Amazon Web Services’ new worldwide channel leader Ruba Borno is planning to double down on working with partners, with a focus on streamlining and making it easier for solution providers to navigate the AWS Partner Network as well as the cloud market leader in general.
“We’re truly doubling down on working with partners in service of our customers,” said Borno, vice president of Worldwide Channels and Alliances for AWS. “We want to continue to focus on streamlining partner onboarding and provide more navigation to them to make it easier for partners to navigate the AWS Partner Network and AWS in general. We want to continue to grow co-sell with them and help them transform our customers together.”
Borno plans to help guide partners better around how to drive profitability and tailor the channel experience to partners specific business models, including investing more in the AWS Partner Paths program.
“One of the great things about the breadth of our innovation, the breadth of our customer base, is that we have a lot of insight that we should be using a lot more proactively to guide our partners on the highest return on investment for their time,” she said. “And that’s something that you’ll see us do more of through the Partner Path experience.”
The AWS Partner Paths provide a flexible way to help partners accelerate engagements with AWS as well as navigate through resources, benefits and relevant programs.
“We want to continue down that line of thinking of helping streamline the experience and simplify the experience. We know that we’ve got room to improve on making it simpler to do business with AWS by being a lot more proactive in guiding them,” said Borno.
Tailoring the partner experience
Borno said she plans to provide partners with more customer insights. AWS will offer more information and insight to channel partners around their specific vertical expertise and business model.
“What we want to do is actually tailor the partner experience to our partners’ business model. Not only what is it that they’re selling, but which customers they are supporting, and also what’s driving their profitability,” said Borno.
Ruba Borno hails from networking global market leader Cisco.
She was most recently senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s global customer experience centres and managed services before joining AWS in November.
Cisco is considered the “gold standard” of partner programs, according to PTP’s Simmons, who also partners with Cisco. Hiring a former Cisco executive in Borno will bring “good things to the AWS Partner Program,” he said.
Borno said with herself at the head of AWS’ channel charge, solution providers will see a commitment “across AWS, top-down,” to its partner community.
She said only a fraction of workloads that could migrate to the cloud are actually in the cloud today, which creates massive amounts of cloud computing transformation opportunities ahead for channel partners.
“From an AWS perspective, as it relates to our partners, it is still day one,” said Borno. “The opportunity ahead of us is significantly greater than what’s behind us. We’ve got more to discover together. You’ll see our continued commitment to our partners.”
