AWS Partner Network (APN) Blog
Validation Checklists Clarify Requirements for the AWS Service Delivery Program
The AWS Service Delivery Program highlights top AWS Partner Network (APN) Partners who have demonstrated expertise and technical proficiency delivering specific AWS services.
As part of the onboarding process, APN Partners must go through a technical audit of their experience delivering Amazon Web Services (AWS) to end customers. This audit is conducted by internal technical experts who validate the APN Partner’s knowledge and capabilities for a specific AWS service.
To help APN Partners better understand this process and our designation requirements, we are introducing AWS Service Delivery Validation Checklists.
These checklists provide visibility into the criteria we use during an organization’s technical validation and give APN Partners clearly-defined requirements for each AWS Service Delivery Designation. This information helps APN Partners prepare their application(s) to the program and during their renewal process.
AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudFormation Partners offer an easy way to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources, and then provision and update them in an orderly, predictable fashion.
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront Partners ensure AWS customers have built-in network optimizations that improve the performance, reliability, and global reach of business applications. AWS customers can be assured their content is distributed with low latency and high data transfer rates by serving requests using a network of edge locations around the world.
Amazon EC2 for Windows
Amazon EC2 for Windows Server Partners help customers deploy and manage Microsoft Windows workloads on Amazon EC2. This ensures AWS customers can find APN Partners best suited to help them run EC2 for Windows Server and related applications on the AWS cloud that provide resizable compute capacity.
Amazon EMR
Amazon EMR Partners help build and deploy big data analytics applications using Amazon EMR, a managed service that makes it easy to run big data frameworks such as Apache Hadoop, Spark, Presto, Hive, and HBase on massively scalable clusters.
AWS Database Services
AWS Database Partners help end customers leverage and optimize a broad range of AWS database services. Currently, we validate APN Partners that deliver services or solutions for Amazon Aurora, AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS), and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS).
Databases are ubiquitous on and off the cloud; relational databases, in particular. With cloud adoption and large-scale enterprise migrations accelerating, we see customers asking more and more for APN Partners that have cloud-relevant database skills. Through the AWS Service Delivery Program, APN Partners who attain the Aurora, Amazon RDS, and AWS DMS designations are technically validated for clearly demonstrating their expertise in these specific areas.
AWS GovCloud (US)
AWS GovCloud (US) Skill Partners help AWS customers with architecting, operating, and managing workloads in the AWS GovCloud (US) region while supporting US government compliance and regulatory requirements, including FedRAMP, DOD SRG, ITAR, and CJIS Security Policy.
These Partners help customers handling sensitive data and workloads implement mission-oriented systems and applications in the AWS GovCloud (US) region that address compliance standards, reduce costs, drive efficiencies, and increase innovation.
Amazon Redshift
Amazon Redshift Partners help customers design, build, and run insight-driven organizations, improving customer performance, and ensuring customers receive returns on their analytics investments.
AWS Server Migration Service (SMS)
AWS Server Migration Service Partners help customers implement SMS to migrate on-premises workloads to AWS, allowing customers to automate, schedule, and track incremental replications of live server volumes.
AWS Serverless
AWS Serverless Partners help end customers mitigate risk and gain valuable expertise when deploying solutions that leverage serverless technologies. Currently, we validate APN Partners that deliver services or solutions for Amazon API Gateway, Amazon DynamoDB. and AWS Lambda.
Building applications using a serverless architecture helps businesses focus more on their core product instead of managing supporting infrastructure like servers, operating systems, runtimes, and load balancing. This reduced overhead allows teams to deliver applications to market more quickly and reclaim time and energy that can be spent on developing great products that scale.
AWS Service Catalog
AWS Service Catalog Partners help create catalogs of IT services that are approved by an organization for use on AWS. With AWS Service Catalog, customers and APN Partners can centrally manage commonly-deployed IT services to achieve consistent governance and meet compliance requirements, while enabling users to self-provision approved services.
AWS Systems Manager
AWS Systems Manager Partners enable customers to use this management service that automatically collects software inventory, applies OS patches, creates system images, and configures Windows and Linux operating systems.
AWS WAF
AWS WAF Partners help customers develop, build, and integrate a secure infrastructure based upon specific needs and industry regulations. The scalability of having AWS WAF enables AWS customers to focus on more security and compliance requirements and less on the high availability of additional servers in their Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).
What’s in the Validation Checklists?
The AWS Service Delivery Validation Checklists provide a list of program prerequisites criteria that must be met by APN Partners before AWS will schedule a technical review. In addition, the Validation Checklists detail the service criteria that APN Partners need to meet to effectively demonstrate AWS best practices and Well-Architected Framework.
The Validation Checklists include requirements for:
- Customer case studies
- AWS service requirements
- Solution complexity
Additional Information
APN Partners currently in the AWS Service Delivery program will retain their designation(s) and will be reviewed against the Validation Checklist for compliance upon renewal in 2019. Please note that both outstanding applications and new applications will be measured against the new requirements for compliance.
You can download the Validation Checklists from the AWS Service Delivery website and from APN Partner Central (login required).
To best prepare your application, please ensure you meet all requirements in the Validation Checklist specific to the designation. APN Partners should have architecture diagrams using AWS approved icons, and two (2) external case studies.
View our how-to guides for help building Architecture Diagrams, Case Studies and Customer References, and Building Microsites. Once your organization has completed all the steps in the Validation Checklist, you are welcome to apply to become and AWS Service Delivery Partner!
About the AWS Service Delivery Program
The AWS Service Delivery Program highlights the top APN Partners with expertise in delivering specific AWS services. These APN Partners are showcased to AWS customers and AWS field sales teams, as well as on the AWS Partner Solutions Finder. Validated AWS Service Delivery Partners also have preferred access to private betas, roadmap briefings, subject matter webinars, and more.
In addition to the Partner Solutions Finder, APN Partners in the AWS Service Delivery Program benefit from being highlighted to AWS Customers through APN marketing channels including the APN Blog, APN Twitter, APN LinkedIn, customer references, partner spotlights, and AWS product pages.