Simon Elisha (AWS)
One of Amazon Web Service’s (AWS) most senior regional figures has defended the provider’s new policy of preventing its partners from discussing other public clouds in their marketing messaging.
Simon Elisha, AWS’ head of solution architecture for A/NZ public sector, told ARN, that the world’s largest public cloud provider saw “best success” from customers when they “choose to work with the cloud provider of their choice”.
“We’re really proud of the way we work with partners and the programs we put in place and we wanted to refine the way we best serve customers,” he said. “One of the ways is to work closely with our valued partners and how we bring the right outcomes for the customer.
“What we see is the best success is when they choose to work with the cloud provider of their choice. That maximises their outcomes. Where we see a lot of organisations fail is when they try and go with the lowest common denominator approach.”
Elisha’s comments come two weeks after AWS’ new co-branding guide told partners it will no longer approve terms such as “multi-cloud,” “cross cloud,” “any cloud,” “every cloud,” “or any other language that implies designing or supporting more than one cloud provider, as reported by CRN Australia.
ARN understands that for a partner to go against these guidelines would be “in violation of its partner agreement”. Although AWS has not revealed the consequences of violating these, partners on the ground at the AWS Public Sector Summit in Canberra suggest it could lead to potential de-registration.
“Partners recognise they are critically important to helping customers succeed in the cloud,” Elisha added. “A lot of customers find themselves with a shortage of skills and capabilities in terms of delivery. We continue to work with our partners large and small to deliver these outcomes.
Meanwhile, during the two-day conference Iain Rouse, AWS’ country manager of public sector touted partner and customers’ “freedom of choice”.
“The more you ask, the more you get. We believe that choice is the most important asset of a provider and freedom of choice is important in all our customer feedback,” he told an audience during his keynote address.
“The way we move faster is through a deep network with our consulting partners. They are an important mechanism for scale at AWS to move faster. We have an amazing network of partners.”
Rouse, in particular, cited Contino, Cloudten and Veritas as “remarkable organisations” during his address.
“This partner ecosystem allows us to move faster and it’s a force multiplier,” he added. “In Australia and New Zealand, it’s remarkable how the public sector, education, health and not-for-profits are adopting the cloud.”
AWS now has 22 cloud geographic regions, spanning 69 availability zones, and is planning to open new zones in South Africa, Indonesia and Italy in the near future.
Rouse also noted that AWS marketplace, which allows ISVs and partners to sell their solutions to AWS customers, now had 4,800 listings globally and was driving “greater pace of adoption” in cloud.
Eleanor Dickinson attended the AWS Public Sector Summit in Canberra as a guest of Amazon Web Services.
