In this episode of AWS Partners Unplugged, host Sri Raghavan talks with John Carey, SVP of Global Channels at SAS, recorded in Cary, North Carolina. They explore how the long-running SAS–AWS partnership helps enterprises run data and AI workloads with predictability, transparency, and trust. John frames the relationship as moving IT cost toward a "deterministic" model — the same auditable answer every time — while still enabling non-deterministic, generative workloads. The conversation covers SAS Cloud managed offerings on AWS, draw downs against AWS commit contracts via Marketplace, and SAS's early-to-market support for sovereign cloud and GDPR. John digs into SAS's role in the agentic AI era: Copilot inside SAS Viya, MCP server integration that lets customers bring their own agent (Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot), and why "trusted AI" with human-in-the-loop and a "translucent box" of auditable decisioning matters in regulated industries. They also discuss customer use cases across financial services (risk, fraud, compliance) and MarTech (Customer Intelligence 360 for fan engagement with Liverpool FC, LAFC, and Octagon), the value of the Strategic Collaboration Agreement, SAS's leadership in Gartner's inaugural Magic Quadrant for Decision Intelligence Platforms, and a greenfield opportunity to bring OT + IT data together in manufacturing (warehouse safety via synthetic vision). It closes with a lighthearted desert-island-classics round.

In this episode of AWS Partners Unplugged, we sit down with Brian Bohan, Director of Partner Growth and Strategy at AWS, to unpack how the partner landscape is being reshaped by the AI era. Brian explains the Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) model and how a shared "harness" built on Bedrock and AgentCore encodes ontology, agents, and skills so each subsequent engagement runs faster and cheaper. He draws the line between FDE and traditional ProServe, describes the new partner-led FDE motion being piloted with major GSIs, and shows how startups, ISVs, and consulting partners each slot into the new delivery model.

Links:

• Brian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianbohan/
• https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/introducing-forward-deployed-engineering-for-partners-winning-the-future-of-enterprise-ai/
• https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/aws/aws-1-billion-forward-deployed-ai-engineers
• https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/open-sourcing-adaptive-workflows-for-ai-driven-development-life-cycle-ai-dlc/
• https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/new-fde-pathways-for-aws-partners-get-ready-for-production-agentic-ai-delivery

In this episode, we explore groundbreaking innovation in partner collaboration with Mickey Iqbal and Nidhi Gupta, who co-authored the first comprehensive ISV custom lens for the AWS Well-Architected Framework with Snowflake. This landmark achievement covers all seven Well-Architected pillars plus a new joint pillar for data governance and compliance, addressing the critical gap where cross-platform risks often fall through the cracks.

We dive into the challenges of bridging two distinct platforms - AWS infrastructure controls and Snowflake's data layer protections - into one coherent security and governance posture. Mickey and Nidhi share real-world examples of common misconfigurations, like wide-open Snowflake network policies sitting alongside restricted AWS security groups, and how their lens identifies these end-to-end vulnerabilities that neither team catches in isolation.

The conversation reveals how they revolutionized the development process using AI-assisted workflows, compressing what traditionally takes months into just ten weeks while improving quality. We explore the three distinct usage paths: the traditional AWS Well-Architected tool, interactive reviews through Kiro (AWS's AI-powered IDE), and native integration with Snowflake Cortex, meeting customers where they already work.

Particularly fascinating is their approach to cost optimization, showing how Snowflake's consumption model and AWS infrastructure pricing can create unexpected trade-offs, and how proper warehouse consolidation can simultaneously reduce both credit burn and data transfer costs. We also discuss the dedicated sustainability pillar - a first for joint ISV lenses - demonstrating how environmental impact and cost optimization align through smart architectural choices.

The lens has already proven its value in the field, with consulting partners adopting it as a shared framework and customers reporting it saved months of post-migration troubleshooting. This episode showcases a replicable model for deep partner collaboration that goes beyond co-marketing to codified best practices and integrated expertise.

Guests

- Mickey Iqbal - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mickeyiqbal

- Nidhi Gupta - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nidhi-gupta-5b80874

Blog co-authors:

- Zahir Gadiwan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/zgadiwan/

- James Sun - https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-sun/

Resources

- Blog Post: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/introducing-the-snowflake-and-aws-custom-lens-for-the-aws-well-architected-framework/

Contact: aws-partner-unplugged-podcast-hosts@amazon.com