AWS Partner Network (APN) Blog

It’s easy for vendors to get caught up in the needs of their customers that they forget to tend to their own needs. When CloudCheckr was a young startup, we admittedly had to make a deliberate effort to focus on leveraging all our platform has to offer. The results were as significant for CloudCheckr as they were for our clients. Identifying a Cloud Management Platform that’s available as a SaaS enables you to get started immediately with no overhead and nothing to install, including no agents.

Cognizant recognized the need to give customers in the insurance industry the ability to industrialize innovation with a platform allowing them to test ideas, innovate, fail fast, and reduce time-to-market. With this vision in mind, they set out to build InCatalyst, an insurance innovation platform. This post provides a detailed overview of InCatalyst, how it’s architected and implemented on AWS, and explore the benefits realized by InCatalyst after moving the platform to the AWS Cloud.

At AWS, we are continually innovating with new services and solutions. That’s why we’re excited to announce several new offerings from AWS Training and Certification to help APN Partners build new cloud skills and learn about the latest AWS services. Learn more about our machine learning courses and beta exam, as well as training for new AWS services launched at re:Invent. We also have 100s of free digital training courses available, and digital Exam Readiness courses to help you prepare.

Amazon EC2 Spot Instances are one of the best ways to dramatically cut EC2 costs on AWS. With the new pricing model, there has never been a better time to start leveraging Spot Instances, and Spotinst’s DevOps Automation Platform helps businesses reduce operational overhead with automation and cut costs by reliably leveraging Spot Instances. In this post, we share a few stories from Spotinst customers outlining how they maximized infrastructure efficiency at minimum cost.

We are thrilled to be in Las Vegas for AWS re:Invent 2018 and our annual Global Partner Summit. This year’s event provides APN Partners with opportunities to connect, collaborate, and discover. Keep reading this blog post throughout the week as we share on-the-ground updates, details of APN program launches, and things to check out from re:Invent, including the GPS keynote, breakout sessions, program launches, and more.

The annual Global Partner Summit was held November 26-30 at AWS re:Invent 2018, and we are excited to introduce key initiatives and program launches. Announcements include APN Tier changes and updates to the overall APN benefits structure, as well as new programs like the AWS Well-Architected Partner Program, AWS IoT Service Delivery designations, the AWS Container Competency, and AWS Device Qualification Program.

We announced at AWS re:Invent 2018 updates to the overall APN program that will further recognize and support the growth, investment, and innovation of our evolving APN Partner community, and better align APN Partners to more structured program benefits. These changes include renaming the Standard Tier to Select Tier and updating APN requirements to measure each APN Partner’s knowledge, experience, and customer success.

The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps cloud architects build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for their applications. At AWS re:Invent 2018, we announced the AWS Well-Architected Partner Program that enables APN Partners to establish good architectural habits, eliminate risk, and assist customers in building and responding faster to changes that affect their designs, applications, and workloads.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the next phase of digital transformation, and AWS IoT Service Delivery Partners are driving this evolution. They are improving customer experiences and outcomes by choosing the best approach for the design and implementation of IoT solutions that are optimized for cost, reliability, security, performance, and scalability. At AWS re:Invent 2018, we introduced AWS IoT Service Delivery Partners in three key areas: AWS IoT Core, AWS IoT Greengrass, and AWS IoT Analytics.

Containers are an increasingly important way for developers to package and deploy their applications. AWS customers use containers as the fundamental unit of compute to deploy both existing and net-new workloads like microservices, big data, machine learning models, and batch jobs. At AWS re:Invent 2018, we announced the AWS Container Competency Program to highlight top APN Partner solutions that offer support to run workloads on containers on AWS.

The new AWS Device Qualification Program makes it easier for APN Partners to qualify their devices on AWS IoT Greengrass, Amazon FreeRTOS, AWS IoT Core, and/or Amazon Kinesis Video Streams so that customers can find and purchase hardware they can trust for their IoT projects. With AWS IoT along with our APN Partners and their qualified hardware, customers will have the intelligence needed to build new services and business models, improve products and services, and strengthen the customer experiences.

To help you prepare for AWS re:Invent 2018, we’ve rounded up a number of things to check out while you are in Las Vegas. Please join us for the Global Partner Summit, which provides APN Partners with opportunities to connect, collaborate, and discover. You’ll learn how to leverage AWS technologies to serve your customers, and how the APN program can help build and grow your business. This year, GPS sessions will take place throughout the week across the entire re:Invent campus.

If you want to be successful in today’s complex IT environment, and remain that way tomorrow and into the future, you need AWS Competency Partners you can team up with. AWS Competency Partners are experts who have demonstrated technical proficiency and proven customer success in specialized solution areas. Guidance from these skilled professionals can lead to better business and bigger results. Teaming up with an AWS Competency Partner is The Next Smart.

The AWS Navigate Program provides a prescriptive path for APN Partners to build a specialized practice on AWS. It offers APN Partners the guidance to become AWS experts and deploy innovative solutions on behalf of AWS customers. We have AWS Navigate tracks for Blockchain, Contact Center, Database Services, DevOps, End User Computing, Financial Services, High-Performance Computing, IoT, Machine Learning, Microsoft Workloads, Migration, and Serverless.