AWS Mainframe Modernization Competency

AWS Partner has a company overview presentation that sets the stage for customer conversations about their AWS Mainframe Modernization capabilities and showcases AWS Partner’s demonstration capabilities.

Presentation contains information about the AWS Partner’s AWS Mainframe Modernization capabilities, including AWS specific differentiators, e.g., what is unique about the AWS Partner’s practice that can only be accomplished leveraging AWS.

Overview presentations contain:

• Company history
• Office locations
• Number of employees
• Customer profile, including number, size, and industries of customers
• Overview of Mainframe Modernization practice
• Notable AWS projects

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Delivery of presentation by a business development executive at the beginning of the validation session. This should be limited to 15 minutes.

AWS Partner has internal mechanisms for maintaining their consultants' expertise on Mainframe Modernization-related AWS services and tools.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• List of internal and/or external AWS-focused education events lead by AWS Partner staff (e.g. formal training, lunch and learns, meetups, user groups, etc.) in last 12 months.
• Resources provided by AWS Partner to staff for ongoing AWS skills development

AWS Partner must describe how Mainframe Modernization opportunities are identified, how their sellers are trained to identify and sell those opportunities, and specific demand generation/lead generation efforts associated to their AWS Mainframe Modernization practice.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• A description on how the AWS Partner engages with customers, their internal sellers, and AWS sellers if applicable.

AWS Partner must describe how and when they engage with AWS sellers and AWS Solutions Architects.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• A verbal description for how and when they engage AWS sellers or AWS Solutions Architects on an opportunity or in the form of a demonstration of the AWS Opportunity Management tool in AWS Partner Central with sales qualified opportunities submitted (sales qualified = budget, authority, need, timeline, and competition fields completed).

AWS Partner must have a process to ensure that there are sufficient Mainframe Modernization trained personnel to effectively support customers.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• An established training plan including on-boarding processes that identify job roles (sellers, solutions architects, project managers) and required training paths
• A verbal description of methods used to allocate required resources to Mainframe Modernization projects

AWS Partners must be Partner Revenue Measurement (PRM) compliant to enable automated measurement and attribution of AWS consumption. PRM provides transparent, data-driven recognition of Partner contributions based on actual AWS service consumption across Partner and customer accounts. All Services competency partners must comply with PRM.

Partner must provide the AWS Marketplace product name associated with PRM enablement.

Note: AWS Marketplace listing is a requirement for PRM and competency funding benefits (e.g., MDF, MAP). Refer to Getting Started with PRM for complete onboarding requirements. The competency application process does not review Marketplace transactability.

AWS Partner has adopted Agentic AI tools in ≥2 internal consulting practice areas (e.g., architecture review, code generation, documentation, estimation, testing) as repeatable workflows—not ad-hoc usage—with governance controls ensuring accuracy, security, and responsible use of AI-generated outputs before customer delivery.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Use case inventory identifying ≥2 practice areas with AI tools used and frequency of use
• Screenshot or documentation demonstrating Agentic AI embedded in ≥2 repeatable workflows (e.g., SOP, CI/CD pipeline, review checklist)
• Written description of governance controls: human review gates, accuracy validation process, and data security safeguards for AI-assisted outputs

AWS Partner has established enablement mechanisms ensuring consulting personnel can effectively and responsibly use Agentic AI tools, including usage guidelines defining approved tools, boundaries, and quality standards for AI-assisted deliverables, plus measurable adoption tracking demonstrating organization-wide usage beyond a single individual or team.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Internal Agentic AI usage guidelines defining approved tools, use cases, boundaries, and quality standards
• Proof of ≥1 enablement activity within last 12 months (e.g., training attendance records, workshop agenda, onboarding checklist with AI tool training)
• ≥1 quantitative adoption metric (e.g., % practitioners trained, # projects using AI-assisted workflows, tool usage statistics)

AWS Partner has processes for working with customers to determine and define expected outcomes associated with the projects.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Project deliverable templates or other resources used for project scoping and definition

AWS Partner has processes to determine scope of work with specific criteria defining customer project with expected deliverables.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Project templates or other resources (e.g., RACI Matrix) used for project scoping and definition

AWS Partner has standard Statement of Work (SOW) templates for Mainframe Modernization projects that can be customized to customer needs.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Default SOW template

AWS Partner assigns Project Manager to each project to ensure project remains on time and within budget.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Documentation to show that Project Managers were assigned to each of the 4 customer example projects.

AWS Partner has processes to document, manage, and respond to requests for changes to the project scope.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Documentation of change management practices

AWS Partner demonstrates AWS cost management knowledge and a defined process for incorporating spend visibility into customer engagements—through direct implementation, advisory guidance, or architectural recommendations.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Written description covering: when in engagement lifecycle cost visibility is addressed, how partner assesses customer cost management maturity to tailor services accordingly, and AWS cost management services partner is prepared to recommend.
• Supporting documentation (≥1): delivery methodology, checklist, SOW template, or scoping questionnaire incorporating spend visibility.

AWS Partner demonstrates knowledge of availability testing (load and performance testing, and failure simulation) and a process for validating availability goals—accounting for dependency unavailability and deployment failures.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Written description of testing methodology, best practices, and how partner assesses a customer's current testing capabilities to tailor services and meet committed availability targets.

AWS Partner has a customer acceptance process.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Example customer training documents
• SOW language describing handoff responsibilities and acceptance criteria

AWS Partner implements customer satisfaction checkpoints as part of the project plan.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Project plan and customer satisfaction results for milestone-defined checkpoints

AWS Partner communicates AWS security best practices to customers early in the engagement lifecycle, ensuring customers understand AWS security processes and technologies—enhancing engagement quality and customer satisfaction.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Onboarding and educational documents provided to customers that specifically cover security considerations of their AWS environment.

Evidence must demonstrate that the AWS Partner encourages "shift-left" of security practices — incorporating security guidelines early in design and as an ongoing part of development and operations.

AWS Partner has a process to determine service availability needs for customers. See AWS Reliability Pillar whitepaper for specific considerations and guidance on how to calculate service availability with downstream dependencies.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Written description detailing how service availability is ensured, including details about the factors taken into consideration (cost, requests, dependencies, redundancy, etc.).

AWS Partner plans network topology to ensure the resiliency of connectivity, including planning for DDoS attacks, unexpected increase in traffic, or removal of connectivity due to misconfiguration errors.

Please provide the following as evidence:

• Written description detailing how required network resiliency is ensured and/or how frameworks/methodologies/techniques are leveraged for the planning of unexpected resiliency disruptions (DDoS attacks, unexpected traffic increase, connectivity losses, etc.).

AWS Partner must submit 3 active employee LinkedIn profiles demonstrating deep technical expertise and experience with tool-based modernizations from Mainframe to distributed systems.

AWS Partner must submit a Mainframe modernization discovery offering description showing the discovery tools being used including tool vendor name(s) and product name(s). These tools can be third-party tools or internal tools.

AWS Partner must submit a Mainframe modernization offering description showing the modernization methodology being used, including when applicable the tool vendor name(s) and product name(s). These tools can be third-party tools or internal tools.

AWS Partner must submit Mainframe modernization offerings’ descriptions demonstrating the AWS Partner supports Mainframe modernization with methodology and toolset for Replacing, Replatforming, Automated Refactoring or Rearchitecting. Replatforming and automated refactoring technology examples are provided here.

AWS Partner must either be an existing AWS Migration Competency Consulting Partner, or demonstrate a partnership in place with AWS ProServe or another existing AWS Migration Competency Consulting Partner.

For each customer example, the Mainframe workload modernization project must be completed in 18 months or less from engagement start to production deployment. This applies to individual Mainframe workloads modernization, not necessarily the complete mainframe modernization.

The customer example must demonstrate the modernization of an online workload that was deployed in a highly available configuration in the target Distributed environment. Please explain if there was no such requirement from the customer. The partner must choose the examples that demonstrate this requirement to meet repeatability and consistency of practice.

The customer example must demonstrate the modernization of a batch workload relying on a job control language. Please explain if there was no such requirement from the customer. The partner must choose the examples that demonstrate this requirement to meet repeatability and consistency of practice.

The customer example must demonstrate how AWS Partner implemented data encryption (both in-transit and at-rest) in the target Distributed environment to address security requirements. Please explain if there was no such requirement from the customer. The partner must choose the examples that demonstrate this requirement to meet repeatability and consistency of practice.

The customer example must demonstrate how AWS Partner migrated security server definitions (users, groups, profiles, etc) from the Mainframe to the target Distributed environment. Please explain if there was no such requirement from the customer. The partner must choose the examples that demonstrate this requirement to meet repeatability and consistency of practice.

Customer examples must demonstrate the modernization of workloads written in one of the following languages:

• IBM Z:
  • COBOL
  • PL/1
  • Assembler
  • Natural
  • Easytrieve
  • CA Gen
• IBM z/TPF:
  • z/TPF Assembler (BAL)
  • z/TPF C/C++
  • SabreTalk
• IBM i / AS400:
  • RPG
  • CL (Control Language)
  • AS/400 COBOL
• HP NonStop:
  • TAL (Transaction Application Language)
  • COBOL85
  • pTAL
  • SCOBOL
• Unisys ClearPath:
  • UCOB (Unisys COBOL)
  • ALGOL
  • WFL (Work Flow Language)
  • MASM (Meta Assembler)

AWS Partner must submit the following details:

• Name of the customer
• Customer challenge
• Proposed solution
• Third party applications or solutions used
• Start date of the engagement
• End date of the engagement
• Date the project entered production
• Outcome(s)/results

The Mainframe modernization customer example project must include both application code and corresponding data modernization. It must be migrated to production on AWS, including functional equivalence test between Mainframe and Distributed, and termination of the Mainframe resources. AWS Partner must submit details showing these conditions are met.

The Mainframe modernization customer example project must use one of the following approaches: replatforming, refactoring, replace, re-architecting, using tool or methodology to migrate both application and data. AWS Partner must submit details showing these conditions are met.

AWS Partner must submit details relevant to the Mainframe source workload which was migrated including:

• Business function or domain supported by the mainframe workload
• Mainframe hardware, model, and operating system
• Transaction manager(s) and data stores used by the workload
• Workload languages, and number of lines of code per language
• Workload number of programs, number of batch jobs, number of database tables, number of data files
• Workload dependencies and 3rd party software
• Workload capacity consumed (MIPS)
• Workload disk space size used (TB)

AWS Partner must submit details relevant to the Mainframe workload modernization project including:

• Project timeline with start and end date, and milestones
• Project business case which can include TCO estimate, modernization cost, ROI, business value
• Application and data discovery approach and tool(s), AWS service(s)
• Application modernization approach and tool(s), AWS service(s)
• Data modernization approach and tool(s), AWS service(s)
• Dependencies modernization approach and tool(s) (scheduler, printing, outputs, reports, security)
• Test case creation approach and tool(s)
• Functional Equivalence Test approach and tool(s)
• Production cut-over approach and tool(s)
• Mainframe termination details

AWS Partner must submit details relevant to the target migrated environment on AWS, including:

• For each customer environment: customer landing zone environment, AWS Services, middleware, third party software.
• Security requirements and corresponding implemented solution(s)
• Availability requirements and corresponding implemented solution(s)
• Development tool chain and code deployment pipeline

AWS Partner must submit architecture diagrams depicting the overall design and deployment of the target AWS environment. Each architecture diagram must show:

• Major components of the architecture, and how they combine to provide the AWS Partner's solution to customers.
• All of the AWS services used, using the appropriate AWS service icons.
• High-availability components or features if a project requirement