Amazon Web Services Inc. has launched two new partner competencies to assist customers with finding the most appropriate AWS partners in the industries of travel and hospitality and public safety and disaster response.

“The Competency Program benefits our customers by providing them with a short list of highly vetted and trusted partners to work with based on whatever their needs may be,” said Rachel Rose (pictured), head of global partner programs at AWS. “For example, if you’re a customer looking for a HIPAA-compliant partner out of Japan, the competency program can help you. It’s all about saving time for our customers. No more searching for partners for hours on end, we do all that work for you.”

Rose spoke with Rebecca Knight, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed the newly launched partner competencies, as well as changes to the AWS service delivery program. (* Disclosure below.)

Inside AWS’ new partner competency programs

The AWS Competency Program is designed to highlight and promote top partners based on their proven technical and customer success in key specialized areas.

The Travel and Hospitality Competency launched with 27 of AWS global ISVs and consulting partners with expertise helping AWS customers accelerate their modernization and innovation journeys for building a resilient business. The travel and hospitality industry is faced with a complex technology environment, especially given the pandemic environment, according to Rose. This poses an ongoing challenge for businesses in this market to hire and retain domain expertise in-house, leading to a growing demand for experienced on demand resources. 

The Public Safety and Disaster Response Competency consists of 16 global ISV partners who build products on AWS to help customers prepare, respond and recover from natural and manmade disasters.

“2020 was an unprecedented year for so many reasons, but especially in terms of disaster and public safety events,” Rose said. “Through this competency, we can differentiate our top most highly vetted partners, giving our customers an easy way to find businesses that offer trusted and specialized services tailored to meet their mission-critical needs.”

AWS updates the Amazon RDS Service Delivery Program

AWS also announced updates to its Amazon RDS Service Delivery program, designed to highlight partners who implement and migrate customers to Amazon RDS. Based on the increased demand AWS has seen for purpose-built databases, the company made changes to the delivery program by adding validation based on individual engine type, such as Amazon Aurora MySQL or Amazon RDS for Oracle.

This allows customers to identify a partner with demonstrated success delivering Amazon RDS solutions for a specific database engine, Rose explained.

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: The AWS Partner Network sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE Media