To be a successful AWS Consulting Partner you’ll need Certifications

AWS is not sold like a traditional product, nor is it a retail cloud product with a SKU. You architected the services to fit a customer need, or business outcome they are trying to achieve. More and more customers are now starting to adopt AWS, and like it or not, they are deciding to migrate a certain percentage (or all) of their workloads & services to the public cloud. To back this up IDC states that by 2023 75% of enterprise workloads will be in a public cloud of some flavour. More concerning for the partner community is that IDC also states that by 2022 30% of partners today will not exist in their current form.

All this suggests adopting a completely different approach to your customer engagements. The secret to success will be how many new AWS engagements you can manage in a given month. This will be decided by the number of certified individuals you have; therefore, you need to be building a competent team of certified AWS sales consultants. A new type of sales force if you will, that combines traditional pre-sales and sales as one group. Then back this up with a professional services team of your own or through partnerships. Don’t forget, managing new opportunities is one thing, adding profitable services is another.
Having spent 4 years building an AWS practice to enable partners, I have seen what works and what doesn’t. Partners that have embraced AWS with dedicated teams and structures have prospered. Running the AWS practice at TD SYNNEX, an Advanced Consulting Partner in the distribution program, it’s no different. Across my team of 3 Partner Success Managers, we have a total of 6 AWS certifications, meaning we can help you consult around AWS services, cloud management tools and our professional services with ease.

At TD SYNNEX, we’ve simplified the AWS Partner Network sign up process with the launch of our AWS Path enablement framework, part of the TD Cloud Practice Builder program. This program will take you from first engagement to be a certified Select level partner in 4 months via a combination clear and easy to follow sprints and online certification training. At every step of the process our Certified AWS Cloud Concierge will support you to ensure that your business fully under-stands and can visualise the steps to success as an AWS partner.

Built in to AWS Path, TD SYNNEX have partnered with A Cloud Guru, the cloud skills learning platform, to provide our partners with the best possible opportunity to achieve as many certifications as possible. The training is self-paced and walks the student through the online coursework and exam prep from the start to passing the test. With an innovate cloud playground environment for hands on labs included, this training is market leading in approach. It’s the partner of choice to 40K+ AWS staff and is how my AWS team have built their certification portfolio. Access to the A Cloud Guru platform is included for those partners who subscribe to AWS Path in the first 12 months.

If all you want to do is resell the monthly billing, then you will struggle on two fronts. Firstly, you will not make enough profit to sustain a business on the base discount. Secondly, your customers will want more than billing management from you and will align to a partner who can provide more margin rich (for you) services. So, if you want a business that will scale for a public cloud world then come and speak to us at TD SYNNEX and let us get you certified.