Dive Brief:
- AWS is restructuring its channel partner program incentives, simplifying third-party provider benefits and adding third-party provider discounts beginning Jan. 1, the hyperscaler said in a Tuesday announcement.
- The changes, which consolidate technical capability discounts with base incentives, reward partners for adding new customers and streamline billing processes, apply to managed service provider partners and resellers enrolled in the AWS Solution Provider Program and AWS Distribution Program. The company announced additional MSP-specific benefits to reward partners that ease customer cloud migrations, deploy AWS services and assist in government digital transformation initiatives last week.
- “As the demand for specialized cloud expertise accelerates, enterprises are increasingly turning to AWS partners to drive their digital modernization and AI initiatives,” Sachin Vora, director of specialists and partner program at AWS, said in a Tuesday blog post. “These strategic program updates will empower our partners to expand their capabilities, improve business predictability, and unlock new growth opportunities.”
Dive Insight:
AWS is counting on an extensive network of more than 140,000 partners to spur migrations and increase consumption of its growing portfolio of AI services, as it continues to pour billions into infrastructure buildouts.
The hyperscaler’s parent company expects its 2026 capital expenditures to surpass this year’s total of $125 billion, Amazon Senior VP and CFO Brian Olsavsky, said during a Q3 2025 earnings call last month.
“AWS is where the preponderance of company's data and workloads reside and part of why most companies want to run AI and AWS,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said. “To enable customers to do so, we need to have the requisite capacity, and we've been focused on accelerating capacity the last several months.”
As spending mounted, the AWS made several tweaks to partnership policies. In May, the company instituted a badging system for its SaaS marketplace that rewarded sellers for running on AWS infrastructure. Providers that did not qualify became ineligible for commitment-based spending discounts.
AWS also clamped down on transfers of Reserved Instances and Saving Plans discounts from third-party providers. As of June 1, partners can purchase cloud discounts for a specific customer, but those credits can’t be used by another party.
AWS has paired enticements with the restrictions.
In August, the company rolled out an independent software vendor promotion that gives cloud credits to customers who purchase SaaS products from participating partners.
The newest enhancements address the need for infrastructure modernization among the hyperscaler’s base of enterprise customers, according to Ben Reed, global MSP program leader at AWS. Organizations are also wary of cloud cost overruns tied to AI adoption.
“MSPs deliver expertise when organizations cannot find or afford dedicated cloud specialists,” Reed said in the blog post announcing MSP-focused incentives.
