Péter Stein joined Noventiq in January as AWS Business Development Manager for the CEE region. He has not been bored since, as he has already launched several successful projects and built many customer relationships. Péter also talked about the origins of his technical orientation, becoming open to AWS, and why a cloud service is the right choice for any company.  

This year you joined Noventiq’s team as AWS Business Development Manager. Can you tell us a bit about your past experience and current tasks?

Although I’d heard about it before, I became familiar with the public cloud professionally at Microsoft, where I worked for six years from 2014. We didn’t know about AWS for a long time, as Amazon did not focus on sales in this region. The service was available, but few people knew about it. At that time, even Microsoft didn’t consider Azure a priority, and all companies needed some time to realize the potential of their cloud services, as was the case with Microsoft and Amazon. However, as providing Microsoft applications as cloud services to customers has become more and more pronounced over the years, we’ve become familiar with AWS together with the other competitors. More and more customers told us that they had tried AWS, or even that they were using it. As I try to stay up to date with industry developments, I became increasingly knowledgeable about AWS. Even so, after the years I’d spent with Microsoft, I didn’t start working with AWS immediately: I worked instead for Huawei for two years, primarily selling on-premise ground infrastructures. During these two years, I came to see the potential in the public cloud and multi-cloud even more clearly. Customer interest in AWS increased, so I established a relationship with the provider as well. The next and defining step in my career was to join Noventiq’s team as AWS Business Development Manager for the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region. My task is to develop the AWS business in the region, which includes customer acquisition, customer engagement, marketing, and ongoing communication with the AWS support team. Since AWS was added to Noventiq’s service portfolio in recent years, and we are just starting to roll it out in the CEE region, this task is a really exciting challenge. 

To what extent is AWS currently present in the CEE market?

Few people know it, but Amazon launched AWS back in 2006, ahead of Microsoft and Google. However, because they didn’t focus on our region for a long time, it wasn’t widely known. But this has been changing in recent years, with an increasing focus on the CEE region, as evidenced by the opening of their Budapest office. 

When did Noventiq add AWS to its portfolio?

Noventiq expanded its service portfolio with AWS just a few years ago, but it has cut itself a very important slice since then. A particularly important milestone was the acquisition of Umbrella Infocare, a recognized AWS solutions specialist company, in 2022, with the exact goal of strengthening the company’s AWS expertise and service offerings. By acquiring Umbrella Infocare, Noventiq has gained 10 years of AWS expertise, with hundreds of AWS experts and engineers, and world-class references. Through Umbrella Infocare, Noventiq now also has AWS Premier Consulting Partner status, which is the highest level of recognition at AWS. This recognition is only held by the most experienced partners, who are leaders in their geographic, vertical or horizontal markets, and boasting deep technical expertise and a large number of successful customer references. Among other things, we migrated almost all of Panasonic’s global IT infrastructure to the AWS cloud. All of our customers receive this expertise and team of professionals from Noventiq when they order the AWS cloud service, as the Umbrella Infocare global knowledge center offers them the highest level of service and support. 

In your opinion, what distinguishes Noventiq from other suppliers? 

It’s the expertise, team of professionals, number of references and history that Noventiq has. Noventiq and thereby its customers are backed by an amazingly large team, with a wide range of experience spanning more than a decade. 

With the AWS cloud service, customers receive a globally unique expertise and team of professionals from Noventiq. 

Noventiq provides customers with more than ten years of expertise on both Microsoft’s and AWS’s side, during which time it’s completed hundreds of migration projects. As early as during the first introductory conversation, we draw our customers’ attention to problems and possible solutions that might otherwise cost them years and millions of dollars to recognize. Whether it’s architecture implementation or solving various technical problems, we have access to the relevant references within a day. 

For what types and sizes of companies would you recommend AWS cloud services and technology? 

The extraordinary thing about cloud services is that in fact they are the right solution for any size and type of company, whether it’s a small business with a few people or a huge global multinational enterprise. AWS offers solutions and technologies that are the most efficient, considering their cost-effectiveness, flexibility and other aspects. To mention a few examples, we know an accounting firm with only a few employees who offer their services to their clients through AWS, as they have recognized that this is the most cost-efficient and secure solution in the long term. We also have a multinational enterprise customer who built their application on an AWS account right from the start, enabling them to price their application for sale easily, by seeing and planning their costs within AWS. So I think there’s a place for cloud services at all levels—the important thing is that it’s used well by the given company, in which Noventiq can help. 

Your career is driven by your passion for IT and cloud services in particular. When and how did this start for you and how does it affect your everyday life? 

Although I myself don’t have a formal technical education, my father and brother do, so the technical orientation has been with me since childhood. I was still in kindergarten when I was already playing on my first Commodore 64 computer. I like to sit in front of the computer in my free time as well, and read industry news and keep track of various technical and technological innovations. At the same time, I try to find the balance and do many things offline as well in my spare time, like playing sports and hiking in nature.