Small businesses don’t have to act small. DLZP Group LLC proved this when it pioneered enterprise resource planning software on the Amazon Web Services cloud in 2012, and the company has been building on AWS ever since.

“I don’t like to take no for an answer. There’s always a solution, so we’re always looking at technology, seeing how we can use it to get a better answer,” said Lisa Brunet (pictured), chief executive officer, DLZP Group, a cloud architecture, design and serverless computing service company.

Brunet spoke with John Furrier and Lisa Martin, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed how DLZP has benefited from joining Amazon’s Think Big for Small Business Program. (* Disclosure below.)

DLZP leverages the AWS cloud to innovate for the future

Back in 2012, DLZP was a premier customer for the then-small AWS. But as AWS grew, it attracted larger and larger companies that pushed the smaller ones to the bottom of the partnership pile.

“If I had every employee, even my admin staff, certified, we would never have enough employees to be at the next level, even though we had the customers [and] the references,” Brunet stated.

As DLZP was a loyal and long-term AWS customer and advocate, this wasn’t a situation that sat right with Brunet. She shared her story with Sandy Carter, vice president of worldwide public sector partners and programs at AWS, who created the Think Big for Small Business Program to support smaller business partners.

As a member of the program, DLZP achieved AWS’ Advanced Consulting Partner level and access to many more benefits than it had before.

“It’s been a great opportunity for us,” Brunet said of the program, “because we’re gaining access to capital, funding for opportunities; we’re getting resources for training.”

DLZP allocates 30% of its budget to research and development, and the company is eager to adopt new technology. When AWS released Lambda, DLZP was one of the first to go serverless, reducing its website costs from “hundreds of dollars to pennies a month,” Brunet said.

The company also helped a local utility company maximize its wind turbine accuracy.

“We were able to redo their algorithm using AWS cloud native tools [and] open source data to get a 97% to 99% accuracy on a daily basis, and that saves them millions of dollars each day,” Brunet stated.

Stressing the importance of collaboration and partnership, Brunet says she “talks with everyone,” whether interns, engineers or executives. “Everybody is interested, and they have different ideas that they want to share,” she said. “We’re looking at the future and what we can invent next.”

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE