Leading experience management (XM) software provider Qualtrics aims to further innovate and support the company’s growth on a global scale by migrating its IT workloads to the cloud on AWS. As part of the extended partnership, AWS’ parent company Amazon will also leverage Qualtrics’ XM technology for its customer and employee feedback programs.
Prior to its Nasdaq debut earlier this year, Qualtrics was once a subsidiary of German enterprise software vendor SAP. Last January, Qualtrics successfully went public in a listing that raised over $1.5 billion, with SAP retaining majority ownership. Recognising the significant increase in the demand for XM solutions today, the company is accelerating innovation and is expanding rapidly to cater to the ever-growing customer base around the world.
This week, Qualtrics unveiled an expansion of its partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to modernise the firm’s IT infrastructure by moving both customer-facing workloads and IT systems — including its entire portfolio of XM solutions and xFlow automated workflow processes — to AWS cloud. According to the two companies’ statements, the XM Directory tool in Qualtrics’ XM platform is powered by Amazon DynamoDB, AWS’ fully-managed NoSQL database service for any scale application.
In addition, Qualtrics iQ is enabled by the Amazon SageMaker service, which offers capabilities that allow workers to develop and position artificial intelligence (AI) models in the cloud. Recently, Qualtrics notably turned its focus on AI when it announced its acquisition of Clarabridge, a customer experience (CX) management provider of omnichannel conversational analytics. This strategic purchase demonstrates the SAP-owned company’s strengthening presence in the XM market.
Commenting on the latest collaboration with AWS, John Thimsen, Chief Technology Officer at Qualtrics, remarked:
“Qualtrics and Amazon share the same guiding principle of customer obsession, and our mutual strengths are helping both companies operate better. Using AWS’ global infrastructure and breadth of machine learning and cloud capabilities will help us surface actionable insights at the speed that our customers, including Amazon, know and expect.”
Qualtrics Expands Amazon Partnership and Migrates to the Cloud on AWS
Thimsen emphasised that Qualtrics continuously invests in innovating its technology to assist customers in unlocking new growth opportunities in the experience transformation era. He added that over 13,500 enterprises bank on Qualtrics to deliver customer and employee experiences effectively.
On the other hand, Matt Garman, SVP of Sales and Marketing at Amazon Web Services, Inc. believes data is critical for companies to understand their operating environment and improve their customers’ overall experience. Reflecting on the partnership with Qualtrics, he stated:
“AWS’ industry-leading cloud capabilities and our proven global infrastructure give Qualtrics the ability to deliver timely, in-depth insights to customers with the utmost security and reliability. The strength and scale of this relationship will also help global companies such as ours use Qualtrics to deliver insights that can lead to improved outcomes around the world.”
While Qualtrics migrates its IT infrastructure to AWS cloud, AWS’ parent company Amazon, at the same time, intends to use Qualtrics’ XM platform internally. According to the statement released, Amazon will be able to more efficiently understand customer and employee feedback using the XM technology, allowing it to make data-driven choices across different departments.
Moreover, Zig Serafin, CEO at Qualtrics, expounded on the latest Amazon deal in an interview with CNBC’s Closing Bell. He noted that the platform is now being used, not just within AWS, but across all of Amazon’s business lines. He shared:
“Amazon is now using Qualtrics across their business to listen and understand how they’re doing with the experiences that they’re delivering and then the way that they’re taking action.”
“They’re going all-in on Qualtrics. Every employee in Amazon now has access to Qualtrics, which is massive,” Serafin stressed.
