AI is putting pressure on the sprawling, multi-year software contracts common in the channel.
As companies seek to control spending in the token economy, AWS partners are experimenting with flexible pricing, including pay-as-you-go and outcome-based models.
“I think that all software that people are acquiring will offer a consumption mode, an AI mode,” Allison Johnson, director of the AWS Americas Technology Partners Team, told Channel Dive. “There's no way to go back to that world of a five-year-deal."
Johnson oversees about 400 technology partners across software, AI and other products with various pricing models. AI-native partners like OpenAI and Anthropic started with consumption-based billing. Now, a cohort of traditional SaaS partners are moving in the same direction, Johnson said.
Outcome-based pricing, which ties costs to measurable results, is gaining traction in the AI market. According to a 2026 AWS Market Study, 80% of customers were shifting to outcome-based commercial models.
Several AWS business application partners are moving to outcome-based pricing, embedding agents into customer experience and pricing by number of help desk cases closed, Johnson said.
The hyperscaler has visibility into partner preferences through its cloud-based AI developer platform Amazon Bedrock.
“All the partners that I work with, they're all on a journey,” Johnson said. “They start off by integrating Bedrock. But then, how are you incorporating Bedrock and the LLMs on Bedrock into your actual products? And transforming not only the way that you code your own software, but how your software interacts with customers and drives value.”
Enterprises are eager to see a return on their investments in AI. Just 23% of companies reported sustained, reportable AI business value, Accenture found in a survey of more than 6,000 employees and C-suite leaders.
Johnson said that enterprise executives want clarity on what they’re paying for. “Instead of buying a three-year project for 10,000 users, what is it for 100 for a year or six months?”
AWS customers also want to see AI usage by business unit, and compare pricing to make sure they’re receiving a fair price, Johnson added. Some AWS partners are layering usage-based surcharges on top of existing contracts, which can cause buyer confusion.
“The partners that are gaining traction are the ones defining new pricing units that customers intuitively understand, like per workflow executed, document processed, insight, token or solved customer case,” Johnson said.
Johnson points to Zendesk, a customer support platform and AWS partner that reengineered its pricing into an outcome-based model. Their customer service resolution platform is priced per ticket solved.
“That's more of that pure play versus adding it in a hybrid model,” she said. “We see those being the most successful, but it really requires you to reengineer your product from the ground up.”
Cost confusion
Generative AI is upending traditional time-plus-materials pricing models as customers demand measurable outcomes. That’s shifting the billing structure for systems integrators, according to Johnson.
“The market is forcing this change for SIs,” she said. “The migrations business has changed. People are using Gen AI tools and the migrations have shortened in time; they're not so long. So it's really forcing this change for our partners to be more outcome-based.”
SIs should also be aligning their AI skills with customer needs and adding resources in that area, Johnson added.
Forward deployed engineers are one entry point for partners seeking to expand their AI services.
Partners that can help AWS customers control AI costs are also needed.
“Instead of tokenmaxxing, I need help figuring out where I'm spending money,” Johnson said. “That’s how some of the partners in cloud grew up with us. It was like, can you help me control my cloud costs? Everyone was going to the cloud and they needed help. I think this is a similar entry point.”
AWS is pushing partners to add outcome-based AI services. The company launched a Business Value Realization program in June, offering funding and support to services partners that can demonstrate measurable customer outcomes. Partners that earn AWS' Business Value Realization Competency are eligible for $50,000 in marketing development funds in 2026 and 2027.
