Amazon Web Services vice president channels and alliances, Terry Wise delivering the partner keynote
Helping partners grow was the message from the first day of AWS re:Invent 2015 in Las Vegas. Big investments in partner certification, training and enablement were announced at the Partner Keynote address delivered by AWS vice president channels and alliances, Terry Wise.
More than 4000 partners turned out to see presentations from Wise as well as Time CTO, Colin Bodell; Infor COO, Pam Murphy; AWS senior vice president of worldwide sales, Adam Selipsky; and AWS senior vice president web services, Andy Jassy.
Wise began by talking about the state of AWS. The company and its partners now collectively serve over one million customers worldwide and for the first time 50 per cent of its partners are based outside the North America.
Wise went on to say that AWS wanted to increase the visibility and profile of partners offering solutions on and around the AWS platform.
“It really is a massive opportunity that partners can take advantage of,” he said.
Wise went on to talk about the AWS approach to technology and offerings for partners to take to market.
“We always start with the customer and work backwards,” he said.
“We listen to the customer so that we can understand what their needs are so we invest our people and our resources, we know that we are doing it with the customer first in mind.”
Wise went over the company’s changes to its partner program including new announcements about the AWS Marketplace; partner training and certification, along with naming its 2016 Premier Consulting Partners, a designation that AWS said recognised 46 APN partners that provided superior customer service and expertise in building and migrating solutions on AWS.
Included in the training and certification offerings were three new AWS Partner Network (APN) Competencies that are said enable and promote partners who have demonstrated expertise and proven success in DevOps, Cloud Migration, and Internet of Things (IoT).
Australian partners that were recognised included Victorian-based, Melbourne IT. Technology One and Bulletproof were singled out as technology partners.
AWS also announced that its AWS Marketplace had grown to more than 2,300 software listings that are pre-configured for the AWS Cloud and available across 35 different categories.
The first day of the conference had partners spoiled for choice with 18 breakout sessions on offer throughout the day.
Wise said that the company was hearing that there needed to be a new model for managed Cloud services.
“Many of the processes and tools we have worked with over the past decades are somewhat applicable to the Cloud, but there were gaps.”
Wise went on to say that the introduction of these new training and certification programs were the company’s way of closing these gaps.
Chris Player travelled to AWS re:Invent as a guest of Amazon Web Services.
