AWS Introduces Education Competency For Consulting And Technology Partners

School's out for summer, but AWS on Wednesday introduced a professional accreditation for consulting and technology partners focused on serving the education market.

The public cloud leader's new Education Competency is intended to make it easier for schools, colleges and research institutions to find AWS partners experienced in building and implementing solutions for academic institutions, said Kate Miller, a strategic communications manager for the AWS Partner Network, in an AWS blog.

"Achieving the AWS Education Competency is not easy," Miller said. "In meeting the high bar set by the AWS Education Competency, customers can be confident in your firm’s proven ability to deliver services or solutions to help meet their needs and provide additional value on AWS."

[Related: AWS Introduces New Storage Competency For Channel Partners]

The accreditation program offers separate tracks for consulting and technology partners. Consultancies are vetted on their ability and experience standing up production workloads for schools and other academic and publishing institutions.

Seven consulting partners at launch are Cloudmas, DLT Solutions, Enquizit, Infiniti Consulting Group, ITEra, NorthBay, and REAN Cloud.

On the technology side, the competency is split between vendors of "teaching and learning" solutions and those that offer technologies assisting with administrative operations both on a campus or online.

Shawn Moore, CTO of Solodev, one of the Education Competency launch partners on the administrative technology side, said introducing the accreditation demonstrates the public cloud leader's new focus on educational technologies.

Solodev, vendor of an enterprise-scale web development platform, was committed to achieving the competency "to help our education customers achieve their goals through the power and agility of the AWS Cloud," Moore told CRN via email.

The Orlando, Fla.-based company recently was named a winner in Amazon's City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge for its work helping a Florida school district establish a web presence that the schools could maintain on their own.

The new education accreditation builds on the AWS Public Sector Program launched late last year to focus on helping partners develop their practices in the government, education and non-profit space, Miller said on the AWS blog.

The number of Amazon cloud customers from that sector is rapidly growing, she said, across K-12, university, and research institutions.

"Our priority is to help education customers on AWS easily identify and connect with APN Partners with proven expertise and customer success in the education space."

One year ago, AWS introduced its Government Competency for partners.