As the leading public cloud provider, Amazon Web Services Inc. has not only built its customer base, it has also spawned an ecosystem of consultants and systems integrators to support a growing portfolio of services.

During the AWS re:Invent conference this month, TEKsystems Inc., a global systems integrator, announced that it had acquired 1Strategy, a Premier Consulting partner in the AWS Partner Network.

The two firms intend to leverage a mutual familiarity with the expanding portfolio of AWS cloud solutions.

“There’s 175 services today; there have been 2,500 feature updates and releases across that AWS portfolio just this year alone,” said Ricardo Madan (pictured, right), vice president of technology, products and services at TEKsystems. “The barrier that AWS has bubbled up to the surface and then sifted off has been that integration into the business. That’s been a transformation that nobody has really enabled outside of AWS.”

Madan spoke with John Walls (@JohnWalls21) and Lisa Martin (@LisaMartinTV), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS re:Invent event in Las Vegas. He was joined by Jen Doyle (pictured, left), vice president of operations at 1Strategy, and they discussed cultural transformation among their numerous clients and the changing role of information technology departments through wide-scale cloud adoption. (* Disclosure below.)

Cultural transformation

1Strategy experts have deployed AWS solutions since 2007, and they have seen changes in the way companies architect and optimize workloads on the public cloud platform. The transformation is more than technical.

“It’s been a huge digital transformation. You can’t deny that. But the culture transformation that’s going along with that has been really phenomenal,” Doyle said. “It’s not just the technical side anymore; it is the business side.”

That transformation in business has also changed the role of IT in many organizations with the shift to the cloud. The IT department has moved from simply being a provider of services within the company to becoming a key element in the overall business strategy.

“You didn’t really look at technology and IT as anything more than a utility,” Madan said. “Now it’s a competitive advantage.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS re:Invent event. (* Disclosure: TEKsystems Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither TEKsystems nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE