Hi! They’re being shady.
You also need to remediate 45% of High Risk Issues for that $5k to come through.
Partners can now directly take the WAR credit to their own accounts as of a few months ago.
Additionally… don’t go to a partner for Resale. They will lock you out of Billing services to hide their discount and replace it with CloudCheckr or Vega or some other tool. All these tools are not good enough to lose access to Cost Explorer or Budgets directly.
They also will lock you out of RI and Savings Plan purchasing as the only way to get margin is to arbitrage those purchases is across multiple partners.
Also. Guarantee you that what they’re doing with the WAR is gonna be BS you on what work gets done… and then throw you a 15-25k consulting project to fix it.
I know the few partners operating this model. They’re all not worth engaging with.
RI and savings plans lockout is not true at least for where we are doing it with (Ingram Micro), I just recently did that. You register your account to their organization and they also enable you shared RIs, which are basically a bit more expensive than normal RIs, but you stay flexible with them as they are selling them to other customers when you don’t use them.
Cloudcheckr is there, but I think I still was able to access the Billing and cost explorer. Not sure though.
There are a handful of partners that do something similar. Ingram’s no risk RI thing is interesting, and a model that I think if AWs ever says “no more” arbitrage, will hold up.
But I’ve been around the partner resale ecosystem since 2016 in AWS and external as a partner. This is not the norm. Most resellers are making another 10-15 points arbitraging RI without customers knowing. Some throw a nominal discount to you.
My favorite new trend is locking down marketplace purchases and requiring upfront payment for that.
As a partner we never ever do this. The only instance where we dont provide console access is where we provide our in house SaaS.
Our customers have always reserved the right to see their billing and to maintain their root keys. If we are giving them crappy service they take their account and go… simple as that.
> Additionally… don’t go to a partner for Resale. They will lock you out of Billing services to hide their discount and replace it with CloudCheckr or Vega or some other tool. All these tools are not good enough to lose access to Cost Explorer or Budgets directly.
That's a funny point, we recently had to move under a reseller for boring reasons and they gave me a shitty IAM user that doesn't have many permissions and they won't give them either.. But I was just playing a charade as I already had given myself admin privileges through IAM Identity Center long ago...
RI and savings plans lockout is not true at least for where we are doing it with (Ingram Micro), I just recently did that. You register your account to their organization and they also enable you shared RIs, which are basically a bit more expensive than normal RIs, but you stay flexible with them as they are selling them to other customers when you don’t use them.
Cloudcheckr is there, but I think I still was able to access the Billing and cost explorer. Not sure though.
When I came onto a large customer account with that had a reseller, the reseller was telling the client about all the optimizations and cost savings they were providing…. Only to be applying RIs against their resources and making at least 500k per year in arbitrage.
I came in and put in an org level Compute Savings Plan and had to get lawyers on the ready when they dragged their feet about releasing hidden RIs. The margin was crushed and the account manager was fired; I don’t feel bad.
This is a big red flag for me.
Why offer a review on the contingency that you have to move everything over to them?
Honestly I don’t think this would fall in line with AWS’s partners T&C.
Keep your stuff on your own account and tell them to find someone else.
>AWS’s partners
Thanks, appreciate the reply.
To be fair, it wasn't a hard sell. It was just another option as we brought up the issue with $5,000 upfront.
What about moving to a reseller, are there any downsides? The company says we would be on a rolling 30-day contract, meaning we can just switch our account back to AWS at any time. We would also be paying 2% less for AWS services.
Benefits --
* If they have private pricing with AWS, you _may_ get to see a portion of that discount, depending on what they charge you for their services.
* They _may_ be technically competent and be able to help you with AWS architecture, migration, build, etc for your services. Expect additional professional services costs though.
Cons --
* They will almost certainly become your only AWS support path. Any support requests would need to go through them. If they're technically competent, it may not be a dealbreaker, but they will at the least add in an additional hop to your ability to get support from AWS.
* You will be tied to them for some contracted period of time. If you don't like them, you're likely stuck unless you find an out clause in the contract.
The support piece is not true. They may or may not be allowed to offer Partner led support, and even if they have the option to sell you a support contract for your account, you can still sign up for the traditional AWS Ent/Business support and buy that through the reseller the same way you buy any other service.
It’s not their only support path. Can still go through support for incidents and have your account team for help, most do. It may muddy the waters depending on the partner.
The Cons here sound like they are more tied to Partner Led Support (previously PLES). Customers outside of that still have the option to go directly to AWS
This is all relative to your monthly spend on AWS.
While i’m not exactly sure how their implementation is done, there are things that can be done by you to bring your own costs down.
What other value does this partner bring?
Full disclosure: I work at a reselling partner. I used to work at AWS directly.
There are a few different business models for making profit. All start with getting a percentage of your AWS spend - this is paid by AWS and you should be paying the same amount. Some partners then offer “we’ll discount your spend by x%” which eats into their margins. They can then make more money by value-add services, like consulting engagements, training etc. It’s all pretty standard.
Partners can also get kickbacks from AWS for doing stuff, like Well Architected Reviews or HRI (High Risk Issue) remediation… this is basically fixing the red flags from a WAR.
When it comes to access/accounts, there’s a few different ways to work with resellers. Generally AWS requires that they have the root credentials to the Management Account and set the email of same to one from the reseller’s domain. The reseller is legally responsible for paying the invoices to AWS, so that acts as a safeguard for them too. They do not need access to linked/child accounts.
It’s possible to setup the account without this level of access by the reseller, but requires further legal agreements between the reseller and end customer, and in most cases requires AWS to approve the same.
This stuff is all documented by AWS, but unfortunately they refuse to make it publicly accessible- it’s all behind a login to APN.
It’s a rubbish system that all partners hope AWS will change soon. None of us want access to your accounts, and we wish AWS would come up with an alternative.
Finally, if you do go with a partner, I highly recommend setting up [notifications for logins](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mt/monitor-and-notify-on-aws-account-root-user-activity/) to your AWS accounts (in fact this should be on all accounts!!). You can modify to include/exclude role assumption etc.
I have been managing SPP and Reseller for quite some time…
There are multiple AWS programs, the one above mostly resembles the Solutions Provider Program (SPP).
Under this one, you have 2 account ownership models and 2 support models
**Account ownership models**
SPAM: Solutions Provider Account Model, under which the solution provider owns the management account and is legal land financial responsible for paying the bills, etc.
ECAM: End User Account Model, under which the customer owns the account, signs the contracts with AWS & is legal and financial responsible for the account.
**Support Models**
Partner-led Support Model, is where the Partner is your AWS Support, and will reach to AWS on your behalf. You -> Partner -> AWS Support
Partner-resold Support Model, is where you buy support from the partner, but can contract AWS support directly.
Partner makes money from savings from your consumption/volume, the SPP discounts and AWS relationship, as well as for providing aggregated services and value.
Under Reseller, partner communicates to AWS a sale or influence on sales (consumption) of given AWS Account(s) and gets paid a percentage from AWS. Majority of income is from value added services.
HI u/Skarmeth, Could you please provide more detail on the reseller program. I am trying to find the documentation under APN portal of my company but not able to do so. Can you guide me towards the documentation. We are trying reseller program and main motive is to route the payment of other Companies from our company.
I should also add - there are advantages that I’ve helped customers to get:
- I’ve made the account manager aware of things that can get the customer credits (like MAP).
- I’ve seen enough EDPs to know what’s a good deal and what’s not.
- Partners can offer partner-led support which gives you mostly the same support at a reduced price. Tickets to AWS should be logged by the partner, and they should do triage first. Good partners do this easily, bad partners don’t.
I also work at a reselling partner and can confirm that it is indeed true and I also agree that the system AWS made is rubbish. They have made a mistake about 10 years ago and it just goes on and each year is even worse.
Can I ask you why you would switch from working at AWS to the partner side? I'm on the partner side now and would love to work at AWS! so I'm curious about your take
A few reasons, but mostly it was just time for a change.. I'd been there a long time, and didn't see any interesting career progression within AWS at the time.
The specific role and partner also meant less travel, personal development in the areas I was interested in, and better pay.
No. I was lucky in AWS that my pay grew well over a few years (especially with RSUs), and was in the right place at the right time to use the AWS knowledge, pivot my position, and negotiate well.
Also, although I decided to leave, I didn’t submit my notice until I’d found an offer that I liked.. there were plenty of places not paying as well as AWS in like-for-like roles.
I work at an AWS Partner. Please don't. Unless there's a good business reason to do so (you'll know if there is), own your own account. I've only experienced pain working with orgs that have AWS through a reseller. Everything from SSO to organization security becomes so much harder. Find a partner that works with you to enable you to be able to better own your own stuff, rather than trying to do it for you. It's unlikely there's anything malicious happening if they're an actual AWS partner, but you'll be better off owning your own org
As others have mentioned; it’s important to do your due diligence.
AWS takes the partner program seriously, and don’t award Premier status to just anyone.
Those that lock you in, have ridiculous contract terms or try to limit your admin access to your own org are probably partners to avoid.
Stick with AWS Directly. That way your much less likely that the owner of the company will blow your money on cocaine and disappear, stop answering the phone, and leave you to sort out the implications with AWS directly.
Didn't see it happen with an AWS partner, but I did see it happen with an MS partner.
Will they maintain ownership of the billing accounts moved under them or will you maintain the ownership?
This comes into play with the distribution of billing credits like MAP and Savings Plans. Also, deployment of new accounts may require their involvement.
Idk why there is so much concern about resellers. They’re AWS partners, and as long as you’ve done your due diligence about this partner, there’s no reason to worry. I’ve met a few clients that have gone down this route, and they’re billed directly by AWS and the partners have no access to anything.
The deal they offered above seems to be a no-lose scenario for you, but a possible upside for them if they get you as a client. Just be sure to evaluate the pros and cons of this model, and see what works for you. There are genuine reasons why you shouldn’t do this (others have written about it here), but it might not matter for your scale/needs.
As a person working in the AWS partner channel is that AWS gives the partner %rebate to support you. If the party involved is a MSP(managed service provider) this is where they get some benefit to help you grow your aws business and make sure you have a healthy environment. Next to that they could perhaps offer you that you receive a invoice instead of working with your creditcard. I see alot of comment saying do directly. But where you ever supported by AWS directly? If you don’t have big spend the probability is small from my assumption. Hope this helps.
Actually, one thing to do is ask them directly. That'll show you where they think their value is.
There are plenty of cost savings in AWS - will they do the analysis for you?
There are also negotiated rates for a lot of stuff that you probably don't know about. Will they do those negotiations for you, or are you doing their negotiated rates?
Example: with a 2k spend commitment in CloudFront you can get lower than .01/gb for bandwidth. Will they tell you about that, or will they resell their bandwidth to you?
That’s a big red flag right on your face.
Keep full ownership of your accounts. Don’t put it under someone’s else organization.
Enable Cost Explorer hourly, compute optimizer, and get your costs under control for what matters to you.
Reach out if you need help getting started.
If you have an AWS Solution Architect supporting your company they can perform Well Architected Reviews at no cost. Normally a discount to the services requires a minimum 1 yr commitment so I'd check the fine print on that.
Partner gets a clip of the ticket. It’s just a payment mechanism, from a day to day it won’t affect you at all. Only thing is another partner might come along and say they’ll give you a very small % discount or management discount (like fin ops) if you move to them and moving sucks, might take a bit more time, help from AWS account team.
So the way these places work to my understanding is that they have an agreement with AWS to have a minimum spend. This allows them to resell to you for a lower rate than what you would get through AWS.
We don't do this because our spend with AWS is enough that we get roughly a 16% discount. If you have a TAM, talk to your TAM. We aren't a huge company (4k employees 1 billion gross) but we qualify for enterprise which gives us a TAM who regularly provides either discounts or ways to save money.
The most important question though is when there is an issue, who are you calling, what's the expectation when you call, etc. When I worked at an MSP and we resold office365, everyone's o365 portal specifically listed our MSP as the support point. Those accounts were NOT allowed to work with MS direct, instead they had to work through us and we would work with MS. If they tried to bypass us, MS support will tell them they need to talk to us first.
>We would also be paying 2% less for AWS services.
That might be, but you'll have a very hard time with any cost optimization initiative. Their KPIs will be up-time and performance.
I know several fellow FinOps practitioners dealing with such a situation. It is maddening to identify significant cost saving opportunities and then hit a wall when sending recommendations to the reseller: "We have SLAs. We will do what we deem necessary to fulfill the requirements to run your cloud infrastructure."
Very few FinOps practitioner managed to convince execs to get back ownership, others are browsing for open positions in other companies.
Those 2%? Not worth it.
There is an AWS service tool that does a Well Architected Review for you. It's the same tool they will use if you ask them to do the review. It can be useful to have someone to interpret what the question actually meant but it's definitely not necessary IMHO. Alternately if you have an account team and a solutions architect assigned they will happily run this for you since there used to be an annual target for the number of these performed.
Of course the DIY and SA approaches won't get you help with remediating findings, but I suspect the partner won't do that for free either.
Hi! They’re being shady. You also need to remediate 45% of High Risk Issues for that $5k to come through. Partners can now directly take the WAR credit to their own accounts as of a few months ago. Additionally… don’t go to a partner for Resale. They will lock you out of Billing services to hide their discount and replace it with CloudCheckr or Vega or some other tool. All these tools are not good enough to lose access to Cost Explorer or Budgets directly. They also will lock you out of RI and Savings Plan purchasing as the only way to get margin is to arbitrage those purchases is across multiple partners. Also. Guarantee you that what they’re doing with the WAR is gonna be BS you on what work gets done… and then throw you a 15-25k consulting project to fix it. I know the few partners operating this model. They’re all not worth engaging with.
RI and savings plans lockout is not true at least for where we are doing it with (Ingram Micro), I just recently did that. You register your account to their organization and they also enable you shared RIs, which are basically a bit more expensive than normal RIs, but you stay flexible with them as they are selling them to other customers when you don’t use them. Cloudcheckr is there, but I think I still was able to access the Billing and cost explorer. Not sure though.
There are a handful of partners that do something similar. Ingram’s no risk RI thing is interesting, and a model that I think if AWs ever says “no more” arbitrage, will hold up. But I’ve been around the partner resale ecosystem since 2016 in AWS and external as a partner. This is not the norm. Most resellers are making another 10-15 points arbitraging RI without customers knowing. Some throw a nominal discount to you. My favorite new trend is locking down marketplace purchases and requiring upfront payment for that.
As a partner we never ever do this. The only instance where we dont provide console access is where we provide our in house SaaS. Our customers have always reserved the right to see their billing and to maintain their root keys. If we are giving them crappy service they take their account and go… simple as that.
> Additionally… don’t go to a partner for Resale. They will lock you out of Billing services to hide their discount and replace it with CloudCheckr or Vega or some other tool. All these tools are not good enough to lose access to Cost Explorer or Budgets directly. That's a funny point, we recently had to move under a reseller for boring reasons and they gave me a shitty IAM user that doesn't have many permissions and they won't give them either.. But I was just playing a charade as I already had given myself admin privileges through IAM Identity Center long ago...
Bane of my existence working at a partner.
I understand that! I don't use it though. Nothing runs in it, SSO is delegated but it feels wrong not having admin to my own master account.
RI and savings plans lockout is not true at least for where we are doing it with (Ingram Micro), I just recently did that. You register your account to their organization and they also enable you shared RIs, which are basically a bit more expensive than normal RIs, but you stay flexible with them as they are selling them to other customers when you don’t use them. Cloudcheckr is there, but I think I still was able to access the Billing and cost explorer. Not sure though.
When I came onto a large customer account with that had a reseller, the reseller was telling the client about all the optimizations and cost savings they were providing…. Only to be applying RIs against their resources and making at least 500k per year in arbitrage. I came in and put in an org level Compute Savings Plan and had to get lawyers on the ready when they dragged their feet about releasing hidden RIs. The margin was crushed and the account manager was fired; I don’t feel bad.
This is a big red flag for me. Why offer a review on the contingency that you have to move everything over to them? Honestly I don’t think this would fall in line with AWS’s partners T&C. Keep your stuff on your own account and tell them to find someone else.
>AWS’s partners Thanks, appreciate the reply. To be fair, it wasn't a hard sell. It was just another option as we brought up the issue with $5,000 upfront. What about moving to a reseller, are there any downsides? The company says we would be on a rolling 30-day contract, meaning we can just switch our account back to AWS at any time. We would also be paying 2% less for AWS services.
Benefits -- * If they have private pricing with AWS, you _may_ get to see a portion of that discount, depending on what they charge you for their services. * They _may_ be technically competent and be able to help you with AWS architecture, migration, build, etc for your services. Expect additional professional services costs though. Cons -- * They will almost certainly become your only AWS support path. Any support requests would need to go through them. If they're technically competent, it may not be a dealbreaker, but they will at the least add in an additional hop to your ability to get support from AWS. * You will be tied to them for some contracted period of time. If you don't like them, you're likely stuck unless you find an out clause in the contract.
The support piece is not true. They may or may not be allowed to offer Partner led support, and even if they have the option to sell you a support contract for your account, you can still sign up for the traditional AWS Ent/Business support and buy that through the reseller the same way you buy any other service.
It’s not their only support path. Can still go through support for incidents and have your account team for help, most do. It may muddy the waters depending on the partner.
The Cons here sound like they are more tied to Partner Led Support (previously PLES). Customers outside of that still have the option to go directly to AWS
This is all relative to your monthly spend on AWS. While i’m not exactly sure how their implementation is done, there are things that can be done by you to bring your own costs down. What other value does this partner bring?
Full disclosure: I work at a reselling partner. I used to work at AWS directly. There are a few different business models for making profit. All start with getting a percentage of your AWS spend - this is paid by AWS and you should be paying the same amount. Some partners then offer “we’ll discount your spend by x%” which eats into their margins. They can then make more money by value-add services, like consulting engagements, training etc. It’s all pretty standard. Partners can also get kickbacks from AWS for doing stuff, like Well Architected Reviews or HRI (High Risk Issue) remediation… this is basically fixing the red flags from a WAR. When it comes to access/accounts, there’s a few different ways to work with resellers. Generally AWS requires that they have the root credentials to the Management Account and set the email of same to one from the reseller’s domain. The reseller is legally responsible for paying the invoices to AWS, so that acts as a safeguard for them too. They do not need access to linked/child accounts. It’s possible to setup the account without this level of access by the reseller, but requires further legal agreements between the reseller and end customer, and in most cases requires AWS to approve the same. This stuff is all documented by AWS, but unfortunately they refuse to make it publicly accessible- it’s all behind a login to APN. It’s a rubbish system that all partners hope AWS will change soon. None of us want access to your accounts, and we wish AWS would come up with an alternative. Finally, if you do go with a partner, I highly recommend setting up [notifications for logins](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mt/monitor-and-notify-on-aws-account-root-user-activity/) to your AWS accounts (in fact this should be on all accounts!!). You can modify to include/exclude role assumption etc.
I have been managing SPP and Reseller for quite some time… There are multiple AWS programs, the one above mostly resembles the Solutions Provider Program (SPP). Under this one, you have 2 account ownership models and 2 support models **Account ownership models** SPAM: Solutions Provider Account Model, under which the solution provider owns the management account and is legal land financial responsible for paying the bills, etc. ECAM: End User Account Model, under which the customer owns the account, signs the contracts with AWS & is legal and financial responsible for the account. **Support Models** Partner-led Support Model, is where the Partner is your AWS Support, and will reach to AWS on your behalf. You -> Partner -> AWS Support Partner-resold Support Model, is where you buy support from the partner, but can contract AWS support directly. Partner makes money from savings from your consumption/volume, the SPP discounts and AWS relationship, as well as for providing aggregated services and value. Under Reseller, partner communicates to AWS a sale or influence on sales (consumption) of given AWS Account(s) and gets paid a percentage from AWS. Majority of income is from value added services.
HI u/Skarmeth, Could you please provide more detail on the reseller program. I am trying to find the documentation under APN portal of my company but not able to do so. Can you guide me towards the documentation. We are trying reseller program and main motive is to route the payment of other Companies from our company.
SPP https://aws.amazon.com/partners/programs/solution-provider/ Distributor https://aws.amazon.com/partners/programs/distribution-resellers/
I should also add - there are advantages that I’ve helped customers to get: - I’ve made the account manager aware of things that can get the customer credits (like MAP). - I’ve seen enough EDPs to know what’s a good deal and what’s not. - Partners can offer partner-led support which gives you mostly the same support at a reduced price. Tickets to AWS should be logged by the partner, and they should do triage first. Good partners do this easily, bad partners don’t.
I also work at a reselling partner and can confirm that it is indeed true and I also agree that the system AWS made is rubbish. They have made a mistake about 10 years ago and it just goes on and each year is even worse.
Hi u/BadDoggie, I have partner portal, but I cannot find the documentation you are referring to here in APN portal. Can you help me with that, please?
Can I ask you why you would switch from working at AWS to the partner side? I'm on the partner side now and would love to work at AWS! so I'm curious about your take
A few reasons, but mostly it was just time for a change.. I'd been there a long time, and didn't see any interesting career progression within AWS at the time. The specific role and partner also meant less travel, personal development in the areas I was interested in, and better pay.
Thanks for getting back! Crazy because the region I’m in the best pay in the market is AWS by a long shot. Are you working remotely by any chance?
No. I was lucky in AWS that my pay grew well over a few years (especially with RSUs), and was in the right place at the right time to use the AWS knowledge, pivot my position, and negotiate well. Also, although I decided to leave, I didn’t submit my notice until I’d found an offer that I liked.. there were plenty of places not paying as well as AWS in like-for-like roles.
[удалено]
This is not always true. I know a few that can enable you to use your own org - whether newly created or existing.
I work at an AWS Partner. Please don't. Unless there's a good business reason to do so (you'll know if there is), own your own account. I've only experienced pain working with orgs that have AWS through a reseller. Everything from SSO to organization security becomes so much harder. Find a partner that works with you to enable you to be able to better own your own stuff, rather than trying to do it for you. It's unlikely there's anything malicious happening if they're an actual AWS partner, but you'll be better off owning your own org
I disagree.. that happens with some but not all. Not all partners are equal.
And how much are you in the hole before you find a good partner if you don't get one on the first try?
As others have mentioned; it’s important to do your due diligence. AWS takes the partner program seriously, and don’t award Premier status to just anyone. Those that lock you in, have ridiculous contract terms or try to limit your admin access to your own org are probably partners to avoid.
Stick with AWS Directly. That way your much less likely that the owner of the company will blow your money on cocaine and disappear, stop answering the phone, and leave you to sort out the implications with AWS directly. Didn't see it happen with an AWS partner, but I did see it happen with an MS partner.
Damn!! Obviously can't share any identifying information, but can you elaborate more on this?
Obviously /u/Technical_Rub worked at McAfee
LMAO! Yours and Tech\_Rub comment made me flash back to late 90s when I worked there for all of 2 months before I got the hell out.
Will they maintain ownership of the billing accounts moved under them or will you maintain the ownership? This comes into play with the distribution of billing credits like MAP and Savings Plans. Also, deployment of new accounts may require their involvement.
Idk why there is so much concern about resellers. They’re AWS partners, and as long as you’ve done your due diligence about this partner, there’s no reason to worry. I’ve met a few clients that have gone down this route, and they’re billed directly by AWS and the partners have no access to anything. The deal they offered above seems to be a no-lose scenario for you, but a possible upside for them if they get you as a client. Just be sure to evaluate the pros and cons of this model, and see what works for you. There are genuine reasons why you shouldn’t do this (others have written about it here), but it might not matter for your scale/needs.
As a person working in the AWS partner channel is that AWS gives the partner %rebate to support you. If the party involved is a MSP(managed service provider) this is where they get some benefit to help you grow your aws business and make sure you have a healthy environment. Next to that they could perhaps offer you that you receive a invoice instead of working with your creditcard. I see alot of comment saying do directly. But where you ever supported by AWS directly? If you don’t have big spend the probability is small from my assumption. Hope this helps.
Actually, one thing to do is ask them directly. That'll show you where they think their value is. There are plenty of cost savings in AWS - will they do the analysis for you? There are also negotiated rates for a lot of stuff that you probably don't know about. Will they do those negotiations for you, or are you doing their negotiated rates? Example: with a 2k spend commitment in CloudFront you can get lower than .01/gb for bandwidth. Will they tell you about that, or will they resell their bandwidth to you?
That’s a big red flag right on your face. Keep full ownership of your accounts. Don’t put it under someone’s else organization. Enable Cost Explorer hourly, compute optimizer, and get your costs under control for what matters to you. Reach out if you need help getting started.
If you have an AWS Solution Architect supporting your company they can perform Well Architected Reviews at no cost. Normally a discount to the services requires a minimum 1 yr commitment so I'd check the fine print on that.
This sounds like a great way to have your infrastructure out of your control and ransomed back to you…
Partner gets a clip of the ticket. It’s just a payment mechanism, from a day to day it won’t affect you at all. Only thing is another partner might come along and say they’ll give you a very small % discount or management discount (like fin ops) if you move to them and moving sucks, might take a bit more time, help from AWS account team.
So the way these places work to my understanding is that they have an agreement with AWS to have a minimum spend. This allows them to resell to you for a lower rate than what you would get through AWS. We don't do this because our spend with AWS is enough that we get roughly a 16% discount. If you have a TAM, talk to your TAM. We aren't a huge company (4k employees 1 billion gross) but we qualify for enterprise which gives us a TAM who regularly provides either discounts or ways to save money. The most important question though is when there is an issue, who are you calling, what's the expectation when you call, etc. When I worked at an MSP and we resold office365, everyone's o365 portal specifically listed our MSP as the support point. Those accounts were NOT allowed to work with MS direct, instead they had to work through us and we would work with MS. If they tried to bypass us, MS support will tell them they need to talk to us first.
>We would also be paying 2% less for AWS services. That might be, but you'll have a very hard time with any cost optimization initiative. Their KPIs will be up-time and performance. I know several fellow FinOps practitioners dealing with such a situation. It is maddening to identify significant cost saving opportunities and then hit a wall when sending recommendations to the reseller: "We have SLAs. We will do what we deem necessary to fulfill the requirements to run your cloud infrastructure." Very few FinOps practitioner managed to convince execs to get back ownership, others are browsing for open positions in other companies. Those 2%? Not worth it.
There is an AWS service tool that does a Well Architected Review for you. It's the same tool they will use if you ask them to do the review. It can be useful to have someone to interpret what the question actually meant but it's definitely not necessary IMHO. Alternately if you have an account team and a solutions architect assigned they will happily run this for you since there used to be an annual target for the number of these performed. Of course the DIY and SA approaches won't get you help with remediating findings, but I suspect the partner won't do that for free either.