AWS To Modernize The Certification Process For Partners

This, in a bid to tackle partner concerns that its AWS certifications are too onerous. The cloud giant has said that it is now looking to make it easier for partners to become certified.

Without lowering the bar of difficulty, that is.

AWS EMEA channel chief Niko Mykkanen revealed this at the European Channel Leadership Forum, where the director of alliances, channels and ecosystems confirmed that his team is looking at how to modernize the certification process for partners.

In fact, according to him, Amazon has invested tens of millions of dollars into training partners on its technology this year, with the number of partner accreditations leaping 159% year on year.

His words:

“For us in Europe, in our business one of the biggest investments in the last 18 months has been to skill up this ecosystem. For us it’s an expensive thing, and for you it’s time consuming, but knowing that customers want you to have the most skilled people, this is a must.

When I talk to many of you, I get feedback that our criteria to become certified are too high; the bar is too high. It is what it is. It’s not going to change, and we’re not going to lower the bar to get more people. What we are looking into is how we can make it easier for you. We completely understand that to put somebody into a training class for three days to learn about system architecture around cloud is a big investment. How we can modernize that is something we are working on.”

He also touched upon how specialization is paramount for AWS partners.

To that end AWS has created 16 competencies including IoT, Migration, Security, Big Data, Storage, Microsoft Workloads, SAP Workloads, Oracle Workloads and DevOps, along with a number of vertical industries including Government and Financial Services.

These, the company says, are all areas around which partners can build their AWS practices.