What’s in an Amazon Web Services Inc. certification? Is it just a fancy label the company slaps on its buddies’ run-of-the-mill products? Let’s ask a bona fide AWS partner decorated with the Managed Service Provider certification.

The short answer is, no, according to Dave Shacochis (pictured), vice president of product management at CenturyLink Inc. It jumped through a number of flaming hoops to make the grade.

“It really made our service better,” he said.

Shacochis spoke with John Walls (@JohnWalls21), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Justin Warren (@jpwarren), chief analyst at PivotNine Pty Ltd, during AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. They discussed CenturyLink’s AWS certification and the network bonus it offers customers. (* Disclosure below.)

Network chops beef up managed service

AWS is asking for more than basic monitoring and management. Qualified companies must pass next-gen cloud-service muster. Are they using big data in their management practices? Are they doing predictive analytics on behalf of customers? Are they reporting, optimizing, analyzing costs, and helping them become as efficient as possible in their deployment of AWS services? AWS measures and certifies all of these.

“That’s a great example of AWS being customer focused by making sure that the partners they … work with can hit a certain bar to be able to drive that value for their customers,” Shacochis said.

CenturyLink is striving to be the do-more MSP for cloud, incorporating network and security features. If there is one thing a service provider today ought to be, it is hybrid capable, according to Shacochis. It needs to meet customers at all the possible rest stops it may visit on its cloud journey.

Many cloud migrations end up in a muddle because the architects did not consider the network path. They may not have the bandwidth and latency to enable cloud to communicate with the corporate data center, for example. CenturyLink draws on its roots in networking to help customers figure out network design at the outset.

“Who are your users? What are the new traffic patterns going to look like? What are the hybrids that you’re going to be building … ?” Shacochis asked.

CenturyLink folds these network capabilities into its managed services inside the AWS cloud. “We can also do the managed network that gets the traffic and … the workload to AWS,” Shacochis concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: CenturyLink Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither CenturyLink nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE