AWS Small and Medium Business (SMB) Competency

AWS Partner has a company overview presentation that sets the stage for customer conversations about their AWS Small and Medium Business (SMB) capabilities and showcases AWS Partner’s demonstration capabilities.

Presentation contains information about the AWS Partner’s AWS Small and Medium Business (SMB) capabilities, including AWS specific differentiators, e.g., what is unique about the AWS Partner’s practice that can only be accomplished leveraging AWS.

Overview presentations contain:

• Company history
• Office locations
• Number of employees
• Customer profile, including number, size, and industries of customers
• Overview of Small and Medium Business (SMB) practice
• Notable AWS projects

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Delivery of presentation by a business development executive at the beginning of the validation session. This should be limited to 15 minutes.

AWS Partner has internal mechanisms for maintaining their consultants' expertise on Small and Medium Business (SMB)-related AWS services and tools.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• List of internal and/or external AWS-focused education events lead by AWS Partner staff (e.g. formal training, lunch and learns, meetups, user groups, etc.) in last 12 months.
• Resources provided by AWS Partner to staff for ongoing AWS skills development

AWS Partner must describe how Small and Medium Business (SMB) opportunities are identified, how their sellers are trained to identify and sell those opportunities, and specific demand generation/lead generation efforts associated to their AWS Small and Medium Business (SMB) practice.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• A description on how the AWS Partner engages with customers, their internal sellers, and AWS sellers if applicable.

AWS Partner must describe how and when they engage with AWS sellers and AWS Solutions Architects.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• A verbal description for how and when they engage AWS sellers or AWS Solutions Architects on an opportunity or in the form of a demonstration of the AWS Opportunity Management tool in AWS Partner Central with sales qualified opportunities submitted (sales qualified = budget, authority, need, timeline, and competition fields completed).

AWS Partner must have a process to ensure that there are sufficient Small and Medium Business (SMB) trained personnel to effectively support customers.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• An established training plan including on-boarding processes that identify job roles (sellers, solutions architects, project managers) and required training paths
• A verbal description of methods used to allocate required resources to Small and Medium Business (SMB) projects

AWS Partners must be Partner Revenue Measurement (PRM) compliant to enable automated measurement and attribution of AWS consumption. PRM provides transparent, data-driven recognition of Partner contributions based on actual AWS service consumption across Partner and customer accounts. All Services competency partners must comply with PRM.

Partner must provide the AWS Marketplace product name associated with PRM enablement.

Note: AWS Marketplace listing is a requirement for PRM and competency funding benefits (e.g., MDF, MAP). Refer to Getting Started with PRM for complete onboarding requirements. The competency application process does not review Marketplace transactability.

AWS Partner has adopted Agentic AI tools in ≥2 internal consulting practice areas (e.g., architecture review, code generation, documentation, estimation, testing) as repeatable workflows—not ad-hoc usage—with governance controls ensuring accuracy, security, and responsible use of AI-generated outputs before customer delivery.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Use case inventory identifying ≥2 practice areas with AI tools used and frequency of use
• Screenshot or documentation demonstrating Agentic AI embedded in ≥2 repeatable workflows (e.g., SOP, CI/CD pipeline, review checklist)
• Written description of governance controls: human review gates, accuracy validation process, and data security safeguards for AI-assisted outputs

AWS Partner has established enablement mechanisms ensuring consulting personnel can effectively and responsibly use Agentic AI tools, including usage guidelines defining approved tools, boundaries, and quality standards for AI-assisted deliverables, plus measurable adoption tracking demonstrating organization-wide usage beyond a single individual or team.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Internal Agentic AI usage guidelines defining approved tools, use cases, boundaries, and quality standards
• Proof of ≥1 enablement activity within last 12 months (e.g., training attendance records, workshop agenda, onboarding checklist with AI tool training)
• ≥1 quantitative adoption metric (e.g., % practitioners trained, # projects using AI-assisted workflows, tool usage statistics)

AWS Partner has processes for working with customers to determine and define expected outcomes associated with the projects.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Project deliverable templates or other resources used for project scoping and definition

AWS Partner has processes to determine scope of work with specific criteria defining customer project with expected deliverables.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Project templates or other resources (e.g., RACI Matrix) used for project scoping and definition

AWS Partner has standard Statement of Work (SOW) templates for Small and Medium Business (SMB) projects that can be customized to customer needs.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Default SOW template

AWS Partner assigns Project Manager to each project to ensure project remains on time and within budget.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Documentation to show that Project Managers were assigned to each of the 4 customer example projects.

AWS Partner has processes to document, manage, and respond to requests for changes to the project scope.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Documentation of change management practices

AWS Partner demonstrates AWS cost management knowledge and a defined process for incorporating spend visibility into customer engagements—through direct implementation, advisory guidance, or architectural recommendations.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Written description covering: when in engagement lifecycle cost visibility is addressed, how partner assesses customer cost management maturity to tailor services accordingly, and AWS cost management services partner is prepared to recommend.
• Supporting documentation (≥1): delivery methodology, checklist, SOW template, or scoping questionnaire incorporating spend visibility.

AWS Partner demonstrates knowledge of availability testing (load and performance testing, and failure simulation) and a process for validating availability goals—accounting for dependency unavailability and deployment failures.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Written description of testing methodology, best practices, and how partner assesses a customer's current testing capabilities to tailor services and meet committed availability targets.

AWS Partner has a customer acceptance process.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Example customer training documents
• SOW language describing handoff responsibilities and acceptance criteria

AWS Partner implements customer satisfaction checkpoints as part of the project plan.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Project plan and customer satisfaction results for milestone-defined checkpoints

AWS Partner communicates AWS security best practices to customers early in the engagement lifecycle, ensuring customers understand AWS security processes and technologies—enhancing engagement quality and customer satisfaction.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Onboarding and educational documents provided to customers that specifically cover security considerations of their AWS environment.

Evidence must demonstrate that the AWS Partner encourages "shift-left" of security practices — incorporating security guidelines early in design and as an ongoing part of development and operations.

AWS Partner has a process to determine service availability needs for customers. See AWS Reliability Pillar whitepaper for specific considerations and guidance on how to calculate service availability with downstream dependencies.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Written description detailing how service availability is ensured, including details about the factors taken into consideration (cost, requests, dependencies, redundancy, etc.).

AWS Partner plans network topology to ensure the resiliency of connectivity, including planning for DDoS attacks, unexpected increase in traffic, or removal of connectivity due to misconfiguration errors.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Written description detailing how required network resiliency is ensured and/or how frameworks/methodologies/techniques are leveraged for the planning of unexpected resiliency disruptions (DDoS attacks, unexpected traffic increase, connectivity losses, etc.).

AWS Partners applying to this designation must complete all program prerequisite requirements, trainings and certification deemed necessary in the prerequisite section of the competency website. https://apn-checklists.s3.amazonaws.com/competency/small-and-medium-business-(smb)/consulting/CldTOTBg1.html#prerequisites

Confirm the completion of all pre-requists.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Attach any required certifications specified in the prerequisite section.

AWS Partners must demonstrate clear alignment between their solutions/practice and specific SMB Solution Areas, ensuring offerings directly address defined SMB market needs and requirements. This ensures partners deliver targeted, effective solutions/services within their chosen solution area(s).

Describe how your solution maps onto one or more AWS SMB Competency solution areas as defined in the AWS SMB Competency Definition.

Note: The SMB Solution Areas can be found in the introduction tab. Note: Selected solution areas will ensure the AWS competency team delivers targeted benefits maximizing partner potential.

The AWS Partner should have an external facing catalog of service/solution offerings covering the selected solution areas from FREQ-002.

Provide a detailed description of your top 3 SMB service offerings that relate to the selected SMB Solution Areas described in FREQ-002. Please include in your response; 1/The SMB Solution Area that this offering maps to. 2/The underlying use case that is addressed by the offering.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Provide URL of a publicly accessible service offer catalog as described above.

Note: The optional microsite can be used too to contain this catalog. Tier based offer must have differentiators expressed clearly for target audience to support stakeholder engagement and service delivery.

AWS Partners must ensure their solutions are readily accessible to customers through AWS Marketplace where available, or through alternative self-service purchasing mechanisms in regions where Marketplace listing is not supported. This ensures easy customer access and streamlined procurement.

Specify all regions that you maintain an active PRM-compliant AWS Marketplace listing for the solutions described in FREQ-003. For regions that you support but do not yet have a Marketplace listing, describe the self-service purchasing options available to the customer for the solutions described in FREQ-003. Include in your response;

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/ Active AWS Marketplace listing URLs 2/ For non-Marketplace regions, please include self-service procurement, documentation, transaction workflow details, customer acquisition process.

AWS Partners must demonstrate the ability to design, package, and deliver standardized, repeatable solutions that can be consistently deployed across multiple SMB customers with minimal customization effort. This ensures the partner can scale their practice efficiently while maintaining quality outcomes for SMB customers who benefit from proven, pre-validated solution patterns.

Confirm that your organization has developed at least 1 documented, repeatable solution that has been successfully deployed to 3 or more unique SMB customers. Please include in your response; 1/Description of your repeatable solution development methodology — how solutions are identified, designed, validated, and maintained over time. 2/The target SMB use case or business problem it addresses. 3/The standardized AWS architecture and core services used. 4/The defined scope of customization vs. standard components (e.g., % templated vs. customer-specific). 5/Average deployment timeline from engagement to production.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/ACE opportunity IDs of at least 3 customer opportunities for each repeatable solution from the list of ACE opportunities submitted in FREQ-008.

AWS Partners must establish and maintain a comprehensive go-to-market strategy specifically tailored to the SMB customer segment. This ensures effective market positioning, customer engagement, and sustainable business growth in the SMB space.

Describe your GTM approach incorporating customer understanding, solution positioning, and execution planning. Please include in your response; 1/ Customer persona definitions and market segmentation 2/ Value proposition and competitive differentiation 3/ Marketing and sales strategy 4/ Product/service offerings and pricing model 5/ Success metrics and resource planning

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/ Go-to-Market strategy document including customer needs analysis, brand positioning, marketing plan, sales methodology, solution catalog and pricing framework.

AWS Partners must maintain a public-facing digital presence that clearly demonstrates their SMB expertise, solutions, and thought leadership. This ensures market visibility and establishes credibility within the SMB segment.

Provide a public URL to one of the following SMB thought leadership assets; blog posts, press articles, videos or analyst reviews. The URL should be hosted on your organization's domain.

AWS Partners must demonstrate a proven track record of selling AWS solutions to Small and Medium Business (SMB) customers. This ensures partners have the expertise and capability to effectively serve the SMB market segment.

Confirm that your organization has successfully launched at least 20 AWS opportunities with SMB customers. AWS defines SMB customers as companies with annualized revenue of <$100M (excluding startups, ISVs and digital native businesses). Please include in your response; 1/Description of your organization's SMB sales strategy 2/Overview of your SMB customer engagement process 3/Summary of successful SMB customer implementations

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/A list of 20 ACE Opportunity IDs representing launched SMB opportunities for unique customers with a minimum of $1K ARR PO/AO in the past 24 months from submitted application date.

SMBs require structured guidance to adopt AI Productivity & CX solutions. Partners must assess customer readiness and prioritize use cases that deliver rapid value within SMB budget and team constraints.

Confirm that your organization has a defined process for assessing SMB AI readiness and identifying high-impact AI use cases. Please include in your response; 1/Your SMB AI readiness assessment methodology (data maturity, team capacity, budget). 2/Use case prioritization approach and typical AI Productivity & CX use cases recommended for SMBs. 3/How you deliver first value within 30 days and phase broader adoption.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/SMB AI Readiness Assessment template or questionnaire. 2/Use case prioritization framework document. 3/Example SMB AI adoption roadmap (anonymized).

SMB AI solutions must prioritize managed services, cost-efficiency, and minimal operational overhead. Partners must select Foundation Models right-sized for SMB budgets and volumes rather than scaling down enterprise architectures. This includes agentic AI patterns — multi-step, tool-using agents that integrate with business systems to automate workflows while maintaining security and cost-efficiency.

Describe your approach to selecting Foundation Models and designing AI architectures (including agentic solutions) for SMB Productivity & CX use cases. Please include in your response; 1/FM selection criteria evaluating at least 4 of: output quality, latency, cost, context window, licensing, budget constraints, regional availability. 2/How you select between managed services (Bedrock, Amazon Q Business, Lex, Connect) vs. custom solutions. 3/A reference architecture for at least one SMB AI pattern with estimated monthly cost. 4/Agent frameworks used (e.g., Strands SDK, Bedrock Agents) and how agents integrate with SMB tools via MCP or APIs. 5/Security controls for agentic solutions: agent permission scoping, IAM, and audit trails. 6/Safeguards against runaway compute or query cost in agentic workloads (e.g., budget caps, token limits, recursion depth controls, circuit breakers).

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Model selection decision matrix or framework. 2/Reference architecture diagram (including at least one agentic pattern) with cost estimates at SMB scale. 3/Documentation of a deployed SMB AI solution showing agent configuration, security controls, and cost (anonymized).

Customer-facing AI solutions must prevent harmful or inaccurate outputs that could damage an SMB's reputation. Partners must implement safety guardrails, hallucination mitigation, data governance, and human-in-the-loop controls proportionate to SMB risk profiles.

Confirm that your organization applies responsible AI and data privacy frameworks to all SMB AI Productivity & CX engagements. Please include in your response; 1/Content safety controls (e.g., Amazon Bedrock Guardrails) and hallucination mitigation approach. 2/Data governance: customer data isolation, encryption, retention, and consent practices. 3/Human-in-the-loop safeguards operable by non-technical SMB staff.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Responsible AI policy or playbook for SMB AI projects. 2/Bedrock Guardrails configuration documentation (or equivalent). 3/Data handling documentation provided to SMB customers.

AI solutions degrade without active lifecycle management. Partners must operationalize AI workloads with CI/CD, monitoring, and support plans tiered for SMB budgets. Routine operations must be accessible to non-technical SMB staff.

Describe your methodology for launching AI solutions into production and providing ongoing support for SMB customers. Please include in your response; 1/CI/CD pipeline for AI workloads (prompts, knowledge bases, model configs), pre-launch testing, and rollback procedures. 2/Monitoring approach: response quality, cost-per-interaction, and handling of FM updates/deprecations. 3/Post-launch support model with SMB-appropriate pricing and self-service capabilities for non-technical staff. 4/Agent-specific observability: monitoring of agent behavior and failure modes (loops, hallucinated tool calls, cascading retries), and consistency of outcomes across repeated runs.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/CI/CD pipeline documentation for AI workloads. 2/Production launch checklist and monitoring dashboard (anonymized). 3/Post-launch support plan template with SLAs and pricing.

SMBs require a streamlined assessment approach to understand their readiness for migration and build a compelling business case. Partners must evaluate the customer's environment, identify blockers, and justify cloud investment within SMB budget and resource constraints.

Confirm that your organization has a defined process for assessing SMB cloud readiness and developing a business case for migration or modernization. Please include in your response; 1/Your SMB cloud readiness assessment methodology covering at least 4 of the 6 AWS CAF perspectives. https://aws.amazon.com/cloud-adoption-framework/ 2/How you build a business case for SMBs including TCO analysis, business value assessment, and ROI projections appropriate for SMB-scale workloads. 3/How you identify and propose actions to remove migration blockers specific to SMBs (e.g., limited IT staff, legacy dependencies, compliance concerns).

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Attach documentation that covers the customer readiness assessment methodology. If your organization uses the Cloud Readiness Assessment tool to evaluate customers, please attach a sample output (anonymized). https://cloudreadiness.amazonaws.com/#/

Partners must use discovery tooling to inventory SMB workloads and propose migration strategies aligned with the 7Rs (Retire, Retain, Rehost, Relocate, Repurchase, Replatform, Refactor). SMB portfolios are typically smaller but require the same rigor in strategy selection to optimize cost and minimize disruption.

Describe your approach to portfolio discovery and migration strategy definition for SMB customers. Please include in your response; 1/Discovery tools used (e.g., AWS Transform or partner tools) and methodology for SMB-scale environments. 2/How you map workloads to migration strategies (7Rs) considering SMB constraints such as limited downtime tolerance, lean IT teams, and budget sensitivity. 3/How you prioritize migration waves for SMBs to minimize business disruption while delivering early value.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Discovery tool output or portfolio assessment report for an SMB customer (anonymized). Please include outputs of AWS Transform (if applicable).

Partners must establish secure, well-architected landing zones for SMB customers using automation. The landing zone must implement multi-account governance, networking, and security controls proportionate to SMB scale while remaining operationally manageable by lean teams.

Confirm that your organization uses automated tooling to deploy landing zones with security baselines appropriate for SMB customers. Please include in your response; 1/Landing zone approach for SMBs (e.g., AWS Control Tower, CloudFormation, Terraform) including multi-account structure and networking design. 2/Security baseline implementation: how you gather SMB security and compliance requirements and validate them with automated tooling (e.g., Security Hub, Trusted Advisor). 3/How the landing zone is designed for SMB self-management post-handoff (minimal operational overhead).

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Landing zone architecture diagram for an SMB deployment. 2/IaC templates or tooling outputs used to build the landing zone. 3/Security baseline validation report from automated tooling.

Partners must demonstrate agile delivery of migration or modernization projects for SMB customers, employing AWS and third-party tooling to expedite workload moves. Delivery must be structured in waves with clear cutover plans sized for SMB timelines and minimal business disruption.

Describe your delivery methodology for executing SMB migration or modernization projects. Please include in your response; 1/Agile delivery approach: wave planning, sprint structure, and tooling used to move workloads (e.g., AWS Transform, DMS). 2/Cutover planning: how you minimize downtime for SMBs with limited maintenance windows and communicate impacts to stakeholders. 3/How you leverage AI or automation to accelerate delivery (e.g., code transformation, schema conversion, automated testing).

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Wave plan or Work Breakdown Structure for an SMB migration project. 2/Cutover plan and communication template. 3/Tool outputs or reports demonstrating automated migration/modernization execution.

Partners must prepare SMB customers for post-migration success by establishing cloud operations, runbooks, and monitoring, and delivering knowledge transfer so lean SMB teams can independently manage their AWS environment.

Confirm that your organization has a structured approach to operationalizing migrated workloads and enabling SMB customer self-sufficiency. Please include in your response; 1/Operational readiness: runbooks or SOPs created for SMB cloud operations (deployment, monitoring, incident management, cost management). 2/Knowledge transfer and training approach: how you enable SMB staff with limited cloud experience to manage their environment post-migration. 3/Monitoring and observability: tools and dashboards deployed for SMB workload health, cost tracking, and alerting.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Standardized runbooks or SOP documentation. 2/Knowledge transfer or training plans. 3/Monitoring dashboard or operational report sample (anonymized).

SMBs need a foundational security posture implemented consistently across their AWS environment. Partners must deploy automated security baselines covering resource inventory, configuration hardening, vulnerability management, network exposure hygiene, and continuous compliance checking appropriate for SMB-scale environments.

Confirm that your organization has a standardized approach to establishing and maintaining a security baseline for SMB customer AWS accounts. Please include in your response; 1/Your process for deploying a security baseline covering AWS resource inventory, configuration assessment, and hardening (e.g., AWS Config, Security Hub, Trusted Advisor). 2/How you implement continuous posture management and misconfiguration detection appropriate for SMBs with limited security staff. 3/How you provision security infrastructure using IaC (e.g., CloudFormation, Terraform) for repeatable deployments across SMB customers. 4/Your approach to vulnerability and patch management — how you identify unpatched workloads and prioritize remediation for SMBs without dedicated vulnerability management teams (e.g., Amazon Inspector, Systems Manager Patch Manager). 5/How you enforce network and exposure hygiene — security group auditing, public-exposure detection (e.g., open S3 buckets, unrestricted ports), and baseline DDoS protection (Shield Standard). Describe how you surface and remediate common SMB misconfigurations that lead to data leaks or unauthorized access.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Security baseline IaC artifacts or conformance pack report demonstrating posture management, hardening standards, and vulnerability/patch workflows deployed for SMB customers (anonymized). 2/Evidence of network and exposure hygiene controls — security group audit output, public-access detection configuration, or exposure remediation runbook.

SMBs require practical identity and access controls that enforce least privilege without creating operational friction. Partners must implement IAM best practices, SSO, and MFA appropriate for organizations with lean IT teams and limited identity governance maturity.

Describe your approach to implementing identity and access management for SMB customers on AWS. Please include in your response; 1/How you implement IAM best practices for SMBs: least privilege policies, IAM Identity Center (SSO), MFA enforcement, and secrets management. 2/Your approach to identity federation and centralized access control across multi-account SMB environments (if applicable). 3/How you design IAM governance that is manageable by SMB teams without dedicated identity administrators.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Reference architecture for SMB identity and access management. 2/Sample IAM policies, permission boundaries, or SCPs deployed for SMB customers. 3/Documentation showing SSO/MFA implementation for an SMB environment.

SMBs typically lack dedicated Security Operations Center (SOC) capabilities but still face significant threats. Partners must implement automated threat detection and provide incident response playbooks that enable SMB teams to identify and respond to security events effectively.

Confirm that your organization delivers threat detection and incident response capabilities sized for SMB customers. Please include in your response; 1/How you deploy automated threat detection for SMBs using AWS services (e.g., GuardDuty, Security Hub, CloudTrail, Inspector) with alerting and triage. 2/Your incident response playbook approach for SMBs: how you enable customers without a SOC to respond to common security events. 3/How you centralize security findings and provide actionable remediation guidance appropriate for non-specialist SMB staff.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Reference architecture for SMB threat detection and monitoring. 2/Incident response playbook or runbook provided to SMB customers. 3/Sample alert configuration and remediation guidance documentation.

SMBs handle sensitive customer and business data that requires protection through encryption, access controls, and data loss prevention measures. Partners must implement data security practices proportionate to SMB compliance requirements and risk tolerance.

Confirm that your organization implements data protection controls for SMB customer environments on AWS. Please include in your response; 1/How you implement encryption at rest and in transit for SMB workloads using AWS services (e.g., KMS, Certificate Manager, Secrets Manager). 2/Your approach to sensitive data discovery and classification (e.g., Amazon Macie) and data loss prevention for SMBs.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Reference architecture for SMB data protection and encryption. 2/KMS key policies or encryption configuration documentation. 3/Compliance mapping or audit readiness documentation for an SMB customer.

SMBs increasingly face compliance requirements (SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS) but lack dedicated compliance teams. Partners must implement automated compliance monitoring, evidence collection, and risk management appropriate for SMB regulatory obligations.

Confirm that your organization has a methodology for implementing compliance and auditing capabilities for SMB customers on AWS for at least 1 framework. Please include in your response; 1/How you discover SMB compliance requirements, assess current posture, and implement automated controls (e.g., Config conformance packs, Security Hub standards). 2/Your approach to continuous compliance monitoring with automated detection and remediation of misconfigurations. 3/How you enable SMB customers to gather audit evidence and demonstrate compliance without manual processes (e.g., AWS Audit Manager).

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Compliance assessment or gap analysis template for SMB customers. 2/Config conformance pack or Security Hub standard deployment documentation. 3/Audit evidence collection process or Audit Manager report sample.

SMBs need well-governed AWS environments with multi-account structures, automated provisioning, and preventive controls — implemented simply enough for lean teams to maintain. Partners must establish governance foundations using IaC and tagging strategies.

Confirm that your organization has a methodology for establishing cloud governance and account management for SMB customers. Please include in your response; 1/Your approach to implementing multi-account strategies for SMBs using AWS Control Tower or Organizations, including automated account lifecycle management. 2/How you deploy infrastructure as code (e.g., CloudFormation, CDK, Terraform) with version control for repeatable, auditable deployments. 3/Your tagging strategy methodology and how you implement preventive/detective controls (SCPs, Config rules) sized for SMB environments.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Multi-account architecture diagram deployed for an SMB customer. 2/IaC templates or Control Tower configuration used for SMB account provisioning. 3/Tagging policy and sample SCP/Config rules applied to SMB environments.

Cost management is critical for budget-sensitive SMBs. Partners must implement cost visibility, forecasting, right-sizing, and purchase optimization to help SMB customers maximize value from their AWS spend without requiring dedicated FinOps staff.

Describe your approach to cloud financial management and cost optimization for SMB customers. Please include in your response; 1/How you establish cost visibility and reporting for SMBs (e.g., Cost Explorer dashboards, cost allocation by service/tag, budget alerts). 2/Your right-sizing and purchase optimization methodology (e.g., Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, instance family recommendations based on utilization). 3/How you deliver ongoing cost governance for SMBs: proactive monitoring, monthly variance analysis, and actionable optimization recommendations.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Cost reporting dashboard or template configured for an SMB customer. 2/Right-sizing or Savings Plan recommendation report sample. 3/Documentation of cost optimization savings achieved for an SMB customer.

SMBs need workload health visibility without the complexity of enterprise observability platforms. Partners must implement monitoring, alerting, and dashboards using AWS-native services that provide actionable insights manageable by small teams.

Confirm that your organization implements monitoring and observability solutions appropriate for SMB workloads and operational capacity. Please include in your response; 1/How you define KPIs and service levels based on SMB business needs, and implement telemetry (metrics, logs, traces) using AWS services (e.g., CloudWatch, X-Ray). 2/Your alerting and visualization approach: dashboards, anomaly detection, and escalation processes designed for SMB teams without 24/7 NOC coverage. 3/How you deliver application performance monitoring and end-user experience visibility appropriate for SMB-scale applications.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Reference architecture for SMB monitoring and observability. 2/Sample CloudWatch dashboard or alerting configuration for an SMB workload. 3/Documentation of KPIs and SLIs defined for an SMB customer environment.

SMBs require automated operational processes to compensate for limited staffing. Partners must implement patch management, change control, incident remediation, and runbooks that reduce manual toil and enable consistent operations.

Describe your approach to operational management and automation for SMB customer environments. Please include in your response; 1/How you implement automated patching, vulnerability scanning, and remediation for SMB infrastructure (e.g., Systems Manager, Inspector). 2/Your runbook and change management approach: documented operational procedures, maintenance windows, and automated event-triggered remediation. 3/How you enable self-service operations for SMB teams (e.g., Service Catalog, automated provisioning, ITSM integration) with appropriate guardrails.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Runbook or SOP documentation created for SMB operational tasks. 2/Automated remediation workflow or Systems Manager automation document. 3/Patch management configuration or vulnerability scan report for an SMB environment.

SMBs depend on business continuity but often lack formal DR planning. Partners must implement automated backup, define recovery objectives (RTO/RPO), and establish disaster recovery strategies that protect SMB workloads without enterprise-level complexity or cost.

Confirm that your organization implements backup and disaster recovery solutions appropriate for SMB workloads and business continuity requirements. Please include in your response; 1/How you implement automated backup for SMB workloads (e.g., AWS Backup) with defined retention policies and cross-region/cross-account replication. 2/Your approach to defining RTO/RPO targets with SMB customers and designing DR architectures that meet those targets within SMB budgets. 3/How you validate recoverability through regular DR testing and document business continuity procedures for SMB teams.

EVIDENCE REQUIRED 1/Backup policy configuration and retention schedule for an SMB customer. 2/DR architecture diagram with documented RTO/RPO targets. 3/DR test results or recovery validation report.

Providing details about who the customer is, their situation and business allow us to establish credibility by providing a degree of authenticity. In addition, this information also allows AWS to verify proper customer alignment to the designation as designations can be aligned with an industry and/or a customer segment.

Provide some background information about the customer; name, industry, size, market segment (Enterprise/SMB/ISV/Startup)?

Note:

• If a public URL for the case study is available, please provide along with your response.
• For anonymous case studies, the customer name can be omitted.

The partner must articulate the customer's critical business challenge that aligns with the specific AWS specialization program's focus area, whether it addresses industry-specific needs, targeted use cases, or specialized workloads. Their documentation must identify both immediate and long-term business risks the customer faced without intervention, supported by quantifiable metrics or concrete business impacts.

The description should establish a clear connection between the customer's challenge and the specialization program's core objectives, demonstrating why this particular case study exemplifies the program's intended scope.

What is the key business challenge for the customer and the risk of not addressing this challenge?

Working backwards from our goals/objectives allows us to formulate an optimal implementation strategy as well as identify the technical solution best suited to meet those goals/objectives. Partners are required to work with the customer to identify what those targets are, but business and technical.

Describe some of the customer's goals and objectives as part of their engagement with your organization.

Each AWS specialization program defines the coverage scope of a domain through definition, distinct categories and/or solution areas. The partner must explicitly articulate how the provided case study meets the definition, category and/or solution area defined by the program by providing substantive evidence demonstrating alignment.

If categories are defined, the case study submission must include a clear mapping between the implemented solution and the chosen specialization category, supported by concrete elements, implementation approaches, and outcomes that validate their solution's fit within the selected category requirements.

Describe how the provided customer reference meets the definitional scope outlined by this competency. If categories are defined, then specify which category corresponds to this customer reference and describe why this reference is a good fit for that category.

Note: The competency definition can be found in the introduction tab.

The partner must demonstrate comprehensive technical expertise in their chosen specialization domain through detailed solution documentation that contains an in-depth analysis of service selection decisions, including rationale for choosing specific AWS services over available alternatives. Their technical solution description should directly reference the architecture diagram and explain each component's role in the overall system, establishing clear connections between customer requirements and technical decisions.

Describe the technical solution implemented. Reference the architecture diagram in the explanation.

Please include the following in your response:

1. Justify each service and region relevant to the designation domain, outlining the analysis of the alternatives considered and rejected.
2. Describe the integration points between different system components

Every business challenge has multiple solutions. AWS prioritizes customer needs, requiring partners to implement solutions that maximize business value while minimizing cost and complexity.

Describe how your solution optimally solves the customer's business challenge and why it was selected amongst the alternatives?

Please include in your response:

1. Description of the alternatives/approaches/options that were considered before arriving at this solution.

Partner solutions implemented for customers must be production grade and live. We measure this by confirming the AWS Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) that the solution is driving. Proof-of-concepts are not acceptable customer references.

What is the estimated AWS ARR and confirm whether it meets the designation revenue requirements (if any)?

Note: Any designation specific revenue prerequisites can be found on the designation checklist website.

AWS Partners are required to understand AWS customer opportunity registration and tracking mechanisms implemented through ACE. The data found through these mechanisms enables AWS to expedite the validation of the customer reference.

If available, Please provide the ACE opportunity ID and AWS account ID

Note: Not providing the ACE opportunity ID and/or AWS account ID may introduce delays in the application processing time or lead to requests for more information from the validation team.

The partner must demonstrate implementation of AWS services specifically relevant to their chosen specialization domain. Their solution documentation must detail which specialized AWS services are utilized, how they are integrated, and what advanced features are activated.

For technology partners with productized offerings, documentation must specify how their solution integrates with and leverages specialized AWS services to enhance their core product capabilities. Partners must provide concrete examples of advanced service features implemented and their direct contribution to solving domain-specific challenges.

For industry specific designations that do not highlight domain specific AWS services, this requirement can be WAIVED.

Confirm which key AWS services is leveraged and/or integrated with in this solution and what advanced capabilities of said services were activated?

The partner must demonstrate solution success through quantifiable metrics that align with the case study documentation.

Their submission must identify and detail at least two specific Key Performance Indicators that directly measure business impact and improvement.

Each KPI must include baseline measurements, improvement targets, actual results, and clear methodology for measurement, providing concrete evidence of how the solution enhanced customer operations.

What two (2) specific KPIs were measured to help improve the customer business?

The partner must candidly identify any challenges that were observed during the implementation providing a thorough analysis of the lessons learned from these shortfalls, and specific actions taken or planned to address these gaps in future implementations.

This transparency demonstrates the partner's commitment to continuous improvement and ability to adapt solutions based on real-world implementation experiences.

What were some of the challenges observed during this engagement and what is being done to ensure these challenges are mitigated for future customers?

AWS Partner must submit architecture diagrams depicting the overall design and deployment of its AWS Partner solution on AWS as well as any other relevant details of the solution for the specific customer in question.

The submitted diagrams are intended to provide context to the AWS Solutions Architect conducting the Technical Validation. It is critical to provide clear diagrams with an appropriate level of detail that enable the AWS Solutions Architect to validate the other requirements listed below.

Each architecture diagram must show:

• All of the AWS services used
• How the AWS services are deployed, including virtual private clouds (VPCs), availability zones, subnets, and connections to systems outside of AWS.
• Elements deployed outside of AWS, e.g. on-premises components, or hardware devices.
• how design scales automatically - Solution adapts to changes in demand. The architecture uses services that automatically scale such as Amazon S3, Amazon CloudFront, AWS Auto Scaling, and AWS Lambda.
• how design has high availability with multi-AZ or multi-region deployment. When intentional tradeoffs have been made (e.g. to optimize cost in favor of high availability), please explain the customer's requirements.

Please provide the following as evidence (required for all provided customer examples):

• An architecture diagram depicting the overall design and deployment of your solution on AWS.
• Explanation of how the major solutions elements will keep running in case of failure.
• Description of how the major solutions elements scale up automatically.

AWS expects all Services Partners to be prepared to create AWS accounts and implement basic security best practices. Even if most of your customer engagements do not require this, you should be prepared in the event you work with a customer who needs you to create new accounts for them.

Establish internal processes regarding how to create AWS accounts on behalf of customers when needed, including:

• When to use root account for workload activities
• Enable MFA on root
• Set the contact information to corporate email address or phone number
• Enable CloudTrail logs in all regions and protect CloudTrail logs from accidental deletion with a dedicated S3 bucket

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Documents describing Security engagement SOPs which met all the 4 criteria defined above. Acceptable evidence types are security training documents, internal wikis, or standard operating procedures documents.
• Description of how Secure AWS Account Governance is implemented in one (1) of the submitted customer examples.

Define standard approach to access customer-owned AWS accounts, including:

• Both AWS Management Console access and programmatic access using the AWS Command Line Interface or other custom tools.
• When and how to use temporary credentials such as IAM roles
• Leverage customer's existing enterprise user identities and their credentials to access AWS services through Identity Federation or migrating to AWS Managed Active Directory

Establish best practices around AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and other identity and access management systems, including:

• IAM principals are only granted the minimum privileges necessary. Wildcards in Action and Resource elements should be avoided as much as possible.
• Every AWS Partner individual who accesses an AWS account must do so using dedicated credentials

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Security engagement Standard Operation Procedure (SOP) which met all the 2 criteria defined above. Acceptable evidence types are security training documents, internal wikis, standard operating procedures documents. Written descriptions in the self-assessment excel is not acceptable.
• Description of how IAM best practices are implemented in one (1) of the submitted customer examples.

AWS Partner has defined metrics for determining the health of each component of the workload and provided the customer with guidance on how to detect operational events based on these metrics.

Establish the capability to run, monitor and improve operational procedure by:

• Defining, collecting and analyzing workload health metrics w/AWS services or 3rd Party tool
• Exporting standard application logs that capture errors and aid in troubleshooting and response to operational events.
• Defining threshold of operational metrics to generate alert for any issues

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Standardized documents or guidance on how to develop customer workload health KPIs with the three components above
• Description of how workload health KPIs are implemented in (1) of the submitted customer examples.

Create a runbook to document routine activities and guide issue resolution process with a list of operational tasks and troubleshooting scenarios covered that specifically addresses the KPI metrics defined in OPE-001.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Standardized documents or runbook met the criteria defined above.

Deployments are tested or otherwise validated before being applied to the production environment. For example, DevOps pipelines used for the project for provisioning resources or releasing software and applications.

Use a consistent approach to deploy to customers including:

• A well-defined testing process before launching in production environment
• Automated testing components

Please provide the following as evidence:

• A deployment checklist example or written descriptions met all the criteria defined above.

Establish internal processes regarding how to secure traffic within VPC, including:

• Security Groups to restrict traffic between Internet and Amazon VPC
• Security Groups to restrict traffic within the Amazon VPC
• Network ACL to restrict inbound and outbound traffic
• Other AWS security services to protect network security

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Written descriptions/documents on network security best practices met the criteria defined above.
• Description of how network security is implementation in one (1) of the submitted customer examples.

Establish internal processes regarding a data encryption policy used across all customer projects

• Summary of any endpoints exposed to the Internet and how traffic is encrypted
• Summary of processes that make requests to external endpoints over the Internet and how traffic is encrypted
• Enforcing encryption at rest. By default, you should enable the native encryption features in an AWS service that stores data unless there is a reason not to.

All cryptographic keys are stored and managed using a dedicated key management solution

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Data encryption and key management policy met the criteria defined above.
• Description of how data encryption is implementation in one (1) of the submitted customer examples.

Changes to infrastructure are automated for customer implementation

• Tools like AWS CloudFormation, the AWS CLI, or other scripting tools were used for automation.
• Changes to the production environment were not done using the AWS Management Console.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Written description of deployment automation and an example template (e.g., CloudFormation templates, architecture diagram for CI/CD pipeline) met the criteria defined above.

Incorporate resilience discussion and advise an RTO & PRO target when engaging with customer. Customer acceptance and adoption on RTO/RPO is not required.

• Establish a process to establish workload resilience including:
• RTO & RPO target
• Explanation of the recovery process for the core components of the architecture
• Customer awareness and communication on this topic

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Descriptions or documents on workload resilience guidance met the three criteria defined above
• Description of how resilience is implementation in one (1) of the submitted customer examples including reasons for exception when RTO&RPO is not defined

Determine solution costs using right sizing and right pricing for both technical and business justification.

Conducted TCO analysis or other form of cost modelling to provide the customer with an understanding of the ongoing costs including all the following 3 areas:

• Description of the inputs used to estimate the cost of the solution
• Summary of the estimates or cost model provided to the customer before implementation
• Business value analysis or value stream mapping of AWS solution

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Description of how to develop cost analysis or modeling with the critical components defined above
• Cost analysis example in one (1) of the submitted customer examples. Acceptable evidence types are price calculator link, reports or presentations on business values analysis