Ruba Borno talks to CRN about the major areas channel partners should be investing in today, which include the AWS Generative AI Competency, cybersecurity, data and analytics, and its Migration Acceleration Program. Here’s what every AWS partner needs to know.

Amazon Web Services global channel chief Ruba Borno is tasked with leading and guiding thousands of AWS partners who are generating billions in AWS sales into the future.

In an interview with CRN, Borno explains four “major” focus areas partners should be investing in for the remainder of 2025 and beyond if they want to be successful in the AI era. These are cybersecurity, data and analytics, AWS’ Migration Acceleration Program (MAP), and generative AI.

“First and foremost is generative AI,” AWS’ Borno, vice president of global specialists and partners, said.

“My advice to our channel partners here is, ‘Let’s work together to get our Generative AI Competency.’ Because those partners who have that competency are able to increase the conversion from proof-of-concept or pilot to production for customers,” she said. “That’s what customers want. They want to get value out of those AI investments.”

Partners who achieve the rigorous AWS Generative AI Competency, which launched in 2024, are showcased and featured by AWS as partners with top-notch technical proficiency and a track record of customer success when implementing AWS’ GenAI technology.

AllCloud, a Denver-based AWS Premier Consultancy partner, has earned its AWS Generative AI Competency.

The Generative AI Competency has helped AllCloud with new customer opportunities as the company has built a wide range of AWS solutions around Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Q, Amazon SageMaker and services like Amazon Lex for chatbots, Amazon S3 for data storage and AWS Lambda for custom functions.

https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/2025/aws-global-channel-chief-4-major-areas-partners-need-to-be-investing-in