AWS Global Passport Program Aims For International Partner Growth

“We want to provide the resources that empower businesses to scale,” AWS GM Miguel Alava said in a statement.

Amazon Web Services has launched a Global Passport Program aimed at growing a select number of software partners’ business internationally, promising to connect these vendors to regional resellers and distributors to build local market pipelines.

Aimed at independent software vendors (ISVs), the program will connect participants with guidance, resources and strategic support in an effort to lower risk and accelerate time-to-revenue, according to Seattle-based AWS.

“Today’s software companies are up against a number of challenges that can hinder their ability to scale and expand into new regions as they look to accelerate growth,” Miguel Alava, AWS’ general manager for software companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), said in a statement.

AWS Partner Program

“AWS has extensive expertise and technical capabilities to help companies fast-track growth into global markets,” Alava continued. “We want to provide the resources that empower businesses to scale on a robust cloud-first technology foundation that strengthens their resilience, increases revenue, and reduces their dependency on single markets so they can reach more customers and make greater impact.”

Phil Walker, CEO of Manhattan Beach, Calif.-based AWS partner Network Solutions Provider, told CRN in an interview that he is working on a listing for the cloud giant’s marketplace because it “is rapidly emerging as one of the fastest-growing opportunities for” MSPs.

“Engaging with and assisting clients in their innovation journey is crucial,” Walker said. “Our AWS clients demand scalability and security to expand their data lakes and eliminate data silos while transitioning toward AI-optimized business models.”

Six pilot participants supported by AWS in 2023 grew usage of the vendor’s cloud wares by 10 to 20 percent per new region within 18 months, according to the vendor. Participants so far have included Freshworks and Forta.

The resources for program members include market evaluation workshops, international expansion roadmaps, architectural best practices for multi-region deployments, software capacity planning, industry-certified assessors and co-selling and go-to-market (GTM) support from AWS sales teams.

Participants go through three-part, half-day, in-person workshops and receive reports with next-step recommendations, a business plan, a technical framework and user-story level roadmap, among other resources. The participant also gets AWS service credits for expansion-related workloads that meet a return on investment (ROI) threshold, according to the vendor.