Amazon wants its customers to get the most out of its AWS platform, but understands not every company can invest in the skills necessary to do that. That’s why the firm has announced a new feature dubbed AWS IQ, which will pair AWS customers with experts who can give tips, training or simply perform tasks that are above the customers’ skillset. 

AWS IQ is available to all Amazon Web Services customers effectively immediately, except for those in China. The service has been specifically designed for small and medium enterprises, but there are a number of options available that could appeal to a company of any size. 

Using AWS IQ, users could leverage the following options: 

AWS Training and Certification – This program helps you and your team to build and validate your cloud skills.

AWS Support – This program gives you access to tools, technology, and people, all designed to help you to optimise performance, lower costs, and innovate faster.

AWS Professional Services – Our global team of experts are ready to work with you (and your chosen APN partner) to help you to achieve your enterprise cloud computing goals.

APN Consulting Partners – This global team of professional service providers are able to help you design, architect, build, migrate, and manage your applications and workloads.

AWS Managed Services (AMS) – This service operates AWS on behalf of our enterprise-scale customers.

Once a customer knows which service it needs, they simply need to fill out a request and AWS IQ will send that request to its database of certified AWS experts. These experts will then submit a proposal for the work, and will describe how they can help the customer and how much the work will cost. It’s then on the customer to select the proposal that appeals most to them. 

Currently, anyone can sign up to become an AWS expert through AWS IQ, so long as they have at least one AWS certification and reside in the United States. Amazon hasn’t exactly said why experts outside of the US can’t participate, but we’re hoping someday in the future the option will be there. 

For those who do want to sign up to become an expert, do note that Amazon will take a 15% fee on any approved payment requests. That could be a small price to swallow, however, given the fact that AWS IQ will be give you access to the more than one million active customers who use AWS.