There’s arguably only a handful of partnerships in the enterprise solutions and cloud technology spaces,that have worked as well as that of Amazon Web Services Inc. and Accenture PLC, according to Sara Alligood (pictured, right), worldwide leader of the Accenture AWS Business Group at AWS.

And a shared obsession on enabling customer outcomes is one major reason behind it.

“So just by consistently taking those customer signals and really obsessing over our customer’s success, we know what we’re marching towards,” she said. “Then we extract those themes and really work together to think about how we go bigger, better, faster, together and accomplish and solve those customer problems.”

Alligood and Andy Tay (pictured, left), senior managing director at Accenture, spoke with theCUBE industry analyst John Walls at the AWS Executive Summit at re:Invent, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the successes of both companies’ collaboration to date. (* Disclosure below.)

Breaking down the modernization trend

Companies are increasingly turning to their cloud solutions providers to modernize. Factors such as the current macroeconomic situation and talent shortage have played leading roles in this emerging trend, according to Alligood.

“But even with those, our customers still need us to solve for sustainability and still focus on inclusion, diversity and equity,” she said. “And so we can’t lower the bar on anything that we’ve already been doing. With the markets as volatile as they are right now, I think a lot of customers are just trying to work with us to figure out how to do that [modernize] in the most optimized and efficient way.”

At the same time, however, companies must see the ongoing economic uncertainty as an opportunity to direct resources to things that’ll keep them competitive when the fog clears, according to Tay.

“But I think clients get it, they see it, and they feel it,” he explained. “They understand the need to invest. And I think there was a study back in 2008 that those clients who didn’t invest ahead of the major macroeconomic downturn times came out on the bad side.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Executive Summit at re:Invent:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Executive Summit at re:Invent. Neither Accenture PLC, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE