What were solution providers talking about with CRN and ITBestOfBreed last week? Here are a handful of perspectives that appeared in stories on both websites, including the AWS outage and Fortinet's announcement of an expansion of its partner program.

"This is going to force a Google conversation. They just handed Google thousands of customers."

~ Jamie Shepard, senior vice president at Google partner Lumenate, following the four-hour-long outage at Amazon Web Services that disrupted service to AWS's S3 clients.

"It helps our customers and gets them the security confidence they're looking for … To be able to deliver some of these capabilities and deliver them quickly is something they want and it frees us up [for other security needs.]"

~ Kevin Watson, CEO of Netsurion, a partner of Fortinet, on the vendor's announcement of an expansion of its partner program for managed security service providers, which will add new tools, discounts and support.

"One, they've got to be innovative, and they need to continue to provide solutions to our mutual customer base, to provide value and help our customers achieve their business outcomes."

~ Mike Thompson, CEO of Groupware Technology – No. 76 on CRN's Solution Provider 500 – on what he sees as a hallmark of a strong vendor-partner relationship.

"Anyone working with endpoint solutions should have enSilo in their stable. It is really how a partnership should work."

~ Ben Dimick, security solutions practice lead at Tevora, a partner of enSilo, after the cybersecurity startup rolled out its first channel program, aimed at both traditional resellers and managed security service providers.

"A good partner should also ensure that the applications are fully implemented, integrated and supported. Following through by making sure everything works the way it's supposed to is what establishes a trusting, healthy relationship with the customer."

~ Aric Bandy, president of Agosto, a Google Premier partner, in response to a study that found that the channel can cash in more sales related to cloud software among small-to-medium-size businesses.