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New AWS Tool Finds Expert Partners
A new tool introduced at the Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) re:Invent 2016 conference helps cloud users more easily find AWS Partners to help with specific projects.
The AWS Partner Network (APN) is a program in which the cloud provider helps curated partners to provide consulting or technical solutions to customers, while also helping those customers discover appropriate third-party services for their business needs.
At yesterday's AWS Global Partner Summit held at re:Invent 2016 -- kind of a conference within a conference -- several new APN-related competencies, programs and tools were announced, including the new AWS Partner Solutions Finder (PSF), which helps customers more easily search for, discover and connect with suitable partners.
AWS exec Kate Miller provided details in a blog post yesterday.
"Built based on customer and partner feedback, the PSF is a whole new way to connect customers and partners," Miller said. "Say you're a Consulting Partner focused on the Financial Services industry, and you hold the AWS Financial Services Competency. As customers come to the PSF and filter by 'Financial Services', your firm may appear higher in the search results, along with other AWS Competency holders. Customers can continue to filter by use case, location, and products, to find exactly what they need."
In another blog post on a different section of the AWS site, Miller summed up all of the tool's the capabilities:
- Search by popular topics, including Location, Industry, Use Case, and Products.
- Easily identify authorized AWS Resellers and validated AWS Managed Service Providers.
- Quickly find APN Partners who hold an AWS Competency and/or AWS Service Delivery Program distinction.
- Learn about different APN Partners at a glance, with data that is verified by AWS.
- Seamlessly get in touch with an APN Partner.
"We often find that our customers are looking for Consulting Partners within the AWS Partner Network (APN) who can help them design, migrate, manage, and optimize their workloads on AWS," Miller said. "Customers are also often seeking out Technology Partner solutions that are either built on or integrate with AWS, to take advantage of to help them meet their business needs. We have an enormous AWS partner ecosystem, comprised of tens of thousands of Consulting and Technology Partners worldwide. APN Partners can help you address virtually every use case on AWS, and we want to make sure we make it as easy as possible for you to identify and connect with the right APN Partner to help you meet your needs on AWS."
At the conference AWS said more than 10,000 new partners joined the APN in the past year.
Along with the PSF, Miller detailed other APN-related launches, including:
- The AWS IoT Competency: Showcases industry-leading APN Consulting and Technology Partners that provide proven technology and/or implementation capabilities for a variety of IoT use cases including (though not limited to) intelligent factories, smart cities, energy, automotive, transportation, and healthcare.
- The AWS Financial Services Competency: Recognizes APN Consulting and Technology Partners offering services and solutions for customers in banking and payments, capital markets, and insurance.
- The AWS Service Delivery Program: Helps AWS customers find APN Partners with validated experience in specific AWS services and skills such as Amazon Aurora or delivering AWS GovCloud (US) Workloads.
- The AWS Public Sector Program: Helps qualified APN Partners build and accelerate their AWS Public Sector business.
More APN news from the conference is available here.
More from re:Invent 2016
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.