Amazon Web Services

Situation / Challenge

In 2006, the online retail giant Amazon.com created Amazon Web Services (AWS) to offer IT infrastructure services such as cloud computing and storage. Backed by a corporate brand name with considerable equity, a low pay-as-you-go offering and a flexible environment, AWS made waves before most of the industry truly understood what cloud computing really meant.

Today, AWS’ worldwide public sector team supports more than 800 federal, state and local government agencies as well as more than 3,000 academic institutions. The company has all the right components for a strong PR story: a well-known executive team, timely topics and a compelling offering.

With a rapidly growing market (federal cloud spending exceeded $3 billion in FY14), and a fast moving federal cloud policy environment, it quickly became apparent that the company needed to engage public sector influencers on a consistent basis.

Approach

With Sage, AWS was able to leverage a communications firm with deep-rooted expertise in the public sector cloud from Cloud-First to FedRAMP and everything in between. Since 2012, Sage has worked to help AWS build its public sector presence through interviews, awards and speaking events in trade as well as mainstream publications.

Results

Our outreach to reporters, event organizers and others in the media have resulted in the placement over 125 feature articles generating more than a hundred million impressions. Additionally, Amazon has won half a dozen awards including the FCW Fed 100 and Campus Technology Innovator.

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