LAS VEGAS – What most Canadians don’t know about AWS is that it has been operating in Canada for 10 years. Sure the Seattle-based cloud giant did not have a physical office in the country until 2015. They did not have any actual employees in Canada until they hired Eric Gales to become the general manager but AWS was in Canada through a unique channel partnership with Vancouver-based solution provider TriNimbus.
CDN interviewed the Chief Cloud Officer of TriNimbus Jarrod Levitan at the Re: Invent conference and he said TriNimbus basically represented AWS in the country. Today, TriNimbus is the only Canadian solution provider who holds Premier Partner status with AWS.
Jarrod Levitan
“They did not have anyone here who was customer facing. For a long time, we worked to build up the community in Canada for AWS. We were AWS’s feet on the street for Canada,” he said.
But now it’s all changed especially since AWS plans on unveiling its regions sometime this year in Montreal. According to Levitan, the biggest challenge was data residency and that issue came with a wide spectrum of complications. “It was more sentiment if you ask me and some regulation, but it was like pushing a rock up a hill. To fight through that and push AWS to be here we feel we are one of the reasons why (the regions are here). We knocked on their door; very hard.”
Jeff Barr, AWS evangelist even credits TriNimbus for pushing AWS to established its regions in the country.
BORN IN THE CLOUD
But Levitan isn’t sure about the term born-in-the-cloud for TriNimbus admitting he knows exactly what it means and what it represents in the IT industry. “The cloud is a term I think will eventually go away. It’s the new normal and everyone will be on the cloud and so it should not be called that,” he said.
What Levitan does like is the concept of born-in-the-cloud because it distinguishes TriNimbus among others in the market. TriNumbis is a new breed of solution provider that has roots in software engineering and is not your run-of-the-mill IT shop.
“We go deep; right into the code and understand it. And, then AWS takes over for the other functionality. They are really what’s above the OS, while we are the value comes in. This is where we play,” he added.
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TriNimbus really holds its Premier designation to heart. They are the only Canadian-based solution provider to reach the top tier in Amazon’s channel ecosystem and Levitan said it brings a lot of credibility in terms of what the Nationwide provider does.
Levitan has built the business with software engineers who have expertise in the AWS architecture, deployment and management.