(NOTE: This story was originally posted to CRN.com Nov. 29.)

If you're a channel partner of Amazon Web Services (AWS) - or want to be - there are new professional competencies you can take advantage of to drive more business.

AWS on Tuesday introduced to its partners several competencies designed to boost a cloud channel that's increasingly reliant on targeted market expertise and specialized technological skills.

During the first major keynote of the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, AWS channel chief Terry Wise told partners that customers are increasingly insisting – often directly in RFPs – that the solution providers they hire carry more comprehensive professional certifications.

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That demand has motivated Amazon to make a greater investment in its partners—both by helping them train their engineers faster and giving them advanced tools to automate more functionality, Wise said.

The partners who "spent the last decade working with us to build the cloud computing market" stand to benefit from a wave of digital transformation, partly driven by a market increasingly characterized by volatility, Wise said, citing interest rates, energy prices, an unpredicted election outcome in the U.S., as well as the U.K.'s vote to leave the European Union.

In that chaotic environment, "the winners are going to be those companies that can be agile and move quickly and innovate quickly," Wise said.

Partners need to have the right foundations in place to enable innovation, and the ingredients are managed services, migration services, DevOps, software solutions, security and storage, Wise told attendees.

To that end, AWS has created several new AWS Competencies addressing the Internet-of-Things, public sector and financial services engagements, and the upcoming VMware on AWS hybrid cloud solution.

Amazon's ecosystem added more than 10,000 partners since the last time it held its annual conference. Partner-driven engagements are growing faster than the overall business, and the largest partners are growing the fastest – Premier Tier partners in the last year increased revenue four times faster than Advanced Tier partners, Wise said.

Managed services providers grew by more than 130 percent; consulting partners by more than 110 percent.

"The vast majority of the Fortune 500 are using one of you in this room, our partners," Wise said. There's "tremendous growth in the enterprise space led by partners."