This week has seen Amazon Web Services (AWS) gather its partners together to provide updates on the progress made and ambitions for the rest of 2025.
Ruba Borno, vice-president for specialists and partners at AWS, was one of the key executives meeting the channel at its London Partner Summit. She took time out to share the key messages with MicroScope.
How have things been going on the channel front for AWS?
We’ve had incredible activity in the AWS partner network. AWS’s commitment to partners continues to strengthen. Every single year, we’ve had some amazing announcements, and I want to focus and drill down on a few strategic workloads where our partners have been key to helping AWS customers realise tremendous value.
The first one is generative AI. We launched a generative AI competency, and it was, upon launch, one of our largest competencies ever in the history of the AWS Partner Network. And today, we have nearly 200 partners with that competency – 110 of them in EMEA.
That competency has been key in helping customers determine which partner to work with to move from pilot to production and get higher value.
We have partners that have that competency, that have 50% or 80% proof of concept to convert to production conversion, and that’s really important, because in this world, everyone is resource constrained – and especially generative AI resources and talent, there isn’t enough of it to date – so being able to go after the higher return on investment solutions and work with partners is important for our customers.
What’s the “power of three” approach?
Another key piece that’s been really exciting for us is not just channel partners ... but seeing the growth of channel partners with our ISVs [independent software vendors]. It’s the power of three – partners working with each other to support customers.
Some of the ISVs that have been successful here – think SAP, ServiceNow, some of our security partners, whether it’s CrowdStrike, Okta, Splunk, ones that have been really successful in the AWS Marketplace – are using this power of three model, with the third being AWS, to support customers more rapidly.
“To deliver business outcomes to customers and industry-based solutions, something like 44% of those opportunities require four or more partners, so the investment in Partner Connection is key in helping make that happen”
Ruba Borno, AWS
One of the things we have done to support that effort is launch Partner Connection. This is a way for partners – through AWS, through Partner Central, the portal – to put in an opportunity. They are able to work together with another partner on that opportunity to submit a proposal to a customer. And that’s been exciting for us because it’s bringing to life something that customers and partners have been asking about.
What we’re seeing from analysts is that to deliver business outcomes to customers and industry-based solutions, something like 44% of those opportunities require four or more partners, so the investment in Partner Connection is key in helping make that happen.
You mentioned SAP – what’s been happening with that relationship?
We’re really excited about the growth of our SAP relationship. It’s been great for customers, and it’s been great for our partners as well. We’re working together to make it faster and easier for companies to apply generative AI to their core business data and the key customer outcomes that they’re looking for – efficiency, responsiveness, sustainability.
So, with AWS and SAP together, and the systems integrator that supports customers on those migrations, there is potential for businesses to transform their raw operational data into actionable insights and automated solutions.
Are there further examples of positive relationships?
VMware has been critical for our customers and our partners. Our customers and our partners are asking, ‘How can we help customers migrate their virtual workloads to AWS as quickly as possible and be able to support our customers that way?’. We launched our enterprise virtualisation service, and that is the fastest way for customers to migrate their virtual workloads to AWS we’re providing – it gives them flexibility and scalability, so that’s been pretty critical for us. We launched that with multiple channel partners – they are key to making it happen.
We also launched Amazon Q Transform, which is a tool that allows migration of VMware workloads to AWS. It also allows migrations of mainframe workloads to AWS and supports modernisation for our customers. And we are hearing of the efficiency that is providing to many of our partners who use it.
We’re seeing channel partners embrace the AWS Marketplace as a route to acquire new customers
Ruba Borno, AWS
Have you seen increased numbers of channel partners engage with your Marketplace?
We’re seeing channel partners embrace the AWS Marketplace as a route to acquire new customers. So, we have systems integrator partners and channel partners who tell us – I’ll quote one that’s in the US that I spoke with recently – that they’ve achieved 15% of their net new logos sourced through the AWS Marketplace. That’s the kind of power, and we think that’s just barely scratching the surface; that’s still early results. I think the more and more we support our partners with features and capabilities in the AWS Marketplace, the more benefit they’re going to get.
As you spoke with partners this week, did you get a sense of optimism about the rest of 2025?
We’ve been really excited about the growth in EMEA in general. I don’t think the UK is an exception here, but EMEA has been one of our fastest-growing regions, so we are excited about the performance year over year. In the first quarter, we’ve been really happy about the growth with partners. We’re seeing partner attach grow significantly year over year in EMEA, and in particular in the UK, so that’s encouraging.
When I meet with partners, there is not only a sense of optimism … I would take it further and say there’s a sense of enthusiasm. So, when we share the power of generative AI, not only to support customers on adopting generative AI use cases and solutions, but to transform their business, it’s a sense of excitement of how they’re thinking about transforming the way they work, how they’re thinking about being able to support customers better and faster by utilising tools like Amazon Q Transform, Q Developer or Amazon Q Business to more quickly deliver statements of work to their customers.
