AWS Partner Network (APN) Blog

For APN Partners helping customers migrate, manage, or deploy Microsoft Workloads to AWS, we are introducing an Application Modernization category within the AWS Microsoft Workloads Competency, as well as the Amazon EC2 for Windows Service Delivery designation. Through our Microsoft Workloads Partners’ investment in developing a Windows on AWS practice, we know customers will have an exceptional experience and the most efficient deployment running Windows applications on AWS.

We are excited to announce the addition of Public Sector Contract Vehicles as a new search option in the AWS Partner Solutions Finder. We have also added the ability to search by U.S. government socioeconomic status. The AWS Public Sector Partner Program helps organizations reach government, education, or nonprofit customers around the world. We enable partners to accelerate their business growth on AWS through alignment with our public sector sales, marketing, partner, and bid teams.

We are excited to announce a series of one-day events taking place across the U.S. this spring—AWS ISV Acceleration Days. If you are leveraging AWS to build new applications, modernize existing apps for a cloud-native world, or driving business transformation, this is the event for you. Join us for a free, one-day workshop run by our AWS Partner Solutions Architects and learn about building, deploying, configuring, and managing your workloads on AWS.

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.