Ever challenged a ping pong professional who used his iPhone as a paddle to a match?
Ever witnessed IT partners battle it out for glory in business casual attire?
That’s what happened in April when Lightstream and AWS got together in SPIN Chicago’s ping pong entertainment venue. AWS’s Central Region Territory and Lightstream, along with Lightstream CEO Jim Cassell, held a meet-and-greet and whooped it up.
AWS Central Territory Vice President Jonathan Leaf was more than happy to take on Lightstream in ping pong as well as strengthen the two organizations’ relationship. The relaxed atmosphere was the perfect way for AWS Territory Reps to learn how Lightstream helps its clients get better value out of their AWS products and services.
Experts in All Things AWS
Lightstream is an APN Advanced Consulting Partner and helps clients assess, design and manage their migrations to AWS. Lightstream’s deep engineering skills and knowledge of AWS products and services means companies turn to Lightstream to help with:
- AWS Migration and Management
- AWS Well-Architected Reviews
- AWS Security
- Amazon Connect Implementations
- Networking and AWS Direct Connect
- Amazon CloudFront
The AWS team was particularly intrigued by Lightstream’s success with AWS Cloud Managed Services. Lightstream offers expert advice coupled with managed services and easy-to-use tools that help organizations manage spend and optimize their AWS environments. The AWS team felt Lightstream’s proven track record of managing cloud spend, helping align IT and finance and enabling elastic cloud growth was a game changer (and in more than just ping pong!).
A Secret Competitive Sauce
One secret sauce in Lightstream’s Cloud Managed Services is Lightstream Connect.
Lightstream Connect solves the visibility problem organizations have into their cloud and telecom services by providing a holistic view into a company’s technology spend and network through a single pane of glass. It securely integrates with carriers, AWS and Lightstream’s service-management platform to consolidate orders, services inventory, usage and analytics into one place.
A Star is Born: Amazon Connect
A key new offering Lightstream supports is Amazon Connect. Lightstream’s recent success in implementing Amazon Connect at Los Angeles based start-up HopSkipDrive demonstrated Lightstream’s understanding not only of AWS and cloud networking but also telephony.
In this case, Lightstream analyzed HopSkipDrive’s call flows and application integration requirements. Lightstream engineered AWS Lambda to automatically retrieve the customer data based on the individual’s phone number and route the customer to the correct agent based on service request and the priority. Lightstream next configured the AWS environment and Amazon Connect with HopSkipDrive’s preferred Interactive Voice Response Solution (IVR), Kustomer. The environment was thoroughly tested, and the existing 1-800 number successfully ported over. The result was not only a smoother and responsive call-center experience, but an instant 50% drop in call-center costs.
Mission Accomplished!
This deep dive into Lightstream’s AWS capabilities and services provided tremendous value for both AWS and Lightstream. Vice President Jonathan Leaf told his team that when clients need additional value around AWS security, AWS Direct Connect, Amazon Connect or AWS Cloud Managed Services, they should hands (and ping-pong paddles) down call Lightstream.
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