AWS Reaches 80 More Countries, Adds Public Sector to Ingram Micro Cloud

INGRAM MICRO CLOUD SUMMIT—Amazon Web Services is adding 80 more countries, for a total of 177, to its reach. It’s also targeting more public sector opportunities through its existing Strategic Collaboration Agreement with Ingram Micro Cloud.

AWS’ Ruba Borno

Ruba Borno, vice president of worldwide channels and alliances at AWS, made the announcements Wednesday morning during her keynote session at the Ingram Micro Cloud Summit in Miami Beach.

First, she told Channel Futures in a pre-speech interview on May 17, AWS’ bigger footprint marks “a pretty material jump in terms of availability.”

As such, channel partners in AWS’ 80 additional countries now may offer all of the public cloud provider’s products and services. That makes AWS available in the world’s top 100 countries (by gross domestic product), except for those on sanctions lists and engaged in active conflicts (think Iran, Iraq, Libya, Belarus, the Dominican Republic, and others.) If you’re wondering about Russia, which continues to invade Ukraine, AWS tells Channel Futures: “We no longer accept new Russia and Belarus-based AWS sign-ups and Amazon third-party sellers.”

Bringing Public Sector Opportunities to Ingram Micro Cloud

But AWS isn’t just expanding on its own across the globe. It’s growing specifically through distributor Ingram Micro Cloud, too.

On Wednesday, Ingram Micro Cloud said it’s bringing more AWS platforms and services to the public sector. That initiative comprises federal, state, and local government, as well as health care, education, research, and other government institutions, and non-profit organizations. The selected geographies include the United States, Latin America, Canada, the Caribbean, the European Economic Area, and the Asia Pacific Japan region.

There’s some backstory between AWS and Ingram Micro Cloud that readers will want to recall.

Ingram Micro joined the AWS Partner Network more than a decade ago — with fewer than 50 channel partners in tow. Then, in 2021, Ingram Micro became the first AWS distributor to sign a multiyear, global Strategic Collaboration Agreement. (AWS uses its SCAs as investment vehicles. The vendor funnels money, tools and support into partners’ — often companies that Channel Futures readers view as providers — operations when it sees the right opportunities for growth.) That deal, as Borno put it on May 17, “took things to the next level.”

That’s because AWS and Ingram Micro each contributed more co-investment and innovation efforts, allowing partners to go after potential clients in more parts of the world. The strategy is undergoing its next evolution with the public sector announcement — and with 1,600 Ingram Micro Cloud partners on board.

Ingram Micro’s Victor Baez

“There’s never been a better time for us to focus intensely on our core cloud solutions business, and this SCA with AWS further underpins our commitment to driving accelerated growth for our partners,” said Victor Baez, senior vice president of global cloud channel sales, at Ingram Micro.

More on Ingram-AWS in Public Sector: Partners Are ‘Force Multiplier’

To that end, Ingram will enable its software and services partners to take part in AWS’ public sector efforts (incidentally, AWS is holding its Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C., next week). To achieve this, Ingram Micro says it will do the following:

The AWS-Ingram Micro Cloud public sector work applies to more than 20 countries, with Canada, Germany, Spain, Hong Kong, Singapore and India representing just some of those regions.

“[W]e’re looking forward to helping thousands of channel partners and our joint customers grow and transform their business, accelerate their AWS development journey and launch new solutions that will help public sector organizations meet their mission,” said Jeff Kratz, general manager, worldwide public sector partners, at AWS. (Kratz replaced Sandy Carter who left late last year to run Web 3.0 startup Unstoppable Domains.)

Borno agreed.

“Ingram is an amazing partner at enabling other partners to make better use of AWS services,” she said.

Outfitting Ingram Micro Cloud partners with public sector capabilities comes at an important time for AWS. The United States federal government alone is expected to spend $8.5 billion in 2023, per Bloomberg Government. Other governments are on pace to follow suit. AWS, for its part, wants its piece of the pie, and the channel is key to its success.

“We’ve been investing quite a bit in helping our public sector clients transform, and we see more and more of a need for that, and not just in the United States,” Borno said. “Public sector customers are transforming and we’re excited about the pace of transformation.”

And partners, she noted, “are our biggest force multiplier.”