Choosing an AWS Partner: Tiers, Checks and Questions

What the AWS Partner tiers mean

AWS sorts services partners into Select, Advanced and Premier tiers. The tier is based on evidence AWS can count: trained and certified staff, AWS certifications held, and customer projects launched. A tier describes accumulated AWS experience. It does not tell you how well a firm fits your project. A Select Tier partner that has run a workload like yours for years can serve you better than a higher-tier firm that has never seen one. Read the tier as a floor on experience, then judge the rest on its own merits.

Select Tier. AWS describes Select Tier Services Partners as firms with trained and certified individuals and customer experience. It is the entry services tier.

Advanced Tier. AWS describes Advanced Tier Services Partners as firms with a strong team of trained and certified technical staff and proven customer experience. This is TiCON Cloud's tier.

Premier Tier. AWS describes Premier Tier Services Partners as its most experienced partners, recognized as leaders in their markets. TiCON Cloud does not hold this tier.

How to verify a partner's tier claim

A tier badge on a company website is self-published, and the wording drifts. "AWS Partner", "consulting partner" and "certified partner" are not tiers. AWS keeps its own directory, and the listing there is the record worth checking. It shows the current tier, locations, and the validations AWS has awarded, such as Competencies, Service Delivery designations and MSP status.

• ✓Open the AWS Partner Solutions Finder at partners.amazonaws.com and filter by country.
• ✓Search the legal entity name as well as the trading name. The two often differ on the listing.
• ✓Read the tier from the listing, not from a badge on the firm's own site.
• ✓Treat Competencies and Service Delivery designations separately. They are workload-specific and often more useful for one project than the tier.
• ✓Ask each shortlisted partner for a link to its own listing, and confirm the entity named there is the entity that will invoice you.
• ✓Re-check at renewal. Tiers are reviewed periodically, and a firm can move between them.

Finding partners in your region

Several firms hold AWS partner status in most regions, and more than one may suit a given project. We do not rank other firms. Use the directory as the list of record, and use the questions below to narrow the shortlist.

• ✓Filter the Partner Solutions Finder by country and by tier, then by the validations you need.
• ✓Read what each firm says about its own AWS status, then confirm it in the directory.
• ✓Shortlist on the questions in the next section, not on a logo wall.
• ✓Treat any printed list, including ours, as out of date until you have checked the directory on the day you decide.

What to ask any AWS partner before you sign

Tier tells you about a partner's history with AWS. It does not tell you how your account will be billed, who answers at 2 a.m., or whether anyone has moved a workload like yours. Ask every question below of every firm on the shortlist, and get the answers in writing, in the contract or an annex.

• ✓Billing currency. In which currency will I be invoiced, and can you bill in USD?
• ✓Invoicing entity. Which legal entity issues the invoice, and where is it registered?
• ✓Resale or consulting. Do you take over the AWS billing relationship, or does AWS keep billing me while you advise?
• ✓Support. What are your response times by severity, who is on call outside business hours, and is AWS Support included or charged separately?
• ✓Migration experience. Which comparable workloads have you moved, and can I speak to a reference customer?
• ✓Account ownership. Whose AWS account runs my workloads, who holds root access, and what happens to the account if we part ways?
• ✓Region and data placement. Which AWS region will hold my data, and why did you choose it?
• ✓After launch. What do you do each month to keep the bill from drifting up, and how is that work paid for?

How paying AWS through a partner works

Buying directly from AWS means a USD account, settled by card or wire, with paperwork your finance team reconciles on its own. A reseller partner changes the commercial side without changing the technical side. The workloads still run on AWS, in the same regions, through the same console and APIs. What changes is who bills you, in which currency, and on which invoice. For finance, procurement and audit teams, that is often the deciding difference.

• ✓TiCON Cloud resells AWS usage on one monthly invoice. Outside Bangladesh, engagements are quoted and invoiced in USD. Other currencies are available only by contract.
• ✓The technical estate does not change: the same AWS services, in the regions we run for clients, Mumbai and Singapore.
• ✓Reseller pricing comes with the relationship. Typical effective savings are 15-35% on compute and storage, and up to 40% on CloudFront bandwidth. These are estimates, not quotes.
• ✓A consulting-only partner cannot change billing. AWS keeps billing you directly, and the partner bills separately for its time.

Where TiCON Cloud fits, and where it does not

TiCON Cloud (TICON System Limited) has been building software and infrastructure since 2007, with offices in Dhaka, Suwon and Tysons Corner, Virginia. It holds AWS Advanced Tier (Services) status, not Premier. It both resells and consults, so it can take over the billing relationship as well as design, migrate and operate the environment. Across the business we have delivered 200+ projects for 100+ clients. Those are the facts a buyer can weigh. The judgement is yours.

• ✓A good fit when you want AWS billed through one partner, with the migration and day-two operations from the same team, and a USD quote.
• ✓A good fit when bandwidth is a large share of cost. CloudFront pricing is where a reseller arrangement usually pays back fastest.
• ✓Not the right fit when your procurement rules require a Premier Tier partner, or when a specific AWS Competency is mandatory and another firm holds it.
• ✓Not the right fit when your contract obliges you to buy directly from AWS.
• ✓In either case, check the AWS Partner Solutions Finder before you decide. It is AWS's record, not ours.