As hybrid cloud gains traction in a continuously evolving cloud market, information technology support companies must execute a twofold strategy that serves both tentative migrating legacy enterprises and greenfield businesses constantly ready for the next move.

While the juxtaposition may appear challenging, market leaders like Sahir Azam (pictured), senior vice president of cloud products at MongoDB Inc., are proving the two objectives are not entirely at odds.

Azam spoke with Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS Marketplace and Service Catalog Experience Hub event in Las Vegas. Through its partnership with Amazon Web Services Inc., MongoDB is offering all the benefits of a scalable database on multiple platforms and re-architecting customer data strategies around tools that can be modernized to help bridge the legacy cloud gap. (* Disclosure below.)

[Editor’s note: The following answers have been condensed for clarity.]

I’m curious [about] the thought process behind offering a database as a service via a partner like Amazon. What were some of the things you were thinking about, and how’s it turned out?

Azam: We’ve always been heavily used in AWS. Five years ago we started to hear customers say [they] want to get out of the business of operationalizing, securing and managing these databases and would rather [have] the database delivered as a service on our cloud platform of choice. We started MongoDB Atlas, which is now available in 15+ regions on AWS, as well as other cloud platforms, as a global database as a service to help those customers move even faster with MongoDB.

How has that [AWS] relationship gone?

Azam: The benefit for us as a partner comes in two ways. First and foremost, it’s awareness. There are definitely some AWS customers that find their technologies by searching in the [AWS] Marketplace. Secondly, it drives good alignment between our sales teams. The AWS sales force is now aligned and incented to work with us on driving joint opportunity for MongoDB, and now Amazon customers.

The reality is, there are definitely database technologies from Amazon that we compete with. But that’s true of probably every technology vendor, and there are places for us to work together and deliver real customer value.

What are some of the things you’re picking up on, trends you’ve seen in the marketplace?

Azam: Serverless [computing] continues to rise. MongoDB Stitch, our serverless platform, makes it really easy to extend the power of the database all the way through mobile devices, client applications and have a data architecture. We’ve been seeing quite a bit of adoption of that platform, in particular for use cases where MongoDB Atlas is used with complementary AWS services.

What percentage of sales are new projects inside enterprises versus people doing migrations?

Azam: There’s large enterprises that are lifting and shifting, migrating those applications from on-premises data centers and into the cloud. What we see is an opportunity, not just to manage things the same expensive, slow way, but to actually modernize at time of migration as well. You can adopt the benefits of a platform as a service or a database a service while you move into the cloud. That helps customers move faster and operate in a much more economical way.

There’s all sorts of new, modern applications, whether it be connected car or [internet-of-things] platforms, modern mobile applications. We’re seeing a fair share of new, fancy applications being built as well.

While shifting over from legacy infrastructure, what are the key things people can do for modernization of the application without doing a complete rewrite?

Azam: There are certain applications that people don’t want to touch and change that much, and those are probably good candidates to lift and shift. But those are oftentimes not the most strategic applications anymore; they’re not the ones driving the customer experience, revenue or opportunities for businesses. Many of those applications are actually being decomposed from monolithic, old technology stacks and legacy tools to more modern microservices-based architectures. Oftentimes, the trigger for that modernization is a cloud migration.

Get off of a legacy relational database technology, move to the cloud, but don’t now operate it the same way you always have. Consume it as a service, and that’s what’s really going to unlock all that developer velocity, the elasticity, the cost savings people expect from the cloud.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Marketplace and Service Catalog Experience Hub event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Marketplace and Service Catalog Experience Hub event. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE