Scale faster with AWS Specialization Partners

Thank you very much. Welcome. My name is Mike Barber. I lead our Partner Journey and AWS Specialization programs. I am here to talk to you today about scaling faster with our AWS Specialization partners.

For our agenda today, we are going to talk about:

• Who are specialization partners
• Why you should work with those partners
• What it takes to achieve a specialization
• What you get out of working with a specialization partner
• How to search for and find those partners
• Resources for how to apply for the programs, how to find the partners, and some recent research you may have seen in the keynote yesterday

To get started, we want to talk about why we have these programs in the first place at AWS. We have over 100,000 partners globally and we are continuing to scale. Take that in for a moment - we have over 100,000 partners. To put that into a visual, if you look at this slide right here - for every single person on this slide, we have over 100 partners.

How can we expect our partners to stand out for our customers and how can we help them get the recognition that they deserve? You may know that the fastest way to achieve success with the AWS Partner Network is through the Partner Journey.

Today we're going to talk a little bit about some of our partner programs, specifically the AWS Specialization program. These programs make it possible to differentiate your business among an elite group of 1,900 partners globally, standing out from that group of over 100,000. We recommend those partners as a short list for each specialization to our customers based on their specific domains and the validation they have achieved.

The specializations in these programs are the answer to the question I asked earlier - how do you stand out to our shared customers? These programs validate our expert partners who pass a high technical bar and demonstrate customer success in a specific specialization. With that specialization, you stand out among a very elite few and gain recognition from our customers worldwide.

In our time today, I'm going to explain a little bit about these programs, why they matter, the value of achieving a specialization, and how you can get started.

So who are our specialization partners? That's what we're going to talk about first.

What is a specialization? Specializations are a tool to find the right partner for the right job by providing validated technical expertise in specific areas. We understand that our customers are looking to get a specific job done or have a specific problem, and we want to help them find the right partner to get that job done.

This is done by identifying partners who raise the bar in customer experience by providing a positive customer experience. Our solution architects review those partners' offerings, case studies, products and more that we validate to find that past history of customer success and high bar of validation. This ensures we can recommend these partners to our customers as partners who can solve their problem with a high degree of experience.

With this validation, those partners receive extra benefits such as discoverability via specific badging, being highlighted in our Partner Solution Finder, early access to certain developments in their specialized field, connection to AWS experts in those areas, upskilling benefits, and various financial incentives.

This is mutually beneficial for our customers, as they are able to find proven, validated, top-tier service partners. The partner is able to separate and differentiate themselves from over 100,000 partners in our network.

The AWS Specialization program is made up of several different programs:

• AWS Service Ready validates partners who have a software offering that works with a specific AWS service. We're always updating this list and launching new ones consistently.

• Our Service Delivery designations validate our service partners' ability to showcase expertise in working with, consulting on, and delivering specific AWS services. Again, we consistently look at this portfolio and launch new designations.

• AWS Competency validates partners on their deep expertise in working with particular industries, for either software or services offerings.

• Our Use Case and Workload offerings validate partners' ability to work with deep expertise on those specific use cases or workloads.

As I mentioned, these designations are not static. Just this year before re:Invent we launched 9 different designations across competencies, service readies, and service deliveries.

As you may have seen in Andy Jassy's keynote, we launched 5 additional validations this week: our Resilience Competency, Cyber Insurance Competency, Advertising and Marketing Technology Competency, AWS Built On Competency, and EKS Ready. These validate our partners' deep expertise in delivering these specific use cases.

What you also may have seen is that we have a recently released study from Canalys that shows 87% of customers say specializations are in their top 3 criteria for selecting partners. Further, over 60% say a specialization is the #1 thing they look for when selecting a partner.

What this means is that based on the 60%, earning a specialization opens a partner up to access a subset of our $300B+ partner economy that they otherwise would not have without the specialization. Customers don't just check this once - 74% check their partners' certifications at least 2 times a year to ensure they stay current.

So what are we doing to support this research and the value these programs provide?

First, we're consolidating programs into a single AWS Specialization program to simplify it for customers. Next, we're focusing entry criteria on the technical requirements that customers say matter most, and simplifying non-technical requirements. For example, we're no longer requiring public case studies or microsites, though we think those are best practices. We want to make it easy to achieve specializations administratively while keeping validations high.

Lastly, we're enabling specialization partners through closer alignment between teams, and creating new benefits like our Partner Equip Live series which provides access to experts and roadmap content.

If you're a customer looking to find partners, you can search by specialization in our Partner Solution Finder. You can see full profiles of all specializations earned. We're also bringing discoverability to more places - like AWS Marketplace.

If you're a partner looking to apply, first join APN if needed and work through the Partner Journey. Work with your leads to review the validation checklist for each specialization. Submit your application for rigorous review by our solutions architects. Once awarded, you unlock benefits and can stand out in our network.

Here are some resources:

• Partner Solution Finder to search for partners
• Our "Work with Partners" page to explore specializations
• The Canalys study on how customers select and differentiate partners

Thank you for coming today. I'm happy to take any additional questions and go deeper on these topics.