AWS re:Invent 2016: News You Need to Know, Nov. 29

This week tens of thousands of Amazon Web Services (AWS) partners and customers will be in Las Vegas for the AWS re:Invent conference which runs until Friday.

On Tuesday, AWS kicked off the conference with a number of announcements at its Global Partner Summit.

AWS says that it has added over 10,000 partners during the past year, with the channel now accounting for two-thirds of its network outside of the U.S.  AWS reports a 130 percent growth in managed service partners and a 100 percent increase in consulting partners.

Addressing partners on Tuesday, Andy Jassy, AWS CEO, said that the cloud giant is going to “direct business to [its] partners who are committed and who really understand the platform”  — suggesting that those who merely skim the surface of what AWS has to offer and don’t make themselves experts in its cloud and related offerings will not reap the benefits.

The position is not necessarily surprising coming from AWS, but it does suggest that AWS may give preferential treatment to partners who go all-in on AWS, rather than dabble in multiple cloud vendors.

“Those of you who really get committed to understanding the details and the breadth and the depth of the platform, are going to be the ones that help our joint customers the most and i believe will be the ones that have the most success as we go through the next couple of years where a lot of the playing field is going to be reshuffled,” Jassy said, according to a report by ZDNet.

AWS is awarding partners with this deep expertise with so-called “competencies”, which designate partners in its Amazon Partner Network as experts in a particular area, such as IoT or financial services.

Here is some of the other partner news announced at AWS re:Invent so far, broken down into announcements from AWS itself, its partners, and customer wins.

AWS

AWS and VMware will roll out an integrated partner program next year. The partnership was first announced in a report by Fortune in October.

On Tuesday, AWS announced the AWS Financial Services Competency Program to identify consulting and technology APN Partners with expertise in providing solutions for banking and payments, capital markets, and insurance organizations. Among the partners with this competency include 2^nd Watch and Corezoid.

AWS launched the Internet of Things (IoT) Competency to recognize partners in the AWS Partner Network (APN) that have deep expertise with IoT. Partners with the designation include Bsquare, Eseye, PTC, and Mobiquity.

The new partner program, available in the coming weeks, will help service providers and software vendors integrate Alexa’s capabilities with their products. According to Terry Wise, director of the Amazon Web Services worldwide partner ecosystem, partners have expressed a desire to integrate Alexa and voice capabilities into their services.

The program identifies APN Consulting and Technology Partners that have passed technical reviews, and have a validated track record of customer success with a specific AWS service, AWS says. The AWS Services Delivery Program has over 150 APN Partner solutions validated across 15 categories.

Partners

SwiftStack has announced the availability of its Cloud Sync capability on AWS which helps compaies adopt a hybrid cloud strategy. In 2017, SwiftStack will be expanding capabilities of Cloud Sync to support additional public cloud platforms.

Tableau Software has announced that Tableau Online is available on AWS. Tableau Online is a fully managed SaaS analytics platform.

Rackspace has achieved Premier Partner status as a Consulting Partner within the Amazon Web Services Partner Network. This designation is the highest level in the APN.

Customers

Capital One announced on Tuesday that it has selected AWS as its predominant cloud infrastructure provider. Over the next five years, Capital One will migrate many core business and customer applications to AWS. In a recent case study on AWS’ website, Capital One said that it plans to reduce its data center footprint from eight to three by 2018.

Shipping company Matson is going “all-in” on the AWS Cloud, closing four of its on-premises data centers in its migration to AWS.