CloudCheckr Takes Partner Enablement Global, Faction Achieves Important AWS-Related Designation

AWS RE: INVENT — While AWS re:Invent doesn’t officially kick off until late Monday afternoon, a number of companies either exhibiting at the giant cloud event in Las Vegas, or that team with AWS, started releasing news earlier in the day.

Here’s the roundup from day one, featuring channel-centric vendors or partners themselves:

CloudCheckr Launches Global Partner-Enablement Program

Cloud management company CloudCheckr, whose channel chief Elissa Livingston made the Channel Futures Top Gun 51 list earlier this year, debuted a new program for cloud service and IaaS resellers.

Cloudcheckr’s Elissa Livingston

The worldwide CloudCheckr Business Partner Program delivers business expertise, sales enablement tools and cloud technology for MSPs and resellers. Participants also get access to a dedicated business development team.

“We are enhancing our commitment to … business partner enablement with a partner-centric go-to-market strategy that provides the tools, resources and support that our business partners need to differentiate and win in this highly competitive space,” said Livingston, vice president of strategic alliances and partner programs at CloudCheckr.

CloudCheckr said to expect enhancements including:

CloudCheckr is an APN Technology Partner gold sponsor at this week’s AWS re:Invent conference.

Faction Earns Key Designation, Releases Learning Series

Faction, an MSP aligned with multiple public cloud providers, said this week it has earned VMware Cloud on AWS Master Services Competency.

The designation, and others like it, helps partners demonstrate proficiency and differentiators. The VMware Cloud on AWS Master Services Competency, in particular, demonstrates expertise in the deployment of an integrated cloud that lets users run applications across a VMware Cloud Infrastructure environment with access to AWS services.

Faction’s Sean Charnock

“We continue to see an avalanche of interest of organizations moving from their data centers to VMware Cloud on AWS,” said Sean Charnock, CEO of Faction. “Our own research shows that interest will continue to grow over the foreseeable future.”

Indeed, the firm’s recent report, VMware Cloud on AWS Market Survey, found that 29% of respondents plan to increase workloads on that particular platform over the next 12 months.

Also this week, Faction unveiled an education program to help companies in all industries evaluate, plan and execute the move to the VMware Cloud on AWS. The “6-Step Blueprint for Success” provides business and technical guidance.

“This series offers everything you need to …

… evaluate how to use or move to VMware Cloud on AWS and how to evaluate the benefits for your organization,” said Duan van der Westhuizen, vice president of marketing at Faction. “Faction’s blueprint for success provides six on-demand webinars, moving from fundamental to advanced topics; a detailed watch guide with pinpointed timestamps that allow viewers to jump to specific material in each webinar; a VMware Cloud on AWS cheat sheet for architecting your environment; and a one-on-one session with a VMware Cloud on AWS expert.”

Faction is offering the series at no cost.

Logicata: Midmarket Customers Overlooking Benefits of Modernizing AWS Infrastructure

Logicata, an AWS MSP based in the U.K., said on Monday its internal research shows that less than 29% of midmarket businesses are building for high availability in the AWS cloud.

“Our survey results show that many small and midmarket businesses have migrated workloads on a lift-and-shift basis to AWS, but they have not looked to modernize their infrastructure to take advantage of the high availability aspects of the AWS cloud,” Karl Robinson, director and co-founder at Logicata, said. “Even if their application is unable to balance workloads across multiple instances, it still makes sense to distribute instances between availability zones to avoid the ‘all eggs in one basket’ scenario if and when an AWS infrastructure problem occurs.”

Logicata found that 26% of customers in the research sample who adopted AWS classic virtual private clouds had not upgraded to the newer counterpart, which enables communication among VPCs on the same subnet. The MSP says that by making this simple change, users could benefit from higher workload availability at no additional cost, and without reconstructing their applications.

Polte’s Location API Now in AWS Marketplace

Polte Corp., which provisions a cellular-based location services platform through partners including system integrators, has made its Location API available in the AWS Marketplace.

“Polte’s Cloud Software enhances Amazon’s ecosystem with an easy-to-use, secure and affordable geolocation offering,” said Ed Chao, Polte’s CEO. “If you make things, sell things or own things, Polte locates all those things.”

The company’s technology works in any industry and tracks everything from containers and pallets to machines, components and more.

Polte is demonstrating its IoT Cloud in the AWS Partner Solutions Experience at AWS re:Invent throughout the week.