New Generative AI Customer Research: AWS Partner Opportunities in the Evolving Generative AI Landscape

By Jacob Newton-Gladstein, Global Lead Generative AI Center of Excellence for Partners

We’re excited to announce the second edition of our comprehensive Generative AI Customer Research Study for AWS Partners, commissioned by the Generative AI Center of Excellence for AWS Partners.

This in-depth research was designed to provide AWS Partners with exclusive insights into customer adoption patterns, buying journeys, and strategic priorities in the rapidly evolving generative AI landscape. One take-away from the study is clear: Partners play a crucial role in bridging varying levels of AI maturity across organizations. Over 90% of surveyed customers plan to engage AWS Partners during at least one phase of their generative AI deployment in the next 3 years.

The study surveyed ~1,000 responses from 10 countries across Europe and North America and covers 24 priority industries, ranging from Hospitality and Transportation to Telecommunications and Banking.

We asked respondents 60+ questions designed to provide insights on 7 areas of interest:

• Generative AI adoption: Screen for FTE decision markets in relevant geographies and industries. Screen out respondents who do not engage and collect info on adoption funnel.
• Buying journey: Understand purchasing motivations, process, and buyer personas. Collect generative AI spend data and pricing model.
• Key purchasing criteria: Understand key purchasing criterial for model vendors, deployment platforms, and partners. Collect customer sentiments surround cloud service providers.
• Architecture decisions: Collect info on platform and model vendors. Understand deployment decisions: multiple vendors, open-source models.
• Pain points and opportunities: Understand progress and obstacles in adoption, deployment, and integration; including risk, scaling, and upskilling.
• Partner and outsourcing: Understand the role of partners within outsourcing scenarios, including satisfaction.
• Vertical and horizontal deep dives: Understand use cases at the department (horizonal) and industry (vertical) levels.

Key Industry Shifts and Trends

The research reveals that generative AI adoption is increasingly following industry-specific patterns rather than universal use cases across sectors. This suggests that industry leaders are creating adoption blueprints around sector specific use cases rather than generic, horizontal use cases.

Compared to our 2023 study, while cost considerations have become less critical for initial experimentation, they remain the primary factor when scaling workloads. ROI has gained importance as the technology matures, while strong cybersecurity continues to be the leading factor in platform selection for a second year in a row.

The study dives deep into key areas to help AWS Partners develop their generative AI strategies. Sample questions and insights from the survey include:

Question: “How far along is your company in its journey to implement generative AI processes in each of the following functions?”

Insight: Partners can identify which business functions are most mature in generative AI adoption versus those still in early stages, allowing them to tailor their offerings and target their go-to-market strategies accordingly—focusing resources on either supporting advanced implementations in mature areas or providing foundational offerings in less developed functions.

Question: The survey includes a series of questions asking respondents to rate or rank the importance of key purchasing criteria such as expertise in the customers industry, expertise with generative AI technology, the ability to manage data prep services and post deployment customer support.

Insight: The purchasing criteria rankings enable Partners to align their value propositions and solution development with what customers prioritize most, potentially adjusting pricing models, feature development, or service packages to better match customer preferences.

Question: “How influential are your outsourced Partners in your gen AI technology architecture and model/deployment selection decisions?”

Insight: Understanding their influence level in customer technology and deployment decisions helps Partners gauge their strategic positioning—high influence suggests opportunities to deepen advisory services and solution architectures, while lower influence might indicate needs to strengthen thought leadership or technical capabilities.

Strategic Value for AWS Partners

The study offers valuable insights for Partners, including detailed persona analysis across different sectors, partner selection criteria, and implementation priorities by industry.

This comprehensive research equips Partners with customer data points to tailor differentiated products, services, and go-to-market messaging for specific industries. The study also provides insights into common Generative AI customer pain points and actionable steps to address them effectively, win more workloads, and successfully scale generative AI workloads.

Accessing the research and next steps

Partners can access the comprehensive study and related resources through the Generative AI Center of Excellence in AWS Partner Central (login required). Available materials include industry-specific data packs, detailed use case documentation, and best practices for implementing key areas highlighted in the study, like robust cybersecurity practices.

We encourage Partners to leverage these insights as they develop and refine their generative AI strategies.