The ecosystem is becoming an increasingly valuable source of growth for Amazon, with thousands of companies offering a wide range of products and services atop AWS. Terry Wise, the director of business development for the retail giant’s cloud business, boasts of signing up 4,000 partners in the past year alone, nearly doubling the number of solutions available on the AWS Marketplace along the way.

Speaking on theCUBE at re:Invent 2013, the executive says that the ability to deliver a software product on a pay-as-you-go basis presents an attractive value proposition for partners – and for customers, too. The number of hours billed through the Marketplace increased sevenfold in the last 12 months, he tells hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante, a testament to the accelerating adoption of AWS in the enterprise.

“We’re seeing our partners really having a major impact on our big enterprise transformation project,” Wise says. “Our customers are asking us to enable services and enable the partners that support those services at a higher level in the stack. Customers want to buy application services, vertical expertise, really the solution bundling and packaging from the ecosystem.”

Amazon’s partnering strategy is user-oriented, meaning that the company integrates its platform with products that customers want to use. Wise details that AWS supported Oracle and SAP workloads for years, in addition to Microsoft and other traditional vendors. The old guard, as he describes them, are playing catch-up with emerging players that are more adept in navigating through the fiercely competitive cloud landscape.

Wise says that Amazon invests heavily in partner enablement, which includes educating companies on AWS pricing and the opportunities that lie in the public cloud. The company also helps developers address user needs more effectively.

Click the video below for the full interview.