The world is taking notice of India’s digital leadership: Jeffrey Kratz, GM – Partner Sales, AWS

On the sidelines of the AWS Summit at Washington DC, Prabhu Ram, Head- Industry Intelligence Group (IIG), CyberMedia Research (CMR), spoke with Jeff Kratz, General Manager, AWS Worldwide Public Sector Partners, Programs, and Activation Sales

Q: Jeff, you were elevated to the new worldwide public sector partner program leader position amidst the pandemic and in a rather tough global environment. Talk to us about your role, and your journey during this time? 

Jeffrey Kratz: I think I have one of the best jobs in the world. Firstly, over the past decade, I have worked with, and seen the innovation in the international markets accelerate. I bring that international experience into my current role. 

Secondly, with my international lens, I have been able to witness the speed of innovation within AWS Public Sector.  There are 48 local zones globally that extend AWS regions to place AWS services at the edge of the cloud. 

Lastly, the innovation in the partner channels. AWS partners are solving  some of the world's hardest problems leveraging technology amidst the pandemic. 

Together with Ruba Borno – vice president, Worldwide Channels & Alliances, AWS, we have been driving simplicity, predictability and profitability for AWS partners. 

For instance, AWS has historically managed commercial and public sector authorizations under two different authorization processes. AWS is now simplifying the processes, making workflows easier for partners, and enabling AWS to expand its Public Sector Distribution Program to >100 countries. 

During the course of the pandemic, AWS and its partners focused on re-imagining what is possible in solving pressing challenges, with a mission-driven business. 

Q: The pandemic highlighted the inadequacies in the form of outdated IT infrastructure. In the new hybrid world, how is AWS supporting public sector?

Jeffrey Kratz: Governments are evolving and increasingly functioning like start-ups.  The pandemic provided a very unfortunate innovation laboratory for ushering in and accelerating modernization of IT services. Cloud played a critical role in enabling governments to address critical challenges posed by the pandemic.  

Over the past two years, the conversation with Governments is continuously evolving to around how best to adopt new advanced technologies. The  pace of decision-making within Government is increasingly swifter, driven by continuous awareness and education around the possibilities that new technologies present.  

We see continuous acceleration in Cloud adoption. 

Q: There is increased momentum in cloud adoption in public sector in the immediate now. How do you see this pan out as we move forward? What about laggards?

Jeffrey Kratz: We are increasingly seeing a fewer laggards out there. Security was a key concern for laggards. In embracing Cloud, laggards are now solving for security. 

An increasing challenge in the new normal, for instance, is ransomware. All 117 AWS services that store customer data offer the ability to encrypt that data.  We constantly work with governments to innovate and share globally the best practice.

Q: Given the rapid pace of modernization in public sector, how is the AWS Partner Transformation Program enabling partners? What are some of the key trends that you see?

Jeffrey Kratz: When it comes to solving mission-critical challenges, and complex business problems at scale, governments seek innovation and rapidly deployable solutions. Our partners seek to move fast. The rapid adoption assistance program enables partners to swiftly innovate and deliver on mission-critical programs. We are supporting partners with technical training workshops around AI, ML and IoT. 

We are also seeing a big shift with customers moving from using ‘easy to compute’ to doing more container application development. To support our partners, we are rolling out new technical training around containers. 

The Partner Transformation Program (PTP) is one of many ways we are helping our partners to accelerate their response and delivering on customer expectations. 

The pandemic has brought us all together in new ways, and it is helping drive further integration between public and private sector.

Q: Under your stewardship, how is the AWS Public Sector Partner Strategy evolving globally, and specifically, in APAC? 

Jeffrey Kratz: In the last few months, we have seen a speed of innovation never seen before. More petabytes of data are being created daily. From a public sector perspective, the questions are increasingly around the insights and learnings that can be gleaned from such data.

We are focused on start-ups. For instance, 68% of the world's start-ups use AWS. This trend is continuing to accelerate. Whether it be in the pace of new innovations, or failing fast on product development, start-ups love working with AWS. 

With our Healthcare Accelerator, we are focused on addressing healthcare inequities.  Similarly, our space efforts are well underway with the AWS Space Accelerator.

Q: How do you view India’s digital initiatives? 

Jeffrey Kratz: When it comes to public sector, the world is going to be taking notice of how India is leading in technology adoption. 

The pace with which the Government of India is understanding and embracing technology, and leveraging that to solves some of the most practical and diverse challenges and complexities with its leadership is inspiring. 

I see India making investments in the long-term success for, not just India, but for the rest of the world. There are so many best digital practices from India that the world can benefit from, and we are seeing it happen daily. 

Q: What are the focus initiatives for AWS Public Sector going forward?

Jeffrey Kratz: I think about this from a couple of different ways. We continue to be proactive listeners to our customers, and deliver on our customer obsession - both for our customers and our partners. 

A lot of government workloads need fast response time. And so a second part of just the innovation is really pushing the services and innovation out to the edge very quickly, so that our partner community can seize on all these wonderful services and tools and build things for them. 

Lastly, the world is facing a technical talent shortage. At AWS, we are leveraging programs such as AWS Educate to enable professionals to learn new skills. For instance, we have made a commitment to support the training of 29 million individuals around the globe on cloud computing by 2025. 

Q: What is that personally excites about you about the future of AWS Public Sector?

Jeffrey Kratz: We are focused on the greater good with a mission-driven mindset. With the experience and innovation in cloud services that we bring, coupled with a very energetic inspiring partner community that wants to solve really hard problems, we are here to make this world a better place. 

What drives me is the challenges that the world faces, and our ability and focus to deliver on a greater good for tomorrow. I have been inspired by it, and I personally feel very strongly to strive and deliver on results.