AWS re:Invent 2021: Here’s A Rundown Of The Biggest Partner News

Accenture, Syntax and Kasten by Veeam were among the AWS partners to announce big news during AWS re:Invent.

An expanded partnership with Accenture, Syntax landing premier partner status and Kasten by Veeam becoming a launch partner of Amazon Web Services‘ Marketplace for Containers Anywhere were among the biggest announcements from AWS partners during the re:Invent conference held online and live in Las Vegas.

Held from Nov. 29 to Dec. 3, this year’s re:Invent was in person and online, unlike last year’s event, which was held online only due to the pandemic. Attendees of the 2021 re:Invent needed to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and masked.

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Here are some of the biggest announcements from AWS technology and consulting partners.

Accenture Expands Partnership

Global systems integrator Accenture announced an additional five-year joint investment with AWS focused on cloud and the Accenture AWS Business Group. The companies have worked together for about 13 years.

The two companies have logged thousands of cloud projects together, according to an Accenture statement. The goal of the joint investment is to develop new accelerators around cloud migrations, with the aim of 50 percent faster AWS innovation enablement.

The Accenture AWS Business Group – launched in 2015 – has 175 assets and 20,000 cloud specialists with 24,000 AWS certifications. Accenture and AWS have co-created about 40 solutions for 16 industries, according to the statement.

Separately, Accenture was announced as AWS’2021 “global system integrator (GSI) partner of the year” for the companies’ work through the business group, according to an AWS statement.

Matterport In AWS Marketplace

Spatial data company Matterport announced the availability of its platform in AWS Marketplace during re:Invent.

The news means AWS customers can access Matterport’s digital twin technology with AWS add-ons while looking at joint offerings from both companies, according to a Matterport statement. Users have access to a free trial to capture digital twins on iOS and Android devices.

Matterport has hundreds of thousands of users across 170 countries, according to the statement.

Matterport was also announced as a launch partner for AWS IoT TwinMaker, a tool used to access real-time and time-series virtual replicas of industrial spaces. The digital twins are used to improve facilities management, create employee training applications and other actions, according to Matterport.

HPE Subsidiaries Deepen AWS Support

Aruba Networks and Zerto, two Hewlett Packard Enterprise subsidiaries, announced new support of AWS during re:Invent.

Aruba announced new support and integration between Aruba SD-WAN and AWS Cloud WAN. Aruba users can now use the AWS Cloud WAN policy-based framework to create wide-area network topologies with network segmentation that aligns with the Aruba SD-WAN fabric.

Local-area network and wide-area network segmentation at the edge is available from headquarters and branches across AWS, according to an Aruba statement.

Aruba previously served as a launch affiliate on past AWS network services AWS Transit Gateway Connect and automation through the application programming interface of AWS Transit Gateway Network manager.

The solution aims to simplify how users integrate SD-WAN with hybrid and multi-cloud services, according to Aruba. Users can segment devices, applications, services and other elements into secure end-to-end zones. And users gain one-click EdgeConnect virtual private cloud instantiation with automatic network deployments. Aruba Orchestrator and Aruba Central enables Aruba SD-WAN and AWS Cloud WAN integration.

Meanwhile, Zerto announced the availability of In-Cloud for AWS, a cloud-native software offering for disaster recovery for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).

This offering scales to protect more than 1,000 instances across regions availability zones and accounts, according to Zerto. The offering scales with orchestration and automation instead of agents. Zerto In-Cloud for AWS will enter the AWS Marketplace early next year.

Cribl

Observability pipeline company Cribl received AWS’ “rising star partner of the year” award for ISVs for its work in migrating customers to AWS while keeping fidelity data in the cloud and connecting disparate data streams. According to Cribl.

Cribl also achieved the newly available AWS Graviton Ready designation, meaning Cribl has a product that integrates with the AWS Graviton processor, according to Cribl.

Earlier this year, Cribl raised $200 million in Series C funding to expand its go-to-market efforts. Greylock and Redpoint Ventures led the round, joined by new investor IVP and existing investors Sequoia and CRV, and included strategic investments from Citi Ventures and cybersecurity tech developer CrowdStrike.

Cribl also announced the LogStream Cloud Enterprise Edition cloud service for securely managing globally distributed observability data pipelines.

NetApp

NetApp received the title of 2021 ISV “design partner of the year” for jointly engineered and natively integrated Amazon FSx for NetApp OnTap service, a fully managed, multi-protocol storage service to extend on-premises data onto AWS for more protection, to migrate workloads without refactoring and to set up stateful Kubernetes applications, according to NetApp.

The company also announced a preview of Spot Ocean for Apache Spark, which combines Spot Wave infrastructure automation and optimization with Data Mechanic with the goal of simplifying Apache Spark on Kubernetes. NetApp bought Data Mechanic earlier this year.

NetApp will launch a private preview of Spot Ocean Continuous Development this month, with the goal of making deployments with integrated and automated continuous verification faster and more reliable, according to the company.

Spot Security is in private preview, allowing users to detect, prioritize and mitigate security threats and risks in their cloud infrastructure, according to NetApp. And NetApp has released CloudCheckr Well-Architected Readiness Advisor to help managed service providers streamline AWS Well-Architected Reviews delivery and verify that AWS users are in compliance with the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

NetApp bought CloudCheckr earlier this year.

Sumo Logic

Sumo Logic’s AWS security and observability tools helped pave the way to the company receiving AWS’ 2021 ISV partner of the year award, according to Sumo Logic.

Sumo Logic also announced four new Sumo Logic AWS Quick Start integrations for Amazon Inspector and expanded tracing visibility into AWS Lambda functions.

The four Quick Start integrations aim to help users migrate to the cloud with an automated, repeatable framework for security threat discovery and response, according to Sumo Logic.

The expanded tracing visibility is powered by AWS CloudWatch, CloudTrail and OpenTelemetry. The capability is meant to help users build and operate Lambda functions, better use resources and improve application stack performance. Sumo Logic can bring CloudWatch logs and metrics for Lambda along with data for EC2, ECS, RDS, DynamoDB, API Gateway and other AWS services.

Rackspace

Onica by Rackspace received AWS’ 2021 migration partner of the year for national system integrators, according to the company.

Rackspace also announced a new service delivery designation for Amazon QuickSight and an AWS perimeter protection managed security services provider partner certification for Rackspace Elastic Engineering for Security, according to Rackspace.

Rackspace Elastic Engineering for Security offers implementation and management services for the AWS Edge Security Services suite, according to the company.

Sophos

Cybersecurity company Sophos announced new advancements for its Cloud Optix security posture management tool, including the continuous analysis of AWS CloudTrail to see individual user activity, according to the company.

Sophos has improved Cloud Optix’s automation abilities and simplified how it detects and responds to AWS security incidents, according to the company. The tool now has new machine learning models from SophosAI.

Immuta

Boston-based cloud data access control company Immuta joined AWS’ ISV Accelerate Program to expand visibility in the AWS Marketplace and improve how joint customers automate Immuta services.

The company also made software-as-a-service deployment generally available. The deployment works for Snowflake, Amazon Redshift and Azure Synapse, among other environments. The deployment will soon be available for Google BigQuery, according to Immuta.

HYCU

Multi-cloud backup and recovery company HYCU launched a preview of HYCU Protege for AWS, aiming to give users a way to better protect, manage and recover data for AWS workloads.

The solution should become generally available during the first quarter of 2022, according to HYCU. Protege is meant for supporting on-premises, applications and virtual machines on public cloud.

It can automatically discover applications, provide easier ways to back up data, allow different service level agreements set for applications within the same cluster and improve recovery validation and cross-regional recovery, among other capabilities, according to the company.

New Relic

New Relic announced a preview of its enhanced Infrastructure Monitoring tool aimed at development operations, site reliability engineering and IT operations teams. The tool aims to provide real-time troubleshooting workflows plus topology visualizations.

The company also hired Riya Shanmugam as group vice president of global alliances and channels as a way to expand its partner strategy. Shanmugam previously served as global head of cloud adoption and customer success, according to New Relic. Her goals at New Relic are to provide more resources to partners, simplify doing business with New Relic and work with MSPs to build practices and catalogs.

Recent moves by the company to show partner commitment include a transition to usage-based pricing, the launch of the open source Instant Observability ecosystem of 400-plus quickstarts and a strategic five-year agreement with AWS, according to the company.

CrowdStrike

Cloud-delivered endpoint and workload protection provider CrowdStrike announced new integrations and certification during re:Invent.

CrowdStrike is a launch partner for AWS Outposts’ 1U, 2U and 42U form factors, according to the company. It also added continuous posture management and breach protection for Amazon EKS running on on-premises infrastructure through Amazon EKS Anywhere.

Humio users gained greater ability to hunt threats and search for novel and advanced cyber threats across their AWS footprint. And CrowdStrike landed an AWS well-architected ISV certification, according to the company.

New Premier Partners

Digital services transformation company Ness and multi-cloud applications managed cloud provider Syntax were among the newly announced AWS premier partners during re:Invent.

Teaneck, N.J.-based Ness has competencies in AWS DevOps, migration and financial services, according to a company statement. Ness’ other partners include Microsoft, Salesforce and Snowflake.

Montreal-based Syntax has more than 800 customers, implements and manages enterprise resource planning deployments and counts among its partners AWS, Oracle, SAP, IBM and Microsoft. The company has a Syntax and AWS SAP Migration Factory dedicated to secure, cost-efficient SAP migrations on AWW, according to Syntax.

Earlier this year, Syntax bought Linke, an European provider of services for migrating SAP environments to the Amazon Web Services cloud, and Illumiti, a major SAP systems integration and management consultant and an SAP Platinum partner.

Other AWS Partners Of The Year

AWS dubbed Leidos its “public sector partner of the year” for consulting. Leidos works in the defense, intelligence, civil and health markets and provides digital modernization, cybersecurity, mission software, systems integration, technology enablement and other capabilities, according to AWS.

SAP National Security Services – or NS2, an independent subsidiary of the tech giant – was deemed AWS’ “public sector partner of the year” among independent software vendors.

SAP NS2 has AWS competencies in data and analytics and is in the AWS GovCloud (US) Service Delivery program.

AWS named New York-based industry cloud company Infor its “”industry solution ISV partner of the year.” Infor has worked with AWS in manufacturing, distribution, food and beverage, automotive, aerospace, defense and other industries, according to Infor.

Toronto-based Softchoice Corp. received AWS’ 2021 “rising star partner of the year award for solution provider program members. Softchoice competencies and designations include AWS non-profit, AWS Microsoft workloads and AWS storage competencies, according to the company.

Irvine, Calif.-based Caylent was deemed AWS’ 2021 rising star partner of the year for systems integrators. The company’s competencies and designations include the AWS DevOps and AWS migration competencies plus the AWS well-architected partner program designation, according to Caylent.

Seattle-based Slalom became the first recipient of AWS’ national system integrator partner of the year award. AWS deemed Infosys its industry solution global systems integrator partner of the year. Deloitte received the AWS migration partner of the year award for global systems integrators. And IBM received the AWS rising star partner of the year award for global systems integrators.

Tata Consultancy Services

Along with receiving AWS’ rising star partner of the year award for global systems integrators, Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services also announced the launch of TCS Assessment and Migration Factory to help customers shift mainframe workloads to the new AWS Mainframe Modernization platform.

The migration factory includes services around mainframe workloads migration, domain-specific reference architecture and best practices for legacy modernization, according to TCS.

The company will use its tools including TCS CLoud Counsel, TCS MasterCraft TransformPlus and Cloud Exponence.

Virtusa Corp.

Solution provider Virtusa extended its strategic collaboration agreement with AWS and plans to create a joint business group meant to speed up cloud adoption. The two companies will focus on global and multinational organizations, expedite cloud modernization for independent software vendors and grow Virtusa’s AWS ProServe partnership.

A member of the AWS Partner Network for more than 10 years, Virtusa will focus on expanding Fortune 500 accounts in financial services, health care, life sciences, media and entertainment, and telecommunications. Virtusa and AWS will provide a dedicated global account team, industry frameworks for cloud native application development and other services to customers, according to Virtusa.

As part of the agreement, Virtusa will establish an AWS-focused co-sell and co-delivery function to support end customers looking to partner with Virtusa and AWS ProServe, according to Virtusa.

Southborough, Mass.-based Virtusa also received the 2021 AWS industry solution national systems integrator partner of the year award for the U.S. during re:Invent, according to Virtusa. The company credited its win in part to its vLife Platform for Healthcare and Life Sciences, Open Innovation Platform for Banking and Financial Services, and iComms Platform for Telecommunications and Media solutions.

Earlier this year, Virtusa announced Santosh Thomas as its new CEO, replacing co-founder Kris Canekeratne.

Kasten by Veeam

Kubernetes backup and disaster recovery tool Kasten by Veeam is among the launch partners for AWS Marketplace for Containers Anywhere.

Kasten made its K10 Kubernetes data management platform available on the new service, according to the company. Customers can subscribe for one month, one year, two years or three years, according to Kasten.
Kasten K10 is available for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) or Amazon EKS Anywhere. The tool also grants data protection against ransomware and insider threats. Veeam bought Kasten in 2020 for $150 million.