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What Is The AWS Partner Network?
AWS Partner Network is an international ecosystem of partners who utilize AWS products , resources and expertise to develop, promote, launch and deploy customer solutions on AWS.
Over 1,000 consulting firms belong to the AWS Partner Network and possess in-depth knowledge of its ecosystem. This comprehensive program provides organizations with the tools necessary for developing solutions using AWS effectively.
AWS Partner Network provides AWS partners with business and technical support and certification programs designed to enable them to gain expertise quickly and deliver exceptional services.
Types Of Partnerships
Both technology and consultancy partners are included in the AWS Partner Program.
AWS Consulting Partner
AWS Consulting Partners specialize in designing, creating, migrating and hosting AWS applications. Based on their experience level, they may be classified as Premier Partners, Advanced Standard or Registered partners.
AWS Technology Partner
What are APN Technology Partners doing? AWS Technology Partners are businesses that develop and distribute Cloud solutions like AWS applications through multiple partnerships: Standard, Advanced and Registered.
AWS Partner Requirements
How does Amazon Web Services (AWS) ensure only top businesses sign up for its services? Their admissions process is an efficient filter; applicants are expected to provide proof of knowledge such as AWS-certified engineers or accreditations as proof, client references and minimum billing expenses using AWS as part of the application process.
Rest easy knowing that only partners meeting these standards will offer suitable solutions for AWS Cloud.
The Key Factors In Choosing An AWS Partner
Your choice of an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner to manage your cloud infrastructure could have far-reaching effects for both your company and yourself.
Consider these three aspects when purchasing your next vehicle:
1. Expertise And Certification:
- AWS certification : Verify that an AWS Partner employs certified professionals with in-depth AWS services knowledge. AWS offers different certification levels, such as DevOps Engineering or Solution Architecture, to select partners who meet these criteria for you.
- Specializations: AWS Partners offer expertise in areas like migration, security and data analytics - so choose one with skills tailored specifically to the requirements of your project. They should possess in-depth knowledge about AWS services as well as be capable of offering customized solutions.
- Track record : Examine past projects and case studies completed by your partner, request references from past customer profiles in order to assess their reliability and performance, and request references as additional proof.
2. Service Offerings:
- Scalability : Make sure your AWS partner can adjust to meet the fluctuating needs of your organization, from migration and adoption of cloud services through ongoing management and optimization.
- Security and Compliance : Check that your partner prioritizes compliance and safety. AWS provides several certifications that enable your partner to adhere to industry best practices to protect infrastructure and data.
- Monitoring : Assess your partner's capabilities for monitoring and support services. They should offer 24/7 monitoring, proactive problem resolution strategies and clear service-level agreements (SLAs) so as to guarantee reliable availability for your infrastructure.
3. Cost Management:
- Cost optimization : Find a partner with expertise in optimizing AWS cost. They should have strategies that reduce unnecessary expenditures while still meeting performance needs.
- Transparent Price : Make sure your partner offers transparent pricing with no unexpected expenses or hidden charges so that it aligns with your budget and understanding what exactly is being provided to meet it.
- Reporting and Billing : Your partner must provide detailed reports on billing and usage to enable you to account for expenses, allocate costs accurately, and make informed choices when allocating resources.
When selecting an AWS Partner to manage your cloud environment, consider their knowledge, service offerings, and cost management abilities before making a final decision.
Ask for references and have an in-depth conversation to determine whether the potential partner aligns with your long-term and short-term goals.
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How To Choose The Right AWS Partner To Manage Your Cloud Infrastructure?
Let's assume you know the basics of the AWS Partner Network. Now, let's talk about the factors to consider when looking for an AWS Partner.
1. Apn Consulting Partners Certifications
Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Cloud Computing places Amazon Web Services (AWS) at the forefront.
Consulting Partners of Amazon Partner Network can assist businesses with all AWS aspects, from planning to implementation.
Be sure that any AWS partners you consider possess all the necessary certifications and expertise for optimal AWS implementation.
Businesses can feel secure knowing that by choosing AWS APN Partners for their consulting needs, their consultants have been fully vetted and granted access to resources necessary for meeting industry standards.
APN Technology Partners must also satisfy AWS certification testing requirements periodically to remain eligible as APN Technology Partners.
2. Related Experience
Choose wisely! Selecting a cloud service provider could spell success or failure for many businesses. Find an AWS partner with extensive experience who can demonstrate it with case studies and solid credentials.
AWS is rapidly changing, so counting how long a company has been around may not provide an accurate measure of success. An ideal business partner should possess an impressive resume, relevant case studies and can demonstrate technical know-how during conversations.
Unworried? Here are the answers to all your queries below!
- What is the size and industry diversity of their clientele? Is there any evidence that they have implemented or supervised migration tactics? What planning and mapping was done?
- AWS Technology Partners have worked with companies with similar storage requirements or infrastructure to yours.
- What information can they provide about the past and the success of their projects? What conclusions can they make about the current status of these projects
3. Technical Background
Keep AWS Consulting Partners' technical expertise in mind; otherwise, you risk making decisions based on speculation alone.
A team that thoroughly assesses cloud objectives, applications, consumption patterns and infrastructure before applying AWS best practices could prove crucially differentiating for their clientele.
Be assured that an APN Technology Partners-certified team has the capabilities to fulfill all your AWS needs. Look for cloud experts with multiple certifications and relevant credentials as part of their team.
Trust that your partner will possess all the resources to guide and maximize your project's full potential for cloud technology.
Partner with AWS with deep technical knowledge of cloud migration to help businesses transition from legacy systems.
When choosing AWS Professional Services with this kind of experience and technical knowledge to assist, these can provide hybrid architectural solutions that ease the transition.
This solution calls for the gradual transition of applications and systems onto cloud infrastructure to minimize disruption and disruption caused by migration processes.
4. How To Minimize Expenditures And Stay Within Your Means
APNs can maximize cloud savings by hiring experts with technical knowledge. AWS partner network consultants should be cost-efficient managed service providers experienced at optimizing AWS expenses on behalf of their customers.
AWS provides flexible pricing options when combined with an effective cloud strategy. However, companies could save millions by hiring an evaluation team to assess alternative methods that better suit their requirements - this might involve increasing storage capacity, improving application performance or migrating to another server location.
What Can You Expect From A Partnership?
- Professional Experience: Our AWS team is comprised of AWS experts who have a track record in the deployment of AWS projects. We have a deep understanding of the technologies that are tailored to meet your specific requirements. This knowledge translates to significant cost and time savings and preventing errors that would otherwise hinder your company's growth.
- Nearshore Services: We understand your business, and our crew is sized perfectly to provide 24/7 platform monitoring.
- Continuous Improvement: Our commitment is to stay at the forefront of technology and continuously improve your cloud infrastructure, keeping up with AWS's rapid pace of innovation.
- AWS Expertise: We guide you on the AWS journey of digital transformation. The path is complex, and every company has its own unique needs.
Questions To Ask Yourself
Before choosing AWS services, you must be aware of your requirements. Here are some questions that you should ask.
- What are your short-term and long-term AWS goals?
- What level of agility and scalability is required for your AWS infrastructure?
- How can AWS partners help you achieve your market entry target?
- Do you want to lower costs by adopting new AWS technology?
- What are your top priority areas, such as compliance, security or scalability?
- How much AWS knowledge is available within the company?
- What assistance do you require from an AWS third-party partner?
- Do you want to be involved in 24/7 operations, or would you rather delegate the responsibility?
You'll be more prepared by answering these questions to determine your AWS plans and goals, which is essential before selecting the best AWS professional services.
Also Read: Aws Cloud Application Development Is The Top Choice For Businesses Why?
Top Four Recommendations To Help Partners Achieve Success With The AWS Competency Program
The AWS Competency program recognizes and promotes AWS Partners who have demonstrated technical expertise, customer success and an impressive track record.
An Amazon Web Services Competency program helps your business market and differentiate itself from competitors among Amazon Web Services customers by showcasing capabilities across industries, use cases and workloads.
To achieve AWS Competency status, partners must meet stringent standards set out by program requirements and can meet today's cloud challenges.
Only partners that fulfill all criteria receive Competency status. AWS Partner Network team (APN) assists partners as they work toward AWS Competency certifications to assure customers they are dealing with genuine AWS Partners.
AWS Partners must compile a list of best practices and recommendations to maximize their involvement with the AWS Competency Program through four key steps.
In this post, we'll show how this can happen.
- Understanding AWS Competencies
- Leveraging AWS Competencies
- Selecting one or more AWS Competencies
- Prepare for AWS Competency Audit
1. Understanding AWS Competencies
An AWS analytics verifies a partner's experience and abilities for managing various workloads on AWS, assuring customers consider them for projects on this cloud provider.
Partners looking to become AWS Competencies must submit case studies highlighting their expertise. Achieving Competency validates a partner's capabilities through customer interactions.
Softerve, for instance, is an AWS Premier Tier Service Partner who participates in three partner programs and boasts more than 500 AWS certified and four service validations.
SoftServe understands the significance of adding AWS competencies into its portfolio to validate customer offerings and demonstrate service excellence.
Customers prefer working with companies who have done this before. Ruslan Kusov, AWS Cloud COE Lead at SoftServe and an ambassador of AWS, says 100 case studies may not be enough for clients to feel assured.
AWS Migration Competency recognition gives customers confidence when migrating with partners listed as AWS's trusted partners.
AWS Partners must understand what criteria businesses must fulfill to obtain Competency designation.
- AWS Partners are required to have case studies of successful engagements. Many Competencies demand that several case studies be publicly available.
- Only if the sales team qualifies for an opportunity and presents a solution appropriate to a customer can an engagement be successful. The deliverich is responsible for the project and should also produce and share key documentation with customers (including AWS Best Practices) about the solution implemented.
- The customer can be offered both sales and delivery in a package. It could be, for instance, a solution that has a technical and business objective but is to be delivered in a specific timeframe or at a fixed price.
No matter whether it was through packaged offers, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions or tailored engagements, each customer engagement sprung from a "practice" within partner organizations containing professionals that possess specific skills, tools and processes for producing results efficiently and quickly.
AWS Partners should take caution if their offerings, delivery kits and practices lack structure or repetition. The AWS Partner Network offers many programs designed to assist partners in creating solid foundations for consistent and repeatable outcomes, which could enable them to earn AWS competencies later on.
Start by selecting APN tracks relevant to your business and the Competency level desired. Navigate tracks are designed to teach specific services, solutions or workloads while earning AWS certifications or Service Delivery designations - like Competencies but focused around specific AWS services like Direct Connect and DynamoDB.
AWS Partners will eventually have all the skills, tools and processes to meet all AWS Competencies requirements. If you would like more information or would like assistance acquiring them, please reach out to AWS Partner Organization through your company Alliance Lead.
2. Leveraging AWS Competencies
An Amazon Web Services Competency can give partners an edge among customers of AWS. Amazon Web Services validation for technical and business skills helps customers identify suitable partners.
AWS Partners have more opportunities to set their business apart from AWS customers, including new funding mechanisms that support demand generation and project acceleration.
AWS experts also make themselves available through various training events designed to hone skills while strengthening relationships.
Customer Visibility
APN's official "Find a Partner" website features thousands of AWS Partners listed, helping customers quickly locate, research and connect with those that meet all technical skills, AWS Validations standards and Competencies requirements for Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Customers searching this database by use case "financial service" would locate partners who have earned AWS Financial Services competency certification and been approved to perform engagements of this nature on AWS.
Further narrowing regarding security skills further narrows their list of qualified partners.
One can quickly see that having more validations makes finding qualified companies for projects and workloads much simpler for any given business.
AWS Competencies play a pivotal role in providing AWS customers with an enhanced "Find a Partner" search experience.
Partners Funding
AWS Competency certification also empowers partners to become more cost-efficient by offering funding programs.
AWS Migration Acceleration (MAP), one of several funding programs associated with AWS Migration Competency, serves to offset costs related to partner services performed for customers during various AWS database migration service .
Marketing Development Funds (MDF) is an annual funding incentive tied directly to how many AWS Competencies an AWS partner has attained, giving those organizations that earn multiple Competencies an increase in MDF allocation for that year.
Partners may use MDF funds for their Go-to-Market (GTM) strategies or other marketing activities.
Jonathan LaCour at Mission Cloud Services believes the AWS Premier Tier Services Partners with eight AWS Competencies offer hugely beneficial partnerships for his cloud management service offering.
Busilike Mission can use such a status to strengthen its cloud service offering.
Jonathan LaCour is the Chief Technology Officer for Mission Cloud Services. He acknowledges the difficulty of attaining AWS competency as a goal for their business expansion.
By becoming AWS qualified, Mission has experienced faster growth due to strengthened partnerships and smart funding programs incentivizing customer success.
Support For AWS And Benefits
Acquiring AWS Competencies allows partners to interact directly with AWS subject-matter experts. Achieve AWS Competence provides partners with the best way to connect with experts from AWS' business development teams and increase visibility when AWS internal teams collaborate with external partners on projects or use cases.
Competency Partners of AWS are regularly invited to special events and training sessions such as GameDays, Deeper Learning NDA Product Roadmap Sessions, APN Immersion Day workshops and Q&As with AWS experts.
Competency Partners may also get priority access for beta testing new features or services from Amazon Web Services (AWS).
3. Selecting One Or More AWS Competencies
Consider the different designations of AWS Competencies based on industry, workload, and use cases. Below are some AWS Competencies in each area.
- Industry: Retail and Hospitality, Healthcare, Travel and Hospitality
- Use Case: Data Analytics, Machine Learning and Migration
- Workload: Microsoft Workloads, Oracle, SAP
AWS Partners may find multiple competencies tailored specifically for their team's experience and abilities within the AWS Competencies list.
Please view all AWS Competencies.
Partners often struggle to choose an AWS development plan when faced with many options. We've identified key considerations when working with AWS Partners who need help selecting their Competency designation.
Focus On Long-Term
Partner organizations looking for AWS Competency strategies must consider how they fit within their long-term business plans and goals.
Competencies could help a partner differentiate itself in its field or create new market trends-related business opportunities that exploit current market conditions. To find their perfect AWS Competency partner, they should start by understanding their organization's vision and goals before embarking on research to see an AWS Competency that aligns perfectly.
AWS Competency Validation Checklists are readily available to each designation of AWS Services and Software Partners, making it essential that partners use the relevant one when reviewing any particular Competencies related to specific projects or offerings they wish to validate.
Existing and New Practices
Are You Beginning or Expanding an Existing Practice? Your answer to this question will determine how quickly a partner becomes AWS-certified.
Other partners may want to start from scratch when building their practice and develop the expertise required. AWS Partners have access to one or more Competencies that best align with current or planned future practices based on long-term planning needs.
Expectations with Supporting Evidence
Note that earning an AWS Competency requires than simply submitting project studies; this accreditation verifies numerous details regarding a partner's focus, experience and skills relating to sales, pre-sales delivery, marketing, support, and thought leadership.
Validation checklists contain many items requiring extensive paperwork, processes and evidence - this may take considerable time to gather and prepare.
Some articles on a validation checklist may need supporting evidence such as playbooks, statements of work runbooks, disaster recovery plans and verbal descriptions as support material.
4. Prepare For The AWS Competency Audit
As AWS Partners work to obtain their Competency status, these best practices should help increase their chances of success with both application and audit processes.
- Check the requirements checklist to see what is already done and what needs to be addressed.
- Determine potential case studies. Create an action plan to fill in the gaps and address the needs requiring additional work.
- Assign, if you can, a project manager or an owner to the process of preparing Competencies. This person will be responsible for managing the progress in the various areas of the Action Plan.
- Assigning the preparation of technical documentation to multiple people or teams is a good idea. Ideally, these resources should have been involved in the project and be able to provide details. Define the work groups and owners of each case study.
- Select owners from the marketing and sales teams to be responsible for the specific validation requirements.
- Follow the validation checklist and perform a few audit dry runs to ensure everything is in order: assets, supporting proof, verbal descriptions of console access, presentations, microsites, etc.
- Prepare a plan to present case studies at the audit. Make sure that all items on the checklist are addressed.
- Bring the right people to the audit. It is important to have the right resources at the audit session.
- Before the audit, perform an architecture check based on the AWS Well-Architected Framework in the workloads relating to these projects. Auditors might ask to enter the console to verify that the deployment follows AWS best practices and adheres to the Well-Architected Framework.
- Create an internal framework for capturing case study details and a repository to store all the collected information. This is a good practice for achieving success in the Competency Process, but it also allows you to track your customers' workloads and customers and provide context to partner resources when there are internal handoffs.
Also Read: With Globe and AWS Cloud Solutions Remote Work Setup Made Easy
Call For Action
We encourage AWS Partners to review the validation checks of the Competencies that align with their long-term goals.
Begin by evaluating an activity relevant to a competency, paying particular attention to the following questions:
- Have you established a practice for this use case or type of workload?
- Are you leveraging packaged offers to drive your sales?
- Have sales kits and delivery kits been developed?
- Do you have any customers you could use as references? This is probably the most important question.
This list provides an outline of all of the requirements needed to become an AWS Certified Professional. From our experience, customer references tend to be one of the hardest aspects of attaining AWS Competency certification; therefore, partners should plan and allow enough time to collect these artifacts.
Learn about the AWS Competency Program and the advantages of becoming an AWS Competency Partner, join the AWS Partner Network without incurring fees to become an AWS partner, and create your AWS Partner Central Account.
Want More Information About Our Services? Talk to Our Consultants!
Conclusion
Finding an AWS solution architect professional can be difficult.
It takes time and energy to assess a consulting partner and understand their capabilities of helping. Therefore, when looking for reliable AWS consulting partners, it is crucial that key elements like those listed here be kept in mind to find one.
Employing AWS consulting services can save businesses both time and money on large-scale migrations or hybrid migrations by helping to identify effective strategies that meet infrastructure and cloud goals.
Compare cost-cutting measures, certification status and benefits offered by premier partners of AWS when making your selection decision.
It is also wise to carefully consider other important criteria before reaching a decision.
