AWS Rolls Out Migration Competency

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) delivered a key new element for its channel program this week with the formal rollout of the AWS Migration Competency.

Amazon announced that the migration competency was on the AWS Partner Network (APN) roadmap last October during the AWS Global Partner Summit in Las Vegas. The migration competency is about helping partners move applications or entire datacenter operations to the Amazon cloud.

"There is just a gigantic opportunity for SIs [systems integrators] to help enterprises with migration managed services," said AWS CEO Andy Jassy at the time.

An executive for one of the initial participants in the new competency program, Slalom Consulting, explained its significance in a video posted by AWS on Thursday.

"The new AWS competency for migrations is really important," said Joel Rosenberger, managing director of cloud technologies for Slalom Consulting. "A lot of people come in thinking about AWS, migrating to AWS. But what you find is there's complexity both around the organizational and knowing which technologies to apply when. And so I think having a competency around migration is a really important thing, and it's an assurance both to AWS customers and even ourselves that we are doing the right things by our customers."

In a blog post about the new competency, Kate Miller of the APN explained the point of the AWS Competency Program, which also includes DevOps, Big Data, Security and other competencies.

"Making sure the right AWS Partners are highlighted to customers and making it easy for customers to connect with these partners is the ultimate goal of the AWS Competency Program. Attaining an AWS Competency allows you, as an AWS Partner with specific expertise, to differentiate yourself to customers by showcasing this expertise," Miller wrote.

Amazon released five lists of launch partners who have earned the competency in various specializations:

• Migration Delivery Partners, who can handle every stage of a migration, include 2nd Watch, Accenture, Classmethod Inc., ClearScale, Cloud Technology Partners, cloudpack, Cloudreach, Cognizant Technology Solutions, CorpInfo, CSC, FPT Software, Infosys, Logicworks, REAN Cloud, Serverworks, Slalom Consulting and Smartronix.
  
  
• Migration Consulting Partners include Apps Associates, Aquilent, Datapipe, Flux7, Pythian and TriNimbus.
  
  
• Partners who offer Migration Technology for Discovery & Planning include Atadata, Cloudamize and RISC Networks.
  
  
• Migration Technology for Workload Mobility Partners are Racemi, CloudEndure and Atadata.
  
  
• Migration Technology for Application Profiling Partners are New Relic, AppDynamics and Dynatrace Ruxit.

Posted by Scott Bekker on June 09, 2016