AWS Partner Network (APN) Blog

VMware Cloud on AWS brings VMware’s Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) to the AWS Cloud, and now many Business Critical Application workloads that were previously difficult to deploy in the cloud no longer require significant platform modifications. A Better Together demonstration that AWS and VMware co-presented at VMworld 2017 using an Oracle RAC database. Enterprises using Oracle RAC now have a seamless transition path to cloud with VMware Cloud on AWS.

We understand that our government and education customers have unique challenges they must overcome to improve the lives of citizens and students around the world. The AWS Competency Program spotlights APN Partners that have demonstrated technical proficiency and proven customer success in specialized solution areas. We launched the AWS Government Competency in 2016, and in 2017 announced the AWS Education Competency. Learn how these programs help you reach AWS customers and prospects.

Our team was especially proud to represent the AWS Partner Network (APN) at the sixth annual Global Partner Summit, held in Las Vegas during AWS re:Invent 2017. Global Partner Summit included a keynote by Terry Wise, Vice President of Global Alliances, Ecosystem, and Channels, as well as dozens of breakout sessions over two days featuring business and technical topics to help you grow your AWS-based practice.

New research conducted by Forrester Consulting examines the value to our APN Partners in creating a next-generation AWS Managed Service Provider (MSP) practice. APN Partners can access the full study for a deep analysis of the revenues, margins, costs, and risks associated with developing this type of practice. Join us for a 1-hour webinar on Tuesday, December 12 from 10-11 a.m. PST. We’ll share an overview of the study and hold Q&A with APN staff and Forrester Consulting.

We are excited to announce several updates to AWS Training and Certification that will make it easier for you to build your cloud skills on AWS and learn about the many new services we launched at AWS re:Invent 2017. New offerings include AWS digital training and a new entry-level certification called AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner. Plus, we have added several new Partner Training courses that are specifically designed to help APN Partners address customer needs with AWS solutions.

The APN Badge Manager is a tool that allows Select tier and above APN Partners to access, manage, and create custom badges to showcase the APN Program designations and AWS Competencies that your company holds. With APN Badge Manager, APN Partners can build customized badges to suit different communications goals. The tool will dynamically create an APN Badge with up to five program components. To get started, login to APN Partner Central and select the Badge Manager link on the left menu.

The AWS Service Broker is a new open source project that allows APN Partners to integrate AWS services directly into their solutions. Customers can then deploy AWS services without leaving the application platform of choice. Built around the industry standard Open Service Broker API, the AWS Service Broker can be seamlessly integrated with any platform which has adopted the API specification. Currently, the AWS Service Broker supports 10 native AWS services with more to be added in the near future.

The Global Partner Summit at AWS re:Invent 2017 provides members of the APN opportunities to connect, collaborate, and discover. The keynote presentation on November 27 was emceed by Terry Wise, Vice President, Global Alliances, Ecosystem and Channels. Here are a few tweets from Terry’s keynote at the Global Partner Summit. You can follow along on Twitter throughout re:Invent by following @AWSreInvent, @AWS_Partners, @AWScloud, and the #reinvent hashtag.

AWS Marketplace now has a machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) discovery page that makes it easier to buy software from vendors that are integrated with or running on AWS. The discovery page features software providers for a variety of data engineer, data scientist, and developer use cases, and helps you select the right products faster by showcasing products in data services, machine learning and data science tools, intelligent APIs and solutions.

We are excited to introduce the AWS Networking Competency—a new program for APN Technology Partners that launched at the Global Partner Summit at AWS re:Invent 2017. AWS Networking Competency Partners provide network solutions and assist customers adopt, develop, and deploy applications on AWS. They offer a set of specialized solutions that auto-scale, are aligned with cloud design principles, and make it easier to use networking features in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).