Departure Looming, Yeum Addresses AWS Partner Audience

AWS RE:INVENT — Doug Yeum made one of his final appearances as AWS‘ vice president of worldwide channels and alliances on Monday.

Yeum spoke at the Global Partner Summit for the AWS re:Invent conference, sharing a long list of updates to the AWS Partner Network. And the list was long indeed.

AWS is increasing its number of Partner Path engagement programs from one to five. The hyperscaler in 2020 launched its ISV Partner Path, but as of Jan. 31, 2022, its partner paths will include software, hardware, training, distribution and services.

AWS’ Doug Yeum

Yeum said AWS initially launched Partner Paths to help partners more easily navigate through resources, programs and benefits designed to met their specific use cases. Yeum said the ISV Partner Path came about through the feedback of consulting partners who provided software offerings of their own but needed help engaging with AWS.

“Unfortunately for these consulting partners, prior to the Partner Paths, they didn’t have a programmatic way of engaging with AWS on their software offerings. This improvement was super important for them,” he told the partner audience.

Yeum said the number of validated software offerings from partners has grown exponentially.

Yeum also said partners who participate in these Paths make it their aim to reach Premier Tier status. More than 120 partners, including Deloitte, IBM, Rackspace, Hitachi and Megazone Cloud, are in the tier.

“More and more senior leaders of our partners are making multiyear commitments to transform with AWS. These are big commitments with specific transformation goals. And in return, we’re making significant investments to help them grow and scale,” he said.

AWS also announced a new program to help partners add software around its Graviton2 processor. The Graviton processors optimize costs in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). The Graviton Ready Program validates software that integrate with Graviton services.

“This is really important, because it helps [customers] realize cost savings sooner,” Yeum said.

Impending Changes

AWS announced earlier this month that Yeum would depart from his position as channel chief. He will be working in Amazon’s retail division.

AWS’ Ruba Borno

The company tapped Ruba Borno, a six-year Cisco alumna, to replace Yeum. Borno will start her new job Dec. 6. She has been shadowing Yeum since Nov. 22. Borno has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and at one point stood as the only millennial on Cisco’s leadership team. She spent part of her childhood in Kuwait and saw her family relocate during Saddam Hussein’s invasion.