ClearScale and AWS Collaborate on SMB Acceleration Initiative

ClearScale and AWS are collaborating to help small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) better handle rapid growth and dynamic business environments through AWS’s new multi-year Small Business Accelerator Initiative (SBAI).

The program aims to help SMBs drive innovation and propel businesses that are growing rapidly and experiencing dynamic business environments, according to the partners.

“This collaboration allows us to extend AWS’s world-class cloud capabilities to small businesses, helping them unlock new opportunities for growth and digital transformation,” Andi Rose, vice president of alliances at ClearScale, told ChannelE2E.

The SBAI initiative will give ClearScale and AWS SMB customers the resources they need to help them accelerate their digital transformations to make their businesses more scalable and successful, she said. At the same time, the program will help ClearScale, an MSP and AWS Premier Consulting Partner, to reach new customers, she added.

ClearScale helps SMB customers grow by assisting them with cloud adoption and modernization expertise.

“We are developing easy-to-consume accelerators available through AWS Marketplace to give customers more self-service experience,” said Rose. “And our relationship with the SBAI team at AWS provides us the support system we need to build marketing and campaigns that drive customer awareness through AWS demand generation channels.”

AWS invited ClearScale to participate in the program based on its experience and track record of moving quickly to help ClearScale customers accomplish their business outcomes quickly, efficiently and in a cost effective manner, said Rose.

Jack E. Gold, president and principal analyst at J.Gold Associates, LLC, told ChannelE2E that he is not surprised that AWS reached out to ClearScale to participate in this program.

“Many of the large scale cloud providers want to be more impactful in the SMB market, particularly with companies they think are on a growth path,” said Gold. “But directly going after SMBs is cost prohibitive. So, partnering with service providers to work with the smaller organizations means that AWS can achieve scale through the channel for SMBs with less work on their part, and be positioned with the companies as they grow.”

Gold said he sees this kind of arrangement happening more and more across the IT marketplace in recent months.

“It is not only AWS doing this, but the others as well to a greater or lesser degree,” said Gold. “Are there other intermediaries in this space? Sure. It is very common and it is an attractive business opportunity for the mid-tier providers.”

In another recent deal recently, ClearScale partnered with Matilda Cloud in March to offer new VMware migration services to enterprise customers seeking alternatives since Broadcom’s 2023 acquisition of VMware. As a part of the deal, ClearScale is working with Matilda Cloud and its comprehensive suite of migration tools to help customers move their VMware-based workloads to AWS. Such migrations have been becoming more popular since Broadcom angered a vocal group of VMware customers with unpopular program and pricing changes following its VMware acquisition.