Why Did Siemens Convergence Creators Choose to go All-In with AWS?

We strive to provide business, technical, and marketing support as our AWS Partner Network (APN) Technology Partners seek to build strong AWS-based solutions and reach a global customer base. And more and more, we are seeing Technology Partners with a global presence going all-in with AWS. By going all-in and making AWS their preferred cloud provider to build and deploy new solutions, ISVs can take advantage of all the AWS Cloud affords while forging a deeper relationship with AWS teams.

Siemens Convergence Creators is an Advanced APN Technology Partner that announced in the fall of 2016 they are all-in with AWS, having refactored and optimized the company’s powerful video management and delivery solution “Smart Video Engine” for AWS.

We recently caught up with Product Line Manager Michael Holocher from Siemens Convergence Creators to learn more about what makes the company unique, how they use AWS, why Siemens became an APN Partner, and the decision to go all-in with AWS.

Who is Siemens Convergence Creators?

Headquartered in Vienna, Siemens Convergence Creators is an independent Siemens unit with offices in Central and Eastern Europe, Germany, China, India, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and the United States. The company combines innovation and decades of experience to provide intelligent solutions to a variety of industries, bridging the gap between technology, processes, and services. “Our presence in emerging and mature market segments, together with a powerful network of partners, provides a strong basis for activities in more than 70 countries all over the world,” says Daniel-Rui Felicio, CEO. Siemens Convergence Creators.

Siemens Convergence Creators focuses on delivering services and solutions for six major industries: Telecommunication, Energy, Media, Public Safety & Security, Transportation, and Space. The company’s Smart Video Engine is a full E2E online video distribution solution with support for advanced content and contract management, a full range of business models from subscription to advertisement based models, and state of the art analytics. The Siemens Convergence Creators technical platform offers telco-grade reliability and seamless scalability for up to millions of users.

Working with AWS and the APN

Similar to many companies, Siemens Convergence Creators began its journey on AWS through experimentation. “We started out by experimenting with certain AWS services. Our engineers liked it very much and thus at some stage we decided to port our solution to the AWS environment,” says Holocher. The team also saw a strong business benefit for customers in the OPEX-driven business models enabled by AWS.

“We believe AWS is the cloud technology leader. We analyzed the technical capabilities and found we can leverage the global footprint that allows us to roll out video solutions globally with a standard set of tools and processes,” explains Holocher. As the company looked to deepen its relationship with AWS, it evaluated the benefits of being an APN Partner. “In addition to the technical aspects, we wanted to benefit from the APN opportunities as well, allowing us to leverage not only AWS’ technological strength but also its strength in the market. The combination of those two values was particularly important for us,” he says.

The company has optimized its Smart Video Engine solution to run on AWS, taking advantage of a number of AWS services. “Our platform has been fully optimized for the AWS environment with respect to installation and scalability. In addition to services like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), we are using a plethora of integrated services like the Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS), Amazon EC2 Container Registry (ECR), Application Load Balancers, Auto Scaling, AWS Lambda, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon CloudTrail, and many more,” says Holocher. “The installation process of our standard product is completely templatized which supports rapid deployment of new systems.”

Going All-in with AWS

Siemens Convergence Creators made the decision early on that its time and resources would be best invested by going all-in with AWS. “As we continue to integrate with additional AWS services, our ties into AWS grow stronger and stronger,” says Holocher. “After an extensive evaluation process we decided to base an important dimension of our product on the single cloud vendor who we feel will make sure we have the best cloud architecture and engineering support available now, and in the future.” Siemens Convergence Creators’ customers have experienced a number of benefits as the company has continued to take advantage of AWS, including lower operational costs, more flexibility, enhanced security and reliability, and deep innovation. It also has enabled customers to start a video platform without the upfront costs or long-term commitments that used to be required, reducing the risks associated with investing in the technology. “Choosing Siemens Convergence Creators’ OTT solutions means making a future-oriented technology decision and benefiting from a Docker- and AWS-based solution architecture,” explains Holocher.

The company also has been impressed with the joint go-to-market opportunities supported by AWS and built on the strength of both brands. “AWS and Siemens are both strong brands and well-known in the global market. Siemens Convergence Creators leveraged the strong cloud presence of AWS to add to the value proposition of the Smart Video Engine,” says Holocher. “We were impressed by the smooth rollout and quick response times of the AWS team during the GTM phase, and took advantage of some of the marketing opportunities offered to APN Partners.”

What’s Next?

“AWS and Siemens Convergence Creators are, in my opinion, both highly service-oriented, which makes for a great pairing in favor of our customers,” says Holocher. “Our customers deserve to have access to the latest, most potent technologies to drive their business – it is our firm belief that this holds true for every aspect of our solution. With AWS, we have found a market-leading cloud solution provider who is continuously optimizing cloud infrastructure and developing innovative tools. We are enthusiastic about such future enhancements as they will contribute to our best-of-breed video platform maintaining its technological edge.”

To learn more, please visit Siemens Convergence Creators website here.