AWS launches its partners into the era of AI at re:Invent 2025

Our latest blog, from Omdia analysts Alastair Edwards and Peter Bryant, outlines the key partner announcements from Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent conference of 2025, including adjusted resell margins, new MSP incentives, and a number of agentic AI updates, alongside new Omdia research unveiling a Partner Ecosystem Multiplier (PEM) of $7.13 per dollar spent on AWS.

What PEM Opportunity Reveals About Maturing AWS Ecosystem

Three years after its initial study, Omdia has worked with AWS to understand its PEM opportunity for partners in the new AI era. The AWS Partner Ecosystem Multiplier (PEM) study, conducted by Omdia, quantifies the revenue opportunities available to AWS partners across the customer lifecycle. Partners can achieve up to a $7.13 multiplier for every dollar spent on AWS solutions, with Expert partners leveraging their capabilities across advisory, design, implementation, adoption, and management services to unlock this full potential.

All four partner segments saw growth compared to their 2022 opportunities, but interestingly, it is within the SMB segment where the largest growth has been seen. Focused Partners, for example, saw a 36% increase in their PEM opportunities, while Multi-category partners saw a 30% increase in their PEM opportunities. Both categories contain types of partners that primarily focus on Greenfield and SMB opportunities within the wider AWS ecosystem.

Beyond the expansion of opportunity in the long tail, the style and type of project delivered by AWS partners is also changing. All year, we have explored the shift to usage and outcome-based pricing, and this is no different in the AWS ecosystem. The study reveals that 61% of PEM opportunities occur post-procurement, with revenue distributed across a three-year cycle: 47% in year one (advisory and implementation), 21% in year two (Build services and AI proofs of concept), and 32% in year three (managed services and AI production deployment). This pattern emphasizes the transition from project-based to business value-based revenue for sustained growth.

What we saw at re:Invent was an extension of this partner strategy to ensure growth across the long term and the long tail. Not only were there significant updates to AWS Marketplace to drive further partner utility for the platform, but incentive changes across the customer lifecycle also continue to emphasize the importance of long-term value, driving services for customers. In addition, continued simplification of resell incentives for clarity and ease of use.

Emphasis from AWS on Simplification and SMB Opportunities

Beyond this support, partners focused on the SMB realm will also have additional support with the expansion or full roll out of other programs. Of particular note, announcements from re:Invent are:

• Launch of the Partner Greenfield Program (PGP): Designed to support partners building the necessary additional practices to their AWS capabilities that will allow them to target a longtime target of AWS - the new to AWS “Greenfield” customers. Services partners will be required to hold either the Migration Competency or the Security or Generative AI competency, while ISV partners will be required to be part of the AWS ISV Accelerate program. Doing so will allow them to unlock funding, co-sell support, and enablement support.

• Expansion of the Small Business Acceleration Initiative globally: In addition to the PGP launch, the successful Small Business Acceleration program that has been piloted throughout the year has been rolled out globally to ensure partners are being supported to build, market, and sell small business solutions beyond simple migrations.

• Consolidated base benefits: Significant partner feedback on base benefit complexity has been actioned, and AWS has combined the previous base incentive and technical capability discount to support partners in unlocking more of the incentives that they are eligible for.

• Newly launched New Customer Incentives: Emphasizing on new customers, this incentive focuses on simplification by replacing programs such as the Partner Originated discount, the Public Sector Discount, and the Customer Engagement Incentive: Grow, while placing increased emphasis on incentives tied to consumption growth.

• New partner growth Incentive: Through continued investment on portfolio growth, partners will be incentivized to expand consumption across their entire resale portfolio, to help support not just external customer growth, but structured support around internal AWS practice building.

Managed Services Continues as a Key Point of Professional Services Expansion

The most significant change from a professional services perspective is the updates announced for AWS Managed Services Provider partners. Available from January 1, 2026, all partners recognized by AWS as Managed Service partners will be able to unlock new incentives tied directly to their driving of cloud consumption with their managed and professional services. These will fall into three categories of incentive:

• MSP incentive for customer management: This will be a base rate incentive tied directly to customer consumption and use of AWS solutions. Managed Services Partners who are able to show consumption growth in their customers will be able to unlock this new incentive from AWS, rewarding the partners for their long-term commitment to end customers and deliver value across multiple years.

• MSP incentive for strategic services: This extension will allow partners to unlock additional incentives in projects and customers where they have been able to drive consumption through specifically identified “strategic services” as designated by AWS.

• MSP government practice benefit: Support for the additional complexity of digital transformation in the federal and public sector end customers will allow AWS Managed Service Partners to have incentives to support these complex customers.

The emphasis on the Managed Service has clear motivation; not only is this a market that is estimated to grow at 9.8% in 2026 for a total spend opportunity of $650.1bn according to the Omdia IT Opportunity data, but the demand for these services by AWS customers is also clear. Previous Omdia research has identified that 52% of customers demand managed services as they procure their partners. While AWS hopes this services-first approach to incentives will drive long-term consumption increases and growth, partners will be able to secure more consistent incentive support across project cycles, thereby expanding and growing their own AWS practices or reducing the long-term cost burden for their customer base.

AWS Partnerships in the Era of AI

Of course, one of the major themes throughout every re:Invent keynote was agentic AI, and there was no difference in the AWS Partner Network announcements through the week. These announcements included expansions of its AI Competency program as well as AWS Transform. As the shift from POC to production continues to challenge many enterprises, AWS is looking to further enable its partners to meet the demands from customers, not simply for agentic AI, but for depth of specialization and expertise from the partners they work with to gain value from their agentic AI spending.

The AI competency has been expanded with the addition of three Agentic-specific categories within the competency: Agentic AI Applications, Agentic AI Tools, and Agentic AI Consulting Services. With 60 launch partners, this is the largest set of launch partners for an AWS Specialization launch ever, with a combination of GSIs, SIs, and market-leading ISVs. These launch partners, and subsequent partners passing through the process, will be able to unlock further support, resources, and, notably, an increase in marketing development funds of 50%.

Beyond this, updates to AWS Transform continue to look to support partners seeking to drive the modernization of legacy systems and applications for their customers, with a focus on mainframes. The new AWS Transform Composability will look to focus on creating specialized AI agents to allow focus on industry-specific workloads, with their unique compliance and domain-specific challenges. In addition, there was an introduction of advanced data analytics capabilities. While significant amounts of partner investment in AI and Agentic AI have focused on themselves as customer zero, AWS’s announcements here have been hyper-focused on driving the same success externally to many of their customers, and arming their partners to be the main drivers of agentic AI success in their customers.

Continued Shift to Long-term Services Strategy

The era of AI partnerships will not be defined by a single application or magic technology, but rather a cohesive and collaborative digital transformation strategy that will require long-term integrations in an era where customer patience is measured in weeks and months, and partner reward continues to be tied to usage and results-based outcomes. Beyond the existing $7.13 PEM opportunity, AWS has used its 2025 re:Invent event to drive its partner strategy into the era of AI while ensuring that the strategic SMB markets are well served and supported by a wider pool of its partners to ensure that, across the board, it is able to drive AI adoption and shift away from stalling proofs of concepts. The real success of these changes will not be measured on their immediate impact, but rather the long-term integration of AWS partners into the strategic digital transformations of all of their customers.