Introducing the Generative AI Center of Excellence for AWS Partners: The Path to AI Expertise

By Julia Chen, Vice President, Partner Core – AWS

We’ve all seen the far-reaching industry and functional applications of generative artificial intelligence (AI) that has captured widespread attention and an urgency for customers to transform their businesses.

Generative AI’s nascency and pace of innovation means there is an increasing demand for specialized capabilities at even the most mature enterprises. The need to address specialized requirements has prevented many businesses from quickly implementing and realizing business outcomes.

At Amazon Web Services (AWS), we believe our partners are well-positioned to support specialized customer needs, either through providing consultative support or specialty business applications with integrated generative AI capabilities.

This is why we are introducing the Generative AI Center of Excellence (CoE) for AWS Partners. It’s a digital experience open to all partners within the AWS Partner Network (APN).

The Generative AI Center of Excellence for AWS Partners includes education and training resources for partners that bridge the potential of artificial intelligence and the growing landscape of generative AI tools, applications, and use cases that are positioned to improve AWS customer experiences.

The CoE includes content contributions from generative AI solution providers and industry thought leaders such as Anthropic, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Capgemini, Cohere, IBM, McKinsey & Company, NVIDIA, and Pinecone. This content provides AWS Partners of varying sizes, maturity, and domain expertise a path to building expertise and solutions in generative AI, making it more accessible to customers.

Get started with the Center of Excellence today:

• AWS Partners can access the CoE in AWS Partner Central (login required).
• Log in and navigate to Resources > Guides > Generative AI Center of Excellence.
• Explore the generative AI playbook for AWS Partners.
• You can also access the CoE through the AWS Generative AI Partner Resources page.

The CoE delivers optimized learning paths to implement generative AI solutions for customers

The Generative AI Center of Excellence for AWS Partners includes guided, optimized learning paths, along with curated and interactive curricula.

The CoE will be complemented by forums that facilitate AWS and partner knowledge sharing and development of joint thought leadership, collectively advancing the thinking and applications of generative AI for our joint customers.

The CoE hosts both technical and non-technical specialized content that showcases the latest developments and insights around generative AI. Resources include industry-focused training, use case-specific best practices, and in-depth thought leadership on vertical applications.

We have ensured trainings also span learner modalities to increase retention and effectiveness.

“We are truly at an exciting inflection point in the widespread adoption of machine learning. We are still in the early days, with a need for continuous investment in and development of generative AI talent and organizational capabilities,” says Vasi Philomin, VP of Generative AI at AWS. “Through the CoE, we are deepening the integration between AWS and partner teams by bringing our internal-facing content directly to partners in a timely manner, which is critical in the fast-paced, highly evolving domain of generative AI.”

Beyond learning the ins and outs of creative generative AI solutions, we encourage AWS Partners to take advantage of user guides and practice-building playbooks explaining how to leverage content for marketing and promotional efforts.

The CoE includes insights and content contributions from AWS Partners

Successful deployment of generative AI solutions and applications requires integration across a selection of different components within generative AI.

The CoE will provide content and trainings to enable AWS Partners across our native AWS services. It also offers training and insights on third-party foundation models (FMs), applications, and developer tools to support the diverse business needs of mutual customers. Additionally, the CoE shares unique industry perspectives and differing approaches to developing and deploying artificial intelligence.

Here’s a look at featured content available through the CoE today:

➤ Familiarize yourself with the wide range of generative AI offerings on AWS to maximize customer outcomes

Foundation models are not a one-size-fits-all solution; understanding the models and selecting the best fit is important. In collaboration with Anthropic and Cohere, the CoE provides a comprehensive training and resource guide for AWS Partners that covers core features, capabilities, and best practices of leveraging FMs through Amazon Bedrock.

Data is core to generative AI strategies, and AWS Partners can engage directly with Pinecone to learn how to leverage vector databases and add advanced features to AI applications.

The CoE has also collaborated with NVIDIA to offer partners the training and tools needed to deliver generative AI solutions to customers through NVIDIA AI Enterprise software. Learn how this accelerates data science and streamlines the development and deployment of production-ready generative AI, helping businesses improve the productivity of their AI teams and achieve business insights faster.

➤ Hear from leaders across the APN on industries’ specialized applications of generative AI

Capgemini brings together experts from its cloud and banking and capital markets practices to further the understanding of trends and unique considerations of generative AI across financial services.

The potential of generative AI’s impact to the healthcare sector is also greatly anticipated. Listen to experts from IBM on where they are seeing the first practical applications of generative AI across the industry.

➤ Build applications that go beyond optimization and understand considerations like fairness, privacy, and safety

Learn from AWS Partners like Veritone about how they are keeping transparency, security, trust, and equity at the forefront of their generative AI applications, and the challenges that come with it.

Bosch AIShield also shares which security and policy-related risks are top of mind for customers, and how they can be addressed while building and scaling generative AI applications.

➤ Leverage data-driven insights and tools to engage and accelerate your customers’ generative AI journeys

The CoE has collaborated with BCG to bring insights on the customer sales cycle and adoption hurdles, with tangible recommendations on how to address customer concerns. This includes a framework and tools that help customers understand the total cost of ownership (TCO) implications for generative AI.

AWS Partners like McKinsey & Company (through QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey—its data and analytics center of excellence) work closely with a wide range of CxOs across industries, regions, and maturity levels, advising them on generative AI and how to build generative AI applications. Based on McKinsey’s experience, the company is collaborating with the Generative AI Center of Excellence for AWS Partners to share how partners can inspire CxO customers on the transformative potential of generative AI, and support them on value capture as they build out their generative AI use cases.

To complement the CoE’s robust training resources, AWS and our partners will host and facilitate knowledge sharing through engagement in industry events, joint partner market publications, and panel discussions.

The CoE will host its first partner panel discussion at AWS re:Invent 2023 on the role of responsible AI, featuring panelists from Accenture, Anthropic, Arthur AI, BCG, and IBM. AWS Partners attending re:Invent can register for the panel discussion.

AWS is focused on collaborating with partners to advance customer deployments

The Generative AI Center of Excellence for AWS Partners will complement the investments AWS is making across a broad range of partners such as DataStax, Infosys, Slalom, and SoftwareOne, to provide the expertise and tools to execute capability development, solution roadmaps, and customer engagement for generative AI on AWS.

For example, our expanded relationship with Slalom will focus on developing foundational generative AI capabilities across customer-facing resources, supported by deep technical capabilities and customer offerings and accelerators.

“We are adopting generative AI technology and expanding our collaboration with AWS so we can better provide innovative solutions that accelerate time to value for our customers,” says Mukesh Kumar, General Manager of Global Technology at Slalom. “The AWS CoE is a core resource that empowers us to scale our generative AI capabilities and match the pace of innovation from AWS more efficiently. Together, Slalom and AWS are delivering the power of generative AI to our customers, so we can help them create new customer experiences, power new ways of working, and achieve business model breakthroughs that lead to greater success.”

Advance your generative AI strategy by engaging with the CoE today

AWS Partners can start leveraging these resources today to accelerate generative AI strategies and specialize in customer use cases. The CoE can help organizations become familiar with generative AI tools on AWS, build relevant solutions, and engage with customers on how the right solutions can increase productivity and be cost effective.

AWS Partners can begin building their expertise through the CoE in AWS Partner Central (login required). Navigate to Resources > Guides > Generative AI Center of Excellence and get started with the generative AI playbook. You can also access the CoE through the AWS Generative AI Partner Resources page.

To contribute to the CoE, please let your Partner Development Manager know you are interested. We’re excited to be at the forefront of advancing generative AI applications and use cases with our AWS Partners to deliver more value to customers.
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Don’t miss our generative AI partner panel discussion at re:Invent:

The CoE will host its first partner panel discussion at AWS re:Invent 2023 on the role of responsible AI, featuring panelists from Accenture, Anthropic, Arthur AI, BCG, and IBM.

AWS Partners attending re:Invent can register for the panel discussion.