AWS channel boss views partners as critical to strategy
Public cloud giant recently wrapped up its annual Re:Invent event with the spotlight shining brightly on its channel activities
Before the curtain came down on last year, AWS was able to outline its current position and ambitions for its channel partners.
The cloud giant has celebrated a decade of its Marketplace and 12 years of its Partner Network, which has evolved and been enhanced regularly over that period.
Leading those efforts is Ruba Borno, vice-president of worldwide channels and alliances at AWS, who is keen to expound on the main messages that came out of Re:Invent from a partner perspective, which included a focus on how the firm can support partners leading customers through digital transformation efforts and how working with the vendor is profitable.
“We had commissioned a third party study by Canalys, which is a multiplier study,” she said. “What Canalys found was that partners who sell multiple AWS services can make $6.40 for every dollar of AWS that they sell. And what they also found was that 79% of the partners saw that customers increased consumption after the first year.”
AWS also provided an update on the progress it has made in the year since it launched partner paths, which were designed to align with channel business models.
“We’ve had over 100,000 partner launches on partner paths,” said Borno. “We’re really excited to see that adoption, and we want to continue to see partners adopt that and give us feedback on partner paths.”
In terms of what’s coming next, AWS has the partner solution factory, which provides access for the channel to experts on industry-specific, pre-built supported solutions that they can then take out to customers that have been calling for more pre-built validated solutions.
Data visualisation
There have also been recent enhancements to Marketplace announced, with improved data visualisation dashboards. “We heard a lot of feedback from partners where they wanted a single dashboard to track, analyse and see how their business is performing with AWS without any technical integration,” said Borno.
“We’re seeing a diverse group of partners that are transacting through the AWS Marketplace,” she said, adding that as well as thousands of ISVs, there were also traditional channel partners and distributors involved.
“Our goal is to support customers through their cloud transformation and work with partners who are able to deliver business outcomes and help our customers,” said Borno. “That’s absolutely our number one goal, and we want to work with all of the partners that are able to do that in service of our customers.”
The recent Re:Invent event was an opportunity for senior AWS management to share some love for the channel, including CEO Adam Selipsky, with it clear that partners are a critical part of the go-to-market strategy.
Borno echoed the sentiments shared back in Las Vegas last month. “Partners have been, since day one, critical to our go-to-market strategy, and we expect that to continue. We continue to invest in our partner programmes; we’re continuing to invest in our partnerships and find new ways of delivering value to our partners so they can deliver value to our customers.”
