AWS Partner Network (APN) Blog

We’re excited to connect with APN Partners from around the globe at AWS re:Invent 2017. To help you plan ahead, we’ve rounded up a number of things to check out while you are in Las Vegas. The AWS Global Partner Summit is taking over the MGM Grand on November 27 and 28 for two days of partner-focused content, including the keynote by Terry Wise. Join us Monday evening from 6-8 p.m. at Hakkasan Nightclub and Restaurant for drinks and appetizers with the AWS team and other APN Partners.

The AWS Training and Certification team is hosting a beta for an updated version of our ‘Solutions Architect – Associate’ exam. This exam is intended for individuals who have the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively demonstrate how to design distributed systems on AWS. Participants in this beta will be the first to take the new exam, which features questions reflecting current AWS features, services, and best practices. We are offering the beta exam at only $75 USD—a 50% discount—until Nov. 22, 2017.

There are many innovations that help customers run Microsoft SQL Server workloads on AWS. We recently released a Quick Start featuring SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition, and we increased the maximum storage capacity for Amazon RDS instances running Microsoft SQL Server from 4 TB to 16 TB. In addition, Amazon RDS for Microsoft SQL Server gained the ability to reconfigure volume type and Provisioned IOPS (PIOPS) upon snapshot restore.

Identity is a fundamental design decision that software as a service (SaaS) architects must consider when developing a multi-tenant system. Developers who are building SaaS applications must be able to identify a user, the tenant associated with the user, the user’s permissions, and the relationship a tenant has with the provider, such as usage plan or tier. In this post for SaaS Technology Partners, I will explore how to architect a multi-tenant system and identify tenant context and role using Amazon Cognito.

The first generation of cloud adopters had a massive advantage over the mid-market and enterprise customers who came after them—their applications were born in the cloud. They did not have years, even decades, of legacy infrastructure running these new apps, so they were largely unencumbered to go “all-in” on AWS. Today, a new generation of companies is navigating a journey to AWS, and those companies have a very different set of challenges to overcome.

As AWS Marketplace customers make larger commitments, they often request special pricing or end-user license terms. AWS now makes it possible for customers to receive private offers with pre-negotiated pricing and end-user license terms directly through AWS Marketplace. This new feature is available to any AWS Marketplace software seller participating in the Enhanced Data Sharing (EDS) program that compensates their sales team for AWS Marketplace sales.

APN Partners new to managed services often have questions about how to protect their customers from social engineering attacks and how to best test themselves to meet APN Program requirements. In the same way a traditional MSP is responsible for the physical security of your datacenter, a next-gen MSP is a customer’s trusted resource for helping maintain their portion of the Shared Responsibility Model. Instead of physical keys, the MSP is their customer’s gatekeepers into the cloud.

This is the second post in our series documenting a project to fix issues with the GameDay architecture by using tenets of the AWS Well-Architected Framework. We cover the steps it took to fix the critical findings identified by the review team. As noted in Part 1 of the series, the review team delivered a list of critical findings we needed to prioritize, as well as a list of non-critical ideas that we should consider in our roadmap.

AWS Partner Solutions Architects highlight offerings from APN Technology Partners. Cesanta provides streamlined tools that simplify the onboarding process and unblocks developers. GorillaStack enables customers to apply simple rules to managing cloud resources across all AWS accounts and regions. GuardiCore offers the Centra Security Platform to help bridge the gaps of customers’ security configuration in the AWS cloud.

We have a number of in-person and online training resources designed specifically for APN Partners so you can more effectively help customers leverage the AWS Cloud. We regularly update and release new training courses so you can be sure you are learning the latest about AWS. The Solutions Training for Partners: Windows (Business) course is available both in-person and online and teaches AWS Business Professional partners about the specific benefits of moving Windows workloads onto AWS.