The new AWS FDE organization “is not a competitor to partners. We certainly don’t see it that way. It is a force multiplier for a variety of reasons,” said BizCloud Experts President Sepehr Noorizadeh.
AWS says enterprise AI has outgrown the traditional partner advisory model as customers are seeking agentic AI solutions in production rather than roadmaps.
This is why AWS launched its new AWS Forward Deployed Engineering organization, which will embed thousands of experts with customers to co-develop and deploy agentic AI solutions in a matter of days—backed by a whopping $1 billion investment from Amazon.
Sepehr Noorizadeh of BizCloud Experts, a Premier Tier AWS Partner, said he doesn’t view AWS’ new Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) organization as competition against AWS’ partner community, but rather a “force multiplier.”
“It’s not a competitor to partners. We certainly don’t see it that way,” said Noorizadeh, President and chief growth officer for BizCloud, in an interview with CRN. “It is a force multiplier for a variety of reasons.”
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AWS FDE Is ‘A Force Multiplier’ For Channel Co-Selling
Noorizadeh said AWS wants a rapid prototyping process for its AI customers so clients can get an AI solution into production faster.
“Amazon is looking at, ‘How can we enable our team to go do a rapid prototyping cycle, so they can actually fail fast, but then get to a solution that scales for the organization,” Noorizadeh said.
“So for the forward deploy engineers, if you’re bringing the folks that can understand both the business and the technology logic, and help solve that in a short cycle for the customer and get them to an answer—that’s what AWS wants,” he said. “AWS is actually setting up the partner ecosystem for success because someone’s going to have to go deploy it at scale for the customer anyways.”
This lines BizCloud Experts and other AWS partners up for AI co-selling opportunities.
“So, if anything, it’s a force multiplier for partners from a co-sell perspective,” he said. “Where they’re bringing their working-backwards framework and their technical team—putting it closer to the customer—and then bringing partners in those conversations with them.”
AWS Says ‘Partners Will Play An Important Role Here’
AWS currently has a $150 billion annual run rate and is the No. 1 global cloud market share leader thanks, in part, to its global ecosystem of over 140,000 partners in the AWS Partner Network.
For its part, AWS is investing money and training into its partner network as part of the launch of its Forward Deployed Engineering organization.
“AWS Partners will play an important role here, contributing model expertise, industry knowledge, and complementary skills to ensure the right engineers are available to customers,” said AWS’ Francessca Vasquez, vice president of Frontier AI Engineering and Services in an email statement to CRN.
“We are investing in partner training, tools, and resources to accelerate AWS FDE engagements,” Vasquez said.
AWS’ Forward Deployed Engineering Strategy And Go-To-Market
AWS’ newly formed FDE team embeds AWS frontier teams—working with purpose-built agents—directly inside customer teams.
Many customers need expert AI engineers working directly with their teams to help them build and become AI-native organizations, according to AWS’ Vasquez.
“The AWS FDE model is different in three key ways: it is agentic-first, it compresses timelines from months to days, and it is designed so customers are self-sufficient when a deployment ends,” Vasquez said.
“These experienced engineers, many of whom build our AWS AI services, partner with a customer’s business, engineering, and security teams to build and deploy production AI systems with their data, governance, and processes,” he said.
Unlike traditional AWS consulting firms who assess, recommend, and may treat each deployment as a standalone project, AWS FDE is focused on long-term success.
Vasquez said customers will leave AWS FDE deployments with new solutions and engineering capabilities, along with agentic systems running in their AWS environment.
“They gain lasting AI skills, workflows, and patterns they can use to innovate independently. Deployments are structured around shared goals and business results, not billable hours,” he said.
BizCloud Experts: AWS Is ‘Going Into Conversations With Partners’
Lewisville, Texas-based BizCloud Experts designs, builds, and operates cloud architectures, with capabilities across generative AI, DevOps automation, cloud contact centers, and database migration.
Noorizadeh said BizCloud is planning to work with AWS’ new FDE team.
“Every time AWS goes into a conversation, they’re going into conversations with partners as well,” said Noorizadeh.
“That’s why for me, it’s not a competitor to us. If anything, it’s complementary to what we’re doing in a force multiplier way,” he said.
Noorizadeh himself worked at AWS for four years as a territory manager and executive advisor before becoming President of BizCloud Experts in April.
“AWS, over the years, has built a robust methodology and framework for helping organizations understand what they truly need to solve for, and where is the value at,” he said. “It was a conscious decision for me to leave AWS for the [AWS] partner network because I saw the opportunity for where partners can be very successful. This is the time to be in the partner ecosystem. So I bet my chips on the partner ecosystem when leaving AWS to come to BizCloud.”
Microsoft, OpenAI And Anthropic Launch Own Frontier Companies
AWS is far from the only AI superstar company launching a Forward Deployed Engineering, or Frontier, organization.
Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic are all racing to embed engineers inside customers.
For example, Microsoft recently launched a new Microsoft Frontier Company backed by a $2.5 billion investment. Microsoft’s new business operating unit will embed 6,000 industry and engineering experts inside customer organizations to design, deploy and run AI systems.
AWS and Microsoft are the two largest cloud companies on the planet with large channel ecosystems. Both cloud leaders also have tight partnerships with AI model superstars OpenAI and Anthropic.
AWS said its own FDEs are already embedded and working with large customers including the NBA, NFL, Allen Institute, Cox Automotive and Southwest Airlines.
“As customers ask us to dive deeper with them, go beyond individual use cases, and help grow their AI capabilities, we’re expanding our commitment to this approach,” said Vasquez at AWS. “AWS FDEs come with that experience and deep product development expertise to work with customer teams as builders.”
