AWS re:Invent: AWS, Partners Working Together to Transform, Innovate, Create New Opportunities

AWS RE:INVENT — Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent on Monday shared the message that partnership is the “highest obsession” for the cloud giant.

AWS re:Invent is taking place this week in Las Vegas, and has drawn more than 50,000 global partners and customers.

Ruba Borno is AWS’ vice president of worldwide channels and alliances.

AWS’ Ruba Borno

“We’re really excited about how we’re working with partners to transform customers together, to innovate together, to create more opportunities for our partners together,” she said. “And also I’m really excited about the impact that we’re having on our communities with our partners.”

This year marks the 10th anniversary of AWS Partner Network and AWS Marketplace, Borno said.

“One of the things that we’re really excited about is it sounds like so much has already happened in terms of cloud transformation, but it’s still day one, only 5%-15% of IT workloads that could migrate to the cloud have migrated to the cloud,” she said. “So we believe there’s still a tremendous potential there for us to work with our partners to deliver more value through the cloud. And we’re really excited about the future.”

AWS ‘Heavily Vested’ in Partner Ecosystem

AWS is heavily vested in its partner ecosystem, and it’s one of the foundations that the cloud giant sees as key for it to enable customer growth over the next decade and beyond. That’s according to Chris Casey, AWS’ director and general manager of industry software and data alliances.

Casey directly manages the ISV and data provider team, but AWS also works with MSPs, SIs and consulting partners.

AWS’ Chris Casey

“As we start to get more and more customer demand for more and more industry-specific use cases and workloads, it’s critical for us to be able to solve that end-customer outcome with a really deep and wide partner ecosystem that can offer as many of the imaginable use cases that a customer might ask us to fulfill on the cloud,” he said. “And so from our side, we certainly are diving into industry-specific themes and workloads in each industry. Those differ, but fundamentally across those industries, AWS has success in being able to unlock that end-customer value. It’s really foundationally built on top of not only our native services, but also the partner solutions that we have available.”

Innovation at AWS re:Invent

Jenni Troutman is head of products and services for AWS training and certification.

AWS’ Jenni Troutman

“There’s a lot of innovation with all of the announcements we’ve had over the last couple of days,” she said. “There’s a lot of innovation and frankly things that we can do to do good for the world. I work with training and certification where we’re really focused on building cloud skills across the globe. And our theme here is really the time is now. We’re seeing that the need for cloud skills is only growing. And so our focus here is really about, hey, we have lots of resources and opportunities for people to build and validate their cloud skills, and get started today.”

AWS is always looking to continuously reinvent how it goes to market, and looks to evolve what it’s doing with customers, and most importantly with partners, Casey said.

“What I’d really love our industry partners and our data providers to take away is that we really value their feedback and we’re listening to it, and we’re iterating as fast as possible with them,” he said. “For partners who have attended re:Invent or even watched some of the keynotes, I hope it’s really resonating with them that AWS is continuously investing in improving how we’re supporting those partners, simplifying their experience and ultimately simplifying the end-customer experience as fast as we possibly can. And we’re nowhere near done with that. We’re pushing the boundaries with some of these partners in brand-new areas. But that’s super exciting because we’re unlocking brand-new use cases for customers in almost every imaginable industry.”

See our slideshow for more from AWS re:Invent.