How the Mid-Market Gets Enterprise AI Without a 300-Person IT Org

Mid-market companies account for roughly a third of U.S. jobs and 40% of GDP, and their AI ambitions now match the enterprise. In AWS and Techaisle research, 96% are already acting on AI, and 59% are prioritizing agentic AI. What they lack is a 200 or 300-person IT organization. Data readiness, unpredictable costs, cybersecurity, and a persistent skills gap stand between intent and production.

Tiffani Bova, Chief Strategy and Research Officer at The Futurum Group, hears from Chris Sullivan, VP of Partner Sales and Development at AWS about how AWS partners combine industry expertise with the latest AI technology to move mid-market customers out of proof-of-concept mode, and why AWS Marketplace is becoming the default channel for finding, buying, and deploying those solutions.

For mid-market leaders, the deployment path runs through partners and procurement. Marketplace storefronts, agent mode, and express private offers cut sourcing work from weeks to minutes, and outcome-based packaged solutions tie AI spending to measurable business results. Sullivan’s advice is to start with a real business problem and choose a partner with proven industry expertise and AWS competencies.

Key Takeaways:

🔹 The mid-market wants enterprise AI without enterprise resources. Regional health systems, financial services firms, and specialty manufacturers want the same transformation as large enterprises, but must work through partners to overcome gaps in data readiness, cost predictability, security, and skills.

🔹 Partners turn AI into measurable business outcomes. BrainBox AI, working with partner Caylent, built a natural language assistant on Amazon Bedrock that cut HVAC emissions by about 40% and costs by 25%. Mission Cloud built a generative AI captioning and translation service for documentary streamer Magellan TV.

🔹 AWS Marketplace is becoming the default buying channel. Partner-branded storefronts, agent mode for plain-language discovery, and express private offers simplify procurement. Mission Cloud now sources 25% of its net new business through Marketplace, and Genpact uses it to offer outcome-based pricing tied to EBITDA and churn.

🔹 Why mid-market leaders should start with the business problem. Sullivan calls AI a great equalizer. He urges leaders to begin with a real challenge, then choose partners with industry experience and AWS competencies in areas such as SMB, generative AI, and security.

🔹 How agentic co-sell tools speed up partners. More than 1,000 partners have adopted AWS co-sell agents since launch, and they report closing deals 65% faster with deals 54% larger.

Mid-market companies that pair a clear business problem with the right partner and a streamlined buying path can deploy AI at enterprise grade without enterprise-sized teams.

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Chris Sullivan:

Start with a business problem and choose a partner that has expertise in your industry, has solutions and some tenure in helping to understand and translate what you see as a business challenge or an opportunity into something that we can do to help move you forward.

‍

Tiffani Bova: 

Hello and welcome to this Six Five Virtual Webcast. I'm TiffanyiBova, Chief Strategy and Research Officer at the Futurum Group. Today, I'll be digging into the mid-market AI opportunity and how AWS and its partners are helping these companies get from intent to production. Joining me will be Chris Sullivan, VP of Partner Sales and Development at AWS. Chris, welcome to the Six Five.

‍

Chris Sullivan: 

Thanks very much, Tiffani. I'm excited to be here. I appreciate your time.

‍

Tiffani Bova: 

Yeah, you know, I'm excited as well. So much of the time we talk about enterprise AI, and I feel like the mid-market companies get a little left in the dust. No one's really kind of covering how and where they're going to be leveraging AI, and more importantly, how providers like AWS are going to be able to reach and service them. So I'd love to start there because I think that that is just a huge opportunity across the board.

‍

Chris Sullivan: 

Yeah, thanks for that. And we see it the same way. We put a tremendous amount of effort programmatically resources into developing and working with our partners to support these customers. So I feel the same way. And, you know, just numerically, right, that's roughly a third of the jobs in this country, and 40% of our GDP comes from this segment of customers. But when the AI conversation is had to your earlier point, it's really enterprise centric. And so I think for us, We're really trying to work with our partners, and we have the examples we'll share later, to focus on the AI use cases that are really evolving, how they manage their processes, how they manage innovation within their businesses, how they take their products and services to market. And so those use cases are really maturing very, very quickly. And our network of partners combined with our marketplace capabilities and evolution has really made that an exciting place to be. These types of customers, they're everything from regional health care systems, financial services, all kinds of specialty manufacturing organizations. And they all have the same requirements, the same desire for innovation, the same desire to transform their businesses that our strategic enterprise customers do. But they're doing it with far fewer resources, internal resources predominantly. There's no 200, 300 person IT organization to help them. It's really incumbent upon them to work with a partner. And that is how most of them have traditionally gone to market and leveraged technology historically. And that's continuing today. Some of the barriers, and Timothy, you know this as well as anyone, the barriers are consistent, right? It is data readiness. Is the data in a place, in a position, organized and centralized in a manner where it can be accessed by these AI opportunities? The cost structure is really, really important to these businesses, so they can't have surprises. They can't have AI overrun in their budgets. They really need to be well supported in how they plan, forecast, and consume these technologies. Cybersecurity is a continuous challenge, same as the enterprise level, but without the sophistication from an internal support perspective. And then the skills gap. The skills gap is real. It's real in our GSI partners. It's real in our partners that are focusing on SMB, and it's very real for our customers as well. So these are some of the things that we're focused on and some of the things that we're trying to ensure that we're providing the right network of partners, the right support, programmatics and funding to help these customers be successful.

‍

Tiffani Bova: 

Well, you published a report earlier this year and there was a stat in there that really stood out to me that 59% are already prioritizing agentic AI. I think that that is just a really telling signal for the market that this isn't just an enterprise play. This is mid-market and even into small business. You mentioned that these companies need a partner to deliver all that demand. And as you mentioned, like, I couldn't agree more. You know, I think that that middle of the market requires very different things. And as you said, they don't have massive IT departments. They have IT departments, don't get me wrong, but they may not have all the capabilities today. And so, you know, I believe, you know, that you have an opportunity here to fill that gap right between what the customers are wanting, not only what you just but also what your report showed and how AWS is really showing up to ensure that those customers and partners can kind of find each other.

‍

Chris Sullivan: 

Oh, absolutely. And we can talk about the marketplace piece in a second, but one of the things that's become incredibly important to these types of customers is they need the industry expertise as well as the deployment expertise and the pace of innovation from a technology perspective is so fast. Even if you do have a reasonably sized IT department, it's incredibly challenging to keep pace with innovation across the model providers, all of the different AI platforms that are emerging and being developed. That pace is so fast that we have partners, many of our partners are spending an inordinate amount of investment to keep up. to be the organization that can bring industry expertise, as well as the most frontline leading edge technologies, bring those together and help a customer get from ideation or get from, you know, we spent a lot of time in POC land, right, to really build and deliver solutions that can impact their businesses. I'll give you two quick examples. The first one is BrainBox AI. So, delivered by a partner named Kalen who's done a phenomenal job in the space for us, but they basically built a natural language assistant on Amazon bedrock and their business is HVAC so maybe not a business that people would think about as being right for disruption. But as far as managing the power consumption of HVAC in massive commercial environments, they're able to deliver an energy saving something like 40% lower emissions, 25% less cost, and then the predictive maintenance side of things is really robust. So their technicians move around the country, interacting with this application called ARIA, and it tells them where to go, what sites to drive to, what parts to bring, and what predictive maintenance needs to be performed. And it's all being done in real time using a natural language interface built on Amazon Bedrock. So a great opportunity for us to deliver with Kalint, a solution that has a robust impact on the business, returns a financial benefit, as well as delivers an efficiency and a job satisfaction to their technicians in the field. So I love that example. A second example I'd share with you is Magellan TV. This customer was supported by a partner Mission Cloud, and they built a generative AI captioning and translation service for Magellan's content. So Magellan has a massive global and international audience. They are in the documentary business, so they collect and aggregate all of these documentaries produced in multiple languages all over the world. They provide a streaming service for their customers and all of the captioning and translation, which used to take a huge amount of human capital to do, is now being done by this platform, leveraging generative AI on a solution that was built on AWS. So another example of a use case that maybe wouldn't come to mind, but has had a strategic impact on the opportunity for this company to serve their customers. Really, really exciting. And I think the last piece is just how we access and provide these opportunities to our customers. And that's really where Marketplace comes into play. especially supported by the agentic capabilities that we built into it. Customers can come and interact with the marketplace to solution the different things that they need. It can be an application, it can be a partner with a specific capability of specialization, but they can find the use case, they can find the solution, they can find partners, they can find deployment capability, they can find a tri-party solution. So it might be a SaaS provider combined with a systems integrator to provide a bundled capability so that they can handle the resourcing that's required as well as the technology. So these types of opportunities are really changing the game for customers in this space. We find it super exciting to support them.

‍

Tiffani Bova: 

Well, you just rattled off some great examples, whether it's HVAC or in the TV space. And look, customer expectations don't scale down or become less important just because they're smaller, right? I mean, at the end of the day, they want a verticalized, industry-specific, like know me, know my business, know my space. And I think that that is that gap right between where the mid-market has to be very thoughtfully gone after, if you will, right? Because it can't just be, look, you've got all this talent, you're going to go figure out how to operationalize it for your industry or your area of expertise. And I think that that's where, let's talk more about that marketplace, because how are you seeing this IT discovery and purchasing habits shift? for mid-market because I think AWS really set the bar a very long time ago on acquiring infrastructure as a service. And so knowing that when businesses are looking for something that they can get it in a very seamless and easy way, friction, use my credit card, let's go. And I'm guessing you're seeing similar things on the agentic side as well.

‍

Chris Sullivan: 

We definitely are, and I think it's a well-established fact in our industry that cloud marketplaces are becoming a default channel, not just for software, but also for consulting-led solutions and managed services for these customers. So when you don't have a significant resourcing for dedicated sourcing teams, and you want to avoid long-term evaluations and things like that, all of these capabilities from a procurement perspective come into play. the consolidated billing across your solutions, streamlined contracts, all those things really help these customers. They make it easier for them to learn about the technology, find the right solution, adopt the solution, and remove a lot of the procurement barriers that can take a whole lot of time when it comes to working with disparate vendors across your landscape, whether it's AI or traditional software. I think a couple of innovations for us, the storefronts have been really, really important, which is a partner branded experience within Marketplace, as opposed to having customers access or be intimidated by a massive catalog, they're getting a branded and curated experience through our partners. That makes a lot of sense for a lot of partners. Another piece, and I kind of touched on in the example, is agent mode in Marketplace, where customers can describe in plain language what they're looking for, and they can get recommendations, they can get comparisons, they can work purchase approvals, all those things supported by really advanced agentic capability. Express private offers is another one, which is tailored pricing for your specific request. And that doesn't require weeks or months to negotiate or to deal with across different vendors. We're doing that in a very, very short period of time, oftentimes in minutes, as opposed to something that historically would take weeks. And we've got customers, you know, I mentioned Mission Cloud. They built an amazing set of packaged AI solutions in Marketplace. They're now at 25% of their net new business is coming through Marketplace. That's an amazing lift to a business or a partnership like Mission Cloud. Not everything has to be sourced through traditional DG methods. We've now got Marketplace sourcing customers and providing opportunities into their business. Genpak is another great example. They've used Marketplace to move from billable hours to outcome-based pricing. So they're tying it to EBITDA gains, cash recovery, reduced churn in a customer's business. These things are really transformational tools and opportunities that our partners can use. They can leverage all of the goodness of AWS Marketplace and create innovative solutions and opportunities for their customers. I think it's super important and the pace of innovation for us and marketplace, as you've seen, has not slowed down. We're releasing features at an accelerated rate, just like everyone else. We're leveraging agentic technology to do so, but we're really excited about what we're seeing and where we believe the platform can continue to grow.

‍

Tiffani Bova: 

Yeah, and I think the one thing that I took away from that is, look, I think many organizations are trying to figure out the return on the investment around AI. So these kind of outcome-based prepackaged solutions removes a lot of that hesitancy, right? Like I'm unsure of how to do this, or I'm overwhelmed, or I don't have the talent. And that's where I think those prepackaged solutions in the marketplace are just a great way to go. And with that said, and you said that allowing the users and the customers and the prospects, if you will, an easy way to find those solutions, right? Easier to locate them, uncover them, understand, is it a fit? Does it have what I need? And what should mid-market leaders be thinking about now? Now with all the capabilities that the marketplace has, but also AWS is heavily investing in, as you just said, you're doing it in days and weeks, not months and years. And so if you were a CIO or CTO at a mid-market company watching this, what should you be thinking about right now when it comes to AI and modernization, but more importantly, where do you start?

‍

Chris Sullivan: 

Just think about our engagement with customers over the last 18 months has completely changed, right? We went from experimentation into delivery of real agentic capabilities that are changing businesses. And so I think for my perspective is I see AI as a great equalizer. especially for mid-market customers. They might see things happening in the industry. They might have innovative ideas themselves, but leveraging these technologies, partnerships, and marketplace, I think they can build and innovate much more quickly. They have a level of intelligence that is available to them that typically would have required a significant investment in budgets and resources. And so I think for us, it's kind of re-imagining what your business can be. and being really open to the think big side of things, right? What is a transformational opportunity in your business that maybe you wouldn't have been able to consider in the past that you can now table, work with partners, work with AWS and put something into production that can really change the game from you. And one of the things that I'll tell you, I tell this to all the partners I work with as well, Start with real business problems. This isn't about a curated technology list that you feel like is the right compelling thing to be adopting. Start with a business problem and choose a partner that has expertise in your industry, has solutions and some tenure in helping to understand and translate what you see as a business challenge or an opportunity into something that we can do to help really move you forward. And it could be customer experience, it could be security posture, whatever it might be that you're trying to solve for, we have partners that can deliver those capabilities to you. You know, the one thing I'll also advise, I guess, when you're using Marketplace or when you're working within the AWS Partner Network is look for the competency. look for the partners that have the use cases aligned to what it is that you're trying to solve for. We spend a significant amount of time and have an incredibly high bar for the competencies, whether it's an SMB competency, a generative AI competency, a security competency, all those different things, all those different certifications and ways that we recognize and support our partners, they all have a really high bar. So as you search and look for support, make sure that those types of identifiers are in your search process so that we can bring the right capability and the right partner to benefit for you.

‍

Tiffani Bova: 

Yeah, and I think the one thing I would say is that finding somebody, a partner, and an organization that has done it before is also really helpful, right? Because that experience gets used in your company and you're not on this learning journey, if you will. completely at the same time, but I would say everything is moving so quickly that it's hard to say I'm an expert in something and then next week, boom, it changes. I was an expert last week or last model or last version and everyone has to keep up. With that said, where are AWS and the partners headed? What's next for this team and this group and these offers?

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Chris Sullivan: 

I will tell you, in these conversations, people will ask me a question like that, or a question like, what do you see happening in 18 months? And man, I wish I could be specific.

‍

Tiffani Bova: 

Yeah, I didn't even say 18 months. I just said, what's next? Could be next week, next month, tomorrow, today, in an hour.

‍

Chris Sullivan: 

No, I totally get it. I think for us, obviously we'll continue to invest in marketplace. We'll continue to evolve the features and capabilities. And the reason is we want the agility that we provide customers to be incredibly capable. We want them to be able to interact with these platforms, get great information, get great solutions, get connections to great partners that can help them in the immediate timeframe. So I think that's really important. We're doing a ton of work with Ajenta capabilities around our co-sell agents, which is how we enable our partners to advance opportunities through the deal cycle with incredible information, incredible telemetry, all the information that we can provide them to help them be successful in supporting customers so that they can scale more quickly. We want them to be able to support a larger number of customers. with a lower barrier to entry, a lower barrier to support and success. So we'll continue to do that. And we're seeing some great results. Our partners that are working with those tools, we've got, I think, over 1,000 partners that have adopted them since we launched. They're closing deals 65% faster. They're telling us their deals are 54% larger. So we're seeing a whole lot of momentum in this space. And I love when partners embrace it. It takes a little bit of learning. It takes an adjustment, right? You're used to picking up the phone, used to calling people. We still do that. And we always want to be responsive at the human level. But if the tooling can help a partner develop an opportunity, can help them bring capability to a customer, do it more quickly than the traditional methods of co-selling, that's a win for everyone. And then when customers need us, we want to be responsive to our partners and customers directly as we will continue to do. So I think if you're waiting for the right moment, I think it's here. Uh, I don't think you're on the front on the bleeding edge anymore. Um, and I'm really excited about the value that's being created. It really is a different way that we're talking to partners and customers now than a couple of years ago. And, um, like I said, I wish I could tell you what 18 months is going to look like, but it's very exciting time for all of us.

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Tiffani Bova: 

Well, thank you so much, Chris, for joining me today for this great conversation. I really enjoyed it.

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Chris Sullivan: 

Thank you.

‍

Tiffani Bova: 

And thanks to everyone at home for tuning in. Don't forget to hit subscribe, follow us on socials, and check out all of our coverage at sixfivemedia.com. See you next time.

Chris Sullivan:

Start with a business problem and choose a partner that has expertise in your industry, has solutions and some tenure in helping to understand and translate what you see as a business challenge or an opportunity into something that we can do to help move you forward.

‍

Tiffani Bova: 

Hello and welcome to this Six Five Virtual Webcast. I'm TiffanyiBova, Chief Strategy and Research Officer at the Futurum Group. Today, I'll be digging into the mid-market AI opportunity and how AWS and its partners are helping these companies get from intent to production. Joining me will be Chris Sullivan, VP of Partner Sales and Development at AWS. Chris, welcome to the Six Five.

‍

Chris Sullivan: 

Thanks very much, Tiffani. I'm excited to be here. I appreciate your time.

‍

Tiffani Bova: 

Yeah, you know, I'm excited as well. So much of the time we talk about enterprise AI, and I feel like the mid-market companies get a little left in the dust. No one's really kind of covering how and where they're going to be leveraging AI, and more importantly, how providers like AWS are going to be able to reach and service them. So I'd love to start there because I think that that is just a huge opportunity across the board.

‍

Chris Sullivan: 

Yeah, thanks for that. And we see it the same way. We put a tremendous amount of effort programmatically resources into developing and working with our partners to support these customers. So I feel the same way. And, you know, just numerically, right, that's roughly a third of the jobs in this country, and 40% of our GDP comes from this segment of customers. But when the AI conversation is had to your earlier point, it's really enterprise centric. And so I think for us, We're really trying to work with our partners, and we have the examples we'll share later, to focus on the AI use cases that are really evolving, how they manage their processes, how they manage innovation within their businesses, how they take their products and services to market. And so those use cases are really maturing very, very quickly. And our network of partners combined with our marketplace capabilities and evolution has really made that an exciting place to be. These types of customers, they're everything from regional health care systems, financial services, all kinds of specialty manufacturing organizations. And they all have the same requirements, the same desire for innovation, the same desire to transform their businesses that our strategic enterprise customers do. But they're doing it with far fewer resources, internal resources predominantly. There's no 200, 300 person IT organization to help them. It's really incumbent upon them to work with a partner. And that is how most of them have traditionally gone to market and leveraged technology historically. And that's continuing today. Some of the barriers, and Timothy, you know this as well as anyone, the barriers are consistent, right? It is data readiness. Is the data in a place, in a position, organized and centralized in a manner where it can be accessed by these AI opportunities? The cost structure is really, really important to these businesses, so they can't have surprises. They can't have AI overrun in their budgets. They really need to be well supported in how they plan, forecast, and consume these technologies. Cybersecurity is a continuous challenge, same as the enterprise level, but without the sophistication from an internal support perspective. And then the skills gap. The skills gap is real. It's real in our GSI partners. It's real in our partners that are focusing on SMB, and it's very real for our customers as well. So these are some of the things that we're focused on and some of the things that we're trying to ensure that we're providing the right network of partners, the right support, programmatics and funding to help these customers be successful.

‍

Tiffani Bova: 

Well, you published a report earlier this year and there was a stat in there that really stood out to me that 59% are already prioritizing agentic AI. I think that that is just a really telling signal for the market that this isn't just an enterprise play. This is mid-market and even into small business. You mentioned that these companies need a partner to deliver all that demand. And as you mentioned, like, I couldn't agree more. You know, I think that that middle of the market requires very different things. And as you said, they don't have massive IT departments. They have IT departments, don't get me wrong, but they may not have all the capabilities today. And so, you know, I believe, you know, that you have an opportunity here to fill that gap right between what the customers are wanting, not only what you just but also what your report showed and how AWS is really showing up to ensure that those customers and partners can kind of find each other.

‍

Chris Sullivan: 

Oh, absolutely. And we can talk about the marketplace piece in a second, but one of the things that's become incredibly important to these types of customers is they need the industry expertise as well as the deployment expertise and the pace of innovation from a technology perspective is so fast. Even if you do have a reasonably sized IT department, it's incredibly challenging to keep pace with innovation across the model providers, all of the different AI platforms that are emerging and being developed. That pace is so fast that we have partners, many of our partners are spending an inordinate amount of investment to keep up. to be the organization that can bring industry expertise, as well as the most frontline leading edge technologies, bring those together and help a customer get from ideation or get from, you know, we spent a lot of time in POC land, right, to really build and deliver solutions that can impact their businesses. I'll give you two quick examples. The first one is BrainBox AI. So, delivered by a partner named Kalen who's done a phenomenal job in the space for us, but they basically built a natural language assistant on Amazon bedrock and their business is HVAC so maybe not a business that people would think about as being right for disruption. But as far as managing the power consumption of HVAC in massive commercial environments, they're able to deliver an energy saving something like 40% lower emissions, 25% less cost, and then the predictive maintenance side of things is really robust. So their technicians move around the country, interacting with this application called ARIA, and it tells them where to go, what sites to drive to, what parts to bring, and what predictive maintenance needs to be performed. And it's all being done in real time using a natural language interface built on Amazon Bedrock. So a great opportunity for us to deliver with Kalint, a solution that has a robust impact on the business, returns a financial benefit, as well as delivers an efficiency and a job satisfaction to their technicians in the field. So I love that example. A second example I'd share with you is Magellan TV. This customer was supported by a partner Mission Cloud, and they built a generative AI captioning and translation service for Magellan's content. So Magellan has a massive global and international audience. They are in the documentary business, so they collect and aggregate all of these documentaries produced in multiple languages all over the world. They provide a streaming service for their customers and all of the captioning and translation, which used to take a huge amount of human capital to do, is now being done by this platform, leveraging generative AI on a solution that was built on AWS. So another example of a use case that maybe wouldn't come to mind, but has had a strategic impact on the opportunity for this company to serve their customers. Really, really exciting. And I think the last piece is just how we access and provide these opportunities to our customers. And that's really where Marketplace comes into play. especially supported by the agentic capabilities that we built into it. Customers can come and interact with the marketplace to solution the different things that they need. It can be an application, it can be a partner with a specific capability of specialization, but they can find the use case, they can find the solution, they can find partners, they can find deployment capability, they can find a tri-party solution. So it might be a SaaS provider combined with a systems integrator to provide a bundled capability so that they can handle the resourcing that's required as well as the technology. So these types of opportunities are really changing the game for customers in this space. We find it super exciting to support them.

‍

Tiffani Bova: 

Well, you just rattled off some great examples, whether it's HVAC or in the TV space. And look, customer expectations don't scale down or become less important just because they're smaller, right? I mean, at the end of the day, they want a verticalized, industry-specific, like know me, know my business, know my space. And I think that that is that gap right between where the mid-market has to be very thoughtfully gone after, if you will, right? Because it can't just be, look, you've got all this talent, you're going to go figure out how to operationalize it for your industry or your area of expertise. And I think that that's where, let's talk more about that marketplace, because how are you seeing this IT discovery and purchasing habits shift? for mid-market because I think AWS really set the bar a very long time ago on acquiring infrastructure as a service. And so knowing that when businesses are looking for something that they can get it in a very seamless and easy way, friction, use my credit card, let's go. And I'm guessing you're seeing similar things on the agentic side as well.

‍

Chris Sullivan: 

We definitely are, and I think it's a well-established fact in our industry that cloud marketplaces are becoming a default channel, not just for software, but also for consulting-led solutions and managed services for these customers. So when you don't have a significant resourcing for dedicated sourcing teams, and you want to avoid long-term evaluations and things like that, all of these capabilities from a procurement perspective come into play. the consolidated billing across your solutions, streamlined contracts, all those things really help these customers. They make it easier for them to learn about the technology, find the right solution, adopt the solution, and remove a lot of the procurement barriers that can take a whole lot of time when it comes to working with disparate vendors across your landscape, whether it's AI or traditional software. I think a couple of innovations for us, the storefronts have been really, really important, which is a partner branded experience within Marketplace, as opposed to having customers access or be intimidated by a massive catalog, they're getting a branded and curated experience through our partners. That makes a lot of sense for a lot of partners. Another piece, and I kind of touched on in the example, is agent mode in Marketplace, where customers can describe in plain language what they're looking for, and they can get recommendations, they can get comparisons, they can work purchase approvals, all those things supported by really advanced agentic capability. Express private offers is another one, which is tailored pricing for your specific request. And that doesn't require weeks or months to negotiate or to deal with across different vendors. We're doing that in a very, very short period of time, oftentimes in minutes, as opposed to something that historically would take weeks. And we've got customers, you know, I mentioned Mission Cloud. They built an amazing set of packaged AI solutions in Marketplace. They're now at 25% of their net new business is coming through Marketplace. That's an amazing lift to a business or a partnership like Mission Cloud. Not everything has to be sourced through traditional DG methods. We've now got Marketplace sourcing customers and providing opportunities into their business. Genpak is another great example. They've used Marketplace to move from billable hours to outcome-based pricing. So they're tying it to EBITDA gains, cash recovery, reduced churn in a customer's business. These things are really transformational tools and opportunities that our partners can use. They can leverage all of the goodness of AWS Marketplace and create innovative solutions and opportunities for their customers. I think it's super important and the pace of innovation for us and marketplace, as you've seen, has not slowed down. We're releasing features at an accelerated rate, just like everyone else. We're leveraging agentic technology to do so, but we're really excited about what we're seeing and where we believe the platform can continue to grow.

‍

Tiffani Bova: 

Yeah, and I think the one thing that I took away from that is, look, I think many organizations are trying to figure out the return on the investment around AI. So these kind of outcome-based prepackaged solutions removes a lot of that hesitancy, right? Like I'm unsure of how to do this, or I'm overwhelmed, or I don't have the talent. And that's where I think those prepackaged solutions in the marketplace are just a great way to go. And with that said, and you said that allowing the users and the customers and the prospects, if you will, an easy way to find those solutions, right? Easier to locate them, uncover them, understand, is it a fit? Does it have what I need? And what should mid-market leaders be thinking about now? Now with all the capabilities that the marketplace has, but also AWS is heavily investing in, as you just said, you're doing it in days and weeks, not months and years. And so if you were a CIO or CTO at a mid-market company watching this, what should you be thinking about right now when it comes to AI and modernization, but more importantly, where do you start?

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Chris Sullivan: 

Just think about our engagement with customers over the last 18 months has completely changed, right? We went from experimentation into delivery of real agentic capabilities that are changing businesses. And so I think for my perspective is I see AI as a great equalizer. especially for mid-market customers. They might see things happening in the industry. They might have innovative ideas themselves, but leveraging these technologies, partnerships, and marketplace, I think they can build and innovate much more quickly. They have a level of intelligence that is available to them that typically would have required a significant investment in budgets and resources. And so I think for us, it's kind of re-imagining what your business can be. and being really open to the think big side of things, right? What is a transformational opportunity in your business that maybe you wouldn't have been able to consider in the past that you can now table, work with partners, work with AWS and put something into production that can really change the game from you. And one of the things that I'll tell you, I tell this to all the partners I work with as well, Start with real business problems. This isn't about a curated technology list that you feel like is the right compelling thing to be adopting. Start with a business problem and choose a partner that has expertise in your industry, has solutions and some tenure in helping to understand and translate what you see as a business challenge or an opportunity into something that we can do to help really move you forward. And it could be customer experience, it could be security posture, whatever it might be that you're trying to solve for, we have partners that can deliver those capabilities to you. You know, the one thing I'll also advise, I guess, when you're using Marketplace or when you're working within the AWS Partner Network is look for the competency. look for the partners that have the use cases aligned to what it is that you're trying to solve for. We spend a significant amount of time and have an incredibly high bar for the competencies, whether it's an SMB competency, a generative AI competency, a security competency, all those different things, all those different certifications and ways that we recognize and support our partners, they all have a really high bar. So as you search and look for support, make sure that those types of identifiers are in your search process so that we can bring the right capability and the right partner to benefit for you.

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Tiffani Bova: 

Yeah, and I think the one thing I would say is that finding somebody, a partner, and an organization that has done it before is also really helpful, right? Because that experience gets used in your company and you're not on this learning journey, if you will. completely at the same time, but I would say everything is moving so quickly that it's hard to say I'm an expert in something and then next week, boom, it changes. I was an expert last week or last model or last version and everyone has to keep up. With that said, where are AWS and the partners headed? What's next for this team and this group and these offers?

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Chris Sullivan: 

I will tell you, in these conversations, people will ask me a question like that, or a question like, what do you see happening in 18 months? And man, I wish I could be specific.

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Tiffani Bova: 

Yeah, I didn't even say 18 months. I just said, what's next? Could be next week, next month, tomorrow, today, in an hour.

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Chris Sullivan: 

No, I totally get it. I think for us, obviously we'll continue to invest in marketplace. We'll continue to evolve the features and capabilities. And the reason is we want the agility that we provide customers to be incredibly capable. We want them to be able to interact with these platforms, get great information, get great solutions, get connections to great partners that can help them in the immediate timeframe. So I think that's really important. We're doing a ton of work with Ajenta capabilities around our co-sell agents, which is how we enable our partners to advance opportunities through the deal cycle with incredible information, incredible telemetry, all the information that we can provide them to help them be successful in supporting customers so that they can scale more quickly. We want them to be able to support a larger number of customers. with a lower barrier to entry, a lower barrier to support and success. So we'll continue to do that. And we're seeing some great results. Our partners that are working with those tools, we've got, I think, over 1,000 partners that have adopted them since we launched. They're closing deals 65% faster. They're telling us their deals are 54% larger. So we're seeing a whole lot of momentum in this space. And I love when partners embrace it. It takes a little bit of learning. It takes an adjustment, right? You're used to picking up the phone, used to calling people. We still do that. And we always want to be responsive at the human level. But if the tooling can help a partner develop an opportunity, can help them bring capability to a customer, do it more quickly than the traditional methods of co-selling, that's a win for everyone. And then when customers need us, we want to be responsive to our partners and customers directly as we will continue to do. So I think if you're waiting for the right moment, I think it's here. Uh, I don't think you're on the front on the bleeding edge anymore. Um, and I'm really excited about the value that's being created. It really is a different way that we're talking to partners and customers now than a couple of years ago. And, um, like I said, I wish I could tell you what 18 months is going to look like, but it's very exciting time for all of us.

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Tiffani Bova: 

Well, thank you so much, Chris, for joining me today for this great conversation. I really enjoyed it.

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Chris Sullivan: 

Thank you.

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Tiffani Bova: 

And thanks to everyone at home for tuning in. Don't forget to hit subscribe, follow us on socials, and check out all of our coverage at sixfivemedia.com. See you next time.