‘If their business is scaling as a result of tariffs, if they’re a U.S.-based based company and their production cycles are going to ramp up—they’re able to scale up or scale down rapidly in the cloud without big time delays. Like when trying to order extra CPUs or GPUs or what have you. So that’s the beauty of being in the cloud,’ says ClearScale’s Andi Rose.
One of the biggest hurdles in the tech market today is how partners and vendors are dealing with the effects of the Trump administration’s global tariff strategy, which has caused disruptions throughout the IT industry for months.
However, businesses that are in the Amazon Web Services cloud have a big advantage when it comes to combating tariffs compared with on-premises and software-licensed customers regarding supply chain, prices and scaling, said top executives from San Francisco-based ClearScale.
“Because customers are in the cloud and they’re not hardware-bound, they’re able to take advantage of AWS’ pay-as-you-go model,” Andi Rose, vice president of alliances for ClearScale, told CRN.
“So if their business is scaling as a result of tariffs, if they’re a U.S.-based based company and their production cycles are going to ramp up—they’re able to scale up or scale down rapidly in the cloud without big time delays. Like when trying to order extra CPUs or GPUs or what have you,” Rose said. “So that’s the beauty of being in the cloud.”
[Related: Andy Jassy: ‘Chips Are The Biggest Culprit’ In Expensive AI; AWS Will Fix It]
Rose is a top channel and industry veteran with decades of executive experience working for Deloitte, Wipro, 2nd Watch, Rackspace and Cisco Systems.
In addition, what stands out to AWS Premier Tier Services Partner ClearScale is AWS and Amazon’s global logistics services and supply chain technology.
“For us as an AWS partner, our strengths are in data and analytics. So we can help customers understand their business, how it’s performing, give them forecast into their entire supply chain if tariffs go into effect,” Rose said. “That’s really the beauty of being in the AWS cloud—it gives you that agility and that flexibility so you can pivot on a dime because you can get that visibility wherever your data is residing. So you can understand what [tariffs] mean to your business.
“Especially if you’re a U.S.-based company that’s poised to benefit from the impact of tariffs on companies outside of the U.S., [ClearScale and AWS] can help them scale overnight,” she added.
Why Cloud Is Better Than Software Licenses
ClearScale CEO Jimmy Chui said customers on the AWS cloud are in a better position to combat tariffs compared with if they buy software licenses from Microsoft or Oracle, for example.
“By getting to a consumption-based model and getting off licensed software, there is a ton of value there. In the end, you’re not paying for licensed software and you’re on this consumption-based model that helps you to adapt to whatever is changing in the market and the cost on your infrastructure and your apps,” Chui said.
“You can follow your business growth, rather than—like if you’ve got a huge Oracle or Microsoft installation and you’ve got all these servers sitting in a room—if business starts to decline, you’re still paying for all that,” he said.
ClearScale Doesn’t Believe Tariffs Will Significantly Impact Amazon
The IT research arm of global banking giant Morgan Stanley called Trump’s across-the-board tariffs a “lose-lose” situation for hardware companies such as Apple, Dell Technologies and HP Inc., saying that “raising prices” for products is their “most viable path forward.”
A Dell spokesperson told CRN this month that the company “has a strong track record of leading through any environment with our globally resilient and agile supply chain.” Similarly, in a statement to CRN this month, an HP spokesperson said HP has “an agile and resilient supply chain that helps us adapt to the evolving economic landscape to ensure we deliver for our partners and customers.”
Chui said he doesn’t believe the tariffs are “going to impact Amazon in a negative way.”
“We’re all still consumers of products,” he said.
In fact, Chui said U.S. manufacturing firms have been reaching out to ClearScale recently to see how they can build a better product or service.
“A lot of the companies I’ve been talking to have been focused on, ‘How do I now take my product and make it a smart product?’” he said. “So we’re seeing that they’re looking to invest in IT. So that might be an indicator of something.”
ClearScale’s New AWS Collaboration Targeting SMBs
ClearScale signed a strategic collaboration agreement (SCA) this month with AWS to help give SMBs access to all the tools, new technologies and AI guidance to take their cloud transformation to the next level.
“There’s still a lot of small businesses that have not taken to cloud yet,” said Chui. “AWS is funding some of the tooling we typically use to accelerate migrations, so it lightens the load on our customers. … We have this opportunity now to really unlock that ROI that’s been preventing organizations from making that cloud investment.”
ClearScale has more than 400 successful migration and moderation engagements with expertise in workload migrations, cloud-native systems integration, strategic consulting, application development, data and AI.
