John Taylor (Consegna)
With many organisations rushing to the cloud amid pandemic-prompted workplace pivots, cloud specialist Consegna is drawing upon its professional services portfolio to double down on helping as many customers as possible make the move to cloud.
Founded in 2016 by managing director John Taylor and business partner Michael Butler, the company’s COO, Consegna is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Advanced Consulting Partner.
Consegna set out to specialise and focus on the delivery of AWS products and services. Now, with a growing technical team of over 35 and offices in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Melbourne, the company’s combined team now holds over 70 AWS certifications.
In May this year, the company reached the technical requirements for AWS Premier Partner status.
All of this puts Consegna in the sweet spot, commercially speaking, with the disrupted business market accelerating its appetite for deep cloud expertise as it works to keep things running with a largely distributed, decentralised workforce.
It should come as little surprise, then, that the company’s partnership expansion, product releases, managed services and trans-Tasman ventures are all progressing at speed.
Moreover, Consegna's inclusion in the AWS Marketplace for the Consulting Partner Private Offers (CPPO) programme in March 2020 represents a focus for software-as-a-service (SaaS) independent software vendor (ISV) partnerships supporting AWS and hybrid cloud transformation.
It is this cloud adoption and transformation play that is likely to see Consegna successfully work to its strengths in the coming months.
“AWS adoption in the coming six to nine months will see us progress strongly in our region,” Taylor told Reseller News. “The growing presence of AWS products and services in the A/NZ region, the announcement of AWS Outpost and other product announcements will drive more opportunity for customer cost avoidance and innovation.
“It’s truly exciting to see that our clients can propel forward without huge capital expenditure, drive cost out and innovate at light speed,” he added.
Leaning into the niche
From Taylor’s perspective, Consegna’s capabilities in the cloud adoption space continue to bolster the company’s relatively unique value proposition in the market.
But the company is not resting on its laurels, instead forging ahead in developing its skills and capabilities to further build out its offering and niche specialisation — a strategy that is already paying dividends.
“We have added to our four existing AWS competencies this year with the Amazon Connect service delivery designation and the AWS Security Competency also as part of our 2020-21 specialisation path,” Taylor said.
“We continue to build on our strong relationships with the growing AWS A/NZ commercial and public sector teams, and being nimble by nature and having stability through the quality of our clients has allowed Consegna to scale,” he added.
This approach feeds well into Consegna’s strategy for 2021 and beyond, which is to build more on, and further support, NZ customers on their AWS journeys.
Reflecting this approach was the recruitment in May of a new team member in Christchurch, along with the opening of Consegna’s Christchurch office.
“Supporting Canterbury Tech and looking to provide local capabilities in the South has been in our sights for a long time. Attracting the right people is now bringing this to light,” Taylor said.
Regardless of this expansion, with the uncertainty that COVID-19 and the restrictions imposed on the country, Consegna’s focus and strategy through the first and second quarter of this year was to maintain the delivery of projects already underway for its clients.
“Our team accomplished this and I’m incredibly proud of them all,” Taylor said. “Thankfully, we worked through this and were able to hand back the government subsidy, allowing other businesses in need to leverage it.
“To help where we could, we also hired a contingency team member from one of our customers whose role was being disestablished, and in doing so were able to help both our client and the technical specialist through that period,” he said.
Preparing for the future, focusing on the present
Beyond these moves, Consegna’s wider strategic initiatives going forward will see the company embark on opening a graduate or intern practical training and enablement practice.
According to Taylor, this initiative will target practical application, not just certification, and will build on the pool of AWS talent within New Zealand.
“In FY21-22, this, along with a wider delivery of Amazon Connect and the AWS Cognitive CX product space is a key strategy,” Taylor said.
However, In the short- to medium-term Taylor and team see Consegna progressing quickly with Amazon Connect and the Cognitive CX portfolio, in addition to foundational services like LandingZone and Control Towers.
Other immediate priorities include data centre migrations, end-user computing, geographically dispersed contact centres, and the satisfaction of seeing Consegna’s customers making use of the assistance provided by the company’s DevSecOps delivery squads.
“Customers have realised that through these uncertain times application modernisation is key to success,” Taylor said. “Embracing remote working through cloud-based desktop mobility services such as WorkSpaces and AppStream, along with Amazon Connect’s seamless customer experience cloud-based capabilities, are proving a clear business advantage.
“At Consegna we will continue to assist our clients across A/NZ and focus on providing delivery excellence, supporting our clients with their ‘new normal’ business demands,” he added.
Reseller News Advance is a centralised editorial resource designed to help partners access forward-looking content as the New Zealand market attempts to reposition for growth.
