Amazon secures cloud contracts
Deals signed with SAP, Symantec
Amazon Web Services, the cloud-computing division of Amazon.com, signed new deals with customers SAP and Symantec worth a combined $1bn, according to an internal memo, underscoring the company’s growing momentum in the market for internet-based computing power and storage.
The contracts are each worth $500m over five years, the text of an Amazon e-mail from September showed. Both transactions represented expansions of existing partnerships.
Microsoft, the number two cloud-services provider, had also competed for the Symantec deal, according to the memo.
Some of the world’s largest technology companies have been fighting it out for supremacy in the cloud.
AWS, Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google have all tried to woo organisations and companies by touting the capabilities and performance of their services, which help organisations store and process data remotely, build new applications and adopt new technologies including artificial intelligence.
AWS has so far maintained the lead, winning $17.5bn in sales in 2017. That is out of a market estimated to have been worth $30bn in 2017 and expected to balloon to $83.5bn by 2021, according to research firm Gartner.
AWS declined to comment. “SAP announced its multi-cloud strategy more than two years ago,” a spokesperson for the Walldorf, Germany-based software company said, referring to SAP’s plan to maintain a presence on the world’s largest public clouds, such as AWS, Microsoft, Google, International Business Machines Corporation and Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud. “We believe in the power of collaboration.”
SAP declined to comment on the Amazon agreement outlined in the memo.
“We do not disclose details of the agreements underlying our relationships,” Symantec chief information officer Sheila Jordan said. “As our cloud business has evolved, we have continuously evaluated our business relationships with our cloud partners.”
Symantec is committed to a multipartner cloud strategy and works with partners including AWS, Azure, Oracle and other global and regional suppliers, she said.
The annual haul from the two deals – $200m per year – is a little less than 1% of annualised revenue for AWS. The unit notched sales of $11.5bn for the six months that ended June 30, according to a regulatory filing.
WE HAVE CONTINUOUSLY EVALUATED OUR BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS WITH OUR CLOUD PARTNERS
Amazon shares were little changed in early trading on Wednesday and are up 60% in 2017. SAP slipped 2.1% bringing gains this year to 8.9%. Symantec, which is down 29% in 2018, was also little changed.
AWS has been focusing on maintaining its sales leadership in the face of growing traction from its rivals. While SAP has spent more money with Microsoft and Google over the past 12 months, “our SAP internal share of wallet stays pretty stable at 70%,” according to the AWS memo. The new deal is for the base layer of computing and storage services, as well as other tools for data management, AI and the internet of things.
The Symantec deal represented an increase of more than seven times in the cybersecurity company’s spending on AWS, meaning that it “has been able to capture more than 80%” of Symantec’s cloud spending, according to the document.
Symantec will migrate its Managed Security Service, Network Protection and Website Security Service products to AWS in the next 18 to 24 months, the memo showed.