our success, that we have achieved in some of the key Kindle countries, and then expand it further to all of those regions as well. I think we have some really, very well differentiated solutions that we have got together with AWS, especially the fact that we have the largest number of mainframe capabilities across the globe. We have the highest number of VMware instances. We are one of the largest customers for VMware. So with this Broadcom AWS relationship, the new solution that has been launched. So there are lot of new things that are, you know, underway that is really, I think, at this point of time, helping us to take the relationship and help us springboard to the next level. Yeah, well,

Chip Rodgers   6:30  
and, and, you know, it's interesting, because AWS is so partner friendly, because, I think, you know, because they, they're, they're really looking for partners like hindrol that can build things and create value for and have the very deep, you know industry and use case expertise to be able to bring the technology to life and really deliver business value. Yes,

Pankaj Kumar  6:52  
absolutely, I think you've really hit the nail on the head, because this year, my focus is on looking at how we can align ourselves with the industry focus that AWS has, as we know, earlier this year, at the start of the year, AWS realigned, restructured the whole organization based on the industry verticals. And just in this year, we have achieved three industry certifications and validations. And we are trying to actually look at how closely we can work together with AWS and some of those key industry and run campaigns proactively by identifying accounts where we can go together. And that's going to be a joint success for both the organization. So I think that's going to be a key focus area for us going forward as well. That's fantastic.

Chip Rodgers   7:30  
And I think it all, it all, it all comes down to, you know, connecting the sales teams and being able to work together, co selling together. You mentioned marketplace, and it is really interesting that marketplaces is has really embraced services organizations to be listings up there as well. So,

Pankaj Kumar  7:49  
right, yeah, absolutely. Even as we speak right now, we have an opportunity in Europe where we are actively, you know, pursuing along with ISV. You know, there are a lot of ISPs where they are reaching out to us that, hey, let's work together on the marketplace, along with AWS, and we are very keen. And there's some ISPs, where I'm actually meeting them during the course of this week, there was a there's a lot of potential to collaborate together. So absolutely. And I'll also like to mention that while working with partners, I think work span has been a great partner for us. So I talked to my team, and they have been using that for CO sell activities, for identifying opportunities. So across the globe, I'm trying to increase the adaptability of work span as a tool as well, so that we are able to collaborate more proactively together. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers   8:28  
that's fantastic. Pankaj, thank you so much for taking some time today, and you have a big remit and a lot ahead of you, but it's very exciting. And thank you for sharing, sure.

Pankaj Kumar  8:40  
No, thank you. Thanks a lot. Chip. Great talking to you, and look forward to our collaboration even going forward. And hope you have a great reinvent going forward. Likewise,

Chip Rodgers   8:48  
likewise. Thank you Pankaj, and thank you all for joining, and we'll see you. It's day two here, beginning of day two, and we'll see you. See you throughout the week. Thanks everybody.

Pankaj Kumar  8:59  
Thank you. Rodgers.

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