Amazon Web Services (AWS), highlighted its ongoing investments in its partner community at the AWS reInvent Global Partner Summit this week.
According to Terry Wise (head of Global Alliances at AWS), the AWS Partner Network (APN), grew by more than 10,000 members in the past twelve months. He stated that AWS is continuing to invest heavily into the APN Program in order to support this growth. This will ensure that AWS customers have the best software and services available for AWS and that partners can continue to build successful cloud businesses using AWS.
AWS launched this week two new competencies for APN Partners — one for machine-learning and one for networking. A trio of new programs were also revealed by AWS for APN Consulting and Technology Partners.
AWS will soon launch the new Solution Provider Program for Consulting partners. This program will replace the old Channel Reseller Program in 2018. AWS says the Solution Provider Program is for “APN Consulting Partners who innovate on behalf of customers with proven solution capabilities and have acquired competencies in the areas DevOps, Migration, Managed Service Provider (MSP) and/or DevOps.” The Solution Provider Program offers more support and contract options.
The Technology partners are the other two APN changes. The AWS Software as a Service Factory (SaaS Factory) will provide architecture, best practices, and training resources to partners who offer SaaS solutions on AWS. The SaaS Accelerate program will offer marketing and sales support.
The SaaS Factory as well as the SaaS Accelerate program are both expected to go live in the first quarter of next year.
AWS Marketplace Updates
A new feature in AWS Marketplace that facilitates the contract process for customers, partners, and employees was released to preview on Tuesday.
According to AWS, the “Enterprise Contract” templated buyer-seller contract “resolves challenging terms including liability and dispute resolution. It also provides warranty and IP protection across multiple vendors.” AWS claims that the new feature was developed in collaboration with 30 companies selling on the AWS Marketplace. It is intended to speed up the procurement negotiation process and prevent long project delays.
Enterprise Contract for AWS Marketplace, currently in private preview, is expected to be made generally available in the first three months of 2018.
AWS Marketplace users can also preview “Private Image Build,” which allows organizations to run software from AWS Marketplace vendors on a custom image. Customers can simultaneously run third-party applications while complying with their IT department’s security policies.
AWS Marketplace also announced this week at reInvent that it will be upgrading its PrivateLink offering. PrivateLink was initially designed to allow AWS customers to establish secure connections between their virtual private cloud (VPC) and other AWS services via VPC endpoints. AWS has enabled PrivateLink to connect to AWS customer and partner solutions, including those available on the AWS Marketplace, as of Tuesday.
AWS evangelist Jeff Barr announced the update in a blog post this week. “Companies can now make services and sell them to other AWS customers for access via a private link.” They create a service that accepts TCP traffic and host it behind a Network Load Balancingr. Then they make the service available in AWS Marketplace or directly. They will be notified about new subscription requests and have the option to accept or reject them all. This feature is expected to be used to build a strong, vibrant network of service providers in 2018.
Wise says that the AW