What does AWS IQ mean for the channel?

The cloud provider's new scheme promises to link customers directly with AWS Certified engineers. CRN investigates the impact this will have on partners

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the internet giant's cloud arm, recently announced a new scheme called IQ.

Set to launch later this year, IQ is billed as a marketplace where customers can access AWS Certified experts for projects.

It is described as a "new service that connects customers with AWS partners and Certified experts for advice and hands-on projects".

The scheme - which is set to be piloted in the US later this year - is open to registration from individuals and companies.

"Firms will create a seller account to handle payments, and employees within the firm will each have a profile," AWS stated.

Profiles of individuals will include professional experience, hourly rates, AWS certifications and customer reviews.

Expertise in at least one AWS certification is required to sign up to the scheme.

IQ will provide Certified experts with the opportunity to become involved in new projects, reach new customers and scale their business, claims the vendor.

But does this move by Amazon mark it out as friend or foe to the channel?

Channel intrigue

Alastair Edwards, chief analyst at Canalys, interpreted the news to be beneficial to partners.

"It is designed not as a way to bypass partners, but as a way to connect partners with customers," he said.

"AWS is heavily focused on training and enabling the channel; they want a partner ecosystem that is predominately providing the services and support around the AWS environment, but they're not seeking to do that themselves."

Edwards believes that smaller partners would see the most opportunities in signing up to IQ, as customers clamour for those with AWS skills.

"From a customer perspective, the real challenge is that they need access to those services," he said.

"If I were a small database consultancy, I would see this as a great way for me to scale or expand my reach and give me access to a broader customer base."

SMBs might not only be the target provider, but also the target customer, according to Chris Bunch, head of AWS Partner Cloudreach Europe.

He speculated that IQ could allow SMB customers to access AWS skills they didn't necessarily have access to before, allowing them to hire engineers for projects deemed too small for partners.

"If I were to bet, I'd say it would be the small organisations that went for it first, and they would take advantage of price point and number of units," he said.

"If AWS end up filling it full of lower-cost individuals, they have a good chance of appealing to a potentially broad base of customers because it starts to potentially disrupt some of the global systems integrators that sell a lot of offshore body shops projects.

"The SMB market only wants a bit of time from someone, but they can't afford to pay very much. And maybe the lower end of the partner ecosystem isn't super interested in those smaller projects that will allow customers to get something at a price point they choose and in chunks of time - in terms of days and hours - that they choose."

Bunch and Edwards envision the scheme being a partner locator tool, where a customer can enter their location and the type of experience they need and IQ will provide them with the biographies of potential engineers in their area.

Both also agreed that IQ didn't appear to pose any threat to the channel as it states that it is open to individuals and firms. Bunch added that if anyone was to be worried about Amazon's latest move, it would most likely be the recruitment industry.

He speculated that large companies could use the tool to locate potential new employees with AWS certifications, thereby cutting out recruitment.

"Some of the bigger recruitment agencies will sign contracts with large, FTSE100-like organisations," he explained.

"And their job is to hunt people and place them. But if the company can do it itself, and it can save probably hundreds of thousands of pounds in fees, then why wouldn't it?

"If Amazon can find a way to get an appropriate blend of quality, price and individuals into the marketplace, why would an organisation then commit to a volume-play with a recruitment agency, if it can do it itself at a lower price point?

"But as with any marketplace, it depends on the scale and quality and the fit with the individuals that are in that marketplace."

Recruitment replacement?

This speculation was emphatically rebuked by Marc Sumner, CEO and founder of recruitment agency Robertson Sumner.

"In the last 20 years, 'I've heard so many things that are going to be disruptive to agencies; in-house recruiting is going to be doing this, automation is going to be doing that," he said.

"Disruptive or not, you'll always need someone to broker a deal…because we're a people game.

"I just can't see anything disrupting the human element of recruitment at the moment."

Analyst Edwards echoed Bunch's thoughts that it could be used as a tool by HR departments to access a pool of potential new employees, but he maintained that it is more about supplying customers with the resources they need.

"We know that the biggest challenge for partners and customers is the access to resources and skills around the complexity that exists in the IT environment today," he said.

"Recruiters are making a lot of money out of that, of course, but they are struggling from the fact that those skills don't exist.

"I think this is about helping customers to get access to the right skills, and AWS is putting those skills into the market."

So how can partners leverage this to their advantage?

"It's another tool that partners will be able to take advantage of to connect their people with customers," Edwards said.

"If I were a partner, I would probably want to put [my AWS people] on IQ as a way to promote those skills and capabilities. I think partners should be looking at how they can make use of this and not see it as competition."