The Value of AWS Partners — APN Competencies, Certifications & Benefits

According to Flexera’s 2021 State of Cloud report, AWS remains a firm favorite public cloud service for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). This wide adoption of Amazon public cloud services is made possible with the help of AWS Partners, who make great efforts to move businesses from legacy networks to cloud infrastructures through adoption and support for the utilization of the Amazon Web Services platform. 

AWS Partners bring the widest range of cloud expertise and experience to customers and help them improve security, cost-effectively grow their businesses, and more. Let’s explore how and why certified AWS Partners play such an integral role on the AWS platform.

AWS Partners & AWS Partners Network (APN)

AWS Partners provide a wide range of software and services that empower AWS customers to successfully manage their most complex workloads. Certified Partners provide the tools, expertise, and automation to help customers modernize their data centers and build cost-effective applications, deploy sophisticated workflows, and automate operations all according to best practice within the specific vertical the business is operating in. 

AWS Partners’ focus is on making it easier for customers to migrate mission-critical workloads from on-premises to the cloud through specialist support and compliance facilitation. AWS Partners also tend to offer software solutions to manage customer data across multiple public, private, and hybrid cloud environments facilitating companies who are still partially operating on-premises or those who are heading towards cloud portability. For more information on cloud portability check out this recent Caylent article on Cloud Portability — A Myth or Not? 

What Is AWS Partners Network?

To become a Partner with AWS, you must meet certain requirements to begin communicating software services to the AWS Partners Network. The requirements include the following: 

• Demonstrate technical proficient
• Showcase use case success in customer success competency
• Have Intellectual Property (IP) protections in place
• Share positive customer feedback and awareness of ecosystem best practices

Why Does the APN Exist? 

AWS Partners network exists to facilitate a wide range of businesses working in different industries. Certified Partners, such as Caylent, offer varying solutions that are based on the AWS platform to help customers easily deploy required cloud infrastructures by leveraging all the necessary services to the benefit of the business according to operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization: the 5 Pillars of the AWS Framework. The AWS Well-Architected Framework is designed to support SMBs to build the most secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure possible for their cloud environments and business-critical workloads. 

The APN is a community committed to developing and deploying cloud-based solutions for their customers. And through the APN, AWS Partners help these business leaders in their cloud journey with exclusive services.

How Can an AWS Partner Help You? 

An AWS Partner can help deploy solutions successfully across your cloud infrastructure.AWS Partners offer everything from migration solutions, backup solutions, CRM solutions as well as big data analytics solutions to specialist compliance support.

There are many Partners working in a variety of industries who have also built service products to manage, process, analyze, store and secure customer data on the cloud. The following is a list of some popular categories of AWS solutions available on the market today: 

• Backup Solutions 
• Security and Identity Management 
• Big Data and Analytics 
• Database as a Service (DBaaS) and Database Migration Solutions 
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) 
• Email, Archiving and Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) 
• Networking and Content Delivery Solutions

What Are AWS Partner Competencies?

AWS always supports its competent Partners who are providing great solutions and services to their customers in different industries such as education, financial services, government sector, industrial software, and retail, etc. 

The APN Partner Program requires Partners to maintain and demonstrate such technical proficiency in the following areas:

1. AWS Technical Competency — Ability to architect and implement AWS-based solutions 
2. Network Competency — Ability to design and operate secure and highly available networks 
3. Customer Success Competency — Ability to support customers throughout the adoption process including ongoing support, education, and enablement 
4. Sales Competency — Ability to sell competently into the AWS customer base by understanding business drivers, requirements, and AWS-based solutions 

Along with these metrics, there is also an AWS Competency Program to identify, validate and promote those Partners who are providing top-notch services to their customers. This program offers many benefits to valuable AWS Partners. 

AWS helps to increase the visibility of competent Partners by showcasing them across AWS web pages and the AWS Partners Solutions Finder. An AWS Partners can also access exclusive AWS services at discounted prices, and AWS will promote Partner services at official AWS events. 

What Are Partner Certifications?

AWS has taken different initiatives to support its individual Partners involved in the APN with different Partner programs and certifications intended for different purposes.

The first and foremost is their AWS Partner Training and Certification program that aims to enhance AWS Partners’ skills and knowledge with respect to the latest advancements in the cloud space. 

The AWS Partner Training program is suitable for anyone who wants to become an AWS certified cloud practitioner, architect, developer, or operations manager. Along with this training, there are a few other certification programs, courses, and scheduled weekly webinars for AWS Partners.

APN Certification Distinctions is another corner for certifications where a Partner can portray their collective achievements and certifications to highlight the value that they can bring to their customers. It is possible for AWS Partners to achieve 50, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 1K, and 2K AWS Certifications within their program. 

An APN Certification Distinction logo is only awarded to those Partners who successfully manage to reach a certain threshold for certifications. Caylent is proud to announce that we hold the 100 Certification Distinction badge across our expert team of engineers. 

How Do AWS Partners Help Accelerate Growth?

As an AWS Partner, it is Caylent’s mission, as well as other Partners too, to help SMBs and enterprises of all sizes across various industries to accelerate their growth. Being an AWS Partner allows us to offer the software and services necessary to power your business’s mission-critical infrastructure. We make it easier for our customers to manage complex workloads across a range of technologies with confidence in outsourcing the system deployment, management, and security. 

As a Partner, we’re also in the potential position to raise funds for noteworthy SMBs who are willing to shift and improve their services on the cloud. 

Amazon acquired the Ring doorbell company back in 2018 from Jamie Siminoff for over $1 Billion. The company was already using AWS’s cloud infrastructure to save videos and images on a secured cloud. AWS Partner companies helped to deploy the Ring’s cloud infrastructure in order to make it a reality, and later the company was bought by Amazon itself.

In Summary

No matter what you are looking for—from cloud data management solutions like AWS Database Migration Service (DMS), Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) or AWS Cloud Storage; to highly available architecture through managed services such as Active Directory Domain Services on AWS (AD DS) or support for granular Identity Access Management (IAM); an AWS Partner is best positioned as outsourced support to help you deploy the most complex of cloud service solutions based on your business needs. 

If your company needs help building out an AWS cloud architecture strategy, then reach out to Caylent to discuss your next steps.

Caylent is a cloud-native services company that helps organizations bring the best out of their people and technology using AWS. We are living in a software-defined world where technology is at the core of every business. To thrive in this paradigm, organizations need to empower their people and processes through technology. Caylent is uniquely positioned to fuel that engine of innovation by bringing ambitious ideas to life for our customers.

Caylent works with customers to build, scale and optimize sophisticated cloud solutions using deep subject matter expertise to deliver world-class outcomes through an agile co-delivery model.