7. AWS Spreads Its Channel Tentacles Even Further

AWS has achieved the dominant position in the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) arena, and the vendor teamed up with some of the industry's top solution providers to press its advantage.

SoftwareONE, No. 14 on the CRN SP 500, rolled out transaction, billing, advisory and migration capabilities for AWS in November tied to its automated cloud platform.

CSRA achieved premier AWS network partner status, meaning the company has access to highly trained solutions architects, certifications and resources to help its U.S. government customers migrate and operate workloads in the cloud.

And AWS pioneer Datapipe, No. 105 on the CRN SP 500, purchased Adapt, the United Kingdom's fastest-growing MSP, to beef up its overseas capabilities, skill sets and talents around cloud services.