We’re pleased and proud to announce that nClouds has again been awarded renewals for our AWS Premier Partner and AWS Managed Service Provider (MSP) Partner designations. These credentials offer important recognition of nClouds skills and service capabilities. They also provide customers with a useful measure of our team’s commitment to—and success in—delivering consistently excellent support and high-value services across the AWS ecosystem.
AWS maintains an extensive network of partner programs for different focus areas, and each has a range of designations available. The Premier Partner and MSP Partner tiers are challenging to reach, with providers sometimes working for years before achieving the minimum requirements.
AWS Premier Partner
The AWS Partner program supports three levels—Select, Advanced, and Premier—with Premier representing the partners with the most experience and leadership recognition in their regions and/or markets.
nClouds has held the Premier Partner designation since 2013. We’ve completed more AWS implementations than almost any other provider and we’ve built an extensive knowledge base around the AWS ecosystem. Our team is heavily invested in our AWS practice and that commitment is reflected in our long-standing position at the Premier Partner tier. The Premier Partner credential involves recurring audits and other confirmatory processes through AWS. Meeting these advanced knowledge, experience, and customer success requirements gives nClouds customers important external validation of our delivery of AWS services—our capabilities, our services, our support, and our expertise.
There are some key elements in achieving the Premier Partner designation. It’s an award that partners need to earn annually through consistent service and ongoing competency development. The requirements include net new customer delivery, net new revenue, sufficient resources related to engineers that are certified both at the associate and the professional levels, and the number of AWS programs the partner participates in with meaningful results. Remaining an AWS Premier Partner also requires achieving sufficiently high customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores every year, meaning 30 different customers must rank the provider’s practice highly on customer satisfaction. That’s a big number and it prevents many otherwise capable providers from achieving Premier Partner status. nClouds often achieves it early in the year due to our commitment to service and the strength of our customer base.
Core to the Premier Partner designation is the clear demonstration that a partner can not only achieve big goals, but that they can do it again and again. Our renewal shows we can migrate and support customers on AWS, and that we can also maintain those results year over year. As technology innovations accelerate and business pressures become more dynamic, delivering consistent support and delighting clients during an initial engagement can be a difficult feat in itself. Building the capabilities and expertise to sustain that strong performance over time is the hallmark of an AWS Premier Partner.
AWS Managed Service Provider (MSP) Partner
Managed service providers offer customers access to targeted skill sets and trusted advice to architect and oversee their environments, scale operations, protect infrastructures from cybersecurity risks, and apply various compliance frameworks.
The AWS MSP Partner designation validates a provider’s managed service competency. As part of nClouds ongoing evolution, this year we added SOC 2 Type II compliance as part of our MSP Partner renewal. This advanced step further differentiates our services and capabilities from those offered by other providers. The increased focus on compliance helps us be better prepared on multiple fronts, from service delivery to customer support to data protection, and translates into increased satisfaction for our clients.
In addition, the AWS MSP Partner program requires a full audit every three years, and 2022 was a complete audit process year for our team. Working with AWS through the renewal program is an important opportunity to continue improving our capabilities and our systems. AWS provides valuable advice and guidance on areas we should be exploring or expanding to ensure we’re positioned to provide our customers with the best services and support for their needs today and into the future.
The scale of the AWS ecosystem is vast, boasting around 50,000 Partners in total. However, there are only about 160 MSPs globally and fewer than 50 in North America. The MSP designation recognizes AWS Partners with the broad skills, deep experience, and AWS expertise to provide customers with full lifecycle solutions. We’re pleased that our customers can be confident we’re among a small group of providers capable of supporting their most advanced and ambitious digital transformation goals.
If you’d like to learn more about our AWS Premier Partner and MSP Partner designations, or if you’re interested in discussing how we can help your business move your cloud strategy forward, please get in touch.
