Amazon Web Services (AWS) has added the first members of its Managed Service Partner program, a channel-focused initiative that was announced by AWS at re:Invent 2014.

AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr, who has been with AWS since 2002, recognized the company’s inaugural Managed Service Partner program participants in a brief blog post this week.

The cloud services giant said each managed service provider (MSP) to join the program possesses deep AWS knowledge and IT service management capabilities to deliver AWS’s cloud managed services.

AWS approved six AWS Partner Network (APN) Consulting Partners to join its Managed Service Partner program:

AWS uses an MSP audit process to evaluate all program candidates. It leverages third-party auditors who review an APN Partner’s MSP practice and capabilities, AWS APN Content Manager Kate Miller said, and the audit process ultimately ensures “customers are able to identify APN Partners, both big and small, who have met [AWS’s] bar for cloud managed services.”

“Through the rigorous audit process, these APN Partners have been validated in their ability to help customers migrate their workloads to AWS and operate those workloads efficiently by following AWS operational and security best practices, while looking for ways to continuously optimize and save their customers money,” Miller wrote in a blog post.

Miller noted that AWS provides an MSP Validation Checklist to help MSPs prepare for third-party audits as well.

This checklist “focuses on a core set of managed service capabilities that all AWS Managed Service Providers should possess,” AWS Global Segment Leader for MSPs Kelly Hartman wrote in a blog post.

Click here for Talkin’ Cloud’s Top 100 CSP list

AWS quietly rolled out an MSP competency in June 2013. Currently, there are 875 MSP APN Consulting Partners, and 371 are located in the United States.

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