Oliver Pearce

Forward Together: How MongoDB Invests in (and Helps Grow) Modernization Consultancies for Our Customers

At MongoDB, our partners are critical to our ability to care for our customers. For example, our Global Systems Integrator (GSI) partners help MongoDB customers modernize, migrate, and manage their data infrastructure in the cloud at scale. Notwithstanding the continued success of our GSI partners, many of our customers and the GSI themselves expressed the need for assistance that was highly tailored to their specific industry or that addressed an extremely complex technical challenge. As a result of this feedback, MongoDB has launched a modernization investment program focused on specialist system integrators, which we are calling Boutique Systems Integrators (BSIs). This post explains our rationale behind the program and offers key details on how it functions. Even though this article is focused on our system integrator program, our customers may also appreciate understanding our thought process behind a key partner initiative that strives to deliver continued customer value. Why did we create the BSI program? Many BSIs offer smaller and more specialized consultancy services, enabling us to expand MongoDB’s global reach in a focused and thoughtful manner. Furthermore, since these BSIs are specially suited to particular industries or sectors within those industries, they help us care for customers in businesses that have historically been difficult to move off of their legacy infrastructure. This approach has allowed us to improve the MongoDB customer experience while also creating beneficial opportunities for our partners. In addition to the need for industry-specific expertise, it was also evident that both our customers and our GSI partners (which tended to be larger corporations) were looking for smaller, more specialized organizations to complement their efforts. For instance, if a GSI didn’t possess the necessary expertise for a given use case, then a BSI could provide help to deliver and implement a solution jointly. Our BSI program immediately delivered value to our customers and GSI partners. It was a great solution to a difficult problem. However, we quickly realized that customer demand for BSI services exceeded capacity. We needed to determine how to accelerate our BSI program and scale our existing partners in order to best support our customers. In the winter of 2020 during some of the most difficult periods of the pandemic, we launched an initiative in which we directly invested and took equity stake in a handful of BSIs. Our investments allowed the BSIs to rapidly accelerate the onboarding of highly skilled consultants, launch additional go-to-market offerings, drive marketing programs, and remain maniacally focused on driving modernization value for our customers. How did we create the BSI program — and how are things going? To select the most appropriate partners to invest in, we created a simple but effective request for proposal (RFP) process. The criteria focused on straightforward qualifications; we sought out organizations led by founders or executives with extensive enterprise experience, established organizations with 50 employees or fewer looking to scale, and aspiring partners with existing MongoDB skills and a proven track record of success in modernization. The vetting process took a wide range of factors into consideration, including growth potential and customer references. Essentially, MongoDB screened for organizations with strong foundations, which took the form of seasoned leadership, finely honed business processes, and the ability to scale with us. We also assessed competence in related areas like training and team development, overall organizational alignment on goals, industry expertise, and recruiting. To take things one step further, the most promising companies were selected to become investment partners, a higher tier of the BSI program. Today, after more than a year of hard work, five investment partners have joined our program: PeerIslands, Exafluence, Gravity 9, Wekan Enterprise Solutions, and Clarity Business Solutions. In total, our investment partners can field over 300 modernization consultants — all of whom are thoroughly familiar with MongoDB — and empower customers to fully leverage the potential of the MongoDB platform. Where we are with each of our investment partners Let’s review some of the exceptional work these Six BSI partners have done over the past year. PeerIslands won the BSI Partner of the Year Award in 2021. A strong organization that has excelled across all of our success criteria, PeerIslands possesses strong delivery skills in the independent software vendor (ISV) replatform and retail segments. The company has a very capable team of ex-Cognizant leaders with close alignment to MongoDB products. Customers love the company’s onshore-offshore model, and we are happy to empower PeerIslands to expand its headcount and organizational abilities — and thrilled to see where the team will go next. Exafluence is a leader in modernizing payments and healthcare platforms, with a particular focus on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR). Given the documented compatibility problems between healthcare information solutions, Exafluence is in an excellent position to facilitate the transformation of obsolete, legacy technology — and help improve vital outcomes for patients and providers alike. Wekan Enterprise Solutions , based in India and the United States, specializes in IoT, mobile development and modernization, and fleet logistics. This creates a natural alignment with Realm, MongoDB’s toolkit for application developers, which includes key services, app logic, and data sync. Wekan, the strongest partner in our ecosystem with Realm expertise, has excelled in reimagining mobile and backend data infrastructure for its customers. Gravity9 , headquartered in the U.K., has considerable expertise in accelerating clients’ transformation journeys by modernizing applications for the cloud, developing operational data stores, and creating single-view solutions. As a result, the company possesses deep technical capabilities and is well qualified to bring MongoDB to a new slate of enterprises. Clarity Business Solutions specializes in application modernization for U.S. government agencies. With its experienced team (many of whom already possess top security clearances and other federal qualifications), Clarity is well positioned to help public sector customers get more from their MongoDB and FedRAMP investments. Pureinsights is a leading provider of search consulting and cutting-edge technologies, delivering exceptional search-based applications. Pureinsights leverages MongoDB Atlas and Atlas Search to build powerful search applications. From simple document search to advanced AI-driven content analytics, Pureinsights has the capabilities to implement a wide range of use cases, meeting the evolving expectations of today's users. How our customers have benefited from this program Our investment partners work with clients to: Accelerate their modernization journeys with MongoDB Provide access to highly skilled modernization consultants with expertise in the MongoDB stack and the cloud Bring in industry specialization for MongoDB use cases Deliver end-to-end solutions using MongoDB's products and services Dr. Narendra Kini, the chief medical officer at our customer VitalProbe Inc., says, “Converting an array of healthcare data (structured, unstructured, and semi-structured) across critical variables into formats that can be stored and accessed for advanced analytics to drive better health outcomes is the core competency of Exafluence." Further, says Dr. Kini, "They are able to achieve this interoperability through their MongoDB Atlas–centric data platform, with FHIR APIs being accessed through mobile apps that leverage MongoDB Realm sync technology. Our company is a great example of a customer that benefits from Exafluence’s expertise and more specifically from the FHIR platform built by them,” he says. “Three years ago, when we decided to transform our data engineering and ML workloads to the cloud and build the world’s best revenue cycle management platform for healthcare providers, we needed a partner who could step up to the challenge. PeerIslands came our way then,” says Sriram Upadhyayula, the CTO at CloudMed. “We have since worked with them for over three years, and I have been more than satisfied with the solutions PeerIslands has developed and delivered. They have grown to be recognized for their experience in digital transformation and for their expertise in MongoDB. The quality of talent at PeerIslands is among the best I’ve worked with,” says Upadhyayula. “They go above and beyond to deliver quality results, time and again.” Where we go from here Going forward, MongoDB looks to grow our modernization investment program for BSIs and continue to empower our existing investment partners as we seek to jointly care for customers. With the help of our talented partners, we aim to support MongoDB adoption — and provide a better data experience — for many more customers across various industries and time zones. If you are a customer interested in using one of our investment partners for a modernization project or would like to become one of our BSIs, please contact us at partners@mongodb.com . We look forward to hearing from you!