AWS: AWS A/NZ partners key to driving modernisation of SMEs

The partner contribution to the Amazon Web Services' (AWS) Australian and New Zealand business continues to grow at a rapid pace, going from 47 per cent in 2022 to 68 per cent in 2024. This is according to AWS partners director for Asia Pacific and Japan Chris Casey, who said during his keynote speech at the cloud giant's Partner Summit that AWS was committed to continuing this acceleration to discover more ways that it can work together with partners. Held in Sydney on 2 April, this the first time AWS has focused exclusively on partners. Previously, the partner summit was part of the wider AWS Summit, which will be held 4 to 5 June. "We're standing on our own outside of the customer summit because we wanted to design an event and an experience that was exclusively focused on our partners and focused on how we are working together to accelerate growth, both for your organisation as well as for our shared customers," said Casey. During the conference and in his keynote speech, he emphasised the importance of partners when it came to generative AI, with Amazon Q Business and the launch of new security specialisations. "Depending on the literature you read, there's between 80 per cent and 90 per cent of workloads that are still yet to be moved to the cloud," he said. "But we must not forget that, in addition to migrations, modernisation is absolutely critical because modernisation is what help our customers most in terms of them becoming more efficient, more scalable and more resilient," he said. In today's digital landscape, a modernised customer is really one who has not yet realised the full value of the cloud, Casey said. "Almost every business objective for pursuing a migration is slightly different," he said. "Sure, everyone wants to save money, but most customers are trying to solve a business problem or programming. "How can we together, help our customers overcome the challenges and accelerate migrations? "In addition to that, modernisation is the key; it does lead to efficiency and operational excellence, creating a foundation for ongoing innovation and growth at speed." It is at the small and medium customer level that AWS believes will be important. "IDC forecasts of the total cloud spend for small and medium customers will grow by a staggering 87 per cent in the next three years to $87 billion and that's why we launched the small and medium business competency," said Casey. "SMB [small- to medium-sized business] competency partners are growing their AWS businesses 35 per cent plus more year over year, compared to a similar group of partners who are yet to achieve that competency, and that's also why I'm so excited." Casey noted that this year AWS launched the Small Business Acceleration initiative, which was one of the cloud giant's first partner-led channel sales motion. "This initiative provides dedicated support from AWS partner territory managers, as well as increased awareness activities throughout demand generation channels for partners, specifically servicing small and medium businesses," he explained. "We are constantly optimising our processes and our tooling to match partner capabilities with customer needs and one of the tools we use internally is called our partner matching engine. "So far, with [the] partner matching engine, the deals that went through ... closed 27 per cent faster than deals that didn't use it, which is super impressive when we're just getting started." Casey also he reiterated that cyber security was also an important part of AWS, highlighting Canva's work with the AWS Professional Services team to develop a cloud-based data link for tracking cyber activities. This solution was used by the cloud giant to detect threats and conduct digital investigations, enabling them to dive deeper into past cyber incidents using the full suite of AWS data and analytics services. "Now, for all the AWS partners here today, it's important to us that we offer you a clear security roadmap," he said. "I want to highlight four new security specialisations, each offering unique benefits to help you go to market. "The first is AWS digital sovereignty, followed by the Amazon security lake service ready specialisation. The third is the AWS security incident response service ready and service delivery specialisation. "Finally, we have the security AI category, designed for customers to identify partners who can help protect their AI applications from advanced cyber attack tactics and techniques," said Casey. Currently AWS has a multitude of programs, planning, and probably demand generation activities that are bundled together for channel partners. "One example of this is our new program, the Business Outcome Accelerator Program," said Casey during another interview. "This program has been designed to work better from the end customer's perspective, focusing on the problems or value propositions they're trying to solve, while bringing together multiple partner solutions. "For instance, we're offering incentives and different forms of partner matchmaking, which is happening right here in Sydney, to better connect channel partners." In the case of generative AI, AWS has Generative AI Competency Partners, he noted. "We've got 39 unique partners operating in Australia and New Zealand over the past 12 months who hold this competency," he said. "These partners include both traditional technology partners as well as consulting or channel partners who are working closely with customers to understand the business opportunities they're trying to solve." Whether it's specific software or tools like Amazon Bedrock, Bedrock Agents, and Guardrails within Amazon Bedrock. For all the partners in the room with a cloud security practice, now is the "perfect time" to accelerate and obtain security specialisations, he added. "Working backward from customers to create different programs that helped drive innovation at the speed we were aiming for," Casey said during a separate interview. "However, this led to over 100 programs that any one partner or individual might need to understand, depending on the customer segment, workload, or application they were working on. "Instead of keeping all of these programs, we've focused on simplifying them and have reduced the number of programs by about 56 per cent year-over-year, and we plan to keep simplifying." According Casey the goal isn't to reduce the value we offer, but to make things more modular. "For example, a partner with a strong security practice can focus on the specific specialisations relevant to them, while still having access to other programs or modules they can pull in if needed. "This makes it easier for partners to understand and accelerate their business on AWS," he explained. The keynote also featured a partner awards event, with Databricks taking the AWS Technology Partner of the Year. Deloitte was recognised as the AWS Consulting Partner of the Year while Workato was recognised as AWS Rising Star Technology Partner of the Year and 6pillars was awarded AWS Rising Star Consulting Partner of the Year.