AWS Outposts Ready Launches With 32 Validated Partners

Partner interest in the program is a good reflection of the interest that AWS is seeing in Outposts, according to Joshua Burgin, general manager of AWS Outposts since June.

Solutions from 32 Amazon Web Services partners – from Alcide and Citrix to Trend Micro and Zadara -- are available now for AWS customers to use with their deployments of AWS Outposts, the on-premises version of the industry’s leading public cloud.

The new AWS Outposts Ready Program, unveiled today as part of the AWS Service Ready Program, is designed to make it easier for customers to find integrated storage, networking, security and industry-specific solutions that AWS has technically validated and tested on Outposts to help deploy, monitor, secure and integrate Outposts-based workloads.

AWS Outposts, which became generally available last December, is AWS’ fully managed service that extends its cloud hardware infrastructure, services, APIs to tools to customers’ data enters, co-location spaces or on-premises facilities for a consistent hybrid experience. It’s designed for workloads that require low latency access to on-premises systems, local data processing or local data storage.

The Outposts Ready Program is a good reflection of the interest that AWS is seeing in Outposts, according to Joshua Burgin, general manager of AWS Outposts since June.

“You kind of don‘t have to take our word for it,” Burgin told CRN. “I don’t think we would have seen 30-plus partners sign up for the work to certify their solutions on Outposts, if they didn’t believe that their customers were going to adopt those solutions as well. That’s all across deployment, monitoring, security, integration, container management, NoSQL.”

The Outpost Ready Program is open to AWS technology, consulting and solutions partners.

“It‘s a slightly different set of requirements for them,” Burgin said. “A lot of the global system integrators -- I think we have six or seven in the pipeline right now -- are going through the program as well. We have people who see value in being able to have a practice inside their consulting or solutions integration business, where they’re able to deploy or sell or manage people’s Outposts for them in addition to what they’re managing on cloud and on prem.”

Mountain View, Calif.-based Pure Storage, which delivers storage as a service, is among the 32 AWS partners in the new program, with its FlashBlade solution that delivers native scale-out file and object storage.

“As our customers navigate the demands of new and emerging applications, we are committed to delivering innovation and partnerships that support their hybrid cloud priorities,” said Matt Burr, Pure Storage’s general manager of FlashBlade. ”We are proud to be a part of the AWS Outposts Ready program and deliver a hybrid cloud solution that delivers on the principles of flexibility and agility that both FlashBlade and AWS are built on.”

Dallas-based cloud security company Trend Micro achieved the AWS Outposts Ready designation for its hybrid cloud security offerings.

“We know the importance of helping customers and organizations more easily identify potential security risks in order to take action,” Burgin said. ”With Trend Micro’s products available to customers on AWS Outposts, we are able to provide a comprehensive view of (a customer’s) security posture on their infrastructure, on AWS Outposts and in AWS regions -- both on premises and in the cloud -- for a truly consistent hybrid experience.”

New York-based Datadog, which provides a monitoring and security platform for cloud applications, also earned the designation.

“Hybrid cloud architectures allow organizations to improve resilience and maintain control over their applications and data,” said Ilan Rabinovitch, Datadog’s vice president of product and community. “Monitoring applications that span physical and virtual infrastructure -- and all of the network communication in between -- is critical to accelerating migrations.”

Cloud data management company Rubrik, another AWS Outposts Ready partner, has a software solution designed to simplify data protection, disaster recovery and application mobility from data centers and edge locations to AWS.

“Supporting AWS Outposts is a natural fit for Rubrik, as our customers innovate more with AWS,” said Wendy Bahr, chief commercial officer of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company.