Partners hail AWS' commitment to accreditations
'Nobody needs to run crying to mummy on this', claims KCOM
Amazon Web Services (AWS) partners have praised the company's commitment to highly accredited partners after its UK boss said yesterday they can make significantly more money than casual resellers.
Gavin Jackson, AWS' UK managing director, who joined the firm from VMware at the end of last year, told CRN yesterday that partners with more than four AWS accreditations can earn up to 11 times more revenue than those with four certifications or fewer.
He added that although AWS is enjoying significant growth, it could be accelerated if partners invested further in skills.
AWS partners have praised Jackson's comments.
"Gavin Jackson is right," said Chris Cox, AWS alliance lead at KCOM. "Having skilled partners is essential in helping deliver the momentum that AWS is enjoying.
"Nobody needs to run crying to mummy on this. AWS freely admits that when they choose partners to put forward to customers, they look at the ones with the best technical competency - in this case, the highest number of relevant certifications to their name."
Pontus Noren, director of long-standing AWS partner Cloudreach, agreed.
"We have had a strong focus on certification and getting people certified from the very beginning," he said. "We have 30 Professional certifications in our business and a couple of hundred in total. It makes a real difference when it comes to our customers. With AWS, I know Gavin very well, and when people like him and other people look up the number of certifications we have, it is a factor in whether or not they involve us with the large enterprise clients we target."
AWS has warned investors that its margins at the moment are "bumpy", but Jackson told CRN that partners can avoid this by creating their own value-added services on top of the platform.
KCOM's head of marketing for enterprise Joseph Spear added: "An 11x return would not surprise me. We co-create solutions with our customers on the AWS platform and co-produce considerable value for them and for us because of the AWS platform.
"You have to look at it in the round. It's not about what a standalone AWS certification is worth, it's about asking yourself what a higher level of partnership with AWS is worth."
AWS has seen the number of partners it works with jump by 50 per cent in the past 12 months, which Jackson said demonstrates the company's commitment to the channel.
Cloudreach's Noren said this is great news.
"Overall, the whole industry is on a learning curve on how to adopt cloud and move away from traditional IT," he said. "Amazon are putting a big focus on how they evolve their partner programmes and how they deal with us. Gavin joined recently but came from a VMware environment. There are a lot of people in Amazon who really understand the importance of and the contribution a strong channel can make. IT companies in the history of IT have shown that - IBM, HP, Cisco, Microsoft all have big channel organisations and Amazon has seen that too."