Announcing 2022 AWS Partner Funding Program Changes and New Funding Tool

By Vanessa Cordero, Global Partner Migrations and Partner Funding Program Lead – AWS
By Erick Levitre, Global Partner Experience Lead, Investments & Incentives – AWS

Migration and modernization projects are strategic to Amazon Web Services (AWS) as customers achieve cost savings, staff productivity, and operational and business agility after migrating to the AWS Cloud.

AWS Partners are building successful migration and modernization practices to help customers with these workloads, and partners are leveraging AWS Partner Funding programs to sell more projects and grow their AWS businesses.

AWS Partner Funding programs provide funding as a benefit to the AWS Partner and the customer. This helps customers make the decision to move to AWS, builds confidence while planning for their move to the cloud, and offsets the AWS Partner’s migration and modernization project services cost for the customer.

Based on past successes and feedback from AWS Partners, customers, and the AWS field, we have consolidated several migration funding programs into the Migration Acceleration Program (MAP). These changes will help fund small and large migrations to AWS across different workloads. AWS Partners can demonstrate their understanding of MAP and earn a digital Training & Certification Badge through the 2022 AWS Migration Ambassador Foundations (Business).

We are excited to share the following funding program updates taking effect April 26, 2022:

• Simple and complete: The single migration funding program construct for customer migrations under MAP makes it easy for partners to adopt and go to market. Additionally, Partner proof of concept (PoC) funding is available for PoC projects, and ISV Workload Migration funding is available for repeatable ISV migrations to AWS.
• Differentiation: Additional benefits within the AWS Partner Paths Framework for partners who have enrolled in an AWS workload or use case Competency Program or Service Delivery Program.
• Scale: New and enhanced tools have been designed to serve as the AWS Partner Funding self-serve portal. The AWS Partner Funding portal (APFP) can accelerate your business through build, market, and sell funding motions for cash and credit.

Effective April 26, 2022, the AWS Partner Funding portal will deliver a consistent user experience that starts in AWS Partner Central (login required). The AWS Partner Funding portal also provides partners access to self-submit funding requests with transparency to status, enhanced notifications, and reporting visibility.

More About the AWS Partner Funding Portal

The AWS Partner Funding Portal (APFP) is a transparent, secure, self-service tool for AWS Partners to manage their funding benefits. It features a frictionless fund request workflow and a set of clear guided notifications to drive real-time visibility to improve the partner experience.

APFP provides a unified starting point in AWS Partner Central for partners to access all eligible APN build, market, and sell funding benefits while also allowing partners to create, update, and track all funding activities. APFP increases the level of collaboration and efficiency by enabling clear visibility and notification channels.

With APFP, AWS Partners can quickly find the appropriate AWS funding benefit and create a fund request with speed and accuracy with better visibility and tracking through improved review and approval notification processes.

After the funding is pre-approved, AWS Partners can leverage APFP to claim their cash benefits or redeem credit benefits. With this level of guidance and ease of use, APFP helps AWS Partners increase their funding adoption and utilization by allowing them to focus on executing the AWS-funded activities.

Next Steps

To learn more about these new features, see our resources in AWS Partner Central (login required), or reach out to your Partner Development Manager.
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Partner Quotes About MAP Updates

Onica by Rackspace Technology

“Onica by Rackspace Technology is thrilled with the updates to MAP. These updates will make MAP available to more customers and allow Onica to impact their cloud adoption and transformational goals. As one of the largest MAP partners, we see the new self-service model for fund requests as a game changer to achieve greater speed and agility with MAP. This will allow us to reach and support many more customers in their migration projects.”

~ Donny Cross, VP of Cloud Strategy – Rackspace

TecRacer

“The simplification of the AWS funding programs is a great step forward for customers and partners. Extending the MAP to smaller projects will open up new business opportunities for us. In addition, we look forward to using the new funding tool which will expedite our processes and deliver a better customer experience.”

~ Sven Ramuschkat, CEO – TecRacer

Caylent

“The enhancements to AWS MAP are truly game-changing for us. The new automation and self-service model for requests will simplify our delivery operations and accelerate time to value for our customers. It will also open up significant new opportunities for us to help customers modernize and position their business for ever-changing market dynamics through cloud technology adoption.”

~ David Close, VP Alliances and Marketing – Caylent

Megazone

“Updates and enhancement of AWS MAP will be a great addition for partners to engage migration opportunities, and it allows customers to be comfortable with their cloud adoption journey. As one of the largest MAP partners in Korea, we believe automated and self-service models for fund requests enable us to achieve faster adoption for MAP. Also, this will help us reach and support many more customers in their migration journey.”

~ Jongchan Kim, Head of Cloud Strategy – Megazone

CMD Solutions

“The recent changes to MAP have reduced the barrier to entry and some of the complexities around AWS funding for accelerating customers’ adoption of AWS. The continuation of the assessment phase is critical, as we have seen this as a key enabler to stakeholders gaining the insights required to make prompt decisions on their migration strategy. Overall, the simplification and reduced barrier to entry should be good for customers.”

~ Adam Durbin, Co-CEO – CMD Solutions

OpsGuru

“Across the board, MAP is the most customer-obsessed investment program of any cloud provider. MAP provides strong guidelines and frameworks for AWS Partners to leverage, which significantly increases the likelihood of a successful AWS program.”

~ Dave Lindon, General Manager – OpsGuru

Infosys

“With the launch of new Migration Acceleration Program and simplified self-service mechanism to track all requests in one consolidated view, it’s easier than ever to orchestrate, amplify, and scale on behalf of the customer. It will help Infosys provide increased visibility, awareness, and consistent process across the board.”

~ Pradeep Yadlapati, Vice President, Cloud Ecosystem – Infosys

Cloud Comrade

“AWS MAP is the best cloud funding program bar none. Great to see it being extended to smaller customer opportunities as well.”

~ Andy Waroma, Founder – Cloud Comrade

VoiceFoundry

“VoiceFoundry is very excited about the addition of MAP Lite to the MAP funding program because it expands this benefit to a larger set of customers. The more streamlined process for MAP and MAP Lite will help us continue to grow and accelerate our Contact Center Migration practice. The flexibility of the new funding portal allows us more visibility and control when submitting for funding. Being able to track where funding is in the approval process allows us to update customers on the expected project start date in a more accurate timeline, improving the customer’s experience with both VoiceFoundry and AWS. The partner experience is greatly enhanced with these funding innovations.”

~ Elsa Wilson, Global Leader, Partner and Channels – VoiceFoundry

Minfy

“As the largest and fastest-growing MAP partner in India and the region, we fully appreciate the recent update to AWS MAP funding process. It is customer-centric, less complex, and facilitates faster client engagement. Empowering partners like Minfy with an automated and self-service funding workflow allows our team to be more agile and strive to deliver customer wow! Aligns to our mantra ‘Better Process Better Business’. Totally welcome this innovation from AWS.”

~ Vivek Jain, Director and Founder – Minfy

Slalom

“As the AWS National SI Partner of the year, Slalom strives to help our customers dream bigger, move faster, and build better tomorrows. The evolution of AWS’s industry-leading MAP program is a significant enabler of our vision, as it helps our customers move faster in their adoption of the AWS Cloud and accelerates realization of meaningful benefits. The consolidation of multiple funding programs into a single framework streamlines and simplifies the process for customers and partners. The planned improvements, such as the self-service tool and other scaling mechanisms, will compress decision making timelines for funding. These changes will allow Slalom and our AWS | Slalom Launch Center program help customers realize the benefits of the cloud faster and more cost-effectively.”

~ Troy Johnson, Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer – Slalom

Logicworks

“Logicworks, as a Day 1 MAP partner, has seen this program mature into the ultimate expression of customer obsession by holistically de-risking migrations. With the new changes in MAP eligibility, we are now able to bring more customers into the program and accelerate their access to AWS funding through a self-service portal. MAP continues to be a perfect complement to our Cloud Reliability Platform (CRP) that helps customers accelerate time to market, mitigate risk, and enable scalability.”

~ Sachin Bansal, VP of Strategic Alliances and Channels – Logicworks

SoftwareONE

“The AWS MAP program offers SoftwareONE the opportunity to accelerate our customers’ digital transformation by migrating and modernizing their applications on AWS. We welcome the new MAP changes which will expedite cloud adoption for enterprise workloads, offer greater flexibility, and provide a variety of funding phases that work better for our AWS customers.”

~ Bernd Schlotter, President of Services – SoftwareONE

BeeX

“These updates allow us to reach and support more customers, and will bring many more business opportunities for us. With experience in SAP and mission-critical systems, we support customers’ cloud journey end to end, from assessment to cloud migration. We will continue supporting customers’ journey with the new program.”

~ Masaru Hiroki, CEO – BeeX