AWS Removes Financial Cap For Partners In MAP Program

“Because of the [MAP] cap—you might end up phasing the project to align more with the funding program, as opposed to phasing the project to align with customer outcomes. So this makes a ton of sense and it really aligns the funding better with customer outcomes,” says Mission Cloud President Ted Stuart.

Amazon Web Services is eliminating the financial cap on how much money partners can make inside the company’s popular Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) in a move to make partners richer and drive better customer outcomes.

“It used to be if a partner sold a really, really large deal, there was a cap of how much funding they would be able to get for that migration. Now we’ve eliminated that cap,” said AWS global channel chief Ruba Borno in an interview with CRN. “We are eliminating the cap that we used to have on how much we could pay partners. So that’s really exciting, because partners can make more money on that.”

Borno said partners will now get “rewarded for the full breadth of their work.”

“It’s not just stopped once they reach that cap and then they’re continuing to do that work—they are continually getting rewarded. The customer is also getting the benefit of taking on that broader transformation,” she said.

Borno (pictured above) said AWS is making sure MAP provides funding to its partners tied to key performance milestones as well as customer transformation and modernization success.

“This is something that’s been really well received by customers and by partners because it really helps them take on some of these transformations that they’ve been hesitant to take on in the past,” said Borno, vice president and leader of AWS’ Worldwide Channels and Alliances.

Initially launched in 2016, AWS’ cloud migration acceleration program helps partners migrate clients to the AWS cloud, build strong cloud foundations, reduce security risk and offset initial migration costs for customers.

Mission Cloud President: This ‘Aligns The Funding Better With Customer Outcomes’

One of AWS’ top national partners, Mission Cloud, said removing the profitability cap in the MAP program aligns with AWS principles of customer obsession and driving successful business outcomes.

“AWS removing the cap is just fantastic news because now we can just keep going. We can focus 100 percent on what's best for the customer and move as quickly as prudent,” said Ted Stuart, President and COO of Los Angeles Calif.-based Mission Cloud.

Stuart said large customer migrations and modernization can be extremely complex.

“Because of the [MAP] cap—you might end up phasing the project to align more with the funding program, as opposed to phasing the project to align with customer outcomes,” Stuart said. “So this makes a ton of sense and it really aligns the funding better with customer outcomes.”

Borno said AWS eliminating the financial ceiling for partners in its MAP program due to the complexity of modernization programs.

“So if we were placing a cap on the amount that they could make, we had an unintended consequence of actually breaking down programs into smaller buckets, which then actually was leading to the unintended consequence of maybe not achieving the customer’s ultimate goal of modernization,” said Borno.

Borno unveiled the MAP news at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas this week.