Tag: Validation Checklists

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are maturing rapidly. According to Gartner, 75% of enterprises will shift from piloting to operationalizing AI by 2024. That’s why we are expanding the AWS Machine Learning Competency to help customers identify and engage qualified AWS Partners that have deep technical expertise and proven customer success in the areas of Applied AI and Machine Learning Operations (MLOps).

To help customers run the most compute-intensive workloads across industry verticals, we are excited to introduce the new AWS High Performance Computing (HPC) Competency featuring AWS Partners who are focused on the important aspects of HPC in the cloud, including security, cost management, and performance. These trusted AWS Partners are uniquely positioned to help customers innovate faster and become more agile and flexible while controlling costs.

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.

An integral part of the AWS MSP journey is completing the full two-day audit with ISSI, our third-party auditing firm and an AWS Select Consulting Partner. In our first post in a two-part series, we had a Q&A with Chang Leong, Global Head of Auditing at ISSI, who shared best practices leading up to the AWS MSP audit. In this post, we continue the conversation with Chang and focus on what to expect for the two-day-long AWS MSP audit—as well as post-audit activities for AWS MSP Partners.

In addition to delivering value-adding products and services, next-gen MSPs are increasingly expected to provide validation that they can meet all of your cloud needs. For AWS Managed Service Providers, learn how using CloudHealth by VMware can help you meet many of the requirements to become an AWS MSP Partner. CloudHealth makes it possible for enterprises to control and analyze the costs, compliance, and performance of their computing environments.

One of the top requests we hear from our AWS MSP Partners is to learn more about the audit process and how to successfully prepare for it. In the first of a two-part APN Blog series, we invited Chang Leong, Global Head of Auditing at ISSI, our third-party auditing firm, to help us understand the audit journey from preparation and execution to practice evolution. The AWS MSP audit is a high bar to meet, so successful partners start preparing well ahead of the audit.

AWS helps first responders, public safety agencies, and emergency and disaster response organizations complete their mission and mitigate impact to communities affected by emergencies and disasters. In 2019, we announced the launch of the AWS Public Safety & Disaster Response Competency for AWS Consulting Partners. Now, we are excited to launch an additional track within this AWS Competency that showcases specialized and dedicated AWS Technology Partners.

Amazon RDS customers are looking for AWS Partners with specific database engine expertise to set up, operate, and scale relational databases in the cloud. To meet this need, we are relaunching the Amazon RDS Service Delivery Program, which now validates AWS Partners by database engine type. This allows customers to identify an Amazon RDS Partner that best meets their database engine-specific migration and implementation needs.

Recognizing the complexity of a mainframe migration, AWS customers seek proven methodologies, tools, and best practices to empower successful migrations. The APN plays a critical role in these efforts by providing proven technology products and services for customers’ mainframe migrations. We are excited to pre-announce the launch of the AWS Mainframe Modernization Competency which gives customers confidence in choosing right right AWS Partners to team up with.

While AWS Outposts enables customers to easily scale their on-premises applications using AWS services and tools, integrating with customer-owned, third-party solutions for storage, security, analytics, and DevOps is important to ensuring positive customer outcomes. Earlier this year, we launched the AWS Outposts Ready Program with 35 solution offerings across 32 AWS Technology Partners. Since then, enthusiasm for the program has only grown with partners and customers alike.