AWS re:Invent 2020: ISVs and SaaS providers take AWS cloud adoption to the sky

AWS partners are moving faster this year than ever before. The company has rolled out new programs for ISV and SaaS providers to take advantage of the new services to deliver greater value for customers, shares Doug Yeum, Head of Global Partner Organisation at Amazon Web Services to CRN India

As Amazon Web Services Inc. concluded its three-week long re:Invent 2020 an all-virtual format, the impact of the global pandemic remained very much a topic of conversation. The company showcased 27 new services and major features, customers case study and talked about the role  cloud technology is playing at this crucial time. And how, the AWS partners have responded and rose to the challenge during the pandemic.

AWS partners are moving faster this year than ever before. Just this year alone, companies like NEC, Orange Business Services, AllCloud, Amdocs and OutSystems have all made strategic decisions to double down on their investments to grow their AWS practices and build solutions on AWS. In return, AWS is making big investments into these partners to help them with their transformation journeys.

In an exclusive interview to CRN India, Doug Yeum, Head of Global Partner Organisation at Amazon Web Services, informs, “Our goal is to help our partners to maximise the value of their existing assets — their customer relationships, their deep industry experience, their unique offerings — to deliver differentiated value to their customers. We will help our partners become better prepared for the future. Partners who’ve been working with AWS for a while and have leveraged the AWS platform, people, programs, they were clearly better prepared to respond to the pandemic.”

AWS have been a focused cloud player to ensure its customers and partners have access to the broadest and the deepest set of services. Having the right tool for the right job matters. This allows builders to build and innovate faster.  And one group of builders who have really leveraged the breadth and depth of the AWS platform are ISVs and SaaS providers. There are many ways in which the AWS platform help ISVs and SaaS providers.

ISVs and SaaS providers are integrating AWS services with their solutions to accelerate the delivery of new capabilities to their customers. For example, Tableau, Sisense, Domo, Qlik have all integrated SageMaker Autopilot to put predictive-analytics capabilities in the hands of business analysts who have no or little experience with data science. “Delivering a service rather than shipping software is different. It requires a new approach to application development, testing and delivery,” Yeum highlights.

In this re:invent, AWS has further strengthened, simplifying existing and rolled out new programs for partners, AWS SaaS Factory program to transform their applications. AWS has seen an increase in demand for a SaaS Factory program from enterprises like Nasdaq and other ISVs. Today, the ISV partners want access to the millions of active customers using AWS. They’re asking AWS sales teams to help with co-selling.

“Over the years, we’ve listened carefully to this diverse group of ISV partners to build different programs that they told us that they needed. Our ISV partners have been able to drive strong business results leveraging these programs. As we continue to look for ways to provide more ways to add more value, we saw an opportunity to be more prescriptive, to help our ISV partners achieve their desired business outcomes faster,” mentions Yeum.

Starting in January, all existing AWS technology partners with software solutions that run on or are innovating with AWS will be transitioned to the AWS ISV Partner Path. And consulting partners with solutions can also sign up to the ISV Partner Path without impacting their AWS consulting partner tier status.

Applauding the performance of partners and setting the new opportunities for them, Andy Jassy, CEO, AWS in a partner keynote says,  “Our strategic partners on both the SI side as well as ISVs and SaaS providers are really strategic to the business. And I think, collectively, we would all not be here without one another.  Even though our business has become bigger at a $46-billion-revenue-runrate business, the overwhelming amount of workloads that exist are on premises. And they’re going to move to the cloud in the next 10 to 20 years. So there’s an opportunity out there for all of us together if we can figure out how to get focused and partner the right way together.”

Yeum also stressed on agility, flexibility and resilience emerging as the key guiding principles for future success. All companies will look to leverage the advantages of cloud computing for their business strategy and are looking for AWS partners who can deliver end-to-end solutions, develop cloud-native applications in addition to managing their cloud infrastructure and have deep specialisations across industries, use cases, specific workloads like SAP and AWS services.

“Partners who can meet these customer requirements and truly understand that speed matters, there see lots of opportunities. And AWS is here to help you capture these opportunities together,” he concludes.