Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the winners of its 2018 Australia and New Zealand Partner Awards, with a total of 5 partners recognised across a range of categories.

The company says the awards recognise leaders across the A/NZ channel who are playing a key role in helping customers remediate technical debt and drive innovation.

Announced during the AWS Partner Summit and on the eve of the sixth AWS Sydney Summit, the AWS Partner Awards recognised a range of born-in-the cloud and established AWS Consulting and Technology Partners whose business models have embraced specialisation and innovation over the past year.

AWS also says it recognised partners whose business models continue to evolve and constantly drive costs down while innovating for customers.

AWS managing director for Australia and New Zealand, Paul Migliorini says, “AWS partners are adding value to customers across a wide range of industries, from banking and finance to resources, the public sector, and increasingly, the Australian and New Zealand Start-up sector.

“The winners of the 2018 AWS A/NZ Partner Awards are those who understand that customers can access more than 100 services to innovate in a myriad of ways – including some who bring new solutions to market and others who have been working with AWS since the launch of the AWS Sydney Region more than five years ago,” Migliorini continues.  

“We are now seeing some of our partners starting to specialise and collaborate around artificial intelligence and machine learning, to power innovation for customers, in another sign it’s still Day One.”

UltraServe, a privately-owned company in which technology entrepreneur Simon Hackett first invested in 2014 and is now the majority shareholder, is achieving strong international growth having opened its US office in 2016 and a new European office recently.

UltraServe specialises in delivering e-commerce applications in the cloud, using its proprietary SmartStack software technology to provide a fast, reliable and resilient way to provision and maintain an e-commerce suite for enterprises. During the past 18 months, UltraServe has won multiple global customers, doubled its staff numbers, established serious traction in the US market, and has continued to enhance its technology and services.

UltraServe CEO Matthew Hyland said the additional capital would enable the company to accelerate its international expansion and innovation. “We’ll use these funds to further our geographic expansion into Europe, to build out our US operations and to accelerate product enhancements,” he said.

“We established the London office to meet European client demand, and we’re increasing our presence in the Chicago office ahead of the release of the next version of our SmartStack software, later this year.

“International demand for our services is very strong as demonstrated by the number of new contracts signed with major global customers during the last 12 months, with about three-quarters of these new customers coming from the US and now the European markets.

“Our sales pipeline is heavily weighted towards the US market, producing more than 75 per cent of our new customer opportunities, while we’ve already seen strong interest from the European market despite only opening our office in the UK a few weeks ago.

“To date, we’ve managed to achieve all this through self-funding, via our operating cash flows. By bringing in new capital, we can build on these foundations, accelerate our growth plans, and grab the significant global market opportunity that we see in front of us.”

Simon Hackett said UltraServe had a unique competitive advantage. “UltraServe has created outstanding technology that orchestrates, manages and hosts the deployment of enterprise-level Internet commerce websites,” he said.

“UltraServe’s technology turns a complicated, slow and error-prone manual deployment process for e-commerce participants into a smooth, automated, rapid and reliable experience. SmartStack equips customers to innovate at the speed of their thought processes rather than at the speed of their system administrators.”

UltraServe’s CEO sat on a panel session with other high profile leaders, discussing how security is a very important strategic element of our business.

Australian commerce specialist UltraServe has recruited experienced technology executive Paul McClure to the new position of Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) to accelerate its international growth.

The latest step in a management redesign to streamline supporting enterprise customers, Paul’s role will focus on driving UltraServe’s revenue growth, specifically generating new opportunities from strategic partnerships, product development and new customers.

Paul has more than 20 years’ experience in technology leadership positions including sales, strategy and business development, technology and product development. Paul worked for Commvault for the past 11 years, including establishing Commvault’s worldwide cloud and service provider line of business. His most recent role, which was based in San Francisco, will assist with UltraServe’s global expansion.

Now located in Sydney, Paul will manage UltraServe’s sales, pre-sales and marketing functions, reporting directly to the company’s Chief Executive Officer Matthew Hyland.

Matt Hyland said Paul brought a wealth of experience to the new Chief Revenue Officer role. “Paul’s goal is to drive our revenue growth through product development and building partnerships to further strengthen our valued-based market offering to our existing and new customers,” he said.

Paul McClure said he was attracted to UltraServe by its unique service offerings, business agility and its large addressable market. “UltraServe is heavily differentiated in a large and rapidly growing market space,” he said.

“Online commerce is changing the way people buy and consume products and technology, which is leading companies to make that transition from traditional bricks and mortar stores to online and omni-channel routes-to-market. It’s a quite complex area which presents an ever-expanding opportunity as organisations need to make significant investments in expertise and technology to realise their true potential.

“UltraServe is very disciplined in its approach to the market by focusing exclusively on commerce and not trying to be all things to all people. UltraServe has specific areas of expertise, which include working with market leaders like SAP hybris, Adobe and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver via a Platform-as-a-Service model. We take away a lot of the complexity of delivering hybris on AWS.

“UltraServe is a nimble organisation, so it’s in a great position to respond to the rapid pace of innovation. My role includes how to define our products, packaging, pricing and partnerships to better align to the buying motions of the typical customer.”

Global ecommerce cloud business UltraServe today announces a strengthened management team as the company prepares to accelerate its international growth.

UltraServe has appointed Matthew Hyland to the role of Chief Executive Officer, charged with managing the company’s operations and international expansion, while the company’s founder Samuel Yeats will guide its strategic direction from a strengthened board. Matthew has previously worked within the business as Chief Financial Officer and strategic advisor.

Samuel Yeats said appointing Matthew as CEO was a logical step for UltraServe. “We’re recording strong year-on-year growth and have successfully launched our services internationally,” he said.
“We already have customers in multiple countries, including North America, India, Brazil and the UK, and we plan to accelerate that pace by expanding our international presence.

“Matt is the ideal person to take on the CEO role because he has immense experience working in related industries with a particular focus on enterprise B2B (Business to Business) clients, which is UltraServe’s space. I’ll stay actively involved in guiding UltraServe as a director.”

Matthew’s extensive business experience includes the role of CFO at NextGen Group; CFO and Head of Operations at Fox Sports Australia; as well as senior commercial and management roles with Telstra, Optus and British Telecom during the past two decades.

Matthew said he had accepted the new role because of UltraServe’s potential for ongoing strong growth. “I’m excited by the opportunity of taking this business from its current stage to realising its significant future potential,” he said.

“When I looked at the UltraServe business, I saw its market-leading technology with a market position that provides a really sound foundation from which to build. Under Samuel’s leadership, UltraServe has carved out a very strong position with a unique service offering that stands out from more traditional cloud-hosting companies. I firmly believe that UltraServe has huge growth potential over the coming years.”

Founded in 2000, UltraServe is the Australian-owned market leader in this country’s cloud and managed services industry. In 2009, UltraServe became the first company to launch a true on-demand cloud product in Australia. UltraServe partners with SAP and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver the world’s fastest growing omni-channel commerce platform, Hybris, in the cloud.

UltraServe is well advanced in transitioning from its origins as an Australian hosting business to a global cloud hosting business, specialising in providing ecommerce Platform-as-a-Service. It has established a foundation of high quality enterprise customers, which provide internationally recognised references for future customer acquisition.

The business has continued to deliver double digit growth in revenues during the past year as it pushed into new geographic markets.

For media assistance, call John Harris on 08 8431 4000 or email john@impress.com.au.

About UltraServe

Since its founding in 2000, UltraServe has become a market leader in the Australian cloud and managed hosting services industry. In 2009, UltraServe was the first company to launch an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing product in Australia – a true testament to its company vision of being industry innovators. UltraServe has continued to broaden its business model through key channel partner relationships such as Amazon Web Services and SAP hybris, which will continue to shape the direction of the business moving forward. UltraServe is 100 per cent Australian-owned – creating and shaping the adoption of cloud technology in this country.