Tag: APN Partner Central

The AWS Foundational Technical Review (FTR) helps identify and mitigate technical risks in solutions built by AWS ISV Partners. The FTR focuses on a subset of AWS Well-Architected best practices and defines objective criteria for each requirement. In October 2021, we updated the FTR process for Partner Hosted solutions to make it faster, easier, and more accurate than before. In this post, learn how the updated FTR process works, benefits of the new process, and how you can get started.

We are excited to introduce two new permissions features for AWS Partner Central: the Alliance Team and ACE Manager roles. These roles provide AWS Partners the ability to grant multiple team members access to the data and features they need to help manage their APN account. With these permissions features, multiple users from an AWS Partner organization can access the data and features they need in Partner Central without relying on the Alliance Lead.

AWS earned a 5-Star rating by CRN, a brand of The Channel Company, in its 2021 Partner Program Guide. This annual guide provides a conclusive list of the most distinguished partner programs from leading technology companies. The 5-Star rating is awarded to an exclusive group of companies that go above and beyond with their partner programs. AWS was honored based on a range of investments made by the AWS Partner Network (APN) to help businesses build, market, and sell their products, services, and solutions.

The APN Customer Engagements (ACE) opportunity validation experience is being updated for AWS Partners to streamline the overall validation process in several key ways. This includes proactively calling out the most common errors that delay approvals, and allowing you to edit submissions requiring additional information directly in the ACE Pipeline Manager. We are also updating the “Date of last provided update exceeds 2 weeks” opportunity and lead list views to only show items in which you are able to take action.

AWS commissioned 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, to conduct a study of global AWS Systems Integrator (SI) Partners focused on profitability. As a result, the new AWS Partner Profitability and Success Report was launched at re:Invent. This report explores some of the biggest challenges AWS Partners face in pursing profitability, including transitioning from other business models, changing customer perceptions, and finding ways to differentiate.

To receive the AWS Service Ready designation, AWS Partners must undergo rigorous technical validation and are assessed on the security, performance, and reliability of their AWS solutions. To help AWS Technology Partners better understand this process, we are releasing new versions of the AWS Service Ready Validation Checklists (VCL). These Validation Checklists outline for AWS Technology Partners the customer case study and technical criteria needed to achieve an AWS Service Ready designation.

AWS customers regularly use the “Find an AWS Partner” tool to discover organizations that can help them design, migrate, manage, and optimize workloads on Amazon Web Services. With a refreshed discovery experience, it’s even easier to find AWS Partners with validated qualifications for a variety of use cases. The new experience is also available in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish, and customers can search for AWS Partners by industry, use case, services, and solution offerings.

The APN Customer Engagements (ACE) program helps AWS Partners support customers and drive successful engagements on AWS. Through the ACE program, qualifying AWS Partners are eligible to receive AWS Lead and Opportunity Referrals through the ACE Pipeline Manager in APN Partner Central. The ACE Pipeline Manager provides you with resources, tools, and the sales and technical support to ensure you are supported in driving meaningful engagements with AWS customers.

The AWS Solution Provider Program provides discounts to resellers offering Partner-Led Support, which allows AWS Partners to define the support offerings they sell to customers, rather than doing a straight resale of AWS Support. A newly-released support offering ties AWS Partners’ support discount to their performance on cost and quality goals. AWS anticipates these changes will improve the end-customer experience, while rewarding partners who actively invest in providing exceptional support.

With increases in remote working conditions over the past few months, AWS has developed virtual training materials to help you better understand our offerings, best practices, and APN programs. In our latest AWS PartnerCast trainings, learn about the APN Customer Engagements (ACE) program, which provides AWS Partners with a medium to engage with AWS sales representatives, marketing teams, and field marketing assets to enhance your co-selling capabilities with AWS.