Sydney-based technology services company and Advanced AWS Consulting Partner, Anchor (part of Hostopia Australia) today announced the launch of its Agile Cloud Engineering (ACE) offering, the first of its kind in Australia.
Four ACE plans and Engineering Credits to promote value co-creation with customers
With ACE, Anchor offers on-demand engineering capabilities through Engineering Credits (ECs); tokens which customers spend on outcomes, project-based work or change management. Anchor estimates this results in a reduction of management fees from 40-50% on average with the traditional managed services provider (MSP) model to only 9-15% on ACE.
Anchor’s ACE will be offered through four plans: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum.
Central to the offering, Engineering Credits (ECs) are an innovative new way to access technical and strategic expertise. They are allocated monthly and are a form of ‘capability currency’ which customers spend in return for change requests, outcome-based services, or to reduce the cost of pre-planned project work.
Engineering Credits incentivise constant investment in technology, therefore accelerating your speed to market, improving customer experience whilst improving return on investment.
How ACE & Engineering Credits (ECs) work:
- Outcomes – Scheduled engagements that have clearly defined outcomes and can be purchased using ECs from a Service Catalogue ‘menu’.
- Consulting – Extra consulting services can be purchased using ECs to complete change requests or consultancy that do not fit into the scope of ‘Always On’, and to scope larger projects.
- Always On Support – Ongoing support services that are in the category of monitoring or reactive support, included with all plans.
With this new offering, Anchor plans to create a new market segment and become Australia’s first Engineering Services Provider (ESP) by aiming to move 100% of its managed services customers to ACE® within the next 12 months.
According to Josh Chiswell, Director of Architecture and Professional Services for Anchor and lead of the ACE® project: “We’re aiming to minimise what companies spend on management fees when buying from managed service providers. What we hear from customers is that they need help in creating business value through technology, and that comes through engineering services and justifiable investment.”
“We created Agile Cloud Engineering® – which is the first true on-demand engineering service in Australia – to advance the existing MSP model, challenge our competitors, and provide more value to customers as well as more price transparency. It’s all about delivering engineering outcomes with upfront pricing in the form of credits, which has not been seen in Australia yet.”
Instead of paying a certain fee per hour, per day, or an arbitrary pricing for services as it’s the case with the traditional MSP model where pricing scales with infrastructure spent, Anchor’s ACE® model is based on what customers want to achieve, with support costs scaling down and a menu of services customers can purchase from. This is an outcome-based approach instead.
A new model requested by Australian customers
This new offering and positioning come as Anchor recorded a 47% increase in Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud revenues, driven by a strategic decision 12 months ago to re-focus on value creation and engineering services.
“Our strategic decision in 2020 to focus our efforts and investments on services that create value for customers rather than just cloud management was calculated, but it has paid off. This is definitely what customers want and need, that’s what they are continually telling us, the market, and why we built this unique new offering,” added Chiswell.
“With ACE®, customers can choose where they invest their capital by using Engineering Credits (ECs), exactly when and where they need it. Partnering with us, they decide which project to prioritise, what KPIs to achieve and what success looks like which in turn makes us co-owners and contributors of success. This gives customers more power, more transparency on where each dollar is spent, and overall better outcomes.”
Embracing AWS’ vision for the cloud
Anchor’s plans to double down on its commitment and growth with AWS in the next 12 months. The shift to engineering services comes with AWS’s relentless focus on value creation for customers.
Adam Beavis, Head of ISV & DNB, APAC and Japan at AWS commented: “The future of cloud lies in the delivery of next-gen services that will help our customer’s customer innovate on AWS. Engineering services are central to this and we believe Anchor’s new ACE® offering is innovative and will see a high demand in Australia. We are looking forward to working with partners like Anchor and supporting the creation and expansion of its new engineering services.”
For Darryn McCoskery, General Manager for Hostopia Australia and Anchor: “A year ago we made the bold decision to invest in engineering capabilities to transform into an engineering company. Investing more in our partnership with AWS was key, and today that transformation has come to life. This is a very exciting road ahead.”
“We’re expecting a lot of growth to come out of our new positioning and our disruptive ACE offering, as well as an expansion into new markets and verticals. We want 2022 to be the year we become the leading provider of engineering services in Australia, and lead the way for a whole new Engineering Services Provider market to emerge.”
