Amazon Web Services has introduced new storage competency for consulting partners, who aid enterprises store a huge amount of data in the public.
AWS Storage Competency Partners are consulting and technology partners that provide proven technology and/or implementation capabilities for a variety of use cases including backup and recovery operations to, from and within the AWS environment; primary storage using IP file or block protocols and object storage; active and passive data archiving services to appropriate storage tiers; and business continuance/disaster recovery (BCDR) solutions that fit within BC planning with a minimum of plan modification.
The cloud vendor introduced a storage competency for third-party technology partners in 2014 to certify their products. The consulting wing enables customers look for solution providers with knowhow in architectural best practices and implementing third-party solutions.
The first seven partners to earn the competency are HCL Technologies, Infiniti Consulting Group, Proact IT, Ahead, CorpInfo Services, Datapipe and REAN Cloud.
As per a CRN report, David Lucky, director of product management at Datapipe, an MSP headquartered in Jersey City, NJ., said earning the storage competency proved a rigorous process—probably even more rigorous than for other AWS competencies.
While storage and compute “are the main pillars” of cloud, Lucky said, the fact that AWS introduced the competency only now shows that a resource so fundamental to computing is getting a lot more complicated and nuanced.
Beyond the marketing and market differentiation that comes with earning a new badge, he said, the process forged a closer relationship between Datapipe and AWS. Amazon is more likely to select an accredited storage partner when it comes to beta testing new products in that area, and give more credence to those partners’ requirements when developing new products, Lucky added.