Versent and AWS formalise five-year push into AI, cloud and sovereignty
Formalises a joint operating model to move AI from PoC to production in a repeatable way.
Versent announced a five-year strategic collaboration agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS) at this week’s AWS Partner Summit in Sydney. The agreement is designed to accelerate commercial and public sector AI and cloud transformations.
"We can see many things today that we know will drive value for customers — and working with AWS, we can bring those capabilities to market faster,” Paul Nicholls, CEO, Versent.
Versent specialises in cloud, digital transformation, data and AI and has had a long relationship with AWS, holding multiple competencies, many staff certifications and has been recognised with numerous partner awards.
As a mid-size organisation, Nicholls said one of Versent’s strengths has been the ability to adapt to customer needs and transform its delivery models rapidly. This agreement is aimed at strengthening how it delivers customer value in a structured, repeatable way.
"Being able to do that with a technology partner like AWS, who will co-invest to accelerate some of those assets and capabilities, that's a real differentiator,” Nicholls told CRN Australia.
Versent offers end-to-end services, from strategy and migration to build, managed services and optimisation. Customers will also gain streamlined procurement through AWS Marketplace offerings with the goal of improving accessibility and accelerating time to value.
The aim is to accelerate how organisations can move from proof of concept to production, something that emerged as one of the main challenges as organisations eye the productivity benefits of AI.
“It will allow us to win new business, but also for our existing customers, it will help them drive change across their organisations faster than they could have before,” he said.
Focus on sovereign cloud offerings
As AI reshapes organisations, the agreement formalises a joint operating model that will focus on three key areas. The first is AI-driven cloud migrations across the full lifecycle with managed services that accelerate cloud transformation and lay the foundations for AI adoption.
Secondly, it includes agentic AI modernisation of applications and infrastructure, with the foundations to scale agentic AI across the business.
The other focus area is Telstra-backed sovereign cloud offerings for Australian government and enterprise customers.
“It’s about combining our strong engineering heritage and cloud mobilisation capabilities with a real focus on sovereignty, security and the operating discipline to execute those transformation programs,” Nicholls explained.
Versent has already launched a sovereign secure cloud solution on AWS for government customers, built to Australian standards and now evolving reduce risk across sectors.
“We want to take that and build an AI enclave that means there’s security and sovereignty around the AI workloads as well,” he told CRN Australia.
App X-Ray tool shortens modernisation cycles
On show at the AWS Summit was Versent’s new App Xray tool. It uses AI‑assisted analysis to rapidly assess legacy applications against standards and compliance, rapidly generating business cases and recommendations for both CIOs and CFOs.
“It takes that application modernisation assessment and design phase and provides the recommendations in 24–48 hours and it is still engineering‑led, but supported by an AI assistant in the background,” he said.
It effectively compresses a traditional weeks-long consulting engagement into something that can be achieved in a matter of days.
“Take a legacy application – historically, that’s a two‑ to four‑week consulting engagement, but at a portfolio level for a customer, it’s an order of magnitude more complicated,” he added.