Amazon Web Services (AWS) today at the AWS re:invent 2018 conference announced extensions to its partner program focused on driving more container and Internet of Things (IoT) expertise in the channel.
Core to that effort is a Container Competency for Amazon ECS and Amazon ECS for Kubernetes designations. Initially, AWS says 17 partners have attained this new competency.
AWS also revealed there are now over 160 container products certified on the AWS Marketplace that can be deployed on Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) and Amazon ECS for Kubernetes (Amazon EKS). Those offerings can all be paid for using the monthly AWS billing process. AWS claims there are now over 200,000 AWS customers contracting to use software via the AWS Marketplace.
In addition, AWS today announced that for the first time making it possible for organizations to create their own private AWS marketplace through which they can create their own custom catalog of applications.
Finally, AWS is also adding AWS IoT Service Delivery designations to help customers identify partners with proven success deploying IoT solutions on AWS in addition to creating an AWS Device Qualification Program (DQP) which allows partners to easily qualify IoT hardware by authenticating and validating interoperability with AWS IoT services.
Overall, the AWS channel has expanded considerably in the last year, says Terry Wise, vice president for global alliances and channels for AWS. Wise says AWS and its partners now collectively engage 100,000 customers, with the average deal size increase in size by a factor of 3.5, says Wise. Much of that success is due to a recent AWS move to add a partner success manager role to its field sales organization.
“We’re going to double the number of partner success managers in 2019,” says Wise.
Wise also revealed there are now 87 premier AWS partners, with 27 of those partners attaining that highest tier ranking in the AWS channel in the last year.
There’s no doubt AWS represents one of the fastest growing segments of IT for channel partners as customers continue to embrace public clouds. The decision channel partners need to make now is not so much whether to partner with AWS, but rather to what degree other clouds, or for that matter, on-premises IT deployments are core to their business.
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