New Amazon Web Services global channel chief Ruba Borno—a six-year veteran of channel stalwart Cisco—will be overseeing an AWS partner program with more than 100,000 ecosystem members that will celebrate its 10th anniversary next April.
Borno will be called on to deal with growing pains for the AWS Partner Network (APN), which has swelled more than 100 percent, on average, year over year and is adding 50 partners a day.
She is sure to get a crash course in AWS channel issues from outgoing channel chief Doug Yeum (pictured), who formally will step down Dec. 6. Yeum, in fact, still is set to deliver the Global Partner Summit keynote address at the AWS re:Invent 2021 conference, which will run from Nov. 29 to Dec. 3 in Las Vegas.
Yeum, who has overseen AWS worldwide channels and alliances for almost two and a half years, spoke with CRN in October — before revealing last week that he would be taking a new job in the retail division of parent company Amazon.com.
Yeum told CRN that AWS’ partner program isn’t perfect, but it’s also never been better.
“While we’re still investing more and we’re going to get better, where we are right now in terms of our relationships with our partners, it’s never been better,” Yeum said. “What we’re trying to do is help our partners leverage the AWS platform, programs and people and bring that together with their assets, and then create that ‘better together’ unique value proposition for customers.”
That means engagements between AWS’ sales team and partners needs to happen early on, according to Yeum, rather than waiting until the last minute to do so at the request of a customer.
“I would say that we’re seeing less and less of that behavior,” said Yeum. “We know that when we work closely and do it well with our partners, our customers are going to benefit.”
Here’s an edited version of Yeum’s responses to 10 APN-related channel issues raised by AWS Premier, Advanced and Select Consulting Partners. 1 23… 11NextRELATED TOPICS: