“Anything is Possible” — Highlights from Ruba Borno’s Keynote at AWS re:Invent 2023

Partners are critical to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) business model, according to CEO Adam Selipsky. He joined Dr. Ruba Borno, Vice President of AWS Worldwide Channels and Alliances, on stage at AWS re:Invent 2023 for her partner keynote, titled “Anything is Possible.” He underscored the importance of partners helping support AWS customers around the world. 

In her keynote, Dr. Borno spoke about the AWS world of strategic partnerships and described how AWS and its partners are achieving “impossible firsts” — from helping customers reimagine their business models to driving more successful business outcomes.

Dr. Borno announced several new services and capabilities added to the AWS marketplace, including a new pricing model, new partner specializations and Generative AI on AWS. She also welcomed other members of the AWS team and several AWS partners on stage to share their insights with the keynote attendees.

When Selipsky joined her on stage, she asked him, “Can you tell us how we’re working from the top to bring partners on our journey of delighting out customers?”

“Our partner ecosystem has been an absolutely fundamental plank of the AWS strategy literally from day one,” Selipsky said. “And that has not changed. Now, we’re investing even more resources in our partner network. Our partners have really become a part of the fabric of how we go to market in so many ways.”

AWS announced Generative AI Center of Excellence

During her discussion on the future of AI, Dr. Borno cited a McKinsey report that stated that generative AI could contribute to $4.4 trillion to the global economy. She stressed how important it will be for AWS partners to help their customers respond to rapid AI-driven technology changes, noting that customers will need help moving from proof-of-concept to production environments. AWS is relying on their partner network and providing support to help customers make that transition.

To that end, Dr. Borno announced the launch of the Generative AI Center of Excellence (CoE) for AWS Partners, which is focused on advancing customers’ application of generative AI. “Our Center of Excellence is a crucial bridge between the potential of AI and the growing landscape of tools, applications and use cases that have the potential to revolutionize our customer experience,” she said.

New AWS partner services announced at keynote

During the keynote, Dr. Borno and the team announced new features in the AWS partner program designed to bring greater support to its partners, including:

• AWS Partner Central software listings: Helps partners seamlessly create AWS Marketplace listings directly from AWS Partner Central.
• AWS Partner Central co-selling: Provides partners with personalized guidance, next-best action recommendations and increased automation to manage customer engagements.
• AWS Partner Central Partner Analytics Dashboard: Gives partners access to data-driven insights to help grow their business.
• AWS Partner CRM Connector Salesforce AppExchange: Allows partners to create and manage partner-originated opportunities using the enhanced co-sell data model in their Salesforce CRM.
• AWS Cyber Insurance Competency Partners: Makes it easy for customers, particularly small- and medium-size businesses, to find affordable cyber insurance policies by providing pricing estimates, purchase plans, and more.
• AWS Built In Competency Partner Solutions: Automates the installation process of partner software integrated with AWS-native services and streamlines value-added services that drive business value when adopting third-party solutions.
• AWS Resilience Hub: Helps define, validate and track the resilience of applications on AWS from a single location.
• SaaS Quicklaunch for AWS Marketplace: Reduces the time to configure and launch third-party SaaS products.
• AWS Marketplace APIs for sellers: Enables AWS Marketplace access within sellers’ applications.
• Reduced AWS Marketplace pricing: Lowers the fee for customers, sellers and partners to a flat fee of three percent. If a customer or partner has a large private pricing agreement with AWS, it will be even lower.

AWS demonstrated to the keynote attendees that anything really is possible with its ever-expanding range of powerful services and its strong foundation of partner support.