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Rohan Karmarkar

Director, APO Technology, AWS Partner SA

AWS

play_circle_outline Partners Validate Production Workloads at AWS GenAI Competency Program Summit in NYC

play_circle_outline Skills development and customer success

play_circle_outline Collaboration with Deloitte on data and AI

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Rohan Karmarkar | AWS

Rohan Karmarkar

Director, APO Technology, AWS Partner SA AWS

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>> Hello, welcome back to theCube's Coverage here in New York City. I'm John Furrier, host of theCube. The AWS Summit, a big event. It's part of their summit program, but the New York City is a big one because concentration of FinTech, a lot of customers here, New York City is the epicenter, one of the hot cities for generative AI. We've got a great guest here, Rohan Karmarkar, who's director of AWS Product Partner Technology. He also runs the GenAI Competency Program. Rohan, great to see you. Thanks for coming on the pop-up Cube here in New York City.

>> Yeah.

>> Thanks for coming on.

>> Great to be here. Thanks, John.

>> I'm really interested in what you're doing, because we're seeing a trend, obviously, with generative AI. We've been covering on theCube, SiliconANGLE, and theCUBEResearch like it's nobody's business. But the thing that's happening now is production workloads are hitting the scene, and teams are being enabled, across all the enterprises in the world, in their departments, getting budget for GenAI. And you see this with new markets, there's a vibe of, I've got to get a design center together, we need to get some core competency, we've got to understand what our philosophy is, we've got to get intrinsic foundational things in place to go for this next generation shift. You are a big part of the Competency Program on AWS that actually starts validating those partners and production workloads for AWS as people start to make these bets. That is the program. Can you explain...

>> Yeah.

>> Well, that's my version of it. But will you tell us what the program is, and why it exists, and what does it do?

>> Yeah. No, happy to share that. GenAI has been, as you said, forefront of a lot of customers' mind. They're leaning in, and they're trying to figure out how to use GenAI at scale within their enterprises, and this is where they lean towards partners to help them build strategy, build a lot of business cases and ROI metrics, as well as implementation, and they look at partners to provide both software solutions, as well as industry solutions. So what we've done with the GenAI Competency Program is help customers identify such partners. So this is a program which goes through a rigorous technical validation, where the partners submit various capabilities around Amazon GenAI technologies, like Bedrock, Amazon SageMaker, Inferentia, Trainium, as well as Q. And not only do they prove their technical expertise, but they also have proven customer success, where each of the Competency Partners submits four production-ready customer case studies to be a part of the competency. So it's a very select list of partners.

>> Okay, let me just back up for a second.

>> Yeha.

>> You're going a little fast for me, I'm a little slow this morning.

>> Yeah.

>> So is the Generative AI Competency Program for end user customers, or is it designed for partners, or both?

>> So partners are part of the Competency Program-

>> Okay....

>> and the customers typically look at the Competency Partners, and select the partners-

>> Got it....

>> for their GenAI implementation.

>> So you're brokering to the end user customer-

>> Correct....

>> the big enterprise, trying to figure out their world-

>> Yes....

>> and then give them a market basket of partners-

>> Yes....

>> that have been vetted.

>> That have been validated-

>> Validated....

>> and proven track record.

>> Okay, let's dig into that.

>> Yeah.

>> What does it take to be competent in the AI side right now?

>> So like I said, there are many areas, starting from consulting, strategy, software solutions. Training is very important. Many of our partners are retraining their workforce to be more AI-enabled.

>> Employee training, not data training?

>> Yes.

>> Let's be specific on this. A lot of training going on there-

>> Yeah....

>> and inference.

>> Yeah.

>> But you're talking about skill development?

>> Skill development-

>> Got it....

>> that's correct. As well as, like I said, these partners have done production-ready implementations and customer references, so they have a lot of industry insights and domain expertise to write GenAI at scale for customers. So that's what it takes to be a Competency Partner. And today, we are also announcing an expanded cohort, we are identifying 19 more partners to be part of this program, so it takes the total-

>> That's being announced here in New York City?

>> In New York City today.

>> New cohort, 19 new partners?

>> Partners. So it takes our total Competency Partners to around 60 plus, and we are also expanding the offerings to Korea, Greater China, Latin America, as well as Middle East.

>> Okay, so you're expanding that. So let me just back up. The current 60, US, North America, or is that international?

>> It's global.

>> So it is global?

>> Yes.

>> Okay. Is there a trend you're seeing, is there categories that are emerging faster than others, or is it horizontal in terms of the category perspective?

>> It's both. So the type of partners in this competency are both ISVs, as well as consulting partners, as well as model providers. Consulting partners have also got various industry solutions in there, and strategy consulting capabilities as well. So it's a pretty broad set of cohort of partners.

>> All are Marketplace participants?

>> Most of them are Marketplace.

>> Okay. It's not a requirement?

>> No, it's not a requirement.

>> So I'm a partner, so take me through the life cycle, the day in the life. Hey, I'm a partner, I want to get in on the action.

>> Yes.

>> And of course, there's probably some benefits from the sales enablement standpoint, I'm sure.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. So take me through the process and coach me through, what do I do?

>> Yeah. See, typically, partners are setting up GenAI center of excellence within their organization, so we've got our own GenAI center of excellence, which helps partners to develop the necessary capabilities that they need to become a Competency Partner. So we help them get to that stage, and then as they're getting to that stage and driving customer engagement, they get to be the Competency Partner.

>> Yeah.

>> So it's a typical ramp that the partners get into, and then eventually be the Competency Partner.

>> When I used to go to Disney as a kid, I used to want to go on the big ride, and you've got to be this tall to ride the rollercoaster, Magic Mountain. What is the bar to get on this program, what is that line? What do people need to know? Is there you've got to have production workloads, is there a filter? How tall do you need to be to ride the Competency Program?

>> Yeah, the bar's pretty high. Obviously, partners need to demonstrate their technical expertise around GenAI services, as well as customer success. I think customer success is critical for us. As you know, there's a lot of experimentation and testing and POCs happening as well, so we want partners to really be experts in driving those production-ready case studies. In fact, a couple of Competency Partners, like Caylent and Loka, we've seen them now advise customers to bypass the POC stage and build directly for production-ready use cases, so that's one of the trends that we've seen starting to happen. So that's one of the high bars of the Competency-

>> These are builders-

>> Yes, yeah....

>> as used to say.

>> Yeah.

>> Let me ask a question. So just they have to have a product or solution-

>> Yes....

>> in market-

>> And capabilities....

>> and capabilities-

>> Yeah....

>> meaning professional services?

>> Professional services.

>> So product and services-

>> Yes....

>> with customers, in production.

>> Correct.

>> Not beta.

>> Not beta.

>> That's the filter.

>> That's the filter.

>> Okay, got it. And then, there's some objective thinking.

>> Yes.

>> All right, so how's it going right now? What is the highlight, what's the coolest thing you've seen?

>> Yeah. Like I said, there is a lot of good and broad use cases that we are seeing with the customer. So it's not just about the low-hanging fruit, which is the chatbots, which I call, it's about really-

>> I want to roll my eyes when I hear chatbot one more time. They're agents now.

>> Yeah, yes. So it's really more integrating these technologies into applications and their business processes, that's what the partners are driving today. To give you another example, Loka that I was talking about, they work with therapy brands who build up a transcription subscription service for mental healthcare professionals. So using that service, they use Bedrock, they train their models to understand the nuance of that particular industry, and then, using that particular customized model, they're building this service which now can generate case summaries and save time of the therapist in this less administrative task and focus more on patient care. So this is one of the examples, where, like I said, the industry solutions, the applications, are really becoming high value and high impact.

>> Okay. So the news here in New York City for this event is the new cohort that's global. Give us the hard news, what's the news?

>> So 19 new partners are being added to this Competency Program today, that takes the total to 60 plus partners globally. And with these 19 partners, some of the new partners we are adding are C3.ai, Cognizant, and IBM, and a few others in Korea, Greater China, LATAM, and Middle East.

>> IBM's been a big partner of you guys-

>> Yes....

>> maybe in the last two years. You guys have really done with IBM. Obviously, they've got a lot of production workloads.

>> Yes, yeah.

>> How's it going with IBM?

>> It's been pretty awesome. They're working both on the software side with us, migrating a lot of their software products on AWS, as well as Marketplace, as well as they're doubling down with us on their professional services, and watsonx.governance and watsonx.data. So there's a lot of collaboration happening between the two companies.

>> Yeah. I was just talking with Mona Chadha, who's the director of infrastructure partners, and Rob Strechay, on theCUBEResearch team, and I have been talking about this too in our research, is that we're moving from a bolt-on to integration, where value, as you look at these marketplaces in general, not just yours, but people who are working with each other, 85% of the internet is connected with APIs. Generative AI is going to be the new wave that's going to change the data landscape, as well as infrastructure capabilities, and integration is becoming now a new important engineering feature of partnering. Not just, hey, let's do a deal-

>> Yeah....

>> and we share some data through an API. We're talking about really joint engineering, partnering. This is where the Competency Program, at least I see it going, where I can, as I'm building the bridge to the future, I'll use that metaphor, I'm going to have suppliers.

>> Yeah.

>> I'm going to have a general contractor, I'm going to have a major power source, maybe it's AWS, maybe I have some on-prem, maybe I've got some edge. So I'm looking at a distributed computing paradigm. Integration, the most important thing, how is that showing up on your competency data screen? Are you seeing that as a big factor as people look for vetted solutions, verified blue check mark? That's what you're doing-

>> Yeah....

>> you're verifying.

>> Yeah, it is, it is. And like you said-

>> Is integration a big part of that?

>> Integration is a big part of it, co-innovation is a big part of it as well. Another big news today is us and Deloitte extending our collaboration agreement on data and AI, and this is a investment, which, again, is about integrating our services into their industry solutions, as well as setting up a co-innovation lab to drive the next gen adoption of technologies, which includes autonomous robotics, as well as quantum ML and . So it's also doubling down on integration for today, as well as innovating for the future.

>> I was talking to my other journalists and analysts, and we were saying there's a Deloitte Love Fest this week here in New York City with AWS, big announcement. Talk about the Deloitte relationship, because that's important, and Mona teased it a little bit about, but that's a competency center that they're building with AWS.

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> Is it a competency center, or is it more of a showcase design center? Explain the Deloitte-

>> Sure. So Deloitte was one of our launch partners for the GenAI Competency, when we launched the GenAI Competency around 18 months back. Now, they're doubling down, and they're going to drive a few things. One is really building the industry solutions, and going to market with those industry solutions that are production-ready. That's one part of the strategic collaboration agreement. The other part is building an innovation lab, which includes resources, both from AWS, as well as Deloitte, it's a co-funded innovation lab, that will help prototype and incubate technologies of the future. So it's also-

>> Like what, like what? Give me an example.

>> Like Quantum ML is one example. We are also looking at automatic robotics, is another example. So the few areas that we are exploring together, as well as, like I said, helping customers who are ready to adopt GenAI at scale.

>> The fun part about AWS, and we're a customer, a small customer-

>> Yeah....

>> we have a small language model, with theCUBE, everyone knows that, it's that you guys enable so much, and it's fun to watch partners like at Deloitte who jump in and go all in-

>> Yeah....

>> and do innovate with you guys. But I've noticed that creates... When this happens before, it's happened before many times, we've seen this movie before, S3, EC2, and the higher level services came out, you saw a lot of innovation. Then there's a domino effect, then you see other people come on. Has the other partners been leaning into this? Can you share what the other GSIs or big integration partners... Because they're leading the field right now in terms of most activity we see, a lot of those partners are putting together solutions for customers. They're engineering shops, not just consultants.

>> Yeah.

>> They're actually doing a lot of good work. So outside of Deloitte, who's jumping on into the mix?

>> Yeah. There are many GSIs there. I just mentioned Cognizant, IBM are part of the competency now. Accenture has been part of that competency since launch, as well as TCS and Infosys. These are all leaning in, and everybody is taking a view of... They're engaging with the customer to understand, hey, what is the problem you're trying to solve? And it's not a technology-led conversation, it's a business outcome-led conversation.

>> Yeah.

>> What is the problem you're trying to solve? And then, how can this technology help solve that particular problem? So they're leading it more from the business and industry side, which is really being more impactful, because they are now picking the use cases which give the right ROI to the customer. It's not always the low-hanging fruit of the hobby projects that you tend to do, it's the value projects.

>> A lot of product engineering going on.

>> Yes.

>> A lot more product engineering. Are you seeing the same thing?

>> Yes, a lot more product engineering, a lot more... For customers, they're trying to understand, do they need to set up a platform that can help drive GenAI at scale, which has the right security controls, the right governance, the right responsible AI development controls and framework that are suitable for the organization. So a lot of these building blocks are being built right now, and then different teams within the customer can leverage these technologies in various applications.

>> All right. Rohan, final question for you, summarize the news and a position of the Competency Program. Again, congratulations. I think this is well-needed, the market needs to get this done. What is it about? How do people get involved? Give a plug for the program.

>> Yeah, a couple of things. We have the GenAI Innovation Center, which helps partners to develop capabilities, and that capabilities, as partners develop, they can be a Competency Partner, and like I mentioned, 60 plus Competency Partners today. And a recent Canalys survey showed that AWS specialization program, the Competency Program, 87% of the customers consider it as a top three priority for them to look at competency before selecting a partner for a project. So it's super important for customers, super important for partners to differentiate themselves with this competency, it's a global program with 60 plus partners.

>> Yeah.

>> Super excited to be part of that journey.

>> Well, we commend you, and of course, thecuberesearch.com, check it out. We have been identifying, and this validates your piece, that you're seeing, storage, networking, and compute, changing significantly the characteristics of how to use those resources when you're using generative AI applications, which then points to the next layer up, which is the data and all those higher level services, so cloud as we know it is going next level. This is what's happening, that's the story.

>> It's AI anywhere, yes.

>> It's GenAI, it's next level, it's legit next level. Rohan, thank you for coming on theCUBE.

>> No, thank you for having me.

>> We appreciate your time. I'm John Furrier, here on theCUBE. TheCUBE Next Level here at NYC, it's GenAI, it's all the action, here in New York City, I'm John Furrier. We'll be right back after this break.

Rohan Karmarkar | AWS

search

>> Hello, welcome back to theCube's Coverage here in New York City. I'm John Furrier, host of theCube. The AWS Summit, a big event. It's part of their summit program, but the New York City is a big one because concentration of FinTech, a lot of customers here, New York City is the epicenter, one of the hot cities for generative AI. We've got a great guest here, Rohan Karmarkar, who's director of AWS Product Partner Technology. He also runs the GenAI Competency Program. Rohan, great to see you. Thanks for coming on the pop-up Cube here in New York City.

>> Yeah.

>> Thanks for coming on.

>> Great to be here. Thanks, John.

>> I'm really interested in what you're doing, because we're seeing a trend, obviously, with generative AI. We've been covering on theCube, SiliconANGLE, and theCUBEResearch like it's nobody's business. But the thing that's happening now is production workloads are hitting the scene, and teams are being enabled, across all the enterprises in the world, in their departments, getting budget for GenAI. And you see this with new markets, there's a vibe of, I've got to get a design center together, we need to get some core competency, we've got to understand what our philosophy is, we've got to get intrinsic foundational things in place to go for this next generation shift. You are a big part of the Competency Program on AWS that actually starts validating those partners and production workloads for AWS as people start to make these bets. That is the program. Can you explain...

>> Yeah.

>> Well, that's my version of it. But will you tell us what the program is, and why it exists, and what does it do?

>> Yeah. No, happy to share that. GenAI has been, as you said, forefront of a lot of customers' mind. They're leaning in, and they're trying to figure out how to use GenAI at scale within their enterprises, and this is where they lean towards partners to help them build strategy, build a lot of business cases and ROI metrics, as well as implementation, and they look at partners to provide both software solutions, as well as industry solutions. So what we've done with the GenAI Competency Program is help customers identify such partners. So this is a program which goes through a rigorous technical validation, where the partners submit various capabilities around Amazon GenAI technologies, like Bedrock, Amazon SageMaker, Inferentia, Trainium, as well as Q. And not only do they prove their technical expertise, but they also have proven customer success, where each of the Competency Partners submits four production-ready customer case studies to be a part of the competency. So it's a very select list of partners.

>> Okay, let me just back up for a second.

>> Yeha.

>> You're going a little fast for me, I'm a little slow this morning.

>> Yeah.

>> So is the Generative AI Competency Program for end user customers, or is it designed for partners, or both?

>> So partners are part of the Competency Program-

>> Okay....

>> and the customers typically look at the Competency Partners, and select the partners-

>> Got it....

>> for their GenAI implementation.

>> So you're brokering to the end user customer-

>> Correct....

>> the big enterprise, trying to figure out their world-

>> Yes....

>> and then give them a market basket of partners-

>> Yes....

>> that have been vetted.

>> That have been validated-

>> Validated....

>> and proven track record.

>> Okay, let's dig into that.

>> Yeah.

>> What does it take to be competent in the AI side right now?

>> So like I said, there are many areas, starting from consulting, strategy, software solutions. Training is very important. Many of our partners are retraining their workforce to be more AI-enabled.

>> Employee training, not data training?

>> Yes.

>> Let's be specific on this. A lot of training going on there-

>> Yeah....

>> and inference.

>> Yeah.

>> But you're talking about skill development?

>> Skill development-

>> Got it....

>> that's correct. As well as, like I said, these partners have done production-ready implementations and customer references, so they have a lot of industry insights and domain expertise to write GenAI at scale for customers. So that's what it takes to be a Competency Partner. And today, we are also announcing an expanded cohort, we are identifying 19 more partners to be part of this program, so it takes the total-

>> That's being announced here in New York City?

>> In New York City today.

>> New cohort, 19 new partners?

>> Partners. So it takes our total Competency Partners to around 60 plus, and we are also expanding the offerings to Korea, Greater China, Latin America, as well as Middle East.

>> Okay, so you're expanding that. So let me just back up. The current 60, US, North America, or is that international?

>> It's global.

>> So it is global?

>> Yes.

>> Okay. Is there a trend you're seeing, is there categories that are emerging faster than others, or is it horizontal in terms of the category perspective?

>> It's both. So the type of partners in this competency are both ISVs, as well as consulting partners, as well as model providers. Consulting partners have also got various industry solutions in there, and strategy consulting capabilities as well. So it's a pretty broad set of cohort of partners.

>> All are Marketplace participants?

>> Most of them are Marketplace.

>> Okay. It's not a requirement?

>> No, it's not a requirement.

>> So I'm a partner, so take me through the life cycle, the day in the life. Hey, I'm a partner, I want to get in on the action.

>> Yes.

>> And of course, there's probably some benefits from the sales enablement standpoint, I'm sure.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. So take me through the process and coach me through, what do I do?

>> Yeah. See, typically, partners are setting up GenAI center of excellence within their organization, so we've got our own GenAI center of excellence, which helps partners to develop the necessary capabilities that they need to become a Competency Partner. So we help them get to that stage, and then as they're getting to that stage and driving customer engagement, they get to be the Competency Partner.

>> Yeah.

>> So it's a typical ramp that the partners get into, and then eventually be the Competency Partner.

>> When I used to go to Disney as a kid, I used to want to go on the big ride, and you've got to be this tall to ride the rollercoaster, Magic Mountain. What is the bar to get on this program, what is that line? What do people need to know? Is there you've got to have production workloads, is there a filter? How tall do you need to be to ride the Competency Program?

>> Yeah, the bar's pretty high. Obviously, partners need to demonstrate their technical expertise around GenAI services, as well as customer success. I think customer success is critical for us. As you know, there's a lot of experimentation and testing and POCs happening as well, so we want partners to really be experts in driving those production-ready case studies. In fact, a couple of Competency Partners, like Caylent and Loka, we've seen them now advise customers to bypass the POC stage and build directly for production-ready use cases, so that's one of the trends that we've seen starting to happen. So that's one of the high bars of the Competency-

>> These are builders-

>> Yes, yeah....

>> as used to say.

>> Yeah.

>> Let me ask a question. So just they have to have a product or solution-

>> Yes....

>> in market-

>> And capabilities....

>> and capabilities-

>> Yeah....

>> meaning professional services?

>> Professional services.

>> So product and services-

>> Yes....

>> with customers, in production.

>> Correct.

>> Not beta.

>> Not beta.

>> That's the filter.

>> That's the filter.

>> Okay, got it. And then, there's some objective thinking.

>> Yes.

>> All right, so how's it going right now? What is the highlight, what's the coolest thing you've seen?

>> Yeah. Like I said, there is a lot of good and broad use cases that we are seeing with the customer. So it's not just about the low-hanging fruit, which is the chatbots, which I call, it's about really-

>> I want to roll my eyes when I hear chatbot one more time. They're agents now.

>> Yeah, yes. So it's really more integrating these technologies into applications and their business processes, that's what the partners are driving today. To give you another example, Loka that I was talking about, they work with therapy brands who build up a transcription subscription service for mental healthcare professionals. So using that service, they use Bedrock, they train their models to understand the nuance of that particular industry, and then, using that particular customized model, they're building this service which now can generate case summaries and save time of the therapist in this less administrative task and focus more on patient care. So this is one of the examples, where, like I said, the industry solutions, the applications, are really becoming high value and high impact.

>> Okay. So the news here in New York City for this event is the new cohort that's global. Give us the hard news, what's the news?

>> So 19 new partners are being added to this Competency Program today, that takes the total to 60 plus partners globally. And with these 19 partners, some of the new partners we are adding are C3.ai, Cognizant, and IBM, and a few others in Korea, Greater China, LATAM, and Middle East.

>> IBM's been a big partner of you guys-

>> Yes....

>> maybe in the last two years. You guys have really done with IBM. Obviously, they've got a lot of production workloads.

>> Yes, yeah.

>> How's it going with IBM?

>> It's been pretty awesome. They're working both on the software side with us, migrating a lot of their software products on AWS, as well as Marketplace, as well as they're doubling down with us on their professional services, and watsonx.governance and watsonx.data. So there's a lot of collaboration happening between the two companies.

>> Yeah. I was just talking with Mona Chadha, who's the director of infrastructure partners, and Rob Strechay, on theCUBEResearch team, and I have been talking about this too in our research, is that we're moving from a bolt-on to integration, where value, as you look at these marketplaces in general, not just yours, but people who are working with each other, 85% of the internet is connected with APIs. Generative AI is going to be the new wave that's going to change the data landscape, as well as infrastructure capabilities, and integration is becoming now a new important engineering feature of partnering. Not just, hey, let's do a deal-

>> Yeah....

>> and we share some data through an API. We're talking about really joint engineering, partnering. This is where the Competency Program, at least I see it going, where I can, as I'm building the bridge to the future, I'll use that metaphor, I'm going to have suppliers.

>> Yeah.

>> I'm going to have a general contractor, I'm going to have a major power source, maybe it's AWS, maybe I have some on-prem, maybe I've got some edge. So I'm looking at a distributed computing paradigm. Integration, the most important thing, how is that showing up on your competency data screen? Are you seeing that as a big factor as people look for vetted solutions, verified blue check mark? That's what you're doing-

>> Yeah....

>> you're verifying.

>> Yeah, it is, it is. And like you said-

>> Is integration a big part of that?

>> Integration is a big part of it, co-innovation is a big part of it as well. Another big news today is us and Deloitte extending our collaboration agreement on data and AI, and this is a investment, which, again, is about integrating our services into their industry solutions, as well as setting up a co-innovation lab to drive the next gen adoption of technologies, which includes autonomous robotics, as well as quantum ML and . So it's also doubling down on integration for today, as well as innovating for the future.

>> I was talking to my other journalists and analysts, and we were saying there's a Deloitte Love Fest this week here in New York City with AWS, big announcement. Talk about the Deloitte relationship, because that's important, and Mona teased it a little bit about, but that's a competency center that they're building with AWS.

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> Is it a competency center, or is it more of a showcase design center? Explain the Deloitte-

>> Sure. So Deloitte was one of our launch partners for the GenAI Competency, when we launched the GenAI Competency around 18 months back. Now, they're doubling down, and they're going to drive a few things. One is really building the industry solutions, and going to market with those industry solutions that are production-ready. That's one part of the strategic collaboration agreement. The other part is building an innovation lab, which includes resources, both from AWS, as well as Deloitte, it's a co-funded innovation lab, that will help prototype and incubate technologies of the future. So it's also-

>> Like what, like what? Give me an example.

>> Like Quantum ML is one example. We are also looking at automatic robotics, is another example. So the few areas that we are exploring together, as well as, like I said, helping customers who are ready to adopt GenAI at scale.

>> The fun part about AWS, and we're a customer, a small customer-

>> Yeah....

>> we have a small language model, with theCUBE, everyone knows that, it's that you guys enable so much, and it's fun to watch partners like at Deloitte who jump in and go all in-

>> Yeah....

>> and do innovate with you guys. But I've noticed that creates... When this happens before, it's happened before many times, we've seen this movie before, S3, EC2, and the higher level services came out, you saw a lot of innovation. Then there's a domino effect, then you see other people come on. Has the other partners been leaning into this? Can you share what the other GSIs or big integration partners... Because they're leading the field right now in terms of most activity we see, a lot of those partners are putting together solutions for customers. They're engineering shops, not just consultants.

>> Yeah.

>> They're actually doing a lot of good work. So outside of Deloitte, who's jumping on into the mix?

>> Yeah. There are many GSIs there. I just mentioned Cognizant, IBM are part of the competency now. Accenture has been part of that competency since launch, as well as TCS and Infosys. These are all leaning in, and everybody is taking a view of... They're engaging with the customer to understand, hey, what is the problem you're trying to solve? And it's not a technology-led conversation, it's a business outcome-led conversation.

>> Yeah.

>> What is the problem you're trying to solve? And then, how can this technology help solve that particular problem? So they're leading it more from the business and industry side, which is really being more impactful, because they are now picking the use cases which give the right ROI to the customer. It's not always the low-hanging fruit of the hobby projects that you tend to do, it's the value projects.

>> A lot of product engineering going on.

>> Yes.

>> A lot more product engineering. Are you seeing the same thing?

>> Yes, a lot more product engineering, a lot more... For customers, they're trying to understand, do they need to set up a platform that can help drive GenAI at scale, which has the right security controls, the right governance, the right responsible AI development controls and framework that are suitable for the organization. So a lot of these building blocks are being built right now, and then different teams within the customer can leverage these technologies in various applications.

>> All right. Rohan, final question for you, summarize the news and a position of the Competency Program. Again, congratulations. I think this is well-needed, the market needs to get this done. What is it about? How do people get involved? Give a plug for the program.

>> Yeah, a couple of things. We have the GenAI Innovation Center, which helps partners to develop capabilities, and that capabilities, as partners develop, they can be a Competency Partner, and like I mentioned, 60 plus Competency Partners today. And a recent Canalys survey showed that AWS specialization program, the Competency Program, 87% of the customers consider it as a top three priority for them to look at competency before selecting a partner for a project. So it's super important for customers, super important for partners to differentiate themselves with this competency, it's a global program with 60 plus partners.

>> Yeah.

>> Super excited to be part of that journey.

>> Well, we commend you, and of course, thecuberesearch.com, check it out. We have been identifying, and this validates your piece, that you're seeing, storage, networking, and compute, changing significantly the characteristics of how to use those resources when you're using generative AI applications, which then points to the next layer up, which is the data and all those higher level services, so cloud as we know it is going next level. This is what's happening, that's the story.

>> It's AI anywhere, yes.

>> It's GenAI, it's next level, it's legit next level. Rohan, thank you for coming on theCUBE.

>> No, thank you for having me.

>> We appreciate your time. I'm John Furrier, here on theCUBE. TheCUBE Next Level here at NYC, it's GenAI, it's all the action, here in New York City, I'm John Furrier. We'll be right back after this break.