Partner Ecosystem Driving AWS Growth; Public Sector a Big Opportunity

Having added over 10,000 partners in the last 12 months, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is betting big on its partner ecosystem for growth. Over 60 percent of our partners are headquartered outside the US, with thousands of partners in India, according to Dorothy Copeland, the head of AWS' global partner ecosystem.

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AWS partners have different specialisations, and build their software on the AWS platform to sell it to customers. Copeland says specialised partners tend to grow really fast. "We've been putting a lot of focus behind our competency program. It includes verticals like media, government, etc," Copeland told Gadgets 360 on the sidelines of re:Invent 2016 - its AWS conference. "Among our tens of thousands of partners we have over 400 competency solutions that have been validated by us. We will develop more competencies in the next 18 months or so."

Much of AWS' growth is coming from international markets, Copeland said, adding that many new partners coming into the ecosystem are from outside the US. The company had earlier mentioned that it had 75,000 customers in India. To help these partners, AWS offers free online training and other subsidies such as a discount on AWS technical training.

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AWS CEO Andy Jassy, speaking at the partner summit during re:Invent 2016, urged partners to work closely with the company. Copeland told Gadgets 360 that there's a need for partners among the AWS customer base. "Partners' AWS usage is growing faster than overall AWS usage. All partner types within the AWS partner ecosystem have grown their AWS revenue by over 90 percent. They're almost doubling their AWS usage," said Copeland.

Amazon claims that over 90 percent of Fortune 100 companies are using AWS partners for deployment. "With so many partners around the world with specialised needs [if someone says] I need to figure out my big data. Our answer is turn to a big data partner."

Amazon has mentioned in the past that it's working with public sector firms in India. Copeland said that AWS has recently launched a public sector partner program targeted at government organisations. Gadgets 360 also spoke to Jeff Barr, chief evangelist for AWS, about the company's push towards the public sector and like Copeland, he said he couldn't share any specific details about India.

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"In the US we have several government agencies that have very very stringent regulations with regard to protecting user data. The GovCloud is a separate region and run by people with a separate security clearance," he explained, pointing to AWS' efforts to target the US government. Barr says the same security practices are followed globally, and not just when governments demand it. "All the security practices that we use for GovCloud are actually the same as we use for commercial regions. We can point to the GovCloud and say this is highly secure but really any AWS customer anywhere in the world gets the benefit from all the security practices and principles," he added.

Disclosure: Amazon sponsored the correspondent's flights and hotel stay for re:Invent 2016.