>> Announcer: From around the globe,
it's the CUBE with digital coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020
special coverage sponsored by AWS Global Partner Network.
>> Welcome back to theCUBE's virtual coverage
of AWS re:invent 2020,
it's virtual this year, we're usually in person
this year we have to do remote interviews
because of the pandemic,
but it's been a great run,
a lot of great content happening here
in these next three weeks of re:Invent.
We've got two great guests here as part of our coverage
of the APN Partner Experience.
I'm your host, John Furrier.
Barbara Kessler, Global APN Programs Leader,
and Ryan Broadwell, Global Director of ISVs for AWS.
Thanks for coming on the CUBE, Thanks for joining me.
>> Hey, thanks for having us, it's great to be here.
>> You know we heard of--
>> Yeah thanks for having us John.
>> Thanks for coming on.
Sorry we're not in person, but tons of content.
I mean, there's a lot of the VODs, the main stages,
but the news hitting this morning around
Doug's comments from strong focus of ISVs
is just a continuation.
We heard that last year,
but this year more focus investments there,
new announcements take us through what we just heard
and what it means.
>> Yeah John, I'll jump in first
and then let Barbara add
some additional color and commentary,
but I think it is a continuation for us
as we look at continuing to build a momentum with our ISVs
they're mission critical for us,
and we hear that loud and clear from our customers.
So as you think about building off
what Doug was talking about,
I think it's first important for us to start with,
we look to help our partners build
and build well-designed solutions on AWS,
supporting their innovation and transformation
and working together to deliver scalable, reliable,
secure solutions for our customers.
To facilitate this, we offer programs
such as AWS SaaS Factory,
that provide enablement to our ISVs
to build new products, migrate single tenent environments
or optimize existing SaaS Solutions on AWS.
And we do this through mechanisms
like Webinars, Bootcamps, Workshops
and even one-on-one engagements.
You know, as you talked about,
we just heard from Doug announce AWS SaaS Boost,
which is a ready to use open source implementation
of SaaS tooling and best practices
to accelerate ISV SaaS Path.
Through SaaS Factory which we've worked on
with many ISVs in the last few years
and you're well aware of, we have lots of learnings
and we've helped a lot of partners
make that journey towards SaaS.
Partners like BMC, CloudZero, Nasdaq,
Cohesity, or F5
transform their delivery and business models to SaaS.
We've had a lot of demand for this type of engagement.
And we knew it was important that we come up
with a scalable way to help partners
accelerate their transformation.
SaaS Boost provides prescriptive experience
to transform applications through an intuitive tool
with many core services needed to develop
and operate on the AWS Cloud.
In addition to that,
we look to use the well-architected framework,
which is proven to set the architectural best practices
for designing in operating systems in the Cloud,
to help ISVs build their solutions on AWS.
We just launched two additional lenses
in well-architected tool,
to enable ISVs to conduct these reviews
from within the AWS console, one SaaS environment,
and one aligned with foundational technical reviews,
which helps partners prepare for the technical validation
in AWS Partner Programs.
>> You know, the SaaS Boost, I love that
I was joking on Twitter,
it sounds like an energy drink.
Give me some of that SaaS Boost,
don't drink too many of them
you get immune to two to strong out,
but this is what people want Barbara.
This is about the Partner Network.
You guys are providing more stuff,
more successful programs and capabilities.
This is what the demand is for.
Help me get there faster path to SaaS.
Can you explain what this means for partners?
What's in it for them, can you share your thoughts?
>> Yeah, absolutely.
And you know, Ryan talked about some of the things
that we do to help partners build their ISVs
and software or SaaS products.
But in addition to that,
we provide a number of programs and resources
to help partners also grow their business
through marketing and sales focused programs.
That's an area that we are focused on investing deeply
with our partner community.
For example, we offer APN Marketing Central
through which partners can find and launch
free customizable marketing campaigns,
or even find a marketing agency to work with
that has experienced messaging AWS,
it also offers APN marketing activity.
We recognize that not all partners,
especially if they're in their startup stages,
have those investments and skill sets yet around marketing.
So Marketing Academy offers self service content
to teach partners who don't have
that capability in house today,
to how to drive awareness campaigns
and build demand for their offerings.
We also offer a broad set of funding benefits
to help partners starting from the build stage
that Ryan talks about
through Sandbox Credits to support their development,
all the way through marketing with Market Development Funds
as they're selling with what we call
our partner Opportunity Acceleration Program,
which is how we fund POC to support our partners
and winning new customers.
We also heard Doug announce in the keynote
that we are launching the ISV Accelerate Program.
This is our new co-selling program for ISVs
that offer compensation incentives for AWS account managers,
access to co-sale specialists
and reduced marketplace listing fees
to help our partners continue to grow
their business with us.
>> You know, successful selling is amazing.
You want to make money.
I mean, come on, you bring it a lot to the table.
Co-selling I think that's a huge point.
Nice call out there.
Ryan, can you give some examples of partners
that have been successful with these resources?
>> Hey John, thank you.
Yeah, it'd be great to kind of walk through
with one good example and a little bit of detail.
And what we've seen with Sisense is a great example
of a partner that leveraged these resources
and the work that they've done with Luma Health.
So Luma Health serves millions of patients,
provides a Cloud-hosted patient engagement platform
that connects patients and providers.
You know when word about COVID started,
spreading Luma helped solve a big increase in questions
and concerns from patients and the providers.
Luma Health saw an opportunity to create new products,
to help patients and providers during the pandemic,
to decide what to build and how to build it,
the company wanted to analyze sentimental
signal and data real-time.
Using Sisense, Amazon Redshift and Amazon Web Services,
Data Migration Services,
Luma Health built a platform
that delivered analytics and insights it needed,
democratizing access to the data for all users.
As a result, Luma Health uncovered insights
such as facts that SMS
was the preferred method of communication
and that many patients had similar questions.
Just three weeks after their hypothesis,
Luma Health released new products based on its insights,
a turn-key EHR enabled healthcare solution,
zero contact check-in
and COVID-19 Broadcast Messaging System.
>> So a lot of good successes.
The question that I would ask you guys,
this is the probably what's on everyone's mind
is I'm a partner, I'm growing,
obviously I'm in the partner network
because I'm being successful. I don't have a lot of time.
I need to figure out all the stuff that you have.
You have so much going on that's good for me.
I don't know what to do.
Can you help me figure out what resources
and programs to leverage?
I could imagine this is a question that I would have,
I want it too, I want to make money co-sell,
I want to get into this program.
What's the best path? I mean, what do I do?
Can you share how you help your partners
get on the right road, have the right resources,
What are the right programs?
'Cause it makes it more consumable.
This is probably a big challenge,
can you share your thoughts?
>> Yeah, happy to explore that.
So we certainly find a lot of opportunity
to innovate with our partners and customers
and a result we do offer a broad range
of programs, resources, material
to meet the diverse needs of those partners and customers.
One focus of these programs and enablement models
that we offer partners,
is to help our partners build their products
and build their business with us.
And the other focus is to create program structures
that help customers find the right partner
and the right solution at the right time.
But we recognize it's a lot (chuckles)
and we want to make sure that our partners
are easily able to find what's most relevant to them.
And to deliver this more effectively
for ISV partners specifically,
Doug just announced the launch of ISV Partner Path.
As with everything we do at AWS,
this new program structure works backwards
from our customers and our partners
to deliver the needs of both of those audiences.
When a customer identifies a need for a solution,
they search for that solution
based on their business needs
and the outcomes that they're looking to deliver
rather than searching based on a partner profile.
So ISV Partner Path pivots the focus that we have today
on partner-level tier badging
to instead focus on solution-level validation badging
that helps us better align
to what our customers are looking for
and how they look for software products.
The new model responds to that partner and customer feedback
that we've heard, it removes APN tier requirements for ISVs
and introduces the ability to engage
across all of the products, services, and solutions
that a partner offers
and it pivots the partner badge attainment.
So today our partners attain badging based on a tier
and moving forward,
they'll attain that badging to go to market
with solutions that are validated
and have gone through a technical assessment
to either integrate effectively or run effectively on AWS.
So if you were requirements to access APN programs
from differentiation to funding and co-selling,
partners can engage more quickly in a more meaningful way
and in a more clear path to develop their solution offering
and go to market with AWS.
>> Ryan anything you want to add on
in terms of structural support
in terms of account management
and does everyone get in on a wrap?
Is there certain levels of attention?
When does that come into play?
>> Yeah, I think Barbara has made a great point
in that we have a lot of great programmatic resources,
but there's also no substitution
for engagement with a person.
And we have Partner Development Resources
available to engage with our partners
and help them develop their individualized plans
that help them understand how they maximize
the opportunity with their customer set
and expand their customer sets.
This starts as soon as a partner registers
with the AWS Partner Network,
they're contacted by a Partner Development team member
within the first business day.
This is a commitment we find
incredibly important to the partner.
And even when we have five or more new partners
registering every single day.
We look to go beyond that
and it's not just about onboarding to your point John,
our partner team works backwards from the customer
and the partner to help develop what is that joint plan?
How do we focus on what strategic to the partner
and what becomes strategic to our customers?
With that plan our team works to activate that
broadly across the team in support
of achieving our joint goals.
And then naturally all partnerships,
we want join accountability,
we want mechanisms to measure success.
>> You know I talked to a lot of channel partners
over the years in my career,
and the Cloud it really highlights the speed
and the agility feature,
but it all comes down to the same thing.
I want to get my solution in front of the customer,
I want to make money, I want to make it easy to use,
make it easy to consume.
I want to leverage the Cloud.
This is kind of the process,
this is how it always happens.
This is what they want
and you guys are bringing a lot to the table
and that's important.
And I think co-selling having the kind of support,
making it consumable is easy and super great.
So I have to ask you with that,
what's your advice for people who are jumping in?
Because you're seeing more on boarding
of ISVs than ever before.
And we've been commenting on theCUBE for multiple years.
We've been seeing the uptick in software SaaS ISVs.
And remember Amazon is not
in the SaaS business a hundred percent.
And government just collapsed the platform
as a service in the IS categories
that highlights the fact that your entire ISV landscape
is wide open and growing.
So there's new ISV is coming in. (chuckles)
What advice would you give them to get started,
experience and --
>> Yeah, I can take that.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, I can take that one thank you.
And I actually want to build on something Ryan said,
we actually have more than 50 new partners
joining the AWS Partner Network every single day.
And so having the right structure
for those partners to easily navigate
and the right resources for them
is something that's very top of mind for us.
I think I can distill down
about two primary pieces of advice
from my perspective for a new partner
who's trying to figure out
how to work with us and get involved.
First and foremost,
build a relationship with your Partner Manager,
help them know and understand your business,
the customers that you focus on,
the solutions you provide.
The Partner Manager is your advocate
and could be your mentor in working with AWS.
Make sure they know what you're good at.
Partners are able to build the best traction
with our shared customers and our AWS sales team
when it's very clear what they're good at
and how their solutions solve specific customer problems.
And specialization through programs such as competency,
which validate solutions
based on industry in this case or workload
is really key to helping communicate that specific value.
And second, I would say avail yourself
of the resources available to you.
We offer a number of self-serve resources,
such as the new ISV Navigate Track
that is launching in conjunction with ISV Partner Path
that provides individuals the sort of step by step guidance
to move through that engagement with us,
they connect them to all the resources that they need.
Marketing Central which we discussed earlier
to drive marketing campaigns
that can be very self-served
and driven by the Partner Central,
which offers a wealth of content, white papers, et cetera.
That's our portal through which partners engage.
And you can also access things like
training and certification discounts
to build your Cloud skills to support your business.
But I think both of those are really important things
to keep in mind for partners
who are just kind of getting started with us
as well as partners who've been working with us
for a while now.
>> Ryan, what do you want to add to that
because again, there's more ISVs is coming.
And again, Amazon has been very disruptive
in it's enablement of partners.
Not everyone fits into a nice clean bucket.
I mean what looks like a category
might be old and being disrupted
into to a new category being developed.
All these new categories and new solutions.
It's hard to put people into buckets.
So you have a tough job,
how do you give advice to your partners?
>> It is tough, and the rate of transformation continues.
And the rate of innovation continues to quicken.
My advice is lean in with us.
We continue to invest our efforts
in developing this vibrant community of partners.
So lean in, we'll continue to iterate around
and optimize our joint plans and activities.
And we'd look to be able to continue to drive success
for our customers and our partners.
>> Well, you guys do a great job.
I want to say I've watched the APN grow and change and evolve.
Market demand is there and you got the Factory,
you got the Boost, you got the Lenses,
you got the Partner Network, the people.
It's people equation with software so congratulations.
Thanks for coming on theCUBE.
>> Thank you so much, appreciate the time.
>> Thank you.
>> Okay, great event here, re:Invent 2020 Virtual.
This is theCUBE Virtual.
I'm John Furrier your host,
wall-to-wall coverage with theCUBE,
thanks for watching.
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