AWS Director On New Partner Funding, Customer Outcome Competency And Marketplace Storefronts
At AWS NY Summit Tuesday, the cloud giant unveiled a new business outcome model that includes a new competency, the Business Value Realization motion, and a new route to market via the AWS Marketplace Storefronts.
Amazon Web Services is giving partners new funding, tools and incentives to show measurable customer business outcomes with the launch of a new partner competency, go-to-market motion and the Marketplace Storefronts for the AI era.
Bhargs Srivathsan, director of customer and partner success at AWS, told CRN that the cloud giant’s new Business Value Realization (BVR) motion and BVR Competency is key to AWS’ channel future.
“BVR gives partners the framework to close [business outcome] gaps systematically with industry benchmarks, ROI models, change management playbooks and funding tied directly to customer outcomes. So it’s not about delivering milestones, but business outcomes,” Srivathsan tells CRN.
“It’s a structured post-deployment framework that ensures customers actually achieve the business outcomes their cloud and AI investments were meant to deliver,” she said.
At AWS NY Summit Tuesday, the $150 billion cloud market-share leader also unveiled its BVR Competency, which is a new AWS Specialization.
“We are launching the BVR Competency to recognize partners who have already proven they can deliver measurable outcomes,” Srivathsan said. “Because in the AI era, the partners who win won’t be the fastest to deploy. They’ll be the ones who can prove it worked.”
AWS NY Summit; AWS Marketplace Storefronts
Thousands of channel partners, developers and customers flocked to New York City this week for the AWS NY Summit at the Javits Convention Center.
At AWS NY Summit, the company unveiled a connected set of motions, competencies and financial incentives aiming to give partners a structured way to prove customer outcomes through BVR as well as new routes to market through Marketplace Storefronts.
The new AWS Marketplace Storefronts is a curated procurement experience that partners can deploy in minutes, connected directly to AWS Marketplace. Partners can use built-in capabilities to automate deal workflows and route transactions through existing AWS Marketplace seller accounts.
“The agentic era is rewriting how software gets priced, discovered and purchased,” said Srivathsan.
“Marketplace Storefronts give partners a branded, curated route to market—with multi-product solution bundles, pay-per-outcome procurement, AI-powered comparison shopping and nearly 4,000 AI agent listings,” she said.
In an interview with CRN, Srivathsan takes a deep dive into the new BVR motion, BVR Competency, Marketplace Storefronts and AWS’ strategy with channel partners.
AWS’ partner network has been talking about ‘outcomes’ for years. What’s actually different now?
Something has fundamentally changed in how customers evaluate their partners.
It used to be, ‘Did you deliver the project on time and on budget?’ Now the question is, ‘Did the business actually see real impact?’ And AI has accelerated this shift dramatically.
When implementation timelines compress from months to weeks, the value of just building the thing goes down—and the only thing left to compete on is outcomes.
But ‘outcomes’ is not one simple metric. It’s improving call handling time by 26 percent or compressing product development from six months to six week, or cutting infrastructure costs by 40 percent while doubling throughput. Every customer defines success differently.
As AI makes it faster to build and deploy, the gap between ‘we shipped it’ and ‘it’s actually working’ is getting wider, not narrower. The hard part is no longer the technology—it’s mapping business value up front, driving adoption across an organization and proving impact continuously.
So how is AWS responding to this shift?
That’s exactly why we built the AWS Business Value Realization motion.
BVR gives partners the framework to close that gap systematically—industry benchmarks, ROI models, change management playbooks, and funding tied directly to customer outcomes. Not delivery milestones, but business outcomes.
It’s a structured post-deployment framework that ensures customers actually achieve the business outcomes their cloud and AI investments were meant to deliver.
Partners get a methodology, ROI calculators, change management tools, enablement support and outcome-based funding—tied to milestones where the customer attests they’ve hit their target KPIs.
We are launching the BVR Competency to recognize partners who have already proven they can deliver measurable outcomes. Because in the AI era, the partners who win won’t be the fastest to deploy. They’ll be the ones who can prove it worked.
What results are these Business Value Realization partners already delivering?
Partners already using BVR are proving results across AI, analytics, migration—you name it.
A few examples include: Tower Insurance worked with Deloitte and saw a 26 percent improvement in call handling time.
Another example is United Express partnered with Caylent and achieved 90 percent faster mean time to detect and resolve issues.
Livelo and Compass UOL delivered 30 percent to 50 percent productivity gains and $2.95 million in projected five-year value.
These are real, measurable business outcomes—not deployment checkboxes.
And the BVR Competency is launching with validated partners including Boston Consulting Group, Compass UOL, Deloitte, DoIT, Persistent, Quantiphi, Reply, tecRacer and SoftwareOne.
What about the co-sell model? Any changes there?
The co-sell model is getting an intelligence layer with Agentic ACE enhancements.
We’re using real-time scoring and AI agents to qualify every partner-submitted opportunity the moment it lands, then route it to the right engagement path—direct AWS sales collaboration, agent-guided deal progression, or partner-led closure with 24x7 agent support.
It means no opportunity sits idle, partners get actionable guidance on every submission, and AWS sellers focus their time where propensity to close is highest.
You're also announcing Marketplace Storefronts. How does that fit into the picture?
The agentic era is rewriting how software gets priced, discovered and purchased.
Marketplace Storefronts give partners a branded, curated route to market—with multi-product solution bundles, pay-per-outcome procurement, AI-powered comparison shopping and nearly 4,000 AI agent listings.
It collapses the distance between a partner’s solution and a customer’s intent to buy, letting partners monetize IP long after the engagement ends.
Partners like Accenture are using Storefronts to bring AI-enabled, industry-specific solutions to enterprise buyers without the complexity of a custom engagement.
What gets you excited about the launches at NY Summit?
So at NY Summit, we’re announcing a connected set of motions, competencies and financial incentives that collectively give partners a structured way to prove customer outcomes through BVR; new routes to market through Marketplace Storefronts; a signal of excellence for AI-era customer experience through the Connect Competency; and an intelligence layer for co-sell through Agentic ACE.
These build on investments we made earlier this year—including new MSP incentives that pay partners directly for delivering and growing managed services, and the expanded MAP program.
Together, the full stack forms a new operating system for how partners go to market, deliver value and get paid in the agentic era.
The old model ended at deployment. BVR starts there. Define success, measure it at every milestone, and prove the investment worked.
Partners who do it earn the competency and earn the customer's next bet.
Looking at the broader picture, how would you characterize what AWS is building for partners in this era?
Enterprise software is in the middle of its third great platform shift: on-prem to cloud, the SaaS boom, and now the agentic era. AWS has helped partners navigate every one of them.
This shift is also hitting consulting partners, but differently than SaaS providers—and frankly, more urgently.
If you’re a SaaS company, AI makes your product better: smarter features, better UX, new pricing models. Your core business model—recurring software revenue—stays intact.
You list on Marketplace, you grow through product-led motion. We’re enabling that with Storefronts, pay-per-outcome procurement and nearly 4,000 AI agent listings already live.
What about for consulting partners?
For consulting partners, the challenge is broader. When AI compresses a six-month implementation into six weeks, the billable-hour model breaks.
You have to sell outcomes. That means fundamentally rethinking how you scope, price, deliver and prove value.
That’s the partner we built BVR for.
It gives consulting partners the methodology, the benchmarks, the funding model and the competency credential to make that transition—from labor-based economics to outcome-based economics.
The smartest consulting partners are doing both: encoding their domain expertise into productized IP—AI agents, accelerators, industry solutions—and listing that IP on Marketplace where it generates recurring revenue long after the engagement ends. That’s the shift from services firm to software-plus-services firm, and it’s where the economics get really compelling.