AWS Partner Network (APN) Blog

The new AWS Solution Provider Program is designed for APN Consulting Partners to resell authorized services to end customers. Authorized Solution Providers benefit from a tiered discount structure that rewards APN Partners for their technical investments on AWS and their ability to bring in new business. This program enables Authorized Solution Providers to manage, service, support, and bill AWS accounts for end customers, and enables end customers to have their own terms with AWS.

We are excited to announce that AWS Partner Network (APN) Partners can take the new AWS Service Catalog Accreditation. You can take the accreditation in-person at AWS Global Summits in San Francisco, Sydney, London, Berlin, New York, and Chicago. Online accreditation will be available soon, and we will update this post when it’s available to you. The AWS Service Catalog Accreditation is the first in the AWS Management Tools series.

As SaaS organizations grow and begin to extend their global reach, they must consider how their larger geographic footprint will shape and influence the architecture of their systems. Operations, deployment, agility, security, and scale all can be impacted by the move to a geographically distributed SaaS model. The more complexity that is added to a system’s operational and deployment profile, the more challenging it becomes to maintain the agility goals that are often associated SaaS delivery models.

When carefully planned, managed, and executed, the rewards of moving Mainframe workloads to AWS are numerous. Besides the cost savings of the pay-as-you-go model, once your Mainframe application set has been fully deployed on AWS, you will have the freedom to integrate proven business logic with modern technologies for data analytics or mobile enablement. With that in mind, migrating Mainframe applications to the cloud seems more like a necessity than a luxury.

With seven new integrations launched on AWS Solution Space, you can optimize your customer experience and contact center efficiency with pre-integrated solutions and pre-defined consulting services from APN Partners with validated capabilities in this area. The contact center solutions we just launched include integrations in sales and service, workforce optimization, speech analysis, fraud detection, and messaging. In addition, customers can find consulting offers from validated Amazon Connect partners.

Networking is often viewed as a foundational element of a system’s architecture. The reality is there are plenty of scenarios where the networking footprint of a SaaS application can influence the functionality, extensibility, and management profile of your SaaS environment. While there are plenty of creative ways developers leverage AWS networking constructs to refine SaaS solutions, the introduction of AWS PrivateLink adds new opportunities in the SaaS networking landscape.

With VMware Cloud on AWS, you can deploy applications in a fully-managed VMware environment. Organizations can simplify their hybrid IT operations by using the same VMware technologies—including vSphere, vSAN, NSX, and vCenter—across their on-premises datacenters and on the AWS cloud. In this post, and my follow-up, we explore the major components of Amazon VPC for engineers and architects who build and operate VMware NSX networks, and who are building solutions on VMware Cloud on AWS.

We are excited to announce two new training opportunities for APN Partners—Amazon Desktop and Application Streaming for Technical and Business Professionals. These courses are intended for Partners who work with desktop applications hosted on AWS. They are delivered through a mix of web-based training and demonstrations of product features and functionality, and includes an assessment to validate what was covered.

The AWS Competency Program admitted 10 new and 9 renewed APN Partners in February—spanning workload, solution, and industry designations. The AWS Competency Program provides customers with highlighted APN Partners that have demonstrated technical proficiency through an AWS Technical Validation and proven customer success in specialized solution areas. Please join us in welcoming our newest AWS Competency Partners.

AWS Marketplace released more than a dozen major features in 2017, as well as many other enhancements and updates. These releases make it easier for AWS customers to discover and procure software, and for ISVs to sell their products on AWS Marketplace, which currently offers more than 4,200 software listings from nearly 1,300 ISVs spanning 35 categories. In case you missed any announcements, here’s a recap of new features that are relevant to ISVs and AWS Partners.