Rohan Karmarkar: How AWS and Partners Build Better Together

Rohan Karmarkar
===

[00:00:00] Rohan Karmarkar: No it's pretty exciting time, right? Like the entire software development is now being transformed due to AI and with respect to modernization, right? We had many customers and many partners who were helping those customers before AI. Like they would prefer to do just lift and shift, because modernization was hard.

[00:00:19] It was expensive, right? It was the predictability was not there. So lift and shift was probably the right option at the point of time where they would get the right benefits of being on cloud. But now with AI tools, modernization's going to be accelerated, right? So partners are building those capabilities and there are many customers who are like, I don't want to just migrate as is.

[00:00:41] I wanna modernize as I migrate. So you're seeing a lot more of that pattern and capabilities that we have around AWS Transform or Kiro or Agent Code. I'm just going to accelerate that.

[00:00:53] Chip Rodgers: Rohan, a lot of announcements and new capabilities coming out this week. Anything, what's top of mind for you, some of the [00:01:00] things that are really exciting for you and your team?

[00:01:01] Rohan Karmarkar: Yeah, I think there are many, a lot to cover in the today, but I think.

[00:01:06]

[00:01:10] Chip Rodgers: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Inside Partnering, and we are here day one at re:Invent, and oh my gosh, it's so exciting, isn't it?

[00:01:20] Rohan Karmarkar: It is very exciting. It's great to be back here for re:Invent

[00:01:25] Chip Rodgers: And it's, so now Rohan, you have been with AWS for 10 years, so you've been to many re:Invents.

[00:01:31] Rohan Karmarkar: Yeah, this is my actually the 11th re:Invent. I joined my first re:Invent as AWS partner and then last 10, with AWS as well. Yeah it's always great to see so many customers and partners come and attend, re:Invent. It's it's a technical confidence, so they take a lot of like enablement and various aspects of our services.

[00:01:52] From this conference and then we have some exciting launch launches planned for the next few days as well,

[00:01:57] Chip Rodgers: and already some

[00:01:58] Rohan Karmarkar: yeah, I saw your [00:02:00] podcast on Marketplace and we've done some announcements on AWS Transform and capability around application modernization.

[00:02:07] So yeah, the funds begin.

[00:02:10] Chip Rodgers: Thats fantastic. So I'm so excited to be joined by Rohan Karmarkar. Rohan welcome.

[00:02:16] Rohan Karmarkar: Thank you. Welcome and great to be here. Yeah.

[00:02:19] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Rohan is Director of AWS Partner Solution Architecture.

[00:02:24] Which is gosh, you're, your background is 10 years, as I mentioned, 10 years with AWS and then previously you were a partner actually with Cognizant and with Infosys for a number of years. And you started, your background really started in the engineering, deep engineering and as a developer originally.

[00:02:46] Now here you are. That's great background for working with partners to make sure they're building the right solution and technology.

[00:02:52] Rohan Karmarkar: Yeah, a hundred percent right. And when I was when I was starting my career as an engineer, I wish we had all the AI tooling back then. [00:03:00] But it's great to be back, right?

[00:03:01] And then I've started to use some of this getting back to my roots of coding, right? Like I obviously, nobody would want my code to go to production right now. But I do dabble a little bit around doing some vibe coding or doing some prototyping, but it's exciting.

[00:03:15] The tools are so intuitive and so helpful nowadays to build all this and it's great time to be an engineer.

[00:03:23] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Really. So Rohan, tell us a little bit about your role because you work with all kinds of partners you work with GSIs, SIs, I ISVs you and your team. And, you're really helping them build the right architecture.

[00:03:37] But tell you, tell me, tell us about your team and what you guys are up to.

[00:03:40] Rohan Karmarkar: Yeah I lead the Partner Solution Architecture team. So my team is solution architects who work with partners including ISVs, SIs, the global SIs, as well as our channel partners. And we help our partners to build capabilities on top of AWS right.

[00:03:55] And that could include, if you're an ISV, how do they build [00:04:00] better together integrations and differentiation with AWS. So AWS becomes the best platform that they can run their products on. If you're an SI, how you can build different SI offerings, migration, modernizations, security all these offerings on top of AWS and for them.

[00:04:17] We help them to build those solutions and offerings and go to market as well. So my team's responsible for making sure that they have the right, technical they make the right technical decisions, the architectural decisions as they build through these these different solutions and offerings.

[00:04:31] Yeah,

[00:04:32] Chip Rodgers: so that's interesting. So it's both from an ISV standpoint where they're, they wanna build a solution integrated or with AWS for, a solution that's a sort of a co-development, co-development solution. But for the SIs then it's, they, it could be taking an ISV solution and then putting the right integration in place and putting the right architecture as they, as it's actually being instantiated at the [00:05:00] customer, something like that.

[00:05:00] Rohan Karmarkar: Yeah, a hundred percent, right? So SIs do work with a lot of our ISV partners as well as our AWS services, right? They typically end up building solutions or even offerings like many of our SIs are helping customers migrate to cloud or migrate and modernize on cloud, right?

[00:05:17] Moving applications, architecting the right security controls. The right governance and operational controls, like a lot of this work is done by SIs and this is where my team helps the SIs to make the right architectural decisions, make the right technical trade offs cost, performance as well as having the right security and resiliency for those architectures.

[00:05:38] Chip Rodgers: It's interesting, there's so much emphasis on AI today and everyone's trying to figure it out, right? All customers and partners are as well, but modernization is still so important. How, what, how do you see that balance coming out in the market and what advice would you give to partners?

[00:05:57] Rohan Karmarkar: No it's pretty exciting time, right? Like the [00:06:00] entire software development is now being transformed due to AI and with respect to modernization, right? We had many customers and many partners who were helping those customers before AI. Like they would prefer to do just lift and shift, because modernization was hard.

[00:06:16] It was expensive, right? It was the predictability was not there. So lift and shift was probably the right option at the point of time where they would get the right benefits of being on cloud. But now with AI tools, modernization's going to be accelerated, right? So partners are building those capabilities and there are many customers who are like, I don't want to just migrate as is.

[00:06:38] I wanna modernize as I migrate. So you're seeing a lot more of that pattern and capabilities that we have around AWS Transform or Kiro or Agent Code. I'm just going to accelerate that. The good thing about those capabilities is that, it's a partnership with our SI partners and ISVs.

[00:06:57] Yes if you look at AWS [00:07:00] Transform we've recently announced a couple of features which include AWS Transform Custom and AWS Transform Composability, where partners can bring in their own knowledge base. Which could be their own industry and domain expertise. They can bring in their own tools or they can bring in their own agents and integrate into AWS Transform and create a very custom workflow, which is very contextual to their customer.

[00:07:27] So this is again what I like about this is a, it's a good better together. And it also meeting customers where they need to meet. So this the way we think about these toolings is all these tools will have some native capabilities, but they all will be extensible where partners can build on top of that as well.

[00:07:45] Chip Rodgers: I love that. So your answer to my original question is it's not either or. It's really, AI is helping to accelerate a modernization. I love that.

[00:07:55] Rohan Karmarkar: It is able to accelerate modernization. It's reducing a lot of heavy [00:08:00] lifting, right? Like how do you do testing after you modernize, right? Like a lot of the testing can be automated through AI, how do you do the code refactoring and code transformation?

[00:08:10] So there are so many aspects of the modernization journey that's now going to be faster, more predictable more secure. And the ROI will be there. Yeah,

[00:08:20] Chip Rodgers: And I assume also some of the use cases will actually involve AI as well. Even while you're using AI to do the modernization, you're actually embedding it in a

[00:08:32] Rohan Karmarkar: hundred percent, right?

[00:08:33] AI is the driver for modernization in many cases as well. So it's not just like modernizing, moving from an old technology to a new technology. It's also about. Adding new capability, to the application, to the products that you're building. And a lot of that capability will be around AI.

[00:08:51] Chip Rodgers: Love that. That's really what an exciting time. What an exciting time. So talk a little bit about how you work with partners [00:09:00] and working with the AWS field teams. How do you connect the dots there between partners and the field organization?

[00:09:08] Rohan Karmarkar: Yeah. No, for sure. So with partners, right?

[00:09:11] So I can give you an example of a SI. Like with Accenture and Deloitte and IBM and TCS, we work to build the different offerings. These offerings could be migration, modernization related, they could be industry offerings for industry, business processes or workflow solutions, right?

[00:09:30] And or they could be different platforms industry platforms as well. And then once these offerings are built, then we drive that awareness with our field organization so that when whenever our field talks to our customers and understands there's a need for those type of solutions, we can bring in the partner and then we can help them drive drive the right outcomes.

[00:09:49] Yeah. That they need to drive for the customer. Same is the case with ISVs as well. We built up, so many capabilities with some of our ISVs, like SAP, Salesforce, Databricks, Mongo [00:10:00] and Snowflake and others where there is a strong AWS integration and capability story, which we can then through a field get it to our customers as well.

[00:10:09] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:10:10] Chip Rodgers: How about engineering? So I assume you know, you, you're, you, the solution architects are working very closely with partners, whether it's ISVs Yes. Or SI partners. And they're hearing from partners all the time, right? So how about how does that what are you take. Or what's the process, for taking that?

[00:10:29] And then does that get fed back into engineering?

[00:10:32] Rohan Karmarkar: Yeah, no, a hundred percent, all the SAs that work with these partners get a ton of feedback from partners as to what, capabilities we need to build. And that feedback we feed it back to our engineering teams who can then prioritize and roadmap those items and build those capabilities.

[00:10:48] So some of these partnerships are very deep. And it's many times co-engineering done between our services engineering org as well as the partner services and engineering

[00:10:58] Chip Rodgers: org. Interesting.

[00:10:59] Rohan Karmarkar: Yeah. So it's, [00:11:00] yes, it's driving innovation on the platform through the features that the partners would need, and also like building co-engineering and building together as well.

[00:11:08] Yeah.

[00:11:09] Chip Rodgers: Love that. Yeah, that's a, that's so you you guys are the glue that holds everything together. Partners need to be , working with you guys.

[00:11:15] Rohan Karmarkar: Oh, yeah. And super proud of the team, right? The team's like super technical. They're best in the industry, right? Working with the partners, guiding them through this transformation is something that the team does very well, right?

[00:11:27] They act as the real trusted advisors. The unofficial CTOs, I would say for the partners who can help them make the right technical decisions.

[00:11:38] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Rohan, a lot of announcements and new capabilities coming out this week. Anything, what's top of mind for you, some of the things that are really exciting for you and your team?

[00:11:46] Rohan Karmarkar: Yeah, I think there are many, a lot to cover in the today, but I think. See you already talked about like a lot of capabilities on the AWS marketplace, which is super critical for partners. We talked about AWS [00:12:00] Transform. There will be many announcements on the dev tooling side, right?

[00:12:04] Which is going to be very exciting for partners as well. And then AI security even some of our negative capabilities on our compute and lambda and containers. All of those are going to be pretty exciting for partners to really build and, build on those.

[00:12:20] I'm super excited about the the agents that we are launching you know, for security, for DevOps as well as the key autonomous agents. I think the partners are going to love it. Yeah.

[00:12:31] Chip Rodgers: Yeah, it's exciting. Rohan, thank you for taking some time with us and sharing what's happening in with AWS and with partners and really getting, getting into the weeds with with the technical capabilities for partners.

[00:12:44] Rohan Karmarkar: No, thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Yeah,

[00:12:48] Chip Rodgers: So thank you Rohan. Thank you all for joining another episode of Inside Partnering, and we will see you next time and in the meantime, make sure you like, share and subscribe. Thanks everybody, and thanks Rohan.

[00:12:59]

‍