Caetano exercised the same unerring eye for opportunity in 2015 in a very different way. To support the massive technology needs of his business without building and maintaining a massive IT infrastructure, Caetano had turned to Amazon Web Services. And after three years, he was happy with the Amazon cloud platform.
So, when Microsoft invited him to look at Microsoft Azure, he wasn’t expecting to make a change—but he was also not one to pass up a potentially momentous opportunity.
“Eye-opening” Azure
Caetano had thought of Microsoft as “old school” but what he found was a Microsoft “more humble, more flexible, and laser-focused on cloud computing.” And what he found in Azure was eye opening. “Oh man, Microsoft is years ahead of Amazon in video and media technology,” Caetano recalls thinking after his exposure to Azure.
For example, Azure has state-of-the-art technologies for video transcoding, digital rights management, media services, livestreaming, video on demand, speech-to-text, translations, and more that he found unavailable, or suboptimal, in Amazon.
The man who built his success by taking advantage of opportunity decided to take advantage of Azure. Caetano had been relying on 15 vendors, in addition to Amazon, for the video technologies that Samba Tech needed. By migrating his 20-petabyte-a-year infrastructure to Azure, he was able to consolidate those vendor relationships to just one: Microsoft.
The result does more than just save cost. Because the vastly simplified video workflow no longer passes through multiple vendors, Samba Tech also sees faster performance and greater reliability—and so do its customers, which is reflected in more competitive service-level agreements.
Performance, reliability up
Another benefit: some of those other technology providers were also Samba Tech’s competitors. By moving to Microsoft, he avoids being dependent on them. Caetano says these benefits will only grow as Samba Tech takes advantage of other Microsoft technologies, such as Azure Machine Learning and Power BI.
A partner, not a supplier
The video and media technology in Azure was only one factor in Caetano’s decision to move from Amazon. The other was the way Microsoft wanted to be not Samba Tech’s supplier, but its strategic partner.
“I saw that with Microsoft, there was tremendous business upside, compared to Amazon,” he says. “Microsoft could help us generate leads, grow our business, and become a global player. Microsoft really wants us to succeed and they’re helping us to do it. We haven’t had this partnership with another vendor before.”
For example, Caetano cites the relationship he has with the Microsoft Chief Executive Officer in Brazil, a relationship that includes the discussion of new go-to-market plans for Latin America. And Microsoft is helping Samba Tech to move its business beyond the borders of the Latin American market.
Entering the US market
Samba Tech worked with Microsoft Ventures on its 2016 entry into the US market. Microsoft, for example, introduced Samba Tech to potential customers and participated in demonstrations that combine Samba Tech and Microsoft technologies. In June, Samba Tech launched the Azure-based Kast. It’s a mobile video app designed to give enterprises more immediate and interactive team communication and collaboration.
A whole partner ecosystem
Caetano sees another gain from the relationship with Microsoft: access to the Microsoft partner ecosystem. For example, Samba Tech is teaming with Microsoft Partner Network member company softwareONE to help sell its services, and it envisions additional technology and business partnerships with Microsoft partners.