Amazon Web Services (AWS) has granted entry for partners to offer professional services alongside software solutions in AWS Marketplace for the first time.
Until now, customers have had to subscribe to Marketplace for its catalogue of ISV software solutions, and separately source any professional services. The update enables consulting partners, ISVs and MSPs to offer services such as assessments, implementations, managed services, support and training, to customers in the cloud.
By combining everything in one place, AWS says customers can customise pricing, payment schedules and contract terms on one consolidated bill, freeing up resources that once managed multiple contracts and spend.
“What that means is that a corporation or a government entity can contract both for software and for the services associated with the implementation of that software, and both can be done through AWS Marketplace,” said Dave McCann, VP, AWS migration, marketplace, and control services, during the cloud giant’s partner keynote at AWS re:Invent 2020.
McCann said AWS has more than over 100 providers of professional services signed up worldwide, including top software consulting partners and resellers such as Computacenter in EMEA. “This capability to quote, provision and bill software, along with professional services, takes some of the friction out of the customer consumption, makes it easy for customers to innovate faster, in a consistent way,” he said.
The update was one of several new partner programmes and competencies unveiled at the virtual event. AWS also announced ISV Partner Path, a programme designed to help ISVs build their businesses in the cloud, and AWS SaaS Boost, an open source reference environment that helps ISVs migrate their applications to a SaaS delivery model on AWS.
The cloud giant has also expanded the AWS Competency Programme with four new areas – Travel and Hospitality, Energy, Mainframe Migration, and Public Safety and Disaster Response. AWS claims it is adding more than 50 new organisations every day to the Amazon Partner Network (APN) with its channel now at “tens of thousands” of partners globally.
