AWS re:Invent 2021: Your Partner Highlight Reel

From seeing former colleagues, to reuniting with coworkers and customers, the energy at AWS re:Invent 2021 was at an all time high despite the reduced capacity due to Covid compared to the last in-person AWS re:Invent back in 2019.

It comes as no surprise that AWS released a slew of exciting new features and enhancements to AWS services that will help builders, buyers, sellers, and partners innovate as we move forward into 2022. And, just like you, we’re excited to leverage these new features and services to help build better products and experiences for our customers! You can see the full recap from AWS on their top announcements blog here.

There are plenty of re:Invent recap blogs out there for you to catch up on so we wanted to put together a brief highlight reel to point out where Tackle is focused, alongside AWS, to continuously improve the seller experience for partners who are building on AWS and selling their software in the AWS Marketplace.

Here are the top 3 takeaways that Tackle sees as changing the game for AWS Partners in 2022:

1. AWS Marketplace is growing…fast!

Stephen Orban, GM of AWS Marketplace and Control Services, took the stage for both the Global Partner Keynote and his Leadership Session to share some impressive growth numbers, including the fact that partners have transacted billions of dollars of products through the AWS Marketplace so far this year. 

AWS Marketplace has evolved to meet the demands of buyers and sellers alike, which is proving to show some phenomenal growth, boasting over 2,000 sellers, 12,000 listings, and over 325,000 customers procuring through the Marketplace. It’s once again clear that Cloud Marketplaces are quickly becoming a preferred route for buyers and sellers alike.

With this growth comes a long evolution of features and services from the AWS Marketplace. Orban elaborated on the latest feature enhancements around Private Offer negotiations, API availability, and Channel Partner support. These features serve both buyers and sellers in the AWS Marketplace, and we are right alongside ensuring that Tackle’s Cloud Marketplace Platform supports the latest AWS Marketplace features that our customers need to run their Cloud Marketplace business. This year AWS Marketplace announced the addition of AWS Marketplace for Containers Anywhere, giving customers the ability to deploy Kubernetes clusters in any environment.

Another major trend throughout the conference was that AWS Partners are continuing to grow their SasS offerings, and as this segment grows at AWS, Mona Chadha, Director of Category Management AWS Marketplace, shared the top SaaS software categories in AWS Marketplace. You can learn more about this in her on-demand session How to grow your SaaS business and drive revenue with AWS Marketplace.

Chadha further elaborated on the values of AWS Marketplace and how buyers and sellers are helping to transform software procurement in ways that speed transactions, thus achieving faster time to value. For many partners who leverage Cloud Marketplaces, they’re seeing upwards of 50% reduction in sale cycle time. These benefits are based on two core AWS Marketplace principles: Simplify transactions and Modernize Procurement.

2. Partners are the backbone to customer success 

This year the Global Partner Summit keynote and leadership sessions highlighted the importance that AWS is placing on developing programs to support AWS Partners. At re:Invent 2020, AWS unveiled the early stages of AWS Partner Paths, while this year, Doug Yeum, Head of AWS Partner Organization at AWS, announced the complete launch of multiple partner paths to suit the unique needs of each partner type:

• Software Path
• Hardware Path
• Services Path
• Training Path
• Distribution Path

As AWS Partners progress along each Path, they can leverage enablement resources, unlock funding benefits, and tap into a broad set of programs to innovate, expand, and differentiate their customer offerings. Learn more about the Partner Paths and what benefits you can leverage today!

Sandy Carter, VP, WW Public Sector Partners and Programs at AWS, took to the stage in the Global Partners Summit keynote to share some helpful tips and announcements that will ensure partners are getting in front of the customers that they serve:

1. Update your Partner Solution Finder Listing. These listings curate all of the different services, use cases, case studies, competencies, and more so that customers who are looking for specific solutions can find and contact you.
2. Leverage Go-to-Market support through Competency Programs. The AWS Competency Programs play a huge role in connecting the power of the partners to the needs of customers. Carter shared the prioritized competencies by customer demand, and emphasized a huge growth in healthcare and energy which officially launched at re:Invent. Government remains the largest industry competency in public sector.

3. Co-Selling with AWS = Partner Success

In the session Accelerate your software co-selling flywheel with AWS with Sabina Joseph, GM Americas Technology Partners, and Andrew Varhola, Senior Manager, US-West ISV Success, they shared how partnering with AWS can help increase the velocity of the partner co-sell motion.

Why co-sell with AWS?

1. AWS has dedicated GTM teams and resources. These teams support partners across the co-sell journey. Start by joining a software path and leveraging ACE (AWS Customer Engagement) to partner on opportunity pipeline.
2. There are 27 ways AWS goes to market with partners. By Industry (Government, Education, Healthcare, etc), by Solution (IoT, Migration, Security, etc) and by Workload (Oracle, Windows, SAP). This means that you can target motions specific to your product fit for your target customers.
3. ISV Accelerate Program. This is a co-sell program for partners with software solutions that run on or integrate with AWS. This program helps partners accelerate sales cycles and offers active co-sell support. With added benefits for AWS sales teams and reduced Marketplace listing fees, this is a must for AWS partners! Learn more and get started here.
4. Visibility and access to AWS account teams. By leveraging ACE, you are opening the doors to engaging with the full AWS account team including Account Manager, Solution Architect, ISV Success Manager, and more. Gain insight into your mutual customers’ needs so that you can partner to find the best solution to meet those needs. This is where the co-sell flywheel really starts to take shape!

Each year AWS re:Invent offers such a wealth of content and luckily it’s not limited to those who attend in person. Be sure to flip through the on-demand catalog for the keynotes, leadership sessions, and many of the speaking sessions offered at re:Invent this year. AWS has done a great job of summarizing all of the key announcements, including those for AWS Partners here.

At Tackle we pride ourselves in working closely with our cloud partners like AWS and AWS Marketplace to meet the needs of sellers so they can continue to focus on their core business while watching their Marketplace revenue soar. If you’re not yet a Tackle customer, you can learn more from our team about how the Tackle Cloud Marketplace Platform and team of Marketplace experts can help you start, accelerate, and scale your Cloud Marketplace business. Already a Tackle customer? Reach out to your rep to learn more about the latest from AWS!