Rodney Clark Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®

I was delighted to welcome Rodney Clark, Senior Vice President of Partnerships and Small and Medium Business at Cisco, to Ultimate Guide to Partnering. Rodney and I worked together at Microsoft, and he was a guest on this platform while leading Microsoft’s Industry-renowned Ecosystem.

This distinguished technology sector leader is bringing his expertise to shape Cisco’s market evolution, specifically the future of partnerships and co-selling to drive innovation and growth.

Throughout his career, Rodney has played a key role as a global leader in technology, fostering collaborations that empower businesses of all sizes. His insights into how companies can leverage technological advancements have made him a respected figure in the industry.

In this conversation, Rodney and I delved into his new role at Cisco and his vision for the future of their partnership, go-to-market (GTM) approach, and sales strategy. We highlighted the crucial role of artificial intelligence (AI) in shaping the future of technology, the importance of maintaining a customer-centric focus, and how significant shifts driven by hyperscalers—such as cloud commitments, marketplaces, and co-selling—are influencing his plans and strategy.

He believes businesses must adapt to this new environment and offers a roadmap for how organizations can thrive. This is a must-listen episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I hope you join us for this thought-provoking leadership discussion.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• Customer-Centric Focus: Rodney emphasizes the shift in customer behavior and the need for businesses to adapt. [00:00:00]
• Rodney’s Role at Cisco: Discusses his journey at Cisco and the focus on connecting partners and industries. [00:01:11]
• Shift in Buying Behavior: Transition from a vendor-channel model to a customer-driven, ecosystem-centric approach. [00:04:15]
• AI’s Role in Cisco: Cisco focuses on networking, security, and AI integration for customer outcomes. [00:06:55]
• Importance of Marketplaces: Rodney highlights Cisco’s collaboration with hyperscalers and the role of marketplaces. [00:10:49]
• Partner Enablement and Success: Cisco aims to empower partners through AI training and incentives. [00:13:00]
• Future of Cisco’s Partner Ecosystem: Cisco’s vision is to help partners grow through networking, security, and collaboration expertise. [00:32:10]
• Co-Sell and Growth Opportunities: Cisco’s growing co-sell business with hyperscalers and its success in driving revenue. [00:38:31]
• Cisco Partner Event Theme – Forward as One: Rodney teases Cisco’s October partner event and its focus on partnership-driven growth. [00:40:39]

https://youtu.be/TCVtWtAAM0M?si=2nltzan8HSm28Wp1

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Transcript

Keywords:

partner, buyer, microsoft, marketplace, talk, year, company, customer, buy, achieve, partnering, partnership, number, ecosystem, moments, thought, inflection point, aws, money, product

Transcript (provided by Descript)

[00:00:00] Rodney: It’s important that all of us put the customer at the center of this is because it is the Customer buying behavior or the shift in, in, in customer expectation that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. 

[00:00:15] INTRO: Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out on top.

[00:00:22] INTRO: As the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent, you show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant 

[00:00:31] INTRO: every day. I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning. 

[00:00:36] INTRO: That flywheel success is where you will build momentum and that momentum will continue, and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did.

[00:00:45] INTRO: This is how we did it together. 

[00:00:46] Vince: Welcome to the ultimate guide to partnering. I’m Vince Menzione your host. And my mission is to help leaders like you. Achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. Today we have a very special podcast for you. We’ve been talking about the tectonic shifts we’ve been seeing in our world, in our lives, the change in dominance of the hyperscalers, the role of the ecosystem and the changing in buying behavior that we’ve been seeing.

[00:01:11] Vince: And I’m excited to be joined by a friend and leader here at Cisco’s Global Sales Conference. My good friend, Rodney Clark, is the SVP of Partnerships and Small and Medium Business at Cisco. Rodney, I’m so excited to have you here today. 

[00:01:26] Rodney: Vince, Thank you for being here, and thank you for joining our 20, 000 Cisco employees and splunkers at our Global Sales Exchange.

[00:01:34] Vince: Such a small, intimate event. 

[00:01:36] Rodney: Just a small, intimate event, but it’s so good that you can pop in and spend some time with us.

[00:01:37] Vince: Well, thank you for accommodating me and making me so welcome here today. Of course. I’m excited to be here. I’m so excited to spend time with you. I’m gushing a little bit. 

[00:01:49] Rodney: There’s that word again.

[00:01:51] Vince: I got to spend a little time with your leadership and your team last week. And this is such an exciting time. So you and I are good friends. We both worked at Microsoft for a number of years together. You’ve been a guest on the podcast. Yes, I have. As a leader of Microsoft, as their channel chief. And, uh, back again today and so excited for your new role now.

[00:02:12] Vince: So I was hoping we could spend a little time. Cisco has been a tech giant. I mean, yes, defines the word tech giant. Yes. And, uh, excited for what your plans are and what you’re looking to do. So why were you hired to Cisco? Let’s start right, let’s start right, let’s go right into it. Like, 

[00:02:28] Rodney: I’m not really sure why I was hired at Cisco.

[00:02:30] Rodney: I’m sure there’s a lot of people. Wondering the same thing. No, it’s, it’s so good to be, uh, first off here at Cisco. Uh, it’s so great to be in a role where we’re connecting different companies, uh, and, and, and connecting different people of all walks of life, uh, as well as companies in different industries to, to come together and deliver customer value.

[00:02:55] Rodney: Uh, Cisco is a large tech behemoth, a large tech company with a huge responsibility to continue to drive innovation for our customers. And part of me joining and why I’m here was that I have a chance to work with our partners. Cisco as a partner led company and ordained partner led company and helping all of our partners participate in this experience with us.

[00:03:18] Rodney: And so it’s been eight months now that I’ve been on board and it’s, it’s been an absolute blast getting to know. The channel in the ecosystem through a different lens. Through a different relationship as well as quite frankly, you talked about the tectonic shifts helping a company like Cisco, you know, evolve and redefine what it means to be a trusted player in the channel.

[00:03:41] Vince: Yeah. It’s funny because I always think of Cisco when I think about the traditional channels, the vendor channel relationships that we always see. Referred to in our industry and Microsoft was always around partnering and I think about Microsoft really built the first ecosystem Yeah, Bill Gates. I mean it spurred 500, 000 companies into that ecosystem and This I’ll call it the sparking of the ecosystem that we’re seeing now this change in buying behavior Where we’re seeing a real change from vendor to channel customer.

[00:04:15] Vince: the customer actually pulling and completing a solution amongst a group of vendors, bringing those together, bringing the solutions to market together. And Cisco is so well poised in this area. I’d love to dive in a little bit more, but bringing the complete networking solution observability. We could talk about a I would talk about all these other components, but bringing it all together for the customers.

[00:04:37] Vince: It’s just this unique opportunity that you have in your role. 

[00:04:40] Rodney: You hit on a few key words that I like to use when I describe our journey. You know, in 1994, we started out as a company that needed a channel, needed a channel to get our core networking products into the hands of customers. And a big part of our strategy then was transactional.

[00:04:59] Rodney: I think it was for most companies that started programs back then. And you mentioned Microsoft kind of evolving to this ecosystem. Well, I think. The entire industry is involved to this notion of ecosystem where we need a fairly significant set of skills in order to complete and drive customer outcomes.

[00:05:17] Rodney: It’s not just the transaction anymore. It’s the value that the collection of companies, it’s not just one company anymore. It is the combination of two to three to seven and ultimately what they bring in the overall solution in our portfolio. has grown since 94 and since those early days. And we have one of the largest portfolios in the industry.

[00:05:39] Rodney: If you look at it from networking and edge point technology to routers and switches all the way to security through collaboration, IOT, and it definitely requires an ecosystem of capable partners in order to deliver on the customer promise. 

[00:05:55] Vince: And Cisco has been building out its portfolio, hundreds of companies and now parting or part of the Cisco portfolio I refer to.

[00:06:03] Rodney: That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Not, not just, uh, you know, I look at those, those companies is, is not just companies that do we do business with from a, from a, from an ecosystem perspective and from a day to day perspective, companies that we’ve had to acquire to help make us better as well, looking at it from both sides.

[00:06:20] Vince: So I want to dive in on this buying behavior change, right? And I’ve been talking about this tectonic shifts being about five years ago with COVID, right? So we’ve been talking about transformation, you and I. I’ve been talking about transformation for decades now, right? And it was happening at a pace, I’ll call it a slow pace, a predictable pace.

[00:06:40] Vince: And then COVID happens, changing, changes everything. Everything accelerates. Satya Nadella says, we saw two years of transformation in two months. We probably saw seven years of transformation in seven months. I clicked my phone three times and boxes show up at my front door. Healthcare is delivered differently.

[00:06:55] Vince: Education is delivered differently. We don’t even think about those changes that happened. Buying behavior started to happen differently and the persona of the buyer also changed, right? So no longer do people want to be sold to they nobody picks up a phone and here’s an SDR BDR Anymore, it’s really about the trusted relationships.

[00:07:15] Vince: Yes, and we all learn that right? We we make the same type of decisions about buying technology that we do about buying a vehicle Absolutely, where we talk to the seven or eight seats at the table our friends our trusteds And this is why partnering is so important now and ensuring that all those seats at the table are your trusted as well.

[00:07:35] Vince: Those are the organizations that you go to market with that are surrounding your customers. I want to talk about that now and how, how you’re viewing this. I know you know about this and you’re bringing in infusing it into Cisco. 

[00:07:46] Rodney: Yeah, well, it’s important that all of us put the customer at the center of this is because it is the, Customer buying behavior or the shift in customer expectation that has created a need for all of us to rethink our models.

[00:08:00] Rodney: And at the end of the day, it’s no longer point product. There’s no one thing that we sell anymore that is going to solve a problem at the customer. Data and AI is driving a lot more sophistication in terms of what companies need. And the more that companies invest in data and AI, they need the assurance that things are going to be connected, protected, uh, and secure.

[00:08:26] Rodney: And so for us, what we’ve been looking at is how are customers buying and how are they ultimately making decisions today? It’s not even the traditional, uh, you know, IT buyer. It’s line of business decision makers. Uh, it can be the marketing department making decisions on something like a demand gen. Uh, you know, data repository that then connects back into some I.

[00:08:48] Rodney: T. System that they didn’t use to connect it to their overall commerce cloud. It could be a number of things. But for us, it’s Cisco. It’s how are we enabling our programs to adjust to those buying patterns and needs? How are we enabling partners to connect to other partners? I was in a conversation yesterday with our good friend J.

[00:09:10] Rodney: McBain from countless. And we talked about the number of organizations, like a midsize organization typically has seven plus or minus partners or companies that are engaged in helping them sustain their outcomes. When you get into large enterprises, it can be anywhere upwards of 20 to 25. And so for us, as we look to manage and map to those, our program has to evolve and will evolve so that we’re making those logical connections and creating a scenario where we’re basically.

[00:09:42] Rodney: serving up those seven entities, those seven companies that are going to go deliver outcomes, or we’re facilitating the connection of more. That’s a really significant shift from years past. 

[00:09:52] Vince: Yeah, it’s a significant shift, but it’s a natural shift for Cisco, right? I started thinking about this holistically.

[00:09:58] Vince: And you know, I also talk about the role of the hyperscalers. We can’t discount that role. I think a lot of organizations tend to ignore the fact that these large cloud commitments, right? There’s We’ll use Microsoft as an example. Let’s call it 50, 000 field sellers. 

[00:10:13] Rodney: Yes. 

[00:10:13] Vince: That are going into these organizations and saying, you know, consume more of our Azure.

[00:10:18] Vince: These decisions are now being made, not in the line of business, they’re being made at the board level. Absolutely. At the C suite level. The CEO is the new CIO in many respects, right? Because they’re really driving a set of different behaviors, which are then in the line of business consuming against. And so their role is important.

[00:10:35] Vince: And I know you’ve been partnering along with with these organizations and you have some thoughts about how to take the company in the future, but we can’t forget that. And the fact that marketplaces are also going to become more significant. Yes, and I know Cisco has a big commitment to marketplace as well.

[00:10:49] Rodney: Yeah, that’s a fairly significant shift for not just Cisco, but the entire industry. And you look at the addressable market and depending on how you look at it or through what lens you get to numbers that are 250 billion. Yeah. Uh, to 85 billion over a certain period of time. And I look squarely at that 85 billion for what we do as Cisco as an addressable market over the next couple of years.

[00:11:11] Rodney: And to your point, these companies are basically making commitments to AWS and EDP, Azure and Microsoft on commit to consume, where they have to basically spend in a certain amount of time on projects that are going to drive more cloud consumption for these hyperscalers. And so for a company like Cisco, it’s, you know, what are we doing to re platform our core assets onto those clouds so that those customers can take advantage of that as well?

[00:11:44] Rodney: Or how are we opting our services, because we are software services and hardware, how are we opting our services so they can also be a part of these broader negotiated terms from AWS, Microsoft, GCP, and others? It’s a massive push for us. We’ve made a pretty significant investment both on Splunk as well as on, uh, at Cisco, where we are driving growth upwards of 40 to 55 percent year over year business with hyperscalers.

[00:12:15] Rodney: And I love to talk about it because we have to remind our partners that there’s an opportunity for them to participate in that as well. It’s not an AWS and Cisco sell. It’s an AWS, Cisco and insert name of partner. 

[00:12:31] Vince: So you are speaking my language. I mean, so I got up at the channel partners event this past spring and had a conversation and it reminded me of the conversation you and I had about the cloud with our partner ecosystems back in the day when we were both leaders at Microsoft.

[00:12:45] Vince: Bunch of people that were doe eyed about this marketplace thing and really haven’t embraced it yet. And I think you’re you’re hitting the nail on the head here about getting the partner ecosystem. engaged in this whole marketplace opportunity in a bigger way. Do you want to expand on that? 

[00:12:57] Rodney: Yeah, we, we have to get them involved and engaged.

[00:13:00] Rodney: A big part of my business here at Cisco, uh, is in something that we call routes to market. What are the routes to market that are driving customer outcomes? Or how, in essence, are our customers buying, back to your previous question, and what are they buying through? Managed services for our ecosystem is big because, you Our customers are needing and wanting more integration services, especially as they get involved and engage in things like a I a route to market could be a does this do we involve at scale a distributor who goes through, you know, a second tier of reseller to get to a point solution, a route to market could be something like, Hey, the I.

[00:13:41] Rodney: S. V. As the actual primary integrator, you name it. Our focus is on routes to market. And what we’ve really been building out for our partners is a muscle around this marketplace route to market. You know, what are we doing to help them get ready and prepared for that? Some of it is in just the core, uh, uh, you know, relationship building three way between an AWS, Cisco and said partner.

[00:14:07] Rodney: Some of it is in getting our partners really, really. Enabled on our core technology in order to drive something through a marketplace transaction. Transaction. Cisco is doubled down, doubled, doubling down on on networking and security. And so we’ve got to get our partners really, you know, built up around capability so that they can sell secure networking solutions through.

[00:14:32] Rodney: Marketplace. We’ve got to get our partners really enabled on a I s and and what it means to be a Cisco a I partner so that they can participate in this opportunity that is marketplace. So it gets a bit, you know, multifaceted and multidimensional, but it’s all something that’s squarely, uh, you know, a priority for Cisco.

[00:14:54] Vince: Yeah, I mean, it looks like you’re eliminating some of the complexity. From the organization, right? This, this channel complexity and bringing us into this, like, what, what is the, what is the win win here for the partner ecosystem? How do you activate that? How do you think about this broad, not only the broad portfolio, but the broad set of partners?

[00:15:12] Vince: How do you think about the activation? 

[00:15:14] Rodney: Yeah, the, the activation is, is, is great. By the way, I’ve got a team that is dedicated, uh, solely focused on marketplace and marketplace acceleration and transaction. That same team, by the way. Is looking at our cloud and hyperscale partnerships as well as our ISV partnerships.

[00:15:32] Rodney: And so the first part of activation is getting us to the point where we’re building out the domain knowledge and expertise from within. Because it’s a route to market, we don’t have a handful of partners that go, Okay, these are my marketplace partners and these are my other partners. It’s just, every, every one of our partners participates in this.

[00:15:49] Rodney: I mentioned our distributors earlier. You know, some of them have their own marketplaces and some of them participate. Okay. In our hyperscalers marketplace, and we want to make sure that we’re supporting every way that we can the front end in terms of how we categorize opportunities and then the back end in terms of how we transact opportunities.

[00:16:06] Rodney: I haven’t talked a lot about that, but a big part of how we support our partners is being able to actually transact on our end. These marketplace opportunities so that they can see the incentive that we offer is Cisco. Nice. So that was a big body of work that we had to do in order to enable that as well.

[00:16:22] Vince: Yeah, because I, again, with the activation component of it, right? How do you, how do you create the there there for them, right? We could, we could talk, you and I could sit here and talk to all the partner community all we want, but until there’s the revenue recognition. the incentives. How am I going to get paid?

[00:16:36] Vince: I’m doing all this for the channel, right?

[00:16:38] Rodney: That’s right. And we spent a lot of time doing that. Now our partners know exactly how they get paid and it’s very similar to how they would get paid in a traditional transaction. And the great thing for us is we’ve also then had to match that to our internal sellers, right?

[00:16:53] Rodney: So any partner out there listening to this, by the way, it’s also marketplace transactions are great. It’s the quickest path to go. You can get paid on it and our Cisco sellers are paid exactly the same way that our partners are paid. And so everybody wins in this. The customer, the partner, and our internal team.

[00:17:11] Rodney: By the way, that’s the hierarchy. Customer, partner, and then our internal team. 

[00:17:16] Vince: Yeah, and if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re not as well informed on marketplaces, those customers have already made those commitments to those hyperscalers. Right. So the money is already spent. It’s available. You don’t have to find incremental budget to go get it.

[00:17:29] Vince: So as a seller working with a customer or a partner working with a customer, you just need to ask. That’s it. Who’s your cloud provider? What’s your commitment like? Can we can we can work this through your cloud commitments? That’s the beauty of what we’re seeing. 

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[00:18:31] Vince: So we can’t have a conversation today, Rodney, without talking about, 

[00:18:36] Rodney: Let me guess. AI?

[00:18:37] Vince: And I feel like every conversation since November of 2022. When Chat GPT hit the ground, that seems like every conversation has embedded AI. I mean, it’s a 158 billion partner opportunity by 2029. That’s Canalys, our friend, Jay McBay’s organization has predicted it might even be bigger than that. Uh, he and I had a conversation. I said, is it, is there hype? He says, yes, there’s a little bit of hype, but I think we’re past the hype cycle now. 

[00:19:10] Rodney: Yes. Yes.

[00:19:10] Vince: It’s an exciting time. And I want to hear your view and where you’re taking Cisco in this conversation. 

[00:19:15] Rodney: Yeah, well, it is definitely not hype. Uh, it’s definitely forcing A. I. Being it is definitely forcing every organization to rethink how they operate and it’s okay that every conversation is around A.

[00:19:30] Rodney: I. Because it is that important. It’s the next wave. It’s what the Internet was for us many years ago. It’s what the move to cloud was for us many years ago. And A. I. Is here to stay at Cisco. I want to parse this in the two things. One is how we’re thinking about it broadly as a company. And then I want to take separately how we’re enabling our ecosystem to do it, because I think it’s important to cover both of those things.

[00:19:52] Rodney: Uh, you know, events that Cisco, you know, for the last 40 years has been primarily a networking company and really a networking and security company. And that hasn’t changed. Networking is at the core of what we do. And we think networking and the network itself is at the core of the AI opportunity.

[00:20:10] Rodney: There’s really a few ways that we think about how we power AI and how we focus on it from Cisco. The first is powering AI ready data centers. And I’m going to try to double click on, on, on, on each of these, by the way. The second is focusing on what we call future proofed workplaces. And the last thing in that.

[00:20:32] Rodney: That supports it all is this notion and concept of digital resilience. If I start with a data center and we look at the progress that we’ve made or the stalls that we’ve had, you have things like high latency and low efficiency that were very frustrating. And in today’s AI world, it just doesn’t work.

[00:20:50] Rodney: It undermines a lot of the investments. That’s right. And so for us, Cisco is revolutionizing how infrastructure and data connect to protect organizations and allow the facilitation And that means reimagining the data center for increased bandwidth and efficiency, driving cost lower, focusing on things like sustainability.

[00:21:12] Rodney: If you look at our overall portfolio, and I mentioned networking and security earlier, we’re really the only company that brings the power of the network together with industry leading security, observability, and collaboration. So that puts us in somewhat of a unique category. In and of itself, especially today.

[00:21:30] Rodney: Absolutely. Absolutely. And when you look at further on the on the data center and the networking piece today, we have over 31 million networking devices that connect over a billion clients every month and our security suite observes more than 800 billion events per day. So when you look at the totality of the AI ready data data center, we’re really poised to maximize the opportunity for our customers and to help them again and protect them in this AI era.

[00:21:59] Rodney: If I just click on workspaces and workplaces just for a second, and when you hear workplace and you think about it in the context of AI, we automatically go to, you know, Hey, what’s our post pandemic, you know, office plan to get employees back in. That’s not what we’re talking about here. When we talk about workplaces, and when we talk about future proof workplaces, the workplace isn’t just the office where we go to work anymore.

[00:22:24] Rodney: We need secure networking, and we need AI in operating rooms, we need it in cruise ships, we need it in banks, we need it everywhere, and we need to know how AI is being delivered across the networking, uh, excuse me, across the network, and ultimately how we collaborate In that same environment. So again, it’s not just the networking and the security, but it’s ultimately in those workplaces, how we’re collaborating, and that’s key.

[00:22:51] Rodney: And the last thing I’ll touch on is digital resilience, and this is really looking at how all of the things, the two things that I just talk about operate in a company’s own network, and then their non own network and how we’re driving a seamless and secure experience across both of those things. So it’s a really comprehensive approach to AI that we’re taking.

[00:23:12] Vince: And such an important approach. First of all, I want to just touch on the fact this, uh, the investments that are going on right now in data centers. Yes. I mean, I use Microsoft because I know the numbers from their reports. But, 50 billion dollars this year. Yes. Just in build out. Chips in data centers. You need to have a reliable, fast, and resilient network.

[00:23:32] Vince: Let’s talk about security. I mean, we’re, we’re hit with threats all the time. Let’s say from bad actors, from criminals, uh, having been on the public side of Microsoft, public sector side of Microsoft, I got to see some of that firsthand. And no one, no one does a better job here than Cisco in driving that.

[00:23:51] Vince: And the observability, and we talk about it, IOT and some of the other areas, bringing it down to the point of use is so important. And, and, and, and. And securing all of that and making sure you have reliable connections and all of that is so important. Yeah. And AI is going to drive more and more usage for everyone.

[00:24:08] Rodney: Yeah, and that’s why we are committed to, uh, the strategy that I just talked about. Because again, it is, it is the network that’s at the center of it. It is. Uh, and again, that’s the core of what we’ve done at Cisco for, for years and years. Uh, and if I go back to the partner piece, because we are here, I want to talk.

[00:24:28] Vince: I want to ask you about that. I’m glad you’re bringing back the partners. 

[00:24:33] Rodney: I got to take it back. I’m like, there’s a role that we need partners to play.

[00:24:33] Vince: This is the ultimate guide to partner. So, so tell me, what are the imperatives? Like, what do partners need to think about? What do they need to go differently? Do differently here now?

[00:24:43] Rodney: Yeah, it’s not so much to do differently, but I want to focus on three things that our partners need to really be focused on. Okay. One is to, is to really get educated on the Cisco AI story. And it’s not just the story for the sake of telling the story, but Cisco has been focused on AI for over a decade.

[00:25:03] Rodney: And we really started, uh, introducing, uh, areas and aspects of AI into, uh, silicon based projects, into, uh, different pieces of, of, of products that we’ve been building. We’ve been playing around and, and focused on AI agents For many, many years, and now we have a single AI agent that spans across our entire portfolio.

[00:25:25] Rodney: And so the first is partners getting educated on, on Cisco and our overall approach to AI and what we’ve been doing over the years. The next thing is really leaning in on the networking and the security expertise and capability. We have thousands and thousands of networking partners that are in the market today working on behalf of Cisco everyday and with Cisco everyday.

[00:25:49] Rodney: Thousands and thousands of security partners. How do we get to a point of secure networking and how do those two constituents, those two partners that are deep in each of those architectures work together, or those who already have capability in both really lean in and build on their, their position of strength, because that’s our starting point is Cisco.

[00:26:11] Rodney: So that would be thing. Number two, thing three, I touched on it just a little bit in, in the previous response, but it’s really getting focused on enablement. Like, we’ve made a pretty significant investment in enabling, helping our partners along this journey around networking and security, helping them get familiar with telling the story.

[00:26:32] Rodney: I think we are less than three months in and we’ve got over, uh, 500 partners that have gone through our AI, uh, for fundamentals. Uh, course, which is, which has been awesome, and over 450 of our partners, and we’ve got over 1200 that are, that are signed up today to go through that. So we’re seeing more and more uptick and more and more interest in that today.

[00:26:53] Rodney: And that would be the three things that I direct partners. 

[00:26:56] Vince: Yeah. So that enablement and activation, right, bringing them along, having them, you know, cross-trained, I guess is the, is the terminology I would’ve used for that. And then having them show the success of the program, right? That’s exactly right.

[00:27:06] Vince: That’ll build that flywheel. That’s exactly right. So, where are you headed? I mean, you’re sharing so much today, and I’m so appreciative of the time, kind of opening up the kimono with us here at Ultimate Guide to partnering to tell your story and your vision for the future of Cisco. Where are you headed?

[00:27:24] Rodney: Yeah, for us, it’s it’s building, uh, an ecosystem starting. I always start when I say ecosystem at the breath of partners that we have. How are we building up their capabilities? And I’m going to go away from AI just for a second and go back to the to the architecture pillars of networking, security, collaboration, uh, and ultimately cloud and AI.

[00:27:49] Rodney: And what are we doing to go deep? And help our partners really build out their expertise around that. Now, in addition to that, we also have a life cycle that, that we support. How are we enabling our partners to support the usage of our products? Yes, hugely important. And we’re investing in ensuring that our partners are able and capable of doing that, not just going deep in the architecture, but able to support ultimately the life cycle that all of our partners are going through.

[00:28:17] Rodney: And then in this world that we live in today, it’s a competitive world. You know, we want our partners adding new logos and new customers. And how are we enabling that? And so our future is based on going deep in those architectures and then connecting the dots so that we get this platform effect of companies who were invested across multiple areas of architecture for us.

[00:28:39] Rodney: And then it’s building a definition of what a successful Cisco partner looks like across performance. across enablement, across engagement, and those things become our primary push into the future. 

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[00:29:48] Vince: You said something here. I want to make sure we dive in a little bit on, or maybe emphasize you said platform and I truly believe we, Cisco is not a product or technology company. It’s a platform company. 

[00:30:01] Rodney: Absolutely. Absolutely. And when you start to see the power of networking and security working together, I talked about workplaces and the fact that it’s secure networking and it’s also collab in those spaces.

[00:30:16] Rodney: You start to string those two, those three things together in our portfolio and you start to see them compound. That’s right. And established or in essence, create this platform effect. That’s where we’re taking our Cisco partner ecosystem. 

[00:30:31] Vince: And I also think about the partners that I know out there, you and I both know, that are partners with the hyperscalers, that are partners with some of the other ISVs.

[00:30:40] Vince: There are a lot of partners today that are bringing the whole portfolio to the customer. Yes. We’ve had some of them as guests on our podcast. Yes. Some of them are multi billion dollar companies, some of them are smaller organizations. But they also enhance and they bring the capabilities of the Cisco platform along with the other platforms. And they’re already poised for this.

[00:30:58] Rodney: Yeah, yeah. You said something that’s key. And, and that is that some of them are, are large, and some of them are not. That’s right. In our new world, what we’re building is a capable partner who can deliver on the promise of a customer, right? And so you balance across performance and transaction, and you blend that with capability, uh, and you blend that with a proven track record of, you know, adding customers and managing the lifecycle.

[00:31:26] Rodney: Yeah. And you start to see not only those partners who are already established in our ecosystem continue to grow and develop, but you start to see these boutique partners, I’ll call them for lack of a better term, that start to rise up in significance because they’re either building and, and, and driving to this notion of platform effect or their partner to partner or their partnering strategy has them working with other organizations that are also Similar to them.

[00:31:53] Rodney: And so it’s for our broad ecosystem in terms of how we’re building and designing. And it’s also for our largest and most capable partners. And we’re basically working on both ends of it to ensure that at the end of the day, the customer wins at the end because they’ve got a capable Cisco partner. 

[00:32:10] Vince: And the customer makes their decision based on their trusted advisors by the organizations that they have brought along or brought them along.

[00:32:18] Vince: Yeah. And I’ll, I’ll add another point here because without sharing the name of the hyperscaler or the person who told me this, but a lot of the multi party offers the things that are going on now where the hyperscaler is bringing along a transactional or selling partner along to the customer.

[00:32:36] Vince: They’re not the traditional partners of the past. They’re new partners, and they’re surprised by that. 

[00:32:41] Rodney: Yes Yes, and that’s what our our future is designed to capture Yes, you know those those those new partners who again I called them boutique earlier You described it much better than I did because boutique doesn’t translate everywhere But hey a partner that maybe has been a niche partner, you know a specialty partner focused on XDRs You know as a security stamp now all of a sudden they have relevance in this Because XDR could be a part of a broader security, um, you know, opportunity, uh, and an outcome that a customer wants to deliver.

[00:33:13] Rodney: And now all of a sudden, they’ve been elevated because of the investments that they’ve made. And so we’re really trying to, to, to rebalance this so that we give, uh, equal footing to that, that, that, that small partner who’s got, you know, a niche area of focus and expertise, but super capable. Working alongside either one that looks like them or even a larger one that perhaps could be an integrator and not necessarily an ISV or the labels that we sometimes put on partners.

[00:33:41] Vince:  Yeah. We do that. Don’t. Yeah. So big vision and for partners watching or listening to great opportunities, right. For growth, for continued growth and success. Like organizations, how do I make money today? How do I sustain, how do I survive? During what is still economic headwinds that we’re seeing right now.

[00:33:59] Vince: But that vision requires a mindset. It requires changes to culture and organization. And you’ve, you know, you’re coming here from with a very storied background of another organization and a growth mindset. How do you infuse some of that? How do you make the cultural changes that are necessary to take Cisco into the future?

[00:34:18] Rodney: This one is actually easy. Um, I said it to my team yesterday. The cheat code for me is just using voice of customer. and voice of partner. Our customers have already made the choice. That’s right. The market has already responded. And so it’s up to us to ensure that we stay one step ahead of the market. I like to tell my teams that the pace of innovation at Cisco is like ridiculously awesome right now.

[00:34:49] Rodney: It is, we’re in a really good spot, uh, and we’re building new products and incorporating new capabilities every single day. Our partner ecosystem and our push has to stay one step ahead of that. 

[00:35:02] Vince: I love that. 

[00:35:03] Rodney: We do 90 percent of our business through our ecosystem And if our ecosystem is not ready to sell the innovation that we’re building Then our customers lose at the end of the day.

[00:35:13] Rodney: So customer voice Market data and insight drives in essence our pace Uh, which has to be again a bit faster than market so that we enable all of our partners to participate in the opportunity. 

[00:35:28] Vince: So I’m sure you’re on a listening tour right now, right? 

[00:35:31] Rodney: Every day, every day is a listening tour.

[00:35:32] Rodney: Yeah, yeah. Some would say that, uh, you know, not  always with both ears, but, uh, but every day is a listening tour. And that’s the, that’s the important thing in this, in this day and age and at the pace of innovation. Uh, we can’t be afraid to, to, to try new things. Yeah. We’ve heard the term fail fast. Yeah, that’s that’s kind of we know what that means.

[00:35:54] Rodney: But for us, we don’t want to fail at the expense of our customers and partners. So we have to take very informed but quick decisions. And that is a cultural shift for us at Cisco as well as our broader ecosystem. But everyone understands why it needs to happen that way.

[00:36:13] Vince: So what do you believe after being on this listening tour every day?

[00:36:17] Vince: What do you believe makes a great partner for Cisco? 

[00:36:20] Rodney: We have an incredibly loyal partner base. Vince, I was like surprised. I joined Cisco in January, but I had a two month preview because I, I, I participated in partner summit, uh, last year in November and I walked in and after my first day, I’m like, is, is it just me being here and you know, the partners are being really nice.

[00:36:48] Rodney: Some of the same partners that I did business with in my previous, at my previous employer. And after day three, I’m like, Oh my gosh, like these partners love Cisco and Cisco loves these partners. And so for me coming in, knowing that we already have a loyal partner base was like unbelievable. I can’t describe it.

[00:37:11] Rodney: And I try to, and I never find the right words because it’s not the world that I came from previously. Now the push that I give, and when you are that loyal, you know, Hey, if you’re walking down the street with your best friend. You know, if you notice a hole in the back of his shoe, are you going to tell him?

[00:37:27] Rodney: Well, you got a decision to make, right? So I want to know not only that there’s a hole in my shoe, but I need a new one. And I want to know what kind of shoes I should be wearing. Terrible analogy, but I think we get it.

[00:37:38] Vince: I think you’re right, though. People are afraid to give the unvarnished truth sometimes.

[00:37:43] Rodney: Yeah. And so where we, you know, the, the feedback comes in, it’s like, you know, Hey dude, you got a hole in your shoe. But I’m like, no, maybe I also need some new shoes. Yes. And so the, the point there is that while we have this very loyal partner base and that’s kind of the, the, the charm of our relationship with the ecosystem at Cisco, we, we should be pushing each other a little harder to make sure that we We stay, uh, you know, focused on customer outcomes and that we maintain the share positions and the profitability more importantly. That we expect to see.

[00:38:19] Vince: I want to touch on something here because I do think it’s important like this change from channel to what I’ll call co selling. Yes. And infusing that change in behavior into the organization. How do you see that happening? 

[00:38:31] Rodney: Yeah, we’ve done that very successfully. I mentioned our marketplace growth being, you know, upwards of, you know, in the, in the 50 percent.

[00:38:38] Rodney: Yep. Our co sell business, uh, has grown similarly. Uh, co sell is, is a, is, is a bit more fluid for us. Because we can get some of our hardware, uh, uh, components and pieces in there as well as software and services. And so we’ve had tremendous success with Microsoft, with, with AWS and a number of other companies on CoSell, uh, contributing quite a bit, uh, new, uh, new incremental revenue for us over the last 45% Uh, year over year.

[00:39:12] Rodney: And so that becomes, we talked about routes to market, that becomes another way that we partner to get ultimately customers, you know, the outcomes that they’re looking for. 

[00:39:22] Vince: What about, are there any challenges you’d like to highlight that partners face that they need to think about addressing? 

[00:39:29] Rodney: Not so much that partners need to think about addressing.

[00:39:32] Rodney: I think we have to tackle those things together. You know, for us being a large company, uh, we get saddled with this term of complexity. Uh, and, and it occurred that once or twice, just once or twice. Uh, you and I were kidding, I think last week where I’m like, I haven’t seen a partner program that doesn’t have complexity associated with it.

[00:39:52] Rodney: And then at the same time, uh, the, the onus is on us to, to make sure that we simplify, uh, we want to make sure that we’re driving cost out of doing business as opposed to adding costs. And so that’s been a big focus of our, of ours as well. You know, everything from our back end systems to our incentive programs and how many we manage and ask our partners to manage to our expectations of them in terms of things like co selling or things like deal registration.

[00:40:22] Rodney: All of those are efforts on our end to be. You know, uh, to drive more simplicity. Uh, and we’ve got probably seven or eight different initiatives that we’ll, we’ll share more on in the, uh, in the October timeframe. 

[00:40:35] Vince: I was, I was going to bring up October. I know you’ve got your big partner event. 

[00:40:39] Rodney: I’m so pumped. So excited.

[00:40:41] Vince: Is there anything you can share with us ahead of time? Or is it, is it…

[00:40:44] Rodney: I think what I can share is, is I’m really excited for our theme this year, which is forward as one forward is one, and that if that doesn’t capture Ultimately, where we want to be with our ecosystem, I don’t know what does.

[00:40:59] Rodney: We talk about, today, this notion and concept internally of One Cisco. Our partners are included in that as well, because they’re such a key and critical part of how we deliver value. And so, Forward as One basically pulls them into the fold. It says, hey, you know, as we march forward, as we pace on our innovation, as we pace on our program evolution, forward as one.

[00:41:22] Rodney: Uh, as we pace on on everything, driving simplicity that we’re doing it with our partners. As one. 

[00:41:29] Vince: Forward as one. And what are the dates of your big partner event? 

[00:41:32] Rodney: We are October 27 through 30, and someone is going to yell at me in a second that’s here in the, the studio audience and tell me of whether or not those are the right dates.

[00:41:45] Rodney: Uh, but we’re in Los Angeles this year, Los Angeles, and I’m pretty, I’m pretty excited about that. 

[00:41:49] Vince: Okay. Well I’m looking forward to being with you. 

[00:41:50] Rodney: Yeah, yeah. Looking forward to seeing you there as well. 

[00:41:53] Vince: That’s really exciting to be there and for our partners. listening today to be the it’s an exciting time. 

[00:41:58] Vince: Forward is one. I love it. So we can’t have an interviewer conversation without me asking this question I ask this, this is my favorite question, I ask this of each of my guests… you’re hosting a dinner party and you can invite any three guests from the present or the past. We had one or two guests actually pick people in the future to be at this amazing dinner party. We can talk about where we’re gonna have this party, too. I love your locations. I know you just came back from Europe, and, uh, I’m about ready to head over that way. Um, whom would you invite to this amazing dinner party and why?

[00:42:38] Rodney: Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Okay, I’m gonna talk a little bit while I build myself into my guest list. All right, great. Um, first off, I love hosting people at home. And I love cooking and in particular this time of year, I’m on the grill.

[00:42:52] Vince: I have seen posts from you. 

[00:42:54] Rodney: Yes. Yes. I love, I love to barbecue. And so let’s assume that there’s a, there’s a rib and a beer associated with this, right? Whether or not my guests are going to appreciate that. That’s how it’s going to go down.

[00:43:05] Rodney: So we’re going to start there. Um, yeah, three people. Okay. I’m going to go with, um, This is totally influenced by a recent trip that I took, but, uh, uh, Plato, 

[00:43:22] Vince: Plato. 

[00:43:23] Rodney: Yeah. And, and not, not the seasoned, you know, hardened philosopher that, that he became later in life. But I want that like fresh 15 year old, you know, uninhibited free thinker, and just really get into the mind of some of that formative thinking.

[00:43:43] Rodney: And, and as I’m, as I’m building my list, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll now start to see and, and just the conversations that, that, that we’d have, uh, let me, let me keep going because…  

[00:43:51] Vince: Well, I, I was thinking about it with, with Plato, especially about how he influenced the ages. Yes. Really. Yes. I mean, not just, not just the Greeks, but the Romans and then beyond.

[00:44:00] Rodney: So much influence, right, across so many things from, from, from religion, uh, to taboo topics at the time of things like, like, like sex to, uh, to just general philosophy around, you know, how the world should, should evolve to even sometimes economics for the time, just like really, really incredible breadth of, of influence.

[00:44:23] Rodney: Uh, and so, uh, I’m, I’m just enamored lately with Plato. My second guess, not necessarily in order. Uh, Muhammad Ali. I think he could give Plato a run for his money, by the way.

[00:44:35] Vince: Uh, yes, that would be very cool. By the way. I’d love to have you both in the same room. 

[00:44:40] Rodney: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and that’s, that, that would be amazing.

[00:44:43] Rodney: And, and, uh, although I, I knew you were an gonna ask a similar question, but I really wasn’t prepared to think about it until just now. But, um, obviously a hero for, for many of us who grew up in that era. Uh, not because of his athleticism, but because of the stances that he took, uh, both from a, a political standpoint, uh, the piece that he tried to drive and create, uh, within his life, and just the, the, the figure that, that, that he was. 

[00:45:07] Vince: Challenged, the status quo in so many areas.

[00:45:09] Rodney: Yeah. Yeah. And can I cheat and go four? 

[00:45:12] Vince: Absolutely. 

[00:45:13] Rodney: Okay. So, um, you know, the fourth is, uh, it’s hard to ignore what’s happening in the U. S. right now, uh, and, uh, although I don’t want to politicize our conversation, uh, but wow, I would love to have Kamala on the day, Kamala Harris on the day that she found out that she was going to actually be in, you know, in, in run for the nomination, right?

[00:45:38] Rodney: Uh, and, and, and just really get that fresh thinking and perspective based on today’s issues. And then that conversation. And I’m gonna round it off with a fourth, which is my Dad. Uh, who’s no longer with us. Uh, but, uh, one, we’d laugh to no end. At the conversation that would happen between the other three.

[00:45:58] Rodney: Uh, and then too, he, he, uh, he was a bit of a philosopher himself and I think he can give both Plato and, and, and Muhammad Ali a run for their money. 

[00:46:07] Vince: Well, and I know a little bit about your dad from our previous conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was an executive at IBM. 

[00:46:12] Rodney: That’s right. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. So that would, that would round out my, uh, my dinner table. 

[00:46:16] Vince: That is an amazing, do you mind if I come along? I can bring dessert. What a conversation. I just, I’m just thinking about this conversation now. Like Muhammad Ali riffing with Plato. Can you see it? Maybe challenging him a little bit on some of his philosophy.

[00:46:32] Vince: Kamala come in. I want to hear what happened. I really want to hear that conversation that Sunday. 

[00:46:39] Rodney:  succulent ribs. 

[00:46:40] Vince: I love it. I love it. And your dad and rainier beer, right? Rainier beer and your dad along for the conversation as well. Well, that’s a fascinating group.

[00:46:49] Vince: And I’m excited to join you for that dinner. So I want to thank you for that. Um, before we leave today, I want to ask you one more question. Um, we are getting towards the end of the year. You’ve got a lot. You’re going to share in the near future. Yes, sir. This leaning in for partners. I want to I want to maybe ask you to give the partners watching and listening today.

[00:47:08] Vince: A lot of them might be the first time they’re listening or watching ultimate guide to partnering because they’ve been Cisco partners and not hyperscaler partners. What advice would you give them for setting up for success going into the new year? 

[00:47:21] Rodney: Yeah, it’s a good question, and we’re going to spend a lot of time on this in the next month.

[00:47:25] Rodney: And, you know, we’re talking about Cisco is a company that has a core in networking. And security. I touched on that a couple of times today. Very intentionally, you know, success for us is aligning to our priority architectures, of course, of which networking is one security is one cloud and A. I being one collaboration being another.

[00:47:47] Rodney: We want to work with our ecosystem to build that platform effect that we talked about, and we need partners to go deep in each of those so that we can start connecting all of these dots together to bring this value. And so it’s Go deep from a certification standpoint from an enablement standpoint in each of those areas and then work with your PAMS Work with your partner account managers to really understand what it means to support Cisco engagement across the lifecycle and with that will come the addition of new customers and logos And so really our whole conversation has been that blueprint of really what I’m asking partners to do But now more than ever We need to really harness the moment.

[00:48:32] Rodney: And this week, by the way, our theme is meet the moment. I almost went into script, so I’m going to do it because I’m already there. We really need to meet the moment and make sure that all of our partners are focused on those things. 

[00:48:43] Vince: Yeah. I think what you’re saying resonates so well with me, hopefully for our viewers and listeners too, and these platforms coming together.

[00:48:50] Vince: And I have a, I’m of a firm belief by the way, that there’s going to be consolidation. Of these platforms over a period of time, we are no longer going to be stitching together thousands of different SAS solutions over a period of time because the security risks are so great. That’s right. We’re going to start to see this consolidation and Cisco is so poised to be part of that.

[00:49:11] Rodney: Yeah, I think we are. Yeah. 

[00:49:13] Vince: So great to see you, my friend. 

[00:49:16] Rodney: Good to see you. So great. Thanks for having me on the, uh, on the podcast. 

[00:49:18] Vince: Thank you for hosting me here in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada for our ultimate guide to partnering episode. Rodney. So great. Thanks. Thank you so much. Yeah. Appreciate it. And thank you for watching.

[00:49:29] Vince: Thank you for listening to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering. You can follow us on all the podcast platforms and please subscribe on Apple, Spotify, and our new YouTube channel where you can watch and listen to all of our 240 plus amazing episodes. Thank you again for joining us today. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering.

[00:49:51] Vince: Hopefully this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something. Have you implemented everything you’ve been learning? And are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve?

[00:50:09] Vince: If not, it’s time to take action now. Join Ultimate Partner Experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about. With UPX you get access to exclusive industry insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources, and support from a community that shares your goals.

[00:50:31] Vince: Join us now. Visit our website, theultimatepartner.com and sign up today.

Jay McBain Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®

In today’s episode, we revisit a conversation with a special guest, Jay McBain, Chief Analyst at Canalys. Jay McBain is an accomplished speaker, author, and innovator in the IT industry. Named Channel Influencer of the Year by Channel Partners Magazine, Top 40 Under Forty by the Business Review, Channel A-List by CRN, Top 8 Thought Leader by Channel Marketing Journal, Top 20 Visionary by ChannelPro, Top 25 Newsmaker by CDN Magazine, Top 50 Channel Influencer by Penton, Top 100 Most Respected Thought Leader by VSR Magazine, Global Power 150 by SMB Magazine, and Top 250 Managed Services Executives by MSPmentor.

Jay joins our host, Vince Menzione, for an enlightening discussion. Together, they navigate the ever-evolving landscape of the technology industry, covering diverse topics such as changing market dynamics, the transformative influence of generative AI, and the digital-first mindset adopted by millennial buyers. Join us as we uncover invaluable insights into business strategies, partnership dynamics, and marketplace trends. Whether you’re a CEO, industry professional, or tech enthusiast, this discussion promises to be intellectually stimulating and enlightening. Don’t miss this opportunity to better understand the modern tech ecosystem.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode

0:00 – Millennials as the New Buyer 

2:35 – Understanding the New Buyer’s Behavior 

5:08 – The Role of Ecosystems and Marketplaces 

7:25 – The Death of the Cookie and the Rise of Second-Party Data 

12:42 – The Future of Partnering and Marketplaces

16:47 – The Importance of Customer Obsession and Partnership Skills 

https://youtu.be/xe9MTL6krak?si=hs3NmzLPis8MiYhD

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Ultimate Partner LIVE – Executive Summit ’24 – Now OPEN!

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I’m thrilled to announce the Ultimate Partner LIVE Executive Summit 2024, which will be held in Dallas, TX, on October 22nd and 23rd!

This year’s summit promises to be bigger and better. It will be an immersive experience bringing together over 300+ partners across ISVs, LSPs, and SIs. Join us for two days of insightful discussions, hands-on workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities with industry leaders and Microsoft executives.

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Transcript

Keywords:

partner, buyer, microsoft, marketplace, talk, year, company, customer, buy, achieve, partnering, partnership, number, ecosystem, moments, thought, inflection point, aws, money, product

Transcript (Generated by Otter A.I. – Please Excuse Any Typos) 

Jay McBain 0:00  

And that leads to marketplaces. Yes, they’re okay buying seven layers to solve a problem. No one wants to buy this all you can eat. You know, best in class, end to end. Platform. I’m okay building layers to my outcome.

Per Werngren 0:00  

I think you shouldn’t be just in one community. It will enrich in you and will enrich the other communities. If you are engaged in multiple communities, yes, and multiple communities means that you will get more business opportunities.

Mike Gervais 0:18  

Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent. You

Vince Menzione 0:29  

show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every

Sharon Schoenborn 0:34  

day. I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning that

Vince Menzione 0:47  

that flywheel success is where you will build momentum, and that momentum will continue, and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. The five reasons why the next generation of CEOs will be partnership leaders, warms my heart to know that as a partner leader and former chief revenue officer as well. So I thought maybe we’d start here. I wanted a deep dive, but you had some very insightful comments. I thought maybe you could maybe summarize the five steps, and then we can deep dive into them.

Jay McBain 1:09  

Yeah, sure, absolutely. So, you know, for years now we’ve been making these future predictions. You know, this is what’s going to happen to marketplaces. This is what’s happening to the new buyer. This is what’s happening to the economics of partnering, and they were all a David Letterman Top 10 List of trends, somewhat interconnected, but at some point, coming to an inflection point. And 2024 happens to be the year of that inflection point where number one, the new buyer, is actually here. By the end of the year, a millennial will lead the majority of tech and telco purchasing over $5 trillion and that’s both by number of millennials, as well as by budget number two, this platform economy, not just in the hyperscalers, not just in SaaS companies, but taken hold in security, but outside of tech.

Jay McBain 1:40

You know, we always got confused that the biggest automotive companies and pharmaceuticals and banks wanted to become tech companies. Every company was going to become a tech company. Where we were confused is they actually want to become platform companies. And what that means, yes, and that drives a whole different set of economics with the way partnerings worked for over 40 years down here in Boca Raton with August 12, 1981 and that first IBM PC with the first IBM program with Microsoft and others. But now we’re looking at a very different thing, and this is the year that it all changes, and then generative AI and other things that come into it. So again, inflection point all into one time. Yeah, I thought

Vince Menzione 2:35  

we would deep dive on these. It was really great and insightful conversation. Let’s talk about the millennials first, right? Because we’ve been talking about the tectonic shifts and this new generation of buyers, right? The different buying persona used to clicking three times on my my phone and a box shows up, right? And and maybe they don’t want to speak to as many salespeople. They want to make their own decision. They go through their own process. You’ve talked about this and how the decision making process has changed. Can you spend a minute there on that specifically? Yeah, so

Jay McBain 3:08  

in a different psychology, different behaviors, different journey that they’re on, but suffice it to say they’re either digital first or digital only, right? And when you said, you know, maybe I don’t want to talk to a human, the latest research says that 75% of them would actually like to get to end of job. And this is to buy a million dollars worth of software. This is to buy a car. I’d like to get to end of job at a very important, big decision. Digital only, yeah. And so that’s 75% so this is a different way to treat those first 28 moments before they make that decision. So that’s one thing. Second is they’re subscription and consumption friendly.

Jay McBain 3:40 

You know, growing up on Netflix, growing up on Spotify, yes, they’re okay to pay $1 a month for the rest of their life for a toothbrush that just gets replenished. And they understand that they’re in it for life. And this goes again across technology, but it goes into every industry, absolutely, and the way they bank, the way they buy insurance, the way they, you know, buy manufactured goods or, you know, pharmaceuticals. It’s, it’s okay to buy, be in these subscription or consumption models, and that leads to marketplaces. Yes, they’re okay buying seven layers to solve a problem.

Jay McBain 4:20

No one wants to buy this all you can eat, you know, best in class, end to end platform, I’m okay building layers to my outcome, and I’m okay building it as a team sport. So in the older generations, you and I generation, you know, we kind of look for a single throat to choke, somebody that was our trusted advisor, somebody that could really orchestrate it for us. Right? The new generation, it’s okay to build a team, and it’s not going to be a team of the seven, seven, same seven people. It’s going to be a team of different types of people that have expertise in my industry, that have expertise in my geography, expertise in the sector segment that I’m in, the compliance and governance that I’m under, all of the different. Angles. I want to build a team. And I go back to sports, I don’t need seven quarterbacks that’s or 11 quarterbacks on the field. I need, you know, 11 different players, but I need them to each do their job. Neil belichuk, well, you know, we

Vince Menzione 5:13  

talked about partner to partner for years now, Microsoft parlance was around partner to partner. We’ve been talking about the decade of the ecosystem. I don’t know who coined that phrase, maybe someone we know personally, but this is, this is really about ecosystem. This is really, when I think about the I call it the marketplace moment. In fact, we’re taking, we’re digitally buying, right? There’s a lot of things that come with along with that, right, the ability to consume against these large cloud commitments, but also the opportunities, you say, to stitch together the solution that best supports your requirements. And this is where we get into multi party offers, in fact, where you can, in fact, layer several solutions together, bring it, serve it up to a customer who already has made $100 million commitment to a Microsoft, Amazon or Google, and say, This is exactly what we need, right? So it’s exactly what you’re talking about. Yeah, and

Jay McBain 6:02  

that’s about. Yeah, and that’s the final piece of research on this new buyer. Is integration. First integration. First of all, the things you’d write into an RFP that’s important to you. You know, the price is important, your service, your support, things like your brand reputation. You know, all these things would have criteria around how I’m going to make my decision. Number one criteria now is how you work in my environment, this is both as a, you know, personal story as well as a professional one, where Apple got on stage last year and said 79% of people won’t buy a car unless it is Apple CarPlay. Yeah, they neglected to mention Android Auto. But the fact of the matter is, you know, here’s an industry that’s $4 trillion in size. You may be, you know, taking over a dealership from your great grandparents, and all of a sudden you’re going to lose four fifths of your buyers because there’s not a technology integration in place. It’s amazing. And so watching this, and then, you know, feeding that into all the other parts of life, I’ll buy a product that’s 80% as good as the competitor if it works better in my environment. So how do we feed an integration first buyer, a digital first or only buyer, a subscription, consumption, marketplace, friendly buyer. This is a complete reconstruction of how we do marketing, how we do selling, and how we do long term customer success.

Vince Menzione 7:15  

It’s fantastic.

Vince Menzione 7:22  

The we’re excited to announce ultimate partner, live executive summit october 22 and 23rd in Las Colinas, Texas. We’re bringing back the event that we hosted last year, but in a new facility with state of the art capabilities and live streaming. This is your opportunity to engage with other technology leaders, to learn the what, why and how to achieve your greatest results, partnering with Microsoft and other tech giants, featuring leadership tracks, fireside chats and workshops designed to help you achieve more. So the next thing you talked about was the death of the cookie. You brought this up before as a big factor, right? And really why partnering is so important right now and again, with my experience in partnering and as a CRO formally, what would you say about the old acquisition models and new models? Yeah. So

Jay McBain 8:20  

we talk about 2024, as an inflection. Point, and this end of the cookie, if you happen to be in marketing, has been coming for years. It’s actually three years ago that on the iPhone, you could say, I don’t want to be followed. I’d no longer want to be the product on the internet. And back then, you know, Facebook was publicly saying, this could put us out of business. We rely on this. You think of Google, who’s half their company, relies on this business model of selling our personal data in those first 28 moments. And obviously there’s active buyers. So this is the third party data system where a couple of weeks ago, to start off 2024 Google updates Chrome and Android to actually stop limiting cookies. They also made a declaration, by the end of 2024 the cookie will be dead. Yeah, so in a world that moves from third party data, you remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and, yes, you remember, you know, the billions of dollars which has created trillion dollar valuations for these companies in third party data, selling our private data is now moving to second party. The channel partners, ecosystem alliances are who own these first 28 moments, the ebooks, the podcasts like this one, all the things that happen in these 28 moments now becomes a second party data problem and CMOS need to shift from third party to second party. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent. And this is just a remarkable thing happening along with everything else,

Vince Menzione 9:53  

but it’s what we’ve been saying for so many years now, right? I mean, many years ago, I went through a course by Miller High. In strategic selling. And the whole idea was to find out as much situational analysis or awareness of your client, and the best way to do that is other people that are talking to your client, who else talks to your client than you the seven or eight seats at the table, they might be competitors, they might be potential partners, they might just be friendlies, and be able to have those conversations. And now what you’re saying around this is, that’s why it’s so important that we have this new data intelligence and we find new ways to approach the customer, because we don’t have cookies,

Jay McBain 10:29  

yeah, and so, you know a story around Microsoft, for example, you know they did a better job of surrounding the buyer. Yes, they didn’t have a better price than than AWS. They didn’t have better product. They didn’t have better Super Bowl ads. What they did is had better coverage of the seven people that surrounded every buyer. They had more Microsoft endorsements sitting at the table, and that sat in the ebooks at the events. It sat in the podcast. It sat in all the different moments that the customer was friendlier to that solution versus that one. And that’s one example, but that’s the future of selling. Is a surround strategy of these seven trusted people, and how you get them to influence that buyer in those first 28 moments, it

Vince Menzione 11:17  

feels like the rest of the world is going to start speaking our language,

Jay McBain 11:21  

this was part of the why the next CEO should have partnerships in their resume or be a partnership leader. Yeah,

Vince Menzione 11:29  

we are thrilled to announce our partnership within partner software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally. In partner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management and partner marketing automation. Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance, tracking, customizable partner journeys and comprehensive business planning. These features Empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value. Impartner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere and continues to innovate with new modules like analytics studio designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. For more information, visit impartner.com you we’ve

Vince Menzione 12:25  

discussed the 45 billion that you had predicted by the end of 2026 I think it was originally 2025 Yeah, 2520 25 and now you said that that’s under called and potentially this year, what are we saying? Yeah.

Jay McBain 12:39  

So, I mean, at Wall Street now we’ve got, not only the Big Three hyperscalers, but we’ve got now with the bigger marketplace, SaaS companies and others starting to show what their future commits are. And it’s one of these, again, to get these high valuations, investors love to know how much money you’ve got committed to you, and just the top three have over $340 billion committed pounding, and then somebody at some point has to figure out how to put that into product SKUs and put that together into seven layer stacks. But that 45 billion, which was a hockey stick, it’s an 86% compounded annual growth. We think it might be doubling every single year, and we don’t see it stopping after 2025 this is just a trend that continues feeding this new buyer. Well, in fact, the number went from 300 billion to three 40 billion in one quarter, correct? So we’ll see what the what it’s expanding. And we’ve also got, in the last 30 or 60 days, we’ve got four press releases now, I’ll use AWS Marketplace as an example. CrowdStrike, snowflake, Palo, alto and Splunk have all issued press releases that they’re running a billion dollar business on one marketplace. And one of the predictions we made alongside the 45 billion, which we also undercalled, is that AWS as a leading marketplace would join the likes of TD cynics and Ingram as a top 10 distributor by 2025 again, under called it, they’re already there. They’re there. Now you have to get to about 5 billion to overtake dnh, or an exclusive networks, and they’re already there. Yeah. So this is an area where they may have achieved, you know, $5 billion as one marketplace. But their sites are on the 60 billion at TD, cynics and 50 billion at Ingram. The numbers are astounding, and when you’re doubling every single year, it doesn’t take you long to get there. So what does this do to the channel and to distribution? Well, the blow up was, this is the channel from decades ago was at the point of sale. All the economics worked at the point of sale, and partners were only measured at that point of sale. Yeah. How much do you sell? Well, the fact of the matter is, money is changing hands in a very different way. And one thing that happened, and Microsoft led this, and everybody soon followed, is Microsoft declared that a marketplace fee shouldn’t be 20% or shouldn’t be 35% which has apple in court with epic and 45% of what they’re trying to. Was in New York Times, but Microsoft’s like, we’re not going to make money off our ecosystem. It costs us about 3% of the fee to run a marketplace, so much like a MasterCard or Visa swipe and consumer it’s about 3% of the deal to architect the movement of money, which is complicated. It’s, you know, we’ve got to move the money. We’ve got to take on the risk that the customer doesn’t pay. We’ve got to wait for the time value of money, net 30, net 60, net 90. And in the end of all that, we have to hire Biff to break knees when that customer doesn’t pay. But for forever, we thought in the 1980s that that was worth 40% margin. Then it was 30, then it was 20. And you know, we’re all kind of deciding what that’s worth, but it’s now been declared, and Google followed Microsoft, and just a few months ago, AWS is finally there on board, yes, but everybody’s at the point now, and all the end users know that the whole value add of taking my money on behalf of a vendor is worth three so let’s talk about where the other 17% of The gross tenets are. And a partner would tell you, Well, I guess I do free consulting, I do free design and architecture, I do free implementations, and it’s great. I’ve always got paid at one point, and a lot of the other stuff that maybe other partners, like a system integrator, would charge for, I’ve ended up giving for free. And then now in a marketplace model, I could still go get the other 17% on a private offer or some sort of multi partner offer, and I might be willing to give up the 3% because that’s a part of the business I’m not all that interested in.

Vince Menzione 16:31  

Exactly, exactly, yeah, it’s changing the entire value chain equation, is what I would say there. So I loved having you here today, and next time, we’re going to have a longer session. We’re going to have we’re going to host you here and maybe even have some partners in the room. But we’re on a tight timeline today, so for our viewers, listeners, what do they need to be thinking about and doing differently now that we’re in 2024 in a big way.

Jay McBain 16:59  

I mean, the first thing, and this is not a surprise to anyone, is continue to be obsessed about your customer. Get obsessed about the people they trust. Get obsessed about what they read, where they go, who they follow. Get obsessed about a journey that isn’t about the point of sale. It’s about the 28 moments before that. It’s at the point of sale, regardless of how money changes hands, so getting the customer to the dance, getting them on the dance floor, and now with every company keeping them dancing all night long, every 30 days, forever. You know, one company a couple of weeks ago became the most valuable company in the world by telling Wall Street, we’d be the most sticky, predictable, reliable, repeatable and scalable revenue, not reliant on a September launch of a product every year. Yes, and the market responded. So, you know, we can talk about a $3 trillion company, or we can talk about a startup. The same thing is, if you get obsessed about your customer, when you move outwards from your customer, you’re going to find that there’s partnerships everywhere, in the integrations, in the go to market, in the routes to market, in all the influence, all the things you need to do around your customer are really partner driven at this point, and that’s why I think your leadership should have much better skills in partnerships.

Vince Menzione 18:16  

I love what you have to say. Thanks for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partnering. Hopefully, this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something, have you implemented everything you’ve been learning, and are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve? If not, it’s time to take action now join ultimate partner experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about with UPX. You get access to exclusive Industry Insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now, visit our website, the ultimate partner.com and sign up today. You.

EY’s Vice Chair Emeritus Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®

In this episode, Greg Sarafin delves into the imperative of the ecosystem, the pivotal role of chief partner officers, career progression in consulting, and the dynamics of organizational leadership.

Discover how Greg oversaw EY’s Alliance Partner Ecosystem, driving substantial growth and impact, with a staggering 40% contribution to EY’s growth over the past six years, surpassing $10B in revenue. With insights from his extensive experience, including leadership roles at IBM and BearingPoint, Greg shares invaluable perspectives on strategic partnerships, technology implementation, and leadership skills essential for C-suite roles.

Learn firsthand about the intersection of technology, business, and partnerships as Greg discusses the tech industry’s influence on GDP growth, AI value creation, and business process reengineering. Gain actionable insights into partner operations, cost management, and the profound impact of partnering functions on organizational success.

Tune in to uncover the secrets of effective partnering, leadership, and capital allocation in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape. Don’t miss this enlightening conversation with Greg Sarafin, a seasoned leader with a wealth of experience in driving impactful partnerships and organizational growth.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode

0:00 – The Decade of Ecosystem and Partnering Efficiency 

2:16 – Industry-Specific Partnering Models 

5:08 – The Role of Chief Partner Officers 

14:24 – Challenges and Benefits of Partnering 

14:58 – Elevating Partnering to a Core Competency 

20:36 – The Future of Partnering

https://youtu.be/JjqVclyjBo0?si=jW8TJq85b0HST_bz

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This year’s summit promises to be bigger and better. It will be an immersive experience bringing together over 300+ partners across ISVs, LSPs, and SIs. Join us for two days of insightful discussions, hands-on workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities with industry leaders and Microsoft executives.

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Transcript

Keywords:

Vince Menzione 0:39  

flywheel success is where you will build momentum, and that momentum will continue, and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together.

Vince Menzione 0:50
So Greg, you’ve been a thought leader in this ecosystem movement as we refer to it now, like, why is it a strategic imperative? And what would you say to other SIS or other organizations similar to EY, analogous to EY, what they need to go do better differently? Soa

Greg Sarafin 1:12  

I’m gonna take it up from the world of tech and SI, because I believe this movement is much bigger than that. I know that because there’s a natural affinity for tech and consultancies to partner for four decades now, if you think about it, and that Bill Gates moment, right, exactly, and so. And the reason for that is that clients, if they just adopt technology and they don’t get business value, or value realization, I think, is the word we typically use, right? What was the point of spending the money on technology so you, you, you hire the consultants to a make sure you don’t screw up the implementation, because that’s easy enough to do, and never happens.

Greg Sarafin 1:40 

It’s never happens and then, but more importantly, hopefully, you then adopt it and use it for a business purpose that returns shareholder value, client value, employee value, stakeholder value, right? You want value creation from having deployed capital and OpEx to put in this deck, and so there’s been a natural synergy. But there are partnering models all over. Like every industry has its version of partnering models. They’re just very different by industry, right? If you look at consumer products, they do a lot of partnering, they do a lot of cross licensing, they do co branding, right? They do supply chain sharing, right? 

Greg Sarafin 2:03

They do a lot of things that are partnering models that are value creative to their end customers, but don’t look like the way that we partner between sis and tech companies. Automotive, automotive, automotive, massive partner, massive partner, dealers, technology, exactly. Now you’re getting play in my, in my that’s another partnership. You have bow stereo, you have Brembo brakes, you have roqueros C you have BorgWarner transmission, right? Those are all. Those were all supply relationships that turned into value relationships, and even co brand relationships in some cases, right? 

Greg Sarafin 2:40

So let’s take it up a level. The reason it’s the decade of ecosystem is because partnering is more capitally efficient in many value vectors. The path to getting to a particular outcome for a client. If you try to do it within the four walls of your company, you probably don’t have enough capital or time to get there. You are speaking my language, so you need to combine your capital. And when I say capital, I mean it broadly. I don’t just mean money, resources, resources, IP, access to customers, access to supply. How big is that today? That’s huge. Route to supply is one of the most highly valued data is another highly valuable one, especially with AI, right? So to me, the reason it is the decade of ecosystem isn’t because what we’re doing in our little world of SI and tech. It is because Tech has taken down the barrier to interoperability between companies. I love that.

Greg Sarafin 3:13

And AI takes it down even further you can in cloud. And you again, you come from a very famous cloud company, right? How much value did Microsoft Cloud unlock not because people move their workload from a data center to the cloud. It turns out that might actually be more expensive. The value on lock is when multiple companies can form these really valuable value propositions for no cost of interrupting the marketplace is driving it even further. The Marketplace creates an accelerant, seamless so to me, the biggest thing that Microsoft is doing economically and its peers is it’s unlocking the ability for companies to pull capital together and new value creation models, and that is why. It is the decade of ecosystem because and you’re going to see this in every industry. We already are seeing in every industry. 

Greg Sarafin 3:50

And here’s the good news. And I dropped the mic now, if you are listening to this, and you are, and you’re like me and Vince and others who have been banging our heads against the wall, hey, flat spot, right here. Right it? You know all your inner direct sales, etc, all of a sudden you’re you’re entering a decade where your worth to pharma companies and and energy companies and automotive, you’re there. They need you, yes, because they need to try to figure out how to do this, because they don’t have what we have, which is experience doing partner operations, partner governance, partner relationship handling and go to market motions. Absolutely, they don’t have any of that experience or, no, they don’t know. And the people listening to this do. And I’m telling you, more than half of you in 10 years will not be in tech. We’re GSI, right.

Vince Menzione 5:58  

We’re gonna help the transformation of the rest of the world, right? Yeah, I see that as well. I talked to and that is why, yesterday, about this very same topic,

Vince Menzione 6:11  

we’re excited to announce ultimate partner live executive summit October, 22 and 23rd in Las Colinas, Texas. We’re bringing back the event that we hosted last year, but in a new facility with state of the art capabilities and live streaming. This is your opportunity to engage with other technology leaders, to learn the what, why and how to achieve your greatest results, partnering with Microsoft and other tech giants, featuring leadership tracks, fireside chats and workshops designed to help you achieve more. The doors are opening next week for Early Bird registration. So let’s dive in here. The talk that you gave at my event was around the CPO, which were the chief partner officer, new term, by the way, although I think you’ve been espousing the benefits and the value of this, I think about your organization, I love the talk you gave. And I also think having been on both sides, having been at the Microsoft and then in the billion dollar ISV, where these things don’t necessarily happen as easily. What do you think about when you think about the chief partner officer, role, its value and where it needs to sit in an organization? Yeah,

Greg Sarafin 7:28  

so I actually flip it on its side. So I believe that for companies to pull, allocate capital, create new value vectors and then drive go to market at scale, they need to have a partnering function. Yes, you’re speaking my language. You don’t have a partnering function. You’re not doing that function. Not just a bolt on, thank you. A function not just a bolt on. And at many companies, it’s a bolt on, as you know many and it’s actually a go to market bolt on, that’s it’s not a value creation bolt on based on where it sits

Vince Menzione 8:05  

in the organization, right?

Greg Sarafin 8:06  

So you need a function, and that function, just like the finance function or the tax function or the HR function, the supply chain function, it’s an L zero function of the company, and it is a steward of a set of business processes. Yes,

Vince Menzione 8:26  

it’s a steward of the processes. Say that processes from Hell, yes, take us through them.

Greg Sarafin 8:32  

So first of all, as you know, partnering touches every internal, every other internal function of the company. That’s right. It can alter rev, rec, it can alter your tax position. It can alter your capital position for the for the better. Hopefully, it changes how you think about marketing and branding. Right now, you’re co branding, multi branding, what is that? Yeah, right. So, so

Vince Menzione 9:02  

far, you’ve touched the CFOs office and the CMOS office.

Greg Sarafin 9:05  

Oh, by the way, if you’re partnering, you’re creating interoperability. Now you’ve created a nightmare for the CIO, because the CIO now has got to work a very about cybersecurity, yeah, through all these other threat factors, that’s right, right? You’re no longer it’s no longer the it within your organization. It’s the it across your organization, and the partners that you’re working with, like and I could go on every trust me, we’ve done this, every ro function we didn’t get revenue. Your go to market complete and your product function, yes. Are you engineering a product to be complete? Are you engineering a product to be the digital core? Now I’m back to tech, right? Yes. Are you? Are you? Are you engineering your product to be the digital core, and then your your partner ecosystem does the last mile around it. Because as that core gets bigger, you know that it goes by the square of the radius, right? So your cost of making that too big, you can, you don’t have the capital, right? So you can only take that core as. Are you want the minimum liable core, and then you want your partner ecosystem to fill in the last mile around it. That is your ideal scenario. So your product strategy has got to be informed by your partner and go to market strategy. The point is, there are places you can go today, and you know what it allows. You’re an expert in these processes, right? So you’ve got these processes that are intra company processes that affect every other function of the company. Yes, but then you have the intercompany processes from hell. We talked about this before the cast, right? Your old company and my company are to the largest, most complicated beasts in the world. And, you know, let’s say Judson and a Andy go. Hey guys, we want to do this thing, and energy, and, you know, like, and it takes them 30 seconds, you know, stroke of the pan, we’re gonna go do this. And then it gets then who’s to get handed to you? It gets handed the partner organizations for us to then try to figure out, Oh, my God, there’s, there’s 12 corporate functions, or, you know, there’s 12 entities within Microsoft, and 32 with an EY, and then, like, and who, oh, my lord, you need a calculator to figure it out sometimes. Yeah, right, so I joke a little bit, but you know just how hard that is do.

Vince Menzione 11:14  

And I call it maniacal focus, right? You get from the Kumbaya, you get from the vision, oh, yeah, like that trickle down to the OKRs, and then you got to get into execution, yeah, and the

Greg Sarafin 11:23  

execution this, that’s a lot, right? Which is why you only do big motions. Yes, you do that, right? Because, right? Because the cost of sales is, is too high otherwise, right? And that’s one thing I’ll spend the organization in multiple directions simultaneously. You get, you know, my rule is, you with any partner, what are the five motions that matter that are gonna get you to 80% of your value creation revenue? And just focus on those, because each motion has a hurdle cost, yes, a very large hurdle cost, and so you can’t spin up 20 of them.

Vince Menzione 11:54  

So what is your guidance to other organizations? This is a this, by the way, this is considered a new role, right? There are. It’s, you’re saying it’s, it’s the at the top level, the L zero level,

Greg Sarafin 12:05  

yeah. And it’s considered a, it’s, like you say, every company has some form of partnering today, but it lives in it’s a bolt onto a different bolt on there’s a channel chief, there’s an alliances leader. There’s multiple alliances, strategic supply chain lead. In the case of automotive, there might be a marketing function that is business development and energy, yeah, a lot of its JVs, yes, yes. So, and then there’s some, there’s some businesses that are, I call, you know, partner, partner native, like Airbnb and Uber and all those folks, right, that just are built in the cloud. They’re orchestrators, they’re value orchestrators, and they bring together a bunch of participants to trade and receive value for which they take their piece. Yes, so And do they have partnering functions? I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know. Or are they just partnering entities? Yeah, I think

Vince Menzione 12:55  

they’re just partnering, partnering. They’re almost like mark their marketplaces in many respects.

Greg Sarafin 12:59  

Yeah, those, I would agree with those are market I look at Microsoft or Amazon’s

Vince Menzione 13:03  

marketplace or Google’s marketplace right now, I’d say it’s more analogous to that. I would agree.

Vince Menzione 13:08  

We are thrilled to announce our partnership within partner software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally in partner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management and partner marketing automation. Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance, tracking, customizable partner journeys and comprehensive business planning. These features Empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value. Impartner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere, and continues to innovate with new modules like analytics studio designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. For more information, visit impartner.com you Yeah, so

Greg Sarafin 14:03  

partnering is just at every company. It’s just small p partnering. It’s not big P partnering, right? It’s not an L zero function. And you’re not allowing all the different types of partnering mechanisms if you just keep small p partnering, and you’re never going to be able to scale it. If you’re small p partnering, if you really want to scale, you’re going to have to you’re going to have to raise it to an L zero function, and then L zero functions have an officer that are accountable to the board and the CEO for the efficacious execution of that function and contribution to key KPIs of the company.

Vince Menzione 14:41  

And how do you get there? Like, what is that function? What does that function look like? And what

Greg Sarafin 14:45  

are the attributes of that function? So that function has a number of layers to it. So there is a governance layer, and the governance is in part, a governance into the capital allocation process. Yeah. So, how are we allocating our capital? And let’s not think about capital allocation as just deploying our resources. I call it. I have this saying, I use, I say, you know, companies need to make a pivot from the the economics of scarcity, the economics of abundance. Yeah, mindset. It is a mindset. It’s very much a mindset. And that mindset can have, it can be night and day. Yes, the the impact of which side of that mindset you fall on. Because if you’re in the economics of scarcity, it’s like me, me, me, my here’s my capital, my people, my resources. I’m going to deploy them as effectively as I can to out muscle my competition. That’s right, that’s the old mindset. That’s the old mindset, yeah, right. Whereas the new mindset is, I have asset value and asset classes, I have all these other entities out there who I can work with, who also has asset value and asset classes, and I’ve got customers out here who have permission to help on a particular to a particular outcome, that’s right. Jeff Bezos understood that better than anybody. Didn’t they did. He did, right? And Satya Nadella and Satya Nadella two of the two of the great towers of CEOs in history, right? So they understood that. And so both of those companies are masters at delivering the outcomes that we want, either in our personal lives or professional lives or both. And not just saying what, what are, what of my assets am I going to deploy? How am I going to orchestrate a lot of different assets to get you to that outcome, yes. So right away, you have to govern decisions about capital allocation, about who you partner with and don’t partner with, because here’s another one for you. More is not more, no and channel, even in channel, right? More is dilution. Yeah, less is more. That’s right, who are your strategics? There should be very few of those. And then who are your specifics, the ones that you’re partnering with, because they have a very specific thing. It’s not strategic as a relationship overall, but you still need that asset class, and they’re the most logical provider of that asset class as companies realize, Oh, my God, I need to have an abundance economics mindset, and I need to be able to think about capital allocation and value creation broader than just what I have within my four walls. They will realize, maybe some faster than others, that this is no longer a bolt on, as you said earlier, this is a core competency of the enterprise, from decision making all the way down to execution. And I think you’re seeing the secular trend now. There are, there are more chief partner officers named every day. True.

Vince Menzione 18:00  

I just want to make sure that that is where it needs to sit, or is it just entitled only? That’s the

Greg Sarafin 18:05  

other piece I’d like. So many chief partner officers are actually chief channel officers, or they are Chief Business Development Officers, or they are whatever they are, right? They are not actually running an L zero function of the company. They are not in the C suite discussions. Um, and again, I think it will get there, and I think economics will drive it there. Yeah, it’s just, can we help ourselves by elevating this conversation, right, and, and, and frankly, also elevating the understanding of what a partner function does, because it is the of all the fun like now, if you ask the average person, they actually understand the difference between fpna and, you know, basic accounting. No, they probably don’t know right or indirect tax from direct. No, they don’t. Yeah, for some reason, partnering doesn’t get that break. It’s like we don’t know what you do. We don’t trust you. Why are you spending all that money? Where’s it going? Right?

Vince Menzione 19:10  

The least understood function is terrible.

Greg Sarafin 19:12  

It’s just I feel sorry for everybody listening right now, I feel sorry for myself. No, actually, I don’t feel sorry for myself. Because,

Vince Menzione 19:19  

well, how did you get how did you get from point A to point B? Maybe that helps you. And you

Greg Sarafin 19:23  

know what form it starts with measurement. Yeah. I realized very early on that, yeah, well, we all know people are belief driven, and so if I’m, if I’m in a system of belief that says we shouldn’t be partnering. We can’t partner. Partnering doesn’t matter. And if we do partner, it’s too expensive. We’re not getting the value right. All those negative things, and we’re all familiar with those sorts of attitudes at our companies. So the first thing you need to do is say, Okay, this is why we partner. You. We don’t partner because we’re trying to make money from Microsoft, right? One even partner because we’re trying to make more money for ourselves. Necessarily, we’re partnering so we’re relevant to our clients. So you start there, right? You keep going. Guys, look at the market. Look at the secular trends in the market. This is happening. Look at the most valuable companies on the planet, and then go down a layer and say, Why are they most valuable? Why is Microsoft the most valuable company on the planet? Because it unlocks capital value creation.

Vince Menzione 20:32  

Growth Mindset.

Greg Sarafin 20:34  

Growth Mindset.

Vince Menzione 20:36  

Thanks for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partnering. Hopefully this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something, have you implemented everything you’ve been learning, and are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve? If not, it’s time to take action now join ultimate partner experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about with UPX. You get access to exclusive Industry Insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now. Visit our website, the ultimate partner.com and sign up today. You.

Per Werngren Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®

In this episode, we sit down with Per Werngren, CEO of Idenxt, an expert who advises partners within the Microsoft ecosystem across North America and Europe. With a wealth of experience in building relationships and growing business opportunities, Per shares his insights on how partnering with Microsoft can drive success, particularly through the strategic use of AI.

We also explore the tech industry’s crucial role in shaping policy, focusing on its impact on local jobs and taxes. Drawing from his extensive experience, including leading the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP) to expand from 4 to 44 countries and generate over $10 billion in annual revenue, Per discusses the importance of collaboration and the value of the P2P Maturity Model he developed.

Join us to gain valuable insights from Per’s leadership experience in multi-national organizations and his expertise in fostering partnerships that drive growth across cultures and geographies.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode

0:00 – Partnering with Microsoft, building relationships, and growing business opportunities.

4:27 – Tech industry’s role in shaping policy, with a focus on local jobs and taxes.

9:41 – Leveraging AI for growth through partnerships with Microsoft.

https://youtu.be/AmJOaATguoE

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Ultimate Partner LIVE – Executive Summit ’24 – Now OPEN!

The Doors Are NOW Open – Ultimate Partner LIVE ’24

I’m thrilled to announce the Ultimate Partner LIVE Executive Summit 2024, which will be held in Dallas, TX, on October 22nd and 23rd!

This year’s summit promises to be bigger and better. It will be an immersive experience bringing together over 300+ partners across ISVs, LSPs, and SIs. Join us for two days of insightful discussions, hands-on workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities with industry leaders and Microsoft executives.

REGISTER HERE

Transcript

Keywords:

partner, microsoft, ai, communities, partnering, ultimate guide, years, stockholm, organization, msps, call, icp, voices, achieve, leaders, great, talk, created, local, innovation

Transcript (Generated by Otter A.I. – Please Excuse Any Typos) 

Per Werngren 0:00  

I think you shouldn’t be just in one community. It will enrich in you and will enrich the other communities. If you are engaged in multiple communities, yes, and multiple communities means that you will get more business opportunities.

Mike Gervais 0:18  

Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent. You

Vince Menzione 0:29  

show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every

Sharon Schoenborn 0:34  

day. I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning that

Vince Menzione 0:39  

flywheel success is where you will build momentum, and that momentum will continue, and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partnering. I’m Vince menzion Your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results. Through successful partnering, we’ve been bringing leaders that are driving the transformation to this platform. And over the years, I’ve gotten to know so many great, award winning partners, and also leaders of communities and just great leaders in this world of hyperscaler and Microsoft and and the like. And I have had a great fortune of having a friendship with an incredible leader who’s here in the studio today because he came all the way from Stockholm, Sweden to join our event. Pear waringgren, thank

Per Werngren 1:27  

you. Vince. Communities like these are the things that we need in this ecosystem, and it’s a pleasure being here. It’s a pleasure supporting ultimate partner experience. And I have a background, as you said in it. Well, I used to have hair, and I have been running IT companies and it financial companies who in my life, and I discovered the beautiful thing about recurring revenue in the 90s, and that has been my mission. All companies I’ve been running should be recurring revenue. Companies, you

Vince Menzione 2:02  

were ahead of the curve with that. And you You also were headed the curve in terms of working with Microsoft and helping to build the, what we now call the ecosystem. We used to call the Microsoft Partner Network. Take us on on that journey a little bit. Why? Why did, how did you get involved with Microsoft? And then you helped start the imcp. You were the founder the imcp, the International Association of Microsoft channel partners. Tell us how you got there.

Per Werngren 2:25  

Yeah. So as everyone I wanted a closer relationship with Microsoft in at the turn of the century, and I engaged with what was a very small organization called the amsp association of Microsoft solution partners, I think it was called, Oh,

Vince Menzione 2:44  

interesting. I never heard of that one. And

Per Werngren 2:47  

they quickly changed their name to amcp, and then they changed and we changed our name to iamcp, because that was when I joined. So it was a tiny organization, and we were, or we claimed that we were in four countries, but in reality, it was only us interesting. And I took that association to 44 countries. So I was traveling the world, meeting Microsoft people, meeting partners, opening up local chapters, and it was super fun and also a good education, because I learned what makes the partner ecosystem tick, what makes partnering tick. And I quickly understood that every country said that we are unique per in our country, we do things very differently, but after having visited so many countries, I saw so many commonalities, and then I thought that, Okay, I better capture this into a model. So I created a P to P maturity model.

Vince Menzione 3:50  

Yes, you’ve covered it on our podcast. You run our earlier guest on our podcast a few years ago with that, that’s right.

Per Werngren 3:55  

And during these years, when I run the imcp, when I expanded imcp, I also built my relationship with Microsoft, so I got the inside track on so many aspects, and I was part of efforts in Europe trying to swing legislation in favor of Microsoft partners, interesting. So after a few years, I saw the fruits of that of these efforts, and saw that legislation were coming our way. And it is the same thing that ICP have been doing in the United States, talking to legislators, or government elites, as we call them, about things that make sense for smaller companies that employ locally, pay taxes locally. Yes, that’s what politicians need to hear, absolutely. And they hear the multinationals talk all the time. But when they hear Microsoft partners smaller companies, they see that, wow, the needs for the multinationals are really the needs for the smaller companies, right? And they are aligned the

Vince Menzione 5:01  

taxpayers locally, they’re driving the economy locally in your country or your region, yes, and this is, this is really what we call voices for innovation today. Was it called Voices for innovation? Then? Yeah,

Per Werngren 5:11  

absolutely. So. So voices for innovation. I think we started 2006 the year my daughter was born, and our first event was with Steve Ballmer at the Conrad hotel in Brussels. So that was amazing years.

Vince Menzione 5:36  

We’re excited to announce ultimate partner live executive Summit, October, 22 and 23rd in Las Colinas, Texas, we’re bringing back the event that we hosted last year, but in a new facility with state of the art capabilities and live streaming. This is your opportunity to engage with other technology leaders, to learn the what, why and how to achieve your greatest results, partnering with Microsoft and other tech giants, featuring leadership tracks, fireside chats and workshops designed to help you achieve more. The doors are opening next week for Early Bird registration. And you know, I’m active with voices for innovation today, absolutely, and I’m on the advisory task force here in the United States, and it really became more of a US function. I believe, right? I think the international components faded off or didn’t continue. Yeah,

Per Werngren 6:29  

and also, the issues that we were fighting for in Europe we came over to was yes, yeah, prominent. And I think that voice for innovation is an phenomenal platform, and there has been so much success around voice for innovation in like, 15 years now,

Vince Menzione 6:47  

yeah, and it’s fascinating, you know, this is a great conversation we can have about what we don’t see from legislators. I’ve been on Capitol Hill meeting with my local congressmen and senators. I’ve been to the White House with Microsoft as part of voices for innovation, and it’s striking technology is driving the world right now, and yet our lawmakers do not really understand the issues surrounding technology the way they should. Many of them are octogenarians, and I mean, they print off emails and handwrite notes on them. I mean, these are people that don’t even use common tools that we take for granted today, and yet we’re asking them to pass legislation around topics like AI, like Cloud for good, all these, all these topics that are so important, so germane to threats and all the issues that we have in the world. And yet we need to educate them. And to your point, when a Microsoft comes to them, or a Google or an Amazon, it’s one thing, but if you as a local entrepreneur like I am, and you employ people locally in your region, and it impacts jobs, it’s a very different conversation that you can have with your local lawmakers. Yes,

Per Werngren 7:55  

they love to hear that story. And it is also, as you say, it is complex for these octalionarians, that it is easier to understand farming, and perhaps the needs for the AI industry is harder for them to grasp. But we can explain for them that they don’t need to understand AI, but they need to understand that local jobs, local taxes are important, and they listen to that.

Vince Menzione 8:20  

So I want to talk about community for a second. I’m going to say some things that are maybe a little bit provocative, because I tend to be a little bit provocative at times. I said this, you know, we talked yesterday at our event. I talked about Walt Disney, which one of the most amazing entrepreneurs, visionary and entrepreneur, right? Creative and entrepreneurial skills together. He created something that didn’t exist. He created the Disney Empire, the Disney World. Disneyland because he didn’t see what he hoped to see from the world. And he created something fresh and something new. And I’ve been saying for a long time, since I left Microsoft, in fact, I was disappointed when I came out that there wasn’t the organization that I expected to see. And this is not as you know, I’ve been a member of imcp. I’ve been member of other partner communities and organizations. It’s the reason why we started ultimate partner experience, because we want to build something unique, something different. And you’ve been a big supporter, champion, if I if you will, and I want to bring all that. I want to I want this to be a big tent. I think we could do more together. I look at ultimate partner and ultimate partner experience as an education platform, not necessarily just a community, but a place where we can bring great leaders in the room, like we did yesterday at this event, and maybe do something that nobody else can do. Have a unique and independent point of view, but a supportive point of view for the hyperscalers, and that’s where I see where we’re going with this. And what would you say?

Per Werngren 9:41  

So, so, like, with customers, we talk about multi cloud, yes. And why not have multi communities? Yes. So, like, you don’t need, and I think you shouldn’t be just in one community. It will enrich and you and will enrich the other communities. If you are engaged in multiple communities. Is yes, and multiple communities means that you will get more business opportunities. So we have the imcp, we have the women in cloud, we have the vit network, and we have a few other really nice communities that are growing and that are doing a great job, and now we have the ultimate partner experience. What I think is unique with ultimate partner experience is that here in this community, we are agnostic to technology. We love technology, but we love all vendors. We want to build a big tent, and ICP members that I’ve spoken with see that this is something that adds value to the imcp

Vince Menzione 10:47  

Yes, we had some imcp members in the room yesterday,

Per Werngren 10:49  

absolutely. And I had great conversations with them, and they see that this is something that really adds so I would encourage imcp members to also become members of this lovely community. Thank you, and also take a look at other communities, because it will enrich them. I

Vince Menzione 11:09  

appreciate that, and we’re going to share this with our community and with broadly with the community. We are thrilled to announce our partnership within partner software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally in partner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management and partner marketing automation. Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance, tracking, customizable partner journeys and comprehensive business planning. These features Empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value in partner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere and continues to innovate with new modules like analytics studio designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. For more information, visit impartner.com

Vince Menzione 12:11  

you are big in this community, this partnership world. You work with a lot of organizations to help them achieve their greatest results. We’re entering the second half of the near the new the beginning of Microsoft’s new fiscal year 25 what would you say to our viewers and those listening today? What should they be doing better differently to help them achieve their greatest results? So

Per Werngren 12:35  

nothing is constant. Change is something that you shouldn’t try to avoid change is something that should embrace now. We are in the middle of change. We are in the cloud era. Some are more in the cloud era than others. I think everyone need to become more into the cloud era and also around AI. Perhaps AI is not the money maker for partners, but it is the conversation starter. They need to make sure that their people understands AI, that their salespeople can have conversations around AI, and they need to make sure that they improve the performance of their companies with the use of AI, like when they are developing software, use AI when they are trying to make their customer Help Desk more efficient. Use AI, etc, gives co pilots for everything that builds knowledge, but also it builds profitability. But selling AI to customers, is not a money maker today, but it is what you need to do. Because if you’re not doing it, someone else will have those conversations, and someone else will sell the vanilla projects. So and it’s

Vince Menzione 13:52  

and it’s helping to spark the rest of the transformation of those organizations, right? Yes, absolutely. It becomes the plumbing, in a way, yeah, yeah.

Per Werngren 14:00  

Very much, very much. And there are some the low hanging fruit around AI, when it comes to making money, today is the projects where you get ready for implementing AI. That’s right. And I have never been a fan of projects, because projects end, recurring revenue never ends. But projects, many partners, are making a living out of projects, and it’s a great way to start an engagement with a customer around AI, but then try to find the formula for creating some kind of recurring revenue. Recurring revenue is important not only for the value of the recurring revenue, but also it gives you a reason to be in constant contact with your customer. So

Vince Menzione 14:43  

you’ve done a lot of work. I mean, you’ve led several or you’re I’ll call you a serial entrepreneur, right? If you’ve led several different organizations, what’s what strikes you the most now? What are you working on now that is most informed, that will help our like, Where should our. Viewers, listeners, think to reach you, and what value do you want to add for them? Yeah,

Per Werngren 15:05  

so I love to help MSPs to find their module, to find profitability. As Jay McBain has said, there are many MSPs that are not making a lot of a profit. And I think as an MSP, if you do things right, you should have a decent return on the investment that you have made running your business. So

Vince Menzione 15:27  

that’s what you’re helping that’s what you’re driving today. Primarily random, yes, absolutely.

Per Werngren 15:30  

And then general questions around partnering. Everyone wants to become a better partner to Microsoft, and they want to become a better partner to others. And what I often explain, and I know that you are a fan of that, is that it starts with the top if you don’t have senior leadership buy in, partnering will never fly. That’s right. So you’ve got to get the mindset right, absolutely, and that is important. And sometimes people need my help to convince boards around the value of partnering. I

Vince Menzione 16:04  

love that. I love the work that you do. I love your passion around partnerships, around Microsoft. I love having you as a friend. I appreciate you so much for coming here, flying all the way from Stockholm. Still, my heart warms by just the fact that you made the trip out here for our event

Per Werngren 16:21  

like vice Vince, it is an honor to be here, and I’m proud to call you my dear friend. So it was an easy decision to see that it had value coming from Stockholm all the way to nice Boca Raton to be part of this wonderful event. Thank you, sir, because I truly support this organization and I truly support the work that you and your team are doing.

Vince Menzione 16:41  

Thank you so much, my friend. Great to see you. Great to see you. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. I want to thank you for supporting the ultimate guide to partnering. If you like what you’re listening to, please subscribe on either Apple Spotify or subscribe to our new YouTube channel the Ultimate Guide to partnering. Thank you so much for listening and watching. The Ultimate Guide to partnering. Thanks for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partnering. Hopefully this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something, have you implemented everything you’ve been learning, and are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve, if not, it’s time to take action now join ultimate partner experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about with UPX. You get access to exclusive Industry Insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now. Visit our website, the ultimate partner.com, and sign up today. You.

Cassandra Gholston Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®

Join us as we dive into partner-led sales with Cassandra Gholston, CEO of PartnerTap, the industry’s leading Ecosystem Co-Selling Platform. Cassandra is a visionary leader who has dedicated her career to driving revenue growth through strategic partnerships. In this episode, she shares her journey from being an enterprise sales rep to founding PartnerTap. This groundbreaking platform empowers companies like HPE, ADP, SAP Concur, and more to maximize their partner ecosystem.

Cassandra discusses the growing importance of co-selling and how automation is revolutionizing partner-led sales in the tech industry. She also delves into innovative sales plays and data-sharing strategies, the transformative power of partnerships in enterprise software, and the key to leading change in co-selling. Finally, learn why co-selling transformation is critical for business success in today’s landscape. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from a true industry leader and get insights on taking your partnership sales strategy to the next level.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode

0:02 – Co-selling and its growing importance in the industry.

4:44 – Partner-led sales and automation in the tech industry.

11:48 – Partner-led sales plays and data sharing in the tech industry.

17:10 – Sales transformation and partnerships in the enterprise software industry.

22:46 – Leading change and co-selling in organizations.

29:12 – Co-selling transformation and its importance in business.

https://youtu.be/AmJOaATguoE

LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP

Ultimate Partner LIVE – Executive Summit ’24 – Now OPEN!

The Doors Are NOW Open – Ultimate Partner LIVE ’24

I’m thrilled to announce the Ultimate Partner LIVE Executive Summit 2024, which will be held in Dallas, TX, on October 22nd and 23rd!

This year’s summit promises to be bigger and better. It will be an immersive experience bringing together over 300+ partners across ISVs, LSPs, and SIs. Join us for two days of insightful discussions, hands-on workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities with industry leaders and Microsoft executives.

REGISTER HERE

Transcript

Keywords:

Keywords: 

partner, sell, company, talk, organization, playbook, microsoft, customer, spreadsheets, cassandra, work, ecosystem, hosting, leader, transformation, seller, opportunity, teams, drive, people

Transcript (Generated by Otter A.I. – Please Excuse Any Typos) 

Jay McBain 0:02  

Music. Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent. You

Vince Menzione 0:13  

show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every

Sharon Schoenborn 0:18  

day. I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning

Vince Menzione 0:23  

that flywheel success is where you will build momentum, and that momentum will continue, and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partnering. I’m Vince benzione, your host, and I’m on a mission to empower every individual, organization and partner to achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Much of the discussion we’ve had over the last several months has been around the tectonic shifts this decade of the ecosystem, the increasing dominance of the three hyperscalers, the changing buying behavior and effective co selling today I welcome back an industry leader driving the transformation of CO selling as the CEO of partner tap a platform transforming selling. Cas, welcome to the podcast.

Cassandra Gholston 1:12  

Thank you so much. Vince, so good to be here. Cassandra

Vince Menzione 1:14  

golston, so good to have you in the room. You’ve been on the podcast twice now. We’ve known each other for several years. We go back to, I guess it was around 16 or 17.

Cassandra Gholston 1:26  

So I actually looked up yesterday on LinkedIn, the message I sent you back in 2017 2017 about Vince. I love the podcast. I’m going to spend the weekend listening to all your episodes. There weren’t as many that, right? And I want to meet you, and I so long ago, but here you are. We’re in the Boca studio. Boca

Vince Menzione 1:54  

studio, where we recently hosted a live in person event, our executive Summit, and you were up on stage. It

Cassandra Gholston 2:01  

was awesome. Such a great time. That was such a great event to just the really intimate the people that were in the room, and great business leaders,

Vince Menzione 2:13  

incredible leaders. You were part of our executive panel and kicked off the event. We had some incredible conversations that we’re going to continue today.

Cassandra Gholston 2:22  

I’m excited for what’s to come. Well,

Vince Menzione 2:24  

I am as well, and I love watching your trajectory. We’ve been friends now since that time, in fact, we had some early conversations. We started mind melding. We can go on about our journey together, but I love the trajectory that you’ve been on. And you know, you focus in on really the enterprise level. CO selling is what I would say. Like, you have worked with some of the largest organizations. We were at another event earlier this year. You had at&t on stage. I mean, you work with lumen, HP, the biggest brands. In fact, we probably can’t even talk about some of the brands that you’re working with today, and I can go on and on here, but for our viewers and our listeners, and you’ve been on the podcast before, tell us a little bit more about Cassandra partner tap and what the mission that you’re on as an organization. Yeah.

Cassandra Gholston 3:14  

So we founded the company back in 2016 and I feel like in 2016 I knew that CO selling was going to be huge. And I remember telling one of my mentors, I’m I’m leaving, I’m leaving concur, and I’m going to launch this company, and it’s all going to be around co sell. And I remember him saying to me, Cassandra, you know, co sell is only something that we do at concur. Not very many companies actually do this. And so you fast forward from 2016 where, you know, we were building the technology and for a couple of years before we even signed our first enterprise customer. But, you know, from then to now, you know, Jay McBain comes out with his report on the CO sell matrix, co selling software category last December. I mean, it’s, it’s awesome to be part of, you know, this huge transformation that is now taking shape. The market is here. But, yeah, I was running around since 2016 coastal is a thing. It’s going to be huge. And there’s a big opportunity, a big white space. We’re building technology around it. And so, I mean, I’m really proud to say that on that report, I think there was 14 companies we

Vince Menzione 4:44  

were general tech stack, yes, he’s been highlighting and supporting, yeah,

Cassandra Gholston 4:48  

and you know, we were in the top four. We’re the only company female founded, not venture backed. I mean, we we have investors, but not venture investors. Dollars. So it’s just an exciting time. And one of the call outs in the report was the fact that we have some of the largest enterprise customers. So it’s just exciting and a validation to Casandra, back into 2016 to Cassandra now,

Cassandra Gholston 5:20  

so I remember meeting you, or maybe was the first conversation we had before we met. And originally, I think it started as a mobile app, didn’t it? Yes. And I was thinking, you know, I had been at Microsoft, leading the partner organization for nine years. At that point, it just left. And I was thinking, I was thinking back to the spreadsheets and literally trying to do territory analysis, trying to map territories and sellers to sellers and partner managers to partner managers, and trying to work through that process was, it was maddening, I guess is what I would say, right? This was always changing, right? And what I called the Southeast, and you called the southeast were two different things. And where I

Cassandra Gholston 6:00  

sell industries, and you sell geography, nothing,

Cassandra Gholston 6:03  

nothing ever. And as soon as you got a spreadsheet, it was outdated, right? Start the process all over again. And I remember that my PDMS were using spreadsheets to drive that, and it was just driving us all crazy. It was it was never relevant. We were never able to action on it, right? And so

Cassandra Gholston 6:22  

people did and do action on it. It’s just you can’t do it at scale. You can’t do it at scale. I mean, the only reason why we’re sending spreadsheets around is because you do actually get something out of it. Get something, but it is hard, hard work, and who has time for that kind of not well,

Cassandra Gholston 6:44  

and who’s going to maintain the spreadsheets, who’s going to keep it current, right? How many you know we talk about the economic headwinds and the layoffs that go on in organizations in the tech sector, it’s changing constantly, right?

Cassandra Gholston 6:55  

Right? So I think we’re at this pivotal time now, and this is the reason that this has become a category is because, you know the go to market playbook, this direct LED playbook that we’ve all been running, every PE backed company, every publicly traded company. I mean, they all run the same playbook, and in this market at this time, everyone’s realizing it doesn’t work. And everybody is like, what do we do? And so now it’s like, we have to be partner LED. We have to, I mean, these, you think about these large companies, they have these vast ecosystems, channel partners, si ISVs. I mean, they it like massive ecosystems. How do we get these companies working together? Yes, surround that. Surround our buyers and customers. How do we get them to be leading those deals where they have those great, tight relationships, and that journey for a company that the DNA is direct, LED is so hard, but, yeah, the exciting thing for everybody in partnerships is that the playbook, the new playbook, is the partner team actually holds the keys to this new playbook. Yes. So the

Vince Menzione 8:29  

changing and buying behavior we talked about like we’ve seen the, you know, the the end of the cookie is Jay McBain talks right? He talks about the decade of the ecosystem. He was here talking the

Cassandra Gholston 8:39  

23 moments which are gonna go away, gonna go away.

Vince Menzione 8:43  

And then also, you know, getting rid of the old mindset within the organization, the old CRO right, that used modern marketing like Marketo and eliqua and HubSpot, and then relied on an SDR, BDR, and a seller at the end of it, that that, that that playbook goes away, right,

Cassandra Gholston 9:00  

because buyers are getting younger. They don’t trust sales people. I mean, this is, this is the research coming out, you know, from, from Forrester Maria chin and, and so it’s all so there’s the shift right from vendor to partner, and the partner actually oftentimes has that trusted advisor relationship. So

Vince Menzione 9:30  

well, Microsoft got it early, right? So I had it in the DNA of Microsoft. But Microsoft even strong. Look at

Cassandra Gholston 9:36  

that, the most valuable company in the world. Exactly, yes. So everyone’s looking to Microsoft, going, what are they doing? And have little secret to tell events, that even at Microsoft, everybody’s operating on spreadsheets. We’re talking about CO selling. I mean, they have a co sell desk, and this is where, you know, we. Talk a lot about CO sell and CO selling. So co sell being this transaction, this, you know, one and done through marketplace. And CO selling being this verb where it’s an action and it’s top of funnel, you know, where should we be running plays? How do we orchestrate those plays before an opportunity is even created? That’s the future of CO selling could never it’s what we were doing on spreadsheets, yes, or trying to do on spreadsheets. Completely not scalable. They’re the like, it’s hard to drive strategy around that. And so you have these co sell desks, which are extremely reactive, instead of, you know, where we see this heading is with automation. You know, companies like partner tap have come out, you know, and we’ve been around since 2016 building and, you know, enterprise ready for scale. So it’s such an exciting time that we can move these companies from these random acts of CO sell, which we call them. Everyone’s sending spreadsheets around and trying to do this top of funnel activity, and now with automation, with a platform where you can identify, securely, share account, opportunity data, align, drive white space plays, drive up, sell, Cross, sell plays, drive multi partner plays where you’re engaging top of funnel. It’s yeah, that’s, that’s

Vince Menzione 11:47  

you’re talking Yeah, that’s talking ecosystem, which is why we use the term spark the ecosystem.

Cassandra Gholston 11:53  

I love that.

Vince Menzione 12:02  

We’re excited to announce ultimate partner live executive summit october 22 and 23rd in Las Colinas, Texas. We’re bringing back the event that we hosted last year, but in a new facility with state of the art capabilities and live streaming. This is your opportunity to engage with other technology leaders, to learn the what, why and how to achieve your greatest results, partnering with Microsoft and other tech giants, featuring leadership tracks, fireside chats and workshops designed to help you achieve more, the doors are opening next week for Early Bird registration. I’m going to take that. We’re going to talk about the Microsofts and the hyperscalers on their side, they’ve been doing this CO selling activity, but it’s a one to one, it’s been right, and this is where I believe partner taps like, this is your acre of diamonds. And I’ll share my point of view on it is that it’s one to one, it’s a Microsoft seller, and then maybe an ISV seller or an SI seller. But it’s only, it’s only two organizations working together, right? It’s a much bigger picture than that. We talk about the seven seats at the table. We talk about the buying behavior changing, becoming more consumer like and this is where partner tap plays such an effective role, because you you orchestrate and aggregate all those selling influences in one system, right? And then you could feed it up to a partner center or an ace, right, or Google, right? Tell us more about that, like, how do you? How do you? You talked about this running through and creating these opportunities and kind of working within the ecosystem and bringing it all together

Cassandra Gholston 13:38  

so every company has a CRM system, and no company is going to say, hey, you can have full access to my CRM system. You can see everything. No, no. Security Teams would never go for that. That’s why everyone sends spreadsheets around of account lists. But when you’re talking about top of funnel orchestration for the good of the customer, right? We have a secure platform where you can sync CRM. You can bring your top partners into the system, where they also sync data and then securely share. And in some instances, you know, we see NSPS, for instance, like the that data to them is keys to the castle. You know, they have these close relationships. And so in those instances, it’s like companies can share to them, and they don’t necessarily have to share back until they’re ready to orchestrate plays. So yeah, through this system, you can share data at scale, and each side decides what they want to share. You can have an ecosystem wide view to. Figure out that multi partner sales play and then have people opt in, pre funnel, right, pre opportunity. So I think Microsoft was like, yes, we know what’s in funnel, and that’s what’s running through the CO sell desk today, but the future is we want to drive plays ahead of time. I loved the talk that Aaron feiger, jen Weiss and the other

Vince Menzione 15:30  

Barry, yes, yeah, and and Brian coper and

Cassandra Gholston 15:35  

they talked yesterday about, you know, the sales plays for Microsoft being inside a partner center. Well, every large company has their sales plays defined to really or to really go after and drive massive growth you need to be orchestrating ahead of time. This is partner LED. This is partner led those sales plays, who are the best partners, using data that’s right to determine ahead of time and then have partners agree to opt in to work together

Vince Menzione 16:11  

as a customer, I’m making a decision about solving for a business application. We talked about at our event. We talked about the fact that the decision on the cloud consumption, the cloud commitments, happening at the board level and the CFO and the CEO level, but then in the line of business, I’m saying I need a backup and recovery. I need the security, I need a data protection, I need an SI to pull it all together. And they’re having these conversations. And wouldn’t it be great if instead of bumping into each other in the hallway, the way we normally do in sales calls, yes, we were working together, yes for that common customer and yes, coalescing that solution, which is what I believe partner tap does,

Cassandra Gholston 16:53  

right? I love to yesterday on the panel with Greg Serafin, he did such an eloquent job of really explaining the right co sell, collaborative sales process ahead of the ahead of time. Yes, that was such gold. I’ve never heard anybody that has really done the research and goes, this is what works. And he said, you know, you have these account teams, but the customer truly is only going to listen to two sellers. So that’s right,

Vince Menzione 17:30  

if you have, can’t bring all seven people the same time, and

Cassandra Gholston 17:34  

it’s not just the seven people, right? It’s the product teams, it’s the, you know, the marketing team, it’s all these teams, the solution engineers, right? So having these pre calls, and then who’s gonna lead, right? We all have to agree who leads. So there’s these new, emerging roles that we talk about, and this is why this is such a big transformation? Yeah.

Vince Menzione 18:02  

So it’s change management of the organization, big time, not

Cassandra Gholston 18:05  

just of your organization, of your partner’s organization, because it sells teams and your side sells teams on the partner side. So,

Vince Menzione 18:15  

so how do we get there? What? Tell Tell us more about these, well, leadership roles.

Cassandra Gholston 18:19  

I just think it’s an exciting opportunity for so many consulting firms, right? Like this new playbook goes, goes in, in, in sales teams, the direct sales teams you are now explaining and coaching to the CROs of the future, of how to run this. I mean, this is a hard, hard playbook, but I think back. I mean, before I founded partner tap, I mean, I was one of those sellers, top, top, number one, you know, four years in a row before i i launched only partners, only ever worked with partners like that’s who’s leading the deal. Absolutely, that’s how you have consistency. But what I didn’t realize is that it’s not natural to everybody. There’s this fear of it’s my customer and it’s not your customer, it’s everybody’s customer, and the seller that realizes that it’s not

Vince Menzione 19:24  

your customer, it’s everyone’s customer. Well, it

Cassandra Gholston 19:27  

truly is. It truly is. It’s that security firm, it’s that, you know, whoever’s doing business, but each seller is like, it’s mine, but no, when we’re going and we’re driving business outcomes, both in mid market and enterprise. I mean, these processes are just as complex you’ve got, you’ve got, really, yeah, everybody has, has a piece of the customer, and so we have to come together and figure out who. Actually has the best relationship, that is, who should be driving the deal, right? So may

Vince Menzione 20:05  

not be your company that’s driving the deal. No partner might be a partner of a partner, no,

Cassandra Gholston 20:09  

I mean, even internally, in partner tap, right? We are co selling with our partners. And there are, you know, we are only selling to the enterprise. And, you know, in some instances, yeah, the partner is leading the entire deal, and we have to be okay with taking the back seat. And, you know, being there to support and trusting, yes, interesting, yes, that is CO selling, and in some instances we’re going to be leading and we’re bringing the partners in. But I think, I think one of the most exciting things is, like, for any of these consulting firms, like sales transformation practices, are going to look so different. And the firms, the big firms, the small firms that see this now, we’ve built our own playbook that we are sharing with with our I would love to

Vince Menzione 21:08  

share, I would love to share that with some of our listeners and viewers. Here we do that, yes, absolutely, provide links. Absolutely. We are thrilled to announce our partnership within partner software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally in partner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management and partner marketing automation. Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance, tracking, customizable partner journeys and comprehensive business planning. These features Empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value in partner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere and continues to innovate with new modules like analytics studio designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. For more information, visit impartner.com

Vince Menzione 22:12  

you work with some of the largest we mentioned, some of the I’ll call marquee clients, enterprise clients, big companies like at&t and HPE. What do you see from the best?

Cassandra Gholston 22:22  

It’s so funny. I hear a lot of times in these companies that say these are vintage companies. Like I’ve heard other ISVs that are kind of in the space. They call these companies vintage companies. And I’m like, these are companies that are actually really trying to they are transforming,

Cassandra Gholston 22:42  

they are doing the transformation. Yeah,

Cassandra Gholston 22:43  

they, they all are. And what, what that means is, you’ve got leaders inside that are change agents, right? And, and it’s scary, I think, for people in today’s market to lead change. Because, yeah,

Vince Menzione 23:03  

change is

Cassandra Gholston 23:04  

what if I fail? What if it fails and risking it? And, you know, the days of fail fast and being okay are not so secure, it feels like, but I think if you don’t, if you’re not the change, then your company is just going to be left in the dust. And you can see a massive company go down by the up and comers.

Vince Menzione 23:32  

So what’s required there to drive the change? And I know you’ve used the term co sell, quarterback role?

Cassandra Gholston 23:37  

Yes. So one thing I’ll say about change agent leadership, this is important. You don’t have to be a leader to be a change agent. You have to be willing to learn and do the research, and then you have to be willing to go and take this up to the leadership. So I think there’s a great opportunity for anyone in the organization that wants to go and put their name behind something that is going to, you know, drive big ROI is, you know, leading edge to go and and and talk about CO sell transformation and what these companies are doing. So I’m you don’t just have to be a leader, but, you know, we work with lots of change agents, whether they’re lower level or leaders, they’re getting to the leaders. And, you know,

Vince Menzione 24:39  

we’re helping. They’re assuming a leadership capacity. And so you

Cassandra Gholston 24:44  

do that inside your organization. Well, guess what? Who’s up for the next promotion? Yeah, right, that’s that’s the up and coming that that we do see in some organizations. But you know, in one company, that and I. Love talking about this company, lumen. I mean, this is a company where the CEO is talking about transformation, yes, Microsoft, right. X, Microsoft, co sell, okay, she gets it. Oh, yeah. And guess who else gets it, the entire team. But you’re transforming an organization that, again, direct, indirect, we don’t really work together and and, you know, they are going through big transformation. They told us that we were their most strategic vendor. That says a lot. It does. I mean, the woman in 2016 that was saying co sell is a thing, I mean. And what they said is, you know, all our partners have a component of CO selling across the board. So you think about that, and you know, they’re lucky they have the change agent from the top down. And so the people inside that organization are are looking for ways to go and transform.

Vince Menzione 26:13  

So I need a leader. I need people that assume leadership roles, whether they be the leader or not, somebody, somebody has to, like Be the change agent in the organization. Yes, I think about Greg Serafin again, because

Cassandra Gholston 26:25  

we, I love him. I just met him yesterday. Yeah, he’s like, but he’s a real deal. Well, he

Vince Menzione 26:29  

was here in that seat telling us what he did at EY amazing. And his role got elevated, because absolutely his role, his role is now at the Vice Chair level, yep, of the organized state global vice chair of EY

Cassandra Gholston 26:43  

so he is Chief partner officer. And I think yesterday, I said, yeah, the chief, the chief partner officer. Everybody’s talking about this new role, the person that takes that role that is a transformation leader, yes, transformational leader that is going to come in and move this new playbook, go to this new playbook of direct LED, to partner LED. And, you know, he’s, he’s, he’s done that, yeah. And I think the numbers that he gave out were, you know, they got to 20% partner LED. Now they’re 4040, 45%

Vince Menzione 27:23  

and the actual numbers were under a billion to ten billion

Cassandra Gholston 27:27  

amazing. Yeah, amazing. This is, yeah. This is the transformation. This is what is possible.

Vince Menzione 27:33  

And that leader also has to be able to speak the language of each of they have to have an influence strategy and be able to speak the language and understand the requirements and the needs and the pains of each of the members of the C suite. Yep, they had this. They had to speak finance, they had to speak marketing, that speak product engineering, right, right? And partner.

Cassandra Gholston 27:52  

And in some cases, it’s not just their C suite. It’s the Partner C suite too, because right, we’re, we’re driving change, not just in our organization, but our partners are leading. So it’s, it’s the the connections over there. So, yes, I love it.

Vince Menzione 28:12  

I love it. I so let’s we’re, I can’t believe we are almost at the halfway point. We’re at the half point, point of 2024, and I was just wishing you had happy new years just a couple weeks ago. Feels like for our viewers and listeners today, what do they need to go do that they maybe haven’t been doing yet? With regards to co selling, what would be your advice for optimizing for success in 2024

Cassandra Gholston 28:37  

Well, I would say to anybody that is operating in this random acts of CO sell, where we’re putting, you know, spreadsheets across the way and, you know, trying to go and action those in a manual fashion. Like, there’s technology for that. There is a way to scale that. But there, you know, I any customer that we’re working with, this is a three, three year transformation journey. There’s a crawl, walk and run, and

Vince Menzione 29:11  

what are the first steps that organizations normally take? So

Cassandra Gholston 29:16  

the first step is really building a program around co selling, and that program needs to be designed around this shared customer, right? This is no longer just my customer. This is our customer. And then we need to incentivize. We need to build incentives that drive collaborative behaviors. And if we don’t have those incentives right from the beginning, well, then the program will fail, right? So you need to be able to speak CFO, right. You need to be able to go and right, talk to them about the incentive programs, that

Vince Menzione 29:57  

is. And you need the investment dollars from the CFO, right? It. Resources and dollars and change in policies and incentives to support the new behavior. Yes,

Cassandra Gholston 30:05  

and then we’re talking about a lot of enablement of my field teams, lot of enablement of my partner’s field teams. I mean, that’s why this is so massive, but very exciting times to you know, see companies that we’ve been working with for now, some are on to four years. And you know, we’ve never lost an enterprise customer. That’s fantastic on the journey. I

Vince Menzione 30:37  

love it. Cassandra, so good. I have one more question, though, okay, you are hosting a dinner party.

Cassandra Gholston 30:44  

Okay? This is a, this is a ringer that you just gave me

Vince Menzione 30:49  

exactly, exactly. I love this. I love to throw these in. Yes, you’re hosting a dinner party. Could host this dinner party anywhere in the world, okay, discuss where you’d want to host it. Like favorite locations, you can invite any three guests to this amazing dinner party from the present or the past. You might, you might have somebody from the past that you want to invite to this amazing dinner party. Whom would you invite and why?

Cassandra Gholston 31:14  

I think that so past. I would definitely, I would want to, I would want to sit at the table with a Gandhi, and then I would also always want to sit at the table with Oprah.

Vince Menzione 31:26  

I love it.

Cassandra Gholston 31:27  

I mean, she was the original female entrepreneur. I love her.

Vince Menzione 31:30  

An influencer. She was an influencer before there was an influencer, right?

Cassandra Gholston 31:34  

And then I just Gandhi. You know, my people lead me like i

Vince Menzione 31:39  

Be the change you wish to see in the world. Absolutely, one of my favorites. Yes. And where are we hosting the party?

Cassandra Gholston 31:46  

Where are we hosting party? That’s a tough one. Could we come to Boca? We can

Vince Menzione 31:50  

come to Boca. We can have a great dinner, like we did at our event on the beach. That was wonderful. People have to come join us for our next big event. Cassandra, you are such an amazing leader. I’m so excited for partner, tap and the journey you’re on. Any final words or closing advice, we talked about quite a few things around co selling today you’d like to share with our listeners and viewers.

Cassandra Gholston 32:10  

I just I just think that companies need to be aware that if you’re not thinking about CO sell transformation, if you’re not starting the journey, just know that your competitors are already either in motion or they they’ve got the plan to be in motion. So way too long. It’s it’s a now. It’s happening. It’s happening. Well,

Vince Menzione 32:37  

I want to thank each of you, our listeners and viewers for following along on Ultimate Guide to partnering. I’m Vince menzion, and I appreciate all of your support. If you haven’t already subscribed on Apple, Google, Spotify, please do so and watch our new YouTube channel. If you’re not watching us today, go to our ultimate partner YouTube channel and please subscribe there as well. We’re getting a lot of followers on our YouTube channel, and in fact, the event that we just discussed with Greg Serafin and Cass is on our YouTube channel. You can watch the entire seven hours, over seven hours of amazing leaders and content from the ultimate partner executive Summit. Thank you again for joining the ultimate guide to partnering. Thanks for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partnering. Hopefully this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something, have you implemented everything you’ve been learning, and are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve, if not, it’s time to take action now join ultimate partner experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about with UPX. You get access to exclusive Industry Insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now. Visit our website, the ultimate partner.com, and sign up today. You.

Oguo Atuanya Join Ultimate Guide to Partnering®

In this Ultimate Guide to Partnering episode, I enjoyed welcoming a friend and leader into the studio for an insightful conversation. Oguo Atuanya, a General Manager within Microsoft GPS, leads the selling efforts for one of Microsoft’s most important segments, SMC – Small, Medium, and Corporate.

With over 20 years at Microsoft, Oguo shares his proven track record in global business strategy development, organizational culture transformation, partner ecosystem transformation, and reversing declining businesses. He is educated across three continents and integrates his diverse cultural background and rich career experiences to create effective global strategies, with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion as core principles. He operates consistently on his foundational values: Integrity, Dignity, and Dedication.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode

0:02 –  Partner engagement and growth strategies at Microsoft. 

5:25 – Mentorship, family, and mental health awareness. 

11:24 – AI impact and Microsoft’s copilot technology. 

16:16 – AI adoption and transformation in a large multinational company. 

21:25 – AI, security, and partner success in the tech industry. 

25:39 – Microsoft’s mid-market strategy and partner channels. 

31:11 – Microsoft’s SMB strategy, partner engagement, and AI solutions. 36:33 – Partner engagement and success strategies.

44:15 – AI strategy and partner alignment for Microsoft’s new fiscal year.

https://youtu.be/kkM4xUq1pV8?si=yi0LE7rVtft-OnsW

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Transcript

Keywords:

partners, microsoft, ai, talked, cosell, isv, year, organizations, people, solution, opportunities, terms, strategy, impact, cloud, customer, journey, understand, smc, mentoring

Transcript (Generated by Otter A.I. – Please Excuse Any Typos) 

Jay McBain 0:02  

Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent you

Vince Menzione 0:13  

show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own earnings, that flywheel success is where you will build momentum. And that momentum will continue and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together.

Vince Menzione 0:32
Welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partnering. I’m Vince Manzi on your host, and I’m on a mission to empower every individual organization and partner to achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Much of the discussion that we’ve been having is on the tectonic shifts, this decade of the ecosystem, the increasing dominance of the three hyperscalers the changing buying behavior, and the importance of the mid market, what Microsoft calls SMC small, medium and corporate, and this marketplace moment, I’m excited to be joined in the studio today here in Boca Raton, with a leader responsible for many of Microsoft’s largest partners, and is also driving the partner engagement in this mid market that is so important to the future growth and success of the partners working with Microsoft. A go out to Anya is our latest guest, a GM at Microsoft, and a leader that I’ve gotten to know and has been on the podcast before a Google welcome to the podcast

Oguo Atuanya 1:30  

events. Big thanks for having me again. absolutely a pleasure to be back.

Vince Menzione 1:33  

It is so hot. I’m so excited to have you finally in the studio looks great. But you got to be in the room when we just had our big event yesterday, we recorded yesterday, our big event types. And I’m glad you could stick around today, spend a little bit more time with us.

Oguo Atuanya 1:49  

Thank you

Vince Menzione 1:50  

have you have an important role. We got to know each other in fact, because I was working with an organization that was trying to figure out how to work with the partner ecosystem that you manage. But for our listeners, I want you to maybe double down on that introduction that I just gave maybe explain your role in a little bit more detail and the mission of your organization.

Oguo Atuanya 2:11  

Yeah, it’s it’s a very interesting and fulfilling role, I think. So I responsible for a set of wonderful partner development managers in the Americas that look after those large partners that you talked about, as well as an organization or channel sales organization that’s responsible for cosell? Yes.

Vince Menzione 2:36  

Right. So it’s such an important process, the

Oguo Atuanya 2:39  

interlock of those two roles we found have been pretty powerful in helping you know, our partners, the head of technological trends. Specifically, this year, of course, we’re focused on helping our partners get ahead when it comes to AI, and security. And you mentioned earlier, the growth of that small, medium corporate segment. And

Vince Menzione 3:04  

you’ve been at Microsoft quite some time. I mean, you’re pretty young guy. So I stayed in grade school, you must, must have started very, tell us more about this career journey. You’ve had a fascinating career journey to this level at Microsoft. It’s a pretty big role at Microsoft. So tell tell us a little bit more about ago. It’s

Oguo Atuanya 3:21  

been sort of wonderful, right? I’ve been at Microsoft for 22 years. Mostly all on the partner side, I started my career at Microsoft as, as what used to be a global account manager. But now a PDM. I run one of our partners, largest partner in the embedded space. Now IoT net. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we had some fun. We actually work together to unset Linux and Wind River as the leader operating systems and embedded, replacing them with, you know, Windows Embedded and CE. One day, so I did that for a while and moved over to the classic OEM side where I was a BDM for some of our system builders. Went back to the embedded group, Randy America’s direct team. And then Steve Guggenheimer tapped me to run the Windows Mobile, open channel. vision strategy we had we had such, you know, huge traction and progress with, you know, phones that were locked to operators. But on the other side of the equation, there was nothing going on with this open channel forums that were really really big in places like Asia and Europe, Middle East and Africa. So I went to run that did that for a bit. went over to the SMS NP side, you remember, worldwide distribution strategy eventually ran their distribution team out of Redmond. And then I spent about four and a half years in Europe. Living in the UK, running devices, business and IoT business is

Vince Menzione 5:23  

so fascinating journey to this point.

Oguo Atuanya 5:25  

It’s been awesome. It’s been fulfilling. Had a lot of all that said I, one of my most fulfilling aspects of my career has just been to have the opportunity to mentor, a group of people across the world have got about at any given time 10 to 15 leaders that are mentoring across the globe. So

Vince Menzione 5:48  

how do you find time to do that, that is fast, it’s just

Oguo Atuanya 5:51  

a passion. I love watching people grow. I love watching people grow from different perspectives. You know, just having that ability to work with people from different walks of life, different parts of the globe, just been enriching.

Vince Menzione 6:05  

I love that. Tell me about like you, you have a group of 15 people you’re mentoring or mostly younger folks? Or like what? What is the what is the the typical profile of somebody that you mentor? And how does that engagement start?

Oguo Atuanya 6:18  

They actually quite dispersed, you know, along the plains. I mean, I’ve got I’ve got people who are, what is it about three, four years into Microsoft earlier and career Early in career, I’ve got people who about, you know, 10 years, Microsoft, some I see some managers. So midpoint, and I’ve got some, a couple of very senior folks. And, you know, they’ve come to me from, you know, a compilation of, of, or confluence of touch points, some introductions from people, some of them actually know people who work in my organization that will reach out to those people and say, hey, it’s kind of leader like to, you know, speak to and grow from, and those introductions are made, and then tried to just find time.

Vince Menzione 7:07  

Yeah, it strikes me you’re and I got to know you. And some of the people work for you. They, your people are very important to you. Absolutely. That’s number one for Yeah, yeah. Where does that come from? Where does that passion come from

Oguo Atuanya 7:18  

it. I come from a very close family, very close knit family. And I really watched my parents kind of do the same thing in their careers. And my parents always told me that the number one asset you have, as a human being are human beings, you know, everything else comes along for a ride, you nurture that and, and everything falls in place. And we were always taught to, you know, make time no matter what, yeah, a lifetime I love. So that’s that’s sort of persisted was,

Vince Menzione 7:53  

you know, at our event, we talked about mental health awareness. And younger people today, the rate of suicide, and I’m bringing this up. Because I think that this maybe this is something that’s lacking in our society today, is having someone to speak to and I do think that we’re, we’re investing, making contributions in organizations to support that. And I’m just wondering what your point of view on that was, since you are mentoring some earlier people?

Oguo Atuanya 8:21  

Yeah, it’s, it’s really unfortunate. If you think about the things that our young folks have to face today, that we didn’t have to deal with the litany of social media out there. Yeah, the material that’s put out just the gravity of, you know, some negative gravity of negative

Vince Menzione 8:46  

fantasy, or the aspiration to something that’s so hollow, in terms of superficial

Oguo Atuanya 8:52  

and superficial people just get caught up, you know, trying to be whatever. Yeah, so any opportunity that I have to sort of sit these young individuals down and just ground them and sort of give them a dose of, you know, you know, reality, and also let him know that you’re never really alone. In this journey, makes a difference as he never know where an individual is at a certain point of their lives and the impact he can have in terms of turning them one way or the other. Visibly, whatever they’re facing at that point. Is

Vince Menzione 9:34  

there a common piece of advice or guidance that you provide them? Or is it is it situational across each other?

Oguo Atuanya 9:41  

It is, it is mostly situational. But But I think young people just have to understand that your journey is your journey. Yeah, you know it you’re not gonna live someone else’s life. Right? Don’t compare yourself. It may be wonderful for someone else you’re not you’re not Lebron James. I Um, and believe me, he’s got his own problem still that has to deal with. That’s right, no matter what you’re going through. Someone else always has it worse. That’s right. And then the last thing I tell people even, you know, you know, speak to folks, their mind musician about this is it if everybody’s health is intact, you don’t have a problem. Yeah, you have issues that you, you get to deal with and overcome. But once you have a problem with somebody’s health, then things are really out of control. So that’s kind of the perspective

Vince Menzione 10:40  

is reminds me about the nuclear, you talked about having a tight knit family, I came from a tight knit family as well. And it seems that today, we don’t see as much of that as we used to, and it’s a shame.

Oguo Atuanya 10:50  

It’s really, it’s a detriment, the negative impact to the young folks. Yeah. But again, we, as you know, leaders have you had this, say, and I’m originally Nigeria, and we always had this thing about it taking a family. When I was younger, and if I did something wrong, I never really got home before was discipline. I got discipline along the way, by me. So, in a sense, my parents didn’t have to do much, because

Vince Menzione 11:23  

you had the cat, there was an accountability trail. I

Oguo Atuanya 11:26  

already went through that. I love it. I love checking those boxes. And you

Vince Menzione 11:31  

were if I recall, you were born in Nigeria, and then you came to the United States as a teenager, or when did

Oguo Atuanya 11:36  

you get back? So I was born in Nigeria? So we spent some time in, in Europe, and then also, I think, into the US. Yeah. And so you know, luckily, those values persist. Yeah, that’s good. And when I came here, we sort of fell into the same, you know, cluster of great individuals. So that really was not, you know, anything lost. I think if you if you’ve got these values, they will transcend no countries and continents.

Vince Menzione 12:14  

Good. I was gonna ask you was there one great piece of advice you received during that journey during that time growing up? Whether it was in Nigeria, Europe, or here? Actually, it’s

Oguo Atuanya 12:24  

the same thing my mom always told me, which is what I tell young people, be yourself. Your journey is your journey. In a world that constantly pushes you to be yourself and be

Vince Menzione 12:39  

yourself. Be yourself. Yeah.

Oguo Atuanya 12:41  

I love to be true to yourself. Be true to yourself. Yeah.

Vince Menzione 12:44  

All right. We’re gonna shift gears now to business. I, we could spend all day here and I love this conversation. I love the personal journey and the conversation. So Microsoft has been on a tear. You know, 18 months ago, we wouldn’t be having a conversation about AI. And I think it was right after right around Thanksgiving of 2023. Yeah, that open AI took off like a rocket ship, right? Yeah. I think Microsoft was caught a little bit off guard to like a little bit like, okay, yeah, this is great. We made this investment. But nobody saw that rocket ship taking off. Certainly Google was flat footed. They were like, well, yeah, we’ve been. We’ve been holding on to this technology. We haven’t done anything with it yet. And Microsoft’s been on a tear with copilot. It’s copilot. Everything. Microsoft recently finished the build event, lots of big announcements around copilot about infusing AI, basically, and all the Microsoft tools and technology and Wall Street has been very appreciative of that Microsoft stock has had a really great bounce, I would say this past year, call it a bit of a renaissance. Right. Would you agree?

Oguo Atuanya 13:52  

Absolutely. Vince, listen. It’s been amazing. And if I take a step back and just talk about AI, because it’s wonderful technology. I don’t want to take away from technology that it is, but what is even more impactful to me. And I think somebody like sat here as well, the way he goes about, you know, driving the strategy of AI is the impact that it will have on humankind. Yeah, you know, if you I always tell people that there’s never been a better time, you know, to be in our industry. Yeah. Right. If you think about the impact this will have on the medical field, you know, research and trading, accelerating the treatment of no illnesses like cancer. If you think about the impact or have on education, if you think about the impact they’ll have on developing countries, you know, human development, if you think about it, Just the advancements that will drive in their countries. And also, you know, most of these countries that are really potential rich, but have had issues with governance and compliance. Yes. Right. So massive, massive impact. So for me, that’s even more impressive than than the technology. So then then, you know, when you when you come down to the technology, itself, copilots has just been amazing. What we’ve done in terms of taking the Lang sorry, the large language model and coupling it or integrating it into your work content and context. Right, so that it reasons how it reasons and just reduces the digital overload you have making individuals more productive, enhancing productivity, elevating their human creativity, right? I’m just customizing where we work. Just, that’s just been immense. And I think I think a lot of people got caught flat footed as people like us who are leading the fray. Because if you think about cloud transformation, that was it driven?

Vince Menzione 16:15  

That’s right. That’s right. It was yeah, it was lift and shift, it was taking your data center moving into the cloud.

Oguo Atuanya 16:23  

It was some sort of, you could predict what would happen and you could pace what what, you know, what would happen? Yes, in this case, this is actually driven, you know, by people wanting those outcomes, that’s going to impact where they work and the way they live. So that’s why it’s been so overwhelming, in a good way. Well, it’s

Vince Menzione 16:43  

the promise, you talked about IoT a little bit earlier. And to me, this is the promise of the cloud. Because, you know, firstly, it was having the Central Intelligence of bringing everything into the cloud, then it was having IoT be the tentacles, right, the bringing, bringing all the information into the Central Intelligence, and then layering in like large language models and all the capabilities around AI to that data set, and being able to act on it in real time. I mean, that’s where we’re going.

Oguo Atuanya 17:15  

And then the interesting part about it is, we’re right at the surface, we’re just at the beginning, we’re right at the surface, it’s gonna get, it’s gonna get more pervasive, it’s going to in a good way, right? It’s gonna get more powerful. In fact, that’s why I tell the partners that are in my patch, that, you know, it’s not just about, you know, this wave that we’re facing right now. It’s about them getting ready for it. Yes. Right. So just ensuring that you build in this practices, you’ve got the resources to support it, you’re compensating those resources in accordingly. You’ve got the services that will convert, especially in the case of, you know, co pilot, you know, those licenses that you sell, through adoption and consumption. They very critical that we learn that and we’re here to help them. Well, let’s

Vince Menzione 18:12  

talk about your world for a second. I’m going to break it up into two conversations, right? Because I look at the partners that you manage in your business. Yeah. We talked about him. We talked about the Bill Gates moment, right. I talked about this, what happened here in Boca Raton, 43 years ago, Microsoft created a licensing model. And we already three years ago, and that created a channel. And though some of the largest calm channel partners are the companies that you manage, right, we can rattle off names like CW, and insight and crayon and some of our other great friends. And some of them have been guests here on the podcast as well. They’re massive organizations. And I and you know that management of that processes. You know, it’s not for the faint of heart like you, these are massive organizations that you’re infusing Microsoft across. What is happening with AI? And how is your business aligned and changed working with these partners now on AI, but also, you know, this new world of hyper scalar co selling and marketplaces? How are your partners thinking differently than maybe they were a year year and a half ago?

Oguo Atuanya 19:20  

Yeah. First and foremost, as you mentioned, these is a large multibillion dollar company, hence,

Vince Menzione 19:28  

publicly traded, publicly traded.

Oguo Atuanya 19:30  

So things are moving fast. Yeah. You know, what we typically do with this, folks is, when we define our priorities at the beginning of fiscal year we sit down with him, let him back up. We actually have conversations with them before they define right. So we have, you know, defined

Vince Menzione 19:49  

you have an ongoing ongoing dialogue. Obviously, we

Oguo Atuanya 19:52  

find it we get input in consideration, right. So it’s collaborative. And then the Get to land it. And in some cases, they get to, you know, staff up the resources to go execute against the strategies and priorities. And that then has to trickle down through the organizations. So my point is it like mentioned, it’s a large ship. Yes. We’ve seen some pretty positive, you know, steps in terms of transformation. And I think we each of them that you’ll speak to, they’ll tell you that while we’ve seen some progress, we still have, you know, a long way to go. Yeah. I think the advent of AI is pushing everybody. Yes, it is pushing everybody. Because this discussions that we’ve had, you know, year in year out for the last, I don’t know, four or five, six years. I think everybody now realizes that. If they’re not manifested, you will get left behind. Yeah. Right. So again, I commend these partners, because we’ve talked with in a conference, they’ve listened. They’ve talked to us who have listened. We’re implementing the strategies. They’re creating budgets, to hire resources, in cases that need to be and

Vince Menzione 21:24  

where are they investing? Is it an AI? Is it across other roles? What were you seeing the investments? It did

Oguo Atuanya 21:30  

this huge investment in AI? You know, security? Data? Yeah. Right. Because don’t forget that journey is customers have to get their data estate. Yes. Yeah. Right. to then be able to leverage AI.

Vince Menzione 21:45  

Yeah. And then they have to layer in security to make sure this

Oguo Atuanya 21:49  

has to be secure. Right. So they’re beginning to their credit, they now understand, you know, the importance of that left to right investment.

Vince Menzione 21:59  

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Vince Menzione 22:56  

We talked about this yesterday. But you know, we talked about Microsoft’s priorities not really changing as much as they changed before in the past, right last year was we’re going to talk about SMC in a moment. But AI being at the forefront marketplace is being an important, but this year, layering in Security Security is foundational to partner success. And would you say that’s that’s a new area? Or it’s an area that’s gotten increased importance and maybe scrutiny? I

Oguo Atuanya 23:24  

think it’s the second part, because it’s not really a new area of

Vince Menzione 23:27  

No, no, no, but But it’s getting more

Oguo Atuanya 23:29  

it’s, it’s become more critical. Yes. And, you know, our partners, we have to succeed when it comes to security, and we have to succeed with them. We think we have probably the most comprehensive, you know, security framework, right solutions from working, because, you know, we start from the devices back to the end of the cloud. I mean, we just liked, you know, a co pilot plus devices. What was it about two weeks ago? Yeah, probably the most powerful devices with the most powerful and the most secure. Yeah, right. And when you it’s creating a

Vince Menzione 24:07  

resurgent resurgence for the PC market. And see,

Oguo Atuanya 24:12  

you can’t really divorce this discussion. That’s right, you know, between the hardware and the cloud, and then everything happening in between and whatever,

Vince Menzione 24:18  

maybe partners that don’t know the ecosystem. The way you and I do is that these are large organizations that provide end to end middle cell devices, they’ll sell cloud they’ll sell ISV solutions, a

Oguo Atuanya 24:30  

one stop shop, one stop shop. It’s a one stop secure and powerful stop and 1000s

Vince Menzione 24:37  

of sellers and organizations huge organizations, you know, we had de Berger on just recently like we talked about like how organizations like his are embracing the change, right? Not Not every organization is like that. What are you seeing from the majority they’ll like it, or I’ll say I’ll put insight maybe towards the top, top ranks, but what do you think For the majority of the partners you manage,

Oguo Atuanya 25:02  

we’ve we’ve got a mixed bag. Right, we’ve got we’ve got, you know, partners, some of them that, that I ended up top tier that forefront insight. You know, this some in the middle, right, but middle of the pack middle of the pack, what I still trying because they understand the urgency, right? We know some of those as well. Yeah, yeah. And what I will tell you, though, is that where we used to have a lot of partners in lower tier pack, we don’t have a lot of anymore. That’s a good thing. It’s been there’s been this push to get to the middle. Yeah.

Vince Menzione 25:39  

And that’s good. I remember we had those conversations. We’re

Oguo Atuanya 25:43  

working very aggressively with them to get to the top of the pack.

Vince Menzione 25:46  

Yeah. Yeah. Nobody wants to be left behind. Yeah.

Oguo Atuanya 25:48  

And the other the other concept that’s that that’s really beginning to, you know, take hold and gain traction that we’ve talked about in the past, but it never really has, is that concept of PRP. Right? Because we talked about this. What was it three years ago, when we spoke, it must have been three years. Yeah, we talked about the fact that not everybody, you know, has all the constituents to build a comprehensive solutions, right yet to pull in an ISV, if needed yet to pull in a hardware provider or an OEM, right. So what a lot of this these folks are doing right now is they now have a very pronounced VDP strategy, where they either engage, you know, with a partner who has a piece of what they’re looking forward to build a complete solution, or they engage in BI, or they’re now talking about, you know, building, you know, from in house. So, in the case of security, and

Vince Menzione 26:51  

it’s also changing, we could dive in on this whole conversation, we might lose a few people along the way here. But the cloud and the dominance of the cloud commitments is changing the dynamic for those organizations that would normally sell, they would sell maybe ISV. Software independent of Microsoft. Yes. And then they sell Microsoft separately. Yes. And now it’s infusing the two going together into the account, right? Because maybe, maybe this ISV is maybe committed to a Microsoft agreement, they have a SaaS solution now sitting on Azure, and they’re trying to get that SAS solution to the customer where it was normal, maybe it was an on prem solution before let’s let’s use backup and recovery. So they’re having to change their internal models, right? The the ISV is changing their model, their compensation, the reseller is now coming to market a little bit differently with them. But at the end of the day, it’s driving Microsoft Azure, it is driving Microsoft products, maybe Office security, all these other solutions into that customer. So it’s more complex. Yeah,

Oguo Atuanya 27:53  

I think more importantly, it’s enabling the outcome they want to drive for the customer. That’s right. I love the fact that we’re where we are right now. You know, from the MPO. perspective, you know, that’s a mechanism that I want to make sure that our partners get really, you know, familiar and conversant with, because it really gives the ISV the ability to scale along with the partner when fulfilling those needs, on marketplace, that you know, is becoming more and more prevalent as a medium to purchase. Yep.

Vince Menzione 28:28  

Right. For those that don’t know, MPO is Microsoft. Multi party offer multisoft term for multiple positions coming together in a marketplace solution. The other guys use a different term for it. I think it’s

Oguo Atuanya 28:42  

CPP PPO. Yeah.

Vince Menzione 28:44  

We get down to the Microsoft speak. And we you know, we get some people here, they’re like, talking about, let’s let’s use another Microsoft acronym for this next part of the conversation. You participated in a panel discussion at our amazing event with one of the leaders from the SMC business, and we’ve had Kevin P skor. Here on stage we’ve had Kevin Biesecker. In the room, we had no no an actor was with you yesterday. SMC is Microsoft’s Small, Medium corporate accounts, business people don’t understand what that means they think it’s SMB. But it’s the mid market. And to mean, it’s actually a pretty significant part of the Microsoft business people don’t regulate. There’s a huge opportunity here. And I remember you and I having a conversation probably about a year ago, that it was underdeveloped and needed to create some muscle and you know, I know you, you exercise and you understand about building muscle, but that we felt we needed to build some muscle. Right. And that’s, I think, what how your role has evolved since we last met in on the podcast is that now you have these channel sellers. So tell us more about that part of the role, and why that’s so important to our listeners and viewers watching.

Oguo Atuanya 29:49  

Yeah, we did a really interesting, good thing. You know, last year at the beginning of the fiscal year, we went from if you recall my role Last year was only in one country, the US what happened? All the channel partners had

Vince Menzione 30:05  

telco distributor,

Oguo Atuanya 30:09  

what we call a scale partners, domain providers. I had them all. It was fun. It was fun. And then I also had accountability for all segments. Yes. Right. But there really wasn’t a lot of focus. That’s right. Right. So yeah, what we did was we went to that singular segment, you know, focus alignment. And we took a look at our channels and said, Hey, which of these partner sets would provide us working with them the biggest bang when it came to focusing on certain segments? Because the scale partners for me. And we took a look at opportunities within each of these segments, by far and wide, the largest opportunities that we had witness MC, small, medium corporate segment, by far, and it was just on the top.

Vince Menzione 31:08  

I’m not surprised, by the way I’ve been calling this the acre of diamonds for a year.

Oguo Atuanya 31:11  

That’s that’s such an apt term, but But you understand, you know, Microsoft, you know, how well resourced the enterprise, you know, businesses,

Vince Menzione 31:19  

there’s, everyone gravitates to the top right, so now you have hundreds of partners going on to those 11,000 customers, basically, yeah. And then they’re ignoring this mid market, which is huge, huge.

Oguo Atuanya 31:31  

And then it keeps growing, because you’ve got you’ve got, you know, a customer in the in the smaller tier SMB that eventually rise into, essentially. That’s right, right. So it continues to grow.

Vince Menzione 31:44  

And people don’t realize that and some of the enterprise customers move down to the corporate space as well, because Microsoft focuses on a smaller patch, in some cases, organization. So the corporate account space gets gets bigger. Yeah, it gets bigger on both sides. So

Oguo Atuanya 31:57  

we did something very deliberate. We carved that out, we assigned a partner portfolio to it. Now, that doesn’t mean the way I like to explain it to partners is with us, you major in SMC and you minor in other things. Right. We encourage you to major and live in SMC doesn’t mean that we’re going to dissuade you from doing anything else. But this is where the opportunity and investments we made some significant investments in resources in incentives. Yes, right in. Right. So that landscape looks very different. We’ve got a nominee we’re talking to yesterday. We’ve got sellers. We’ve got my PDM. We’ve got my channel sales managers, you facilitate now cosell?

Vince Menzione 32:54  

And just in the US market, there’s what 10,000 corporate accounts, roughly athletic nominees 5000 for the East.

Oguo Atuanya 33:01  

Yeah, yeah. So roughly across the Americas even much more than much bigger, you have much more of

Vince Menzione 33:06  

all of the Americans. So that was the other thing that happened differently. Microsoft last year, your role expanded from a geo perspective. Yeah, exactly. So Sam, and Kenneth, you

Oguo Atuanya 33:15  

went vertical, you know, partner says, right. So to provide a focus. Yeah.

Vince Menzione 33:22  

And it makes the most sense, because, again, those are the partners that you manage scale into those mid market organizations most effective.

Oguo Atuanya 33:29  

Yeah. And they’ve been, they’ve been very receptive to that shift in strategy, because we’re seeing in the fruits of focusing on those opportunities together.

Vince Menzione 33:41  

So let’s, we got partners, watching and listening to us today that are looking to maybe potentially engage with you and your team on the SMC side. What did they need to do? Like? How did they engage? And what do you do to help them foster the growth? What does your team do there?

Oguo Atuanya 33:56  

So the first thing I like to say is if you’re not engaged, email me. It’s all at one or at you NYHA microsoft.com. Now, you know that we’ve got a very elaborate, you know, partner, management and development program. Alright, so we’ve got a set of BDMS that manage

Vince Menzione 34:23  

depending on where you are, what type of partner are you are, if you’re an SI a GSI, an ISV? I mean, exactly. You’re ultimately going to your teams can ultimately work with them to bring them into the customer, potentially, or help them guide them into the journey. Yes, but they might be managed or unmanaged. In one of those others. Yeah, yeah.

Oguo Atuanya 34:40  

But what’s what’s what’s blanket and universal across the board is that at the beginning of the year, again, we define this priorities right. This branch is defined along solution areas, you know, more than one Azure, these apps and then we’ve got you know, solution plays on The neat solution areas that are very specifically aligned. Right? To segments. Right, right. And then what this team that I just talked about, is make sure that through partner business planning, you know, our partners engaged into those opportunities in a very defined way. Right. And then in addition to making sure you’ve got your AI strategy, there are three things that that we’re going to focus on this coming. this coming fiscal year. Here’s one, land copilot,

Vince Menzione 35:37  

land copilot on every desk,

Oguo Atuanya 35:39  

every seat. Dr. Jen AI design wins. And you know, absolutely proliferate Microsoft solution. Security Solutions.

Vince Menzione 35:52  

With the land land, Jen AI, wins, what does that look like? So it’s, it’s something that customers

Oguo Atuanya 36:01  

it’s a little, it’s kind of broad, right? Because if you have a Gen AI solution that you’ve developed as a pot, right, you drive an opportunity win with it. Now there’s so many different things that we look at in terms of calibrating those wins, right? You know, things that that you know, spin the Azure data consumption in the backend, right. But it’s just going out there secure net win with a customer. We want our partners to drive all theirs as much as possible. Right. And then of course, we talked about security, but security, probably the most important, one of the most important things that we need to get done in terms of partner engagement with our field is cosell. We talked about cosell yesterday? Yes.

Vince Menzione 36:55  

Quite a bit. Actually. We

Oguo Atuanya 36:57  

did. Yeah, we spent a lot of time on an important topic. It’s very, very important because we need the sellers, from our partners and sellers from SMC organization to really get down to the tactical level in terms of where there’s opportunities. What are we going to use to fill those opportunities? How do we attract those opportunities? Right. So now kushiel bid is very important. Partners have to get really comfortable with you know, partner center. That’s right, right, as I’m moving these,

Vince Menzione 37:30  

and many of them are working with some of our coaches, right, we have these ultimate partner ambassadors that were up on stage yesterday, these are organizations that actually helped coach these or help these partners along because you can’t do everything alone. You can’t always rely on Microsoft to do it all you were with you. With some of the help that we we have people that know how to do that really well.

Oguo Atuanya 37:49  

So how how are you successful, let’s align on those imperatives. There’s three imperatives that I’ve talked about. Let’s align on how we drive what I call a relationship with yourself. Right? Those are the four really important legs of the stool, I would say when when engaging successfully with us.

Vince Menzione 38:10  

And so the fourth one being the cosell effective. Relational cosell.

Oguo Atuanya 38:17  

I call it relationship because our relationship. What is the difference

Vince Menzione 38:20  

between relationships cosell and any other cosell because they’ll by any other name? I think

Oguo Atuanya 38:25  

you know, some people think that quiz sale is that point in time engagement where you sit down?

Vince Menzione 38:31  

Right? Yeah, like let’s let’s compare spreadsheets. And

Oguo Atuanya 38:34  

yeah, off you go. Yeah. Yeah. Relationship cross sells. Actually, you start that pre work beforehand. It’s right. And beyond that meeting, you know, you’re still connected. Yeah. Right. You heard no more mentioned yesterday, if something goes wrong, pick up the phone and call your counterpart. Right.

Vince Menzione 38:51  

And the relationship is all about building the trust. Right. In fact, we have Cassandra gholston Here. recently talking about the fact that CO selling is a verb. It’s something you do all the time. Yes. Right. It’s not an amount of one and done. It’s not a noun. It’s a verb. Yeah. Yeah.

Oguo Atuanya 39:08  

I mean, we actually even get now to level where we now I want to make sure we map the names of our sellers. Yes. On platinum sellers. Yes. And make sure that their contact information is exchanged. And they live with one another. It’s, it’s getting to that point.

Vince Menzione 39:26  

So cool. What advice do you have for these partners watching or listening today to optimize success? Like if you, you talked about these four areas, but if you want to, like, within 30 seconds, if we’re on an elevator, what would you say to them? What do they need to go do differently or better to optimize for success?

Oguo Atuanya 39:44  

I would say, one, understand who you are, and be very definitive in terms of what you do. Right, you know, while it’s wonderful to say you can do everything That doesn’t always work, right, you’re better off, you know, taking those two or three things that you know how to do and do well, and filling in, you know, very specific gaps in terms of needs, you know, that we’ll have when we’re trying to get to that customer, you know, requested outcome. In at the second thing I would say is, be very, very intentional from a cultural perspective, right. Make sure that we’re connected, make sure that we’re having those follow ons from a relationship point of view. The third thing that I will just mention is, let’s also stay aligned on imperatives. Right? Because we can really succeed without the partner. And that, I would like to think vice versa, right. So if we begin the fiscal year, step for step aligned in the same direction, and understanding how to leverage the resources that we have, will be successful. The other thing that I think partners should think about is, let’s understand what you’re doing from a GTM perspective. Because we can evangelize, we integrate, we can interlock we can evangelize,

Vince Menzione 41:27  

right, and understanding what makes you different and better and different, and makes you stand out gives you that opportunity to then go evangelize.

Oguo Atuanya 41:34  

Yes. It’s a branding campaign, right. So Phil, somebody hears about a CD wo insight or soft choice of crayon. Is that one of the two things that’s right, that pricks and they understand that they’re strong idea, and you pull them into opportunities. I

Vince Menzione 41:50  

love that. I love that. So I want to pivot for a second, I want to ask a personal question is one of my favorite questions. And want to ask now that we’re in the studio here in Boca, you are hosting a dinner party, and you can host this dinner party anywhere in the world, we could talk about all the fabulous places you’ve lived. And you can invite any three guests to this amazing dinner party from the present or the past to this dinner party. Maybe even in the future. Somebody somebody once said, a guest in the future. Whom would you invite? And why? A gua.

Oguo Atuanya 42:23  

So I always say this, I would invite my mom from the past, right? I mean, the significant impact she had on my life at indelible. I have a soccer star that I loved growing up as a child, Socrates, Olivia.

Vince Menzione 42:44  

Socrates Olivia era from Brazil from Brazil. Okay. Wow, I know Pele.

Oguo Atuanya 42:52  

But I love Socrates. I would I would, I would invite Socrates. And I would probably invite my, my college football coach, Dave Aslanian. What’s his name? Dave Aslanian.

Vince Menzione 43:05  

Dave is learning. Yes. Interesting. Interesting. As you play again,

Oguo Atuanya 43:09  

we will state university Nice, nice. So there’s a I mean, if we kept the list of three, and that would be it.

Vince Menzione 43:15  

And obviously, I get the impact of your mom. Some was the soccer player, just we’re just a huge fan. I was just a huge fan growing up as a child, and tell me about the impact of your football coach.

Oguo Atuanya 43:26  

Coach Aslanian had a style of autumn. He was he was a real human being he wasn’t your typical coach. He was that coach that would tell you hey, listen, useful policy, get what you want out of life, versus football using. He’s that coach now give me a pep talk and say, Hey, listen, we’re not really out there to hurt anybody. Right? We’re out there to achieve an outcome. Right? So do what you need to do, but then make it personal. I just love this integrity as a human being and I loved you know, just as authenticity made an impact on me.

Vince Menzione 44:15  

Wondering, I’m wondering about the mentoring that you do now wondering if you’re taking some of that forward, thinking forward. A lot of that a lot of that comes in

Oguo Atuanya 44:25  

you know, he’s a very powerful individual came from a very, you know, prominent powerful family, but was very understated. Nice. So that really struck a chord and stayed with.

Vince Menzione 44:41  

So awesome. So awesome. A gua I want to thank you. But before I do, we are at this we’re like the halfway point of the year beginning of Microsoft’s new fiscal year. One last thing for our partners on leaning in for the second half of the year. How do they think how do they need to be thinking differently? going into the second half of the year beginning of Microsoft’s new fiscal year.

Oguo Atuanya 45:05  

I think if I could just borrow a co pilot, as your as some sort of a microcosm to just learn this, we spent the first six months or so landing it, testing things out trialing. Right. Now we’re ready for scale. Right. Now, when you sort of draw that parallel back to AI, and you know, all the movement that AI is going to drive in the industry, that’s really where we are right now.

Vince Menzione 45:43  

Yeah, yeah,

Oguo Atuanya 45:44  

we need to scale now. I think we’re past. You know, the trial show and tell. So it’s time to lean in and say, It’s time to lean out. It’s time to execute against all the strategies. It’s time to scale. Because if you don’t, you’ll find yourself behind. Yeah. And if you find yourself behind, and this AI race, it’s

Vince Menzione 46:05  

gonna be tough. It’s a fast race.

Oguo Atuanya 46:06  

It’s not like Cloud transformation. We talked

Vince Menzione 46:09  

about it. We have lots of years to get the cloud transformation. We don’t have we don’t have years here in the

Oguo Atuanya 46:14  

cycle, if you want to stay relevant. I go back to those things I talked about, right. Develop a managed services, practice and strategy if you don’t have one yet. Right. Second thing is hurry up and get that AI strategy. Yes. The thing is security. Fourth, is amplifying that cosell. Right. Because that’s what we’re all about. Moving into FY 25. Yeah.

Vince Menzione 46:46  

Excellent. Excellent. I want to thank you so much for coming down here to Boca Raton, making the trip for this event and for being on the podcast here today in the studio. I can’t thank you enough. And for our listeners and viewers, I want to thank you for joining thank you for supporting the ultimate guide to partnering. And if you haven’t subscribed to our YouTube channel, please hit the subscribe button at the top. You can also rate and review us on Apple Spotify. And leave a comment in the note section on either of those platforms. It helps us continuing to get great guests like a good to join us on Ultimate Guide to partnering with gua thank you so much for joining us today. I mean,

Oguo Atuanya 47:25  

it’s been wonderful. The event yesterday was absolutely incredible.

Vince Menzione 47:30  

Thank you. Hey, gentlemen, thank you. Thanks for having us. Thanks for being part of it. And thank you for watching and listening. Thanks for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partnering. Hopefully, this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something. Have you implemented everything you’ve been learning? And are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve? If not, it’s time to take action now. Join ultimate partner experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about. With up x you get access to exclusive Industry Insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now visit our website, the ultimate partner.com and sign up today.

Sanjay Mehta & Erin Figer of Tackle.io join Ultimate Guide to Partnering

I so enjoyed bringing two friends and experts into the studio for an insightful conversation. In this episode, we explore the world of cloud go-to-market strategies and co-selling with two of the industry’s top leaders: Erin Figer (VP of Co-Sell) and Sanjay Mehta (Chief Cloud Officer) of Tackle.io.

With extensive experience in B2B technology marketing and the hyperscalers ecosystems, Erin specializes in amplifying your reputation to boost pipeline and optimize program alignment. Her proven method has resulted in 200% pipeline growth, higher close rates, ISV Partner of the Year, and achieving Co-sell Ready status in just 60 days. Erin’s mission is to help you achieve the best results through a structured framework.

A seasoned business leader and sales strategist, Sanjay brings a wealth of experience in cloud technology. At Tackle.io, he focuses on enabling software companies to sell through the cloud marketplaces of AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud, driving significant revenue growth and market expansion.

Whether you’re looking to strengthen your partnerships with Microsoft, AWS, and Google, or optimize your sales strategies, this discussion is packed with valuable insights. Get ready to learn how to maximize your co-selling efforts, boost your pipeline, and accelerate your wins with actionable strategies from industry experts. 

What You’ll Learn From This Episode

0:02 – Cloud go-to-market strategies and co-selling with Microsoft and partners.

4:37 – Coselling strategies for ISVs with cloud providers and partners. 

10:12 – Partnerships and ecosystems in the tech industry. 

13:57 – Marketplace growth, validation, and potential for universal buying mechanism. 

18:03 – Leveraging data to power sales strategies and improve customer engagement. 

22:39 – Leveraging Salesforce marketplace for ISVs, with insights on data-driven approach, ecosystem power, and partner acceleration. 

26:41 – Optimizing partner strategy for success. 

https://youtu.be/do5M_jePeJA?si=ZdRU14Kddp0XvP7D

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For more insights and detailed discussions, tune in to the full episode of The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. Subscribe to stay updated with the latest trends and strategies in the world of technology partnerships.

Transcript

Jay McBain 0:02  

Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent you

Vince Menzione 0:13  

show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every

Sharon Schoenborn 0:18  

day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning

Vince Menzione 0:23  

that flywheel success is where you will build momentum. And that momentum will continue. And then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. that flywheel success is where you will build momentum. And that momentum will continue. And then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together.

Vince Menzione 0:36  

Welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partnering. I’m Vince Manziel, your host, and I’m on a mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We’ve been talking about these tectonic shifts we’ve been seeing in our world and in our lives, and the role and dominance of the hyperscalers. And this cloud, go to market moment. And now I have two leaders in the room from a valued partner tackle IO for discussion on this amazing transformation we’ve been seeing and how cloud go to market is evolving today. I want to welcome Erin Figer, the VP of cosell.

Erin Figer 1:10  

Hi Vince, thanks for having me.

Vince Menzione 1:11  

See you and Sanjay Mehta, Chief Operating Officer at tackle

Sanjay Mehta 1:15  

he just promoted me. Thank you very much. I love that. I’ll take the promotion.

Vince Menzione 1:20  

Office. Sorry. So great to have you. You know, we just finished a live event here yesterday. And it was so great to have you both here in Boca Raton. We covered several areas of cloud go to market marketplaces, conversations around co selling. Both of you are experts in this space. And you’ve been around this, this journey for us with us for so long. And I was hoping for a deep dive today really spending some time here on this amazing topic. We we’ve seen a third of a trillion dollars in durable cloud budgets by three hyperscalers just an amazing growth. Five ISPs reached a billion dollars total transactable last year, right just that’s a volume we might see one get to a billion dollars in one year.

Vince Menzione 2:11 
John Yankee, your CEO said yesterday, Microsoft saw a 80% increase in 100 million dollar cloud commitments quarter over quarter, just this past quarter. And the role of the moment of Mark marketplaces, we had Microsoft in the room Microsoft is finally leaning in on marketplaces. So tackle was built in 2016. Like evolved in 2016, really at the forefront of marketplaces from the very beginning, even leading the charge just finished your own event last month in May. Really interested in this deep dive conversation with you around this topic. Sanjay over to you first, I think you know, we have we’ve had a rich conversation with John Yankee or CEO about marketplaces. What are you seeing now that you didn’t see before?

Sanjay Mehta 2:45  

Yeah, if you roll back to like 2015 2016, when this started, getting up and listed in a marketplace was just part of your cloud provider strategy. I don’t want to go to market with AWS or Microsoft login to tile up in the marketplace. And honestly, I just we just didn’t have a lot of plans. They just wanted to get their shingle up and act cool until they’re bored. Hey, we’re a cloud company. We’re a SaaS company.

Vince Menzione 3:04  

brochure. We’re

Sanjay Mehta 3:05  

brochure work, right? And, like a lot of partnerships, unfortunately, back then. But now it’s a boardroom conversation around how can I make this the most sales efficient channel and particularly as the market has become a little bit tougher economically. And his cloud transaction fees have come down from all of the major cloud providers. Now CEOs and CFOs are looking at this and saying, I can make my deals go faster. I can tap into budgets that already exist. I can tap into legal agreements that already exists. Yeah. Streamline vendor onboarding. So the conversation has totally changed from

Vince Menzione 3:39  

lowering the days. Quicker payments. Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s amazing to see how this has evolved. And I believe if Microsoft was on the sidelines up until this past year, right, and they’ve leaned in a big way. We had Jason rook leading the conversation with you and another one of the Microsoft leaders yesterday around the topic, and what partners need to do differently than that they haven’t done before. And CO selling plate pays an even more important role here. And Aaron, you and I have a long history working together.

Vince Menzione 4:02

I mean, we share to those who’ve been following along our journey together. You’ve been on the podcast, early guests on the podcast. We did a lot of CO selling workshops back in the day when I first came back out and ultimate partner was was reignited you lead a session on effective co selling and operationalizing. CO selling. And now that we’ve got Marketplace offers in market, that’s the next step, right, we need to get to that we need to get to the buyer. And the best way to get to the buyer is through co selling with the organizations to get there. Right. Tell us how you think about that.

Erin Figer 4:37  

Yeah, it’s really great to see now that we’ve been at co selling for a while. Initially people took co sellers like, I’m going to connect a seller with a cloud cellar and it’s this like seller to seller coaster motion. So now we’re at this point where people are like know where they’re thinking bigger about cosell and really that when you just aside to co build and bring that solution to market, how are you going to cosell? In your partnership? How are you going to co sow with the people through the marketplace and with the ecosystem that you’re now a part of that you could also be co selling and supporting this solution holistically and bringing that to market. So cosell is getting people are now looking at it much bigger than just this cosell thing I do with two sellers,

Vince Menzione 5:32  

your CEO, John Yankee talks about like meeting the customer where they buy. And we had Jason rook with you. And then also on the podcast recently talking about this as well that there was an influence strategy, there’s the seven seats at the table, like it’s not just an ISV and a hyper scalar together going to the customer, there are all these other influencers, there might be a channel partner is actually transacting maybe has a relationship with the customer, there might be other ISVs involved security solutions. Yeah, to your point,

Erin Figer 6:02  

right. And so now you can flip it and say instead of like an ISV, thinking about one customer and CO selling with the cloud provider, they can now say, we meet the buyer, where they’re at? And how does that buyer want to buy through the marketplace, but who are the other players. And now it’s really, I’ve got to make sure I’m co selling with all of those seven people who are influencing that buyer, that I’m also co selling with them. And we’re all collectively working on driving this solution that we know is going to help our customer with their problem.

Erin Figer 6:39

And it’s going to drive the clouds metrics that they care about the channel partner that you’re working with metrics, you might have an SI Partner doing your services work for you that ultimately makes your product get used and implemented, which is what the ISP wants. Right? So cosell, you have to think about all those seven players? And when you put that opportunity, and how are you going to connect with all of those different players now that are supporting that opportunity? Or supporting that customer?

Vince Menzione 7:10  

So you lead the cosell practice? Right? And you work with a lot of these leading organizations leading ISVs on this strategy? How do you do this more effectively? What do you how do you coach them on this?

Erin Figer 7:21  

Well, we we launched a maturity model, which really helps because we have to figure out where you’re at in your journey, like, are you in the starting off? And like just getting started and establishing the foundation? Are you in building adoption? Are you driving adoption? Or are you scaling adoption? So once we can understand where the partner is in their maturity, then we can look at what is the solution? And how are you trying to go to market with with skilling up your people with your processes, with implementing technology to support you operationally, your partnership, so there’s many different points that we look at inside of your overall maturity. And then we come in with consultative support and best practices to say, Okay, we’re going to help you go from here to here. Now, based off of where you’re at your solution and how you’re trying to bring that to market

Vince Menzione 8:20  

have you look across the ecosystem approach.

Erin Figer 8:24  

So when you are looking at your solution, you’re trying to say, in there in not just your club partnerships, but what are the other partnerships that you are trying to create in your channel, in your channel strategy? And then how are you engaging with them. And yesterday, partner tap was here and one of your sponsors, and we really love partner taps technology, because it enables you as we start to cosell and we identify, say, a use case scenario or specific area that we want to start to share opportunities. Then using a tool like partner tap to say, okay, these are where I have opportunities. But where do we have continued customer alignment around this use case or around the sales region or territory or industry we’re trying to go to market in and they help fill in the that visibility to like, here’s the other accounts that you guys have in common, or could support and bring in inbounds to fill out. Your, your cosell audience, your cosell customer base around that particular solution or use case scenario?

Vince Menzione 9:37  

Yeah. And Cass was on our panel from CO partner tap was on our panel yesterday for that conversation. So that’s replacing all the spreadsheets that we normally operated on before right. Starting

Erin Figer 9:47  

to like you, you can actually activate a coastal strategy in your channel. Now. So like we have this coastal strategy with our cloud providers, but now using that At an partner tab, we can actually build a more holistic cosell strategy that enables us to bring in all of our partners around one opportunity love that. We’re

Sanjay Mehta 10:12  

starting to drink our own champagne a bit at tackle around this. So we just launched our own ecosystem a couple of weeks ago. And the effort behind that stemmed from as an ISV matured through the model Aaron’s talking about their needs became a little bit different when all you needed was a title and a marketplace, you could do it yourself, we could do that for you is pretty simple, right? But as you start to move along, we have ISVs, that might be in one cloud, but they want to be in another cloud. So maybe they’re an Amazon, they want to go to Google. So we’ll bring in a partner like do it to help them specify that application in a different place. Maybe they need reseller services to get to market and the beginning marketplace was going to kill the channel. Now we figured out the channel is actually a huge benefit for going into markets that matter to reach out to a Presidio or WWE and in the AWS world and the Microsoft world, maybe they need go to market resources. So they’ll tap somebody like a transcends. So we’re starting to look at the journey and say, What kind of partners do we need? Because we can’t do it all to slot in the right experts at the right time to really help somebody to accelerate their revenue curve.

Vince Menzione 11:06  

Yeah, you’re spot on. You mentioned a couple of things. Firstly, you can’t do it alone. We all know that right? Partnerships are important to everybody, even those of us in the technology side of partnerships. And then and then the fact that this journey is evolving, and the role of channel we thought it was going to this is gonna kill the channel. No, it’s invigorating. It’s sparking the ecosystem is sparking the channel. In fact, we’ve had we had people in the room here yesterday from some of the big channel companies that are leaning in on marketplaces and CO selling in a bigger way. And

Erin Figer 11:34  

now we have to include them in that cosell conversation. So how are you going to connect with them? And get everybody collectively working around that same use case or that same customer in that code in the spirit of CO selling?

Vince Menzione 11:48  

And I, you know, I like to use the term like we’re passing each other in the hallway, right? We’re all calling on that same client, but maybe we’re not showing up at the same time. Yeah. So this brings it all together. So we know oh, by the way, I’m also working on that account, but I’m trying to sell this into that account. And that’s where that’s where you’re effectively helping them get to, yeah, their whole influence strategy around that client.

Sanjay Mehta 12:09  

We’re trying to be we have hundreds of customers. So we’re thankful that so we try to be the voice of the ISV. Back to the cloud. So we’ve got awesome, not just go to market relationships with the clouds, but more importantly, probably product and service relationships. So you can see in marketplaces, we’re going from single software vendors selling a single software title on a single deal to a single customer. And that’s great, but it’s not where we need to be like, ideally, a customer wants to buy a solution that has multiple things from multiple ISVs, probably wrapped with some services that potentially come from a channel and might need to buy it with credit terms.

Sanjay Mehta 12:46
Or maybe it needs to be metered. So you’re starting to see the clouds think about that phenomenon. And it might be 24 months out before it becomes a reality around marketplace. And we think cosell should do the exact same way like you need true multiparty cosell like who’s gonna register that opportunity, who’s gonna get credit who’s gonna get incentivized. So there’s really a ton of evolution that needs to happen over the next 12 to 24 months to make this, like really tuned for what a buyer wants to buy, how they want to buy and getting more prescriptive around how to package solutions versus kind of this ala carte sushi menu of like, pick whatever you want and deploy it one by one.

Vince Menzione 13:15  

Yeah, you know, we had Jay McBain in the room yesterday as well talking about the channel tech stack, and you’re part of that channel tech stack. But it’s there they are on islands for a reason. Because they’re not interconnected today, right? We need to get better, that better connection point those better connection points around all these technology offerings to your point, maybe 24 months from now we’ll be where we need to be nirvana. Maybe it’ll be you’ve been working with some of the largest ISPs. I want to I want to go back on this moment. And this kind of this. Really the evolution of where we are moving from the brochure brochure where to where we are today $100 billion potential by 2026 is tackles call. Yeah. Whether it’s whether whether we get there exactly or not probably doesn’t matter. It’s just that this is a huge opportunity. What are you seeing you work with some of the biggest and the best ISVs that are out there doing this?

Sanjay Mehta 14:02  

Yeah, it’s interesting, like the the first pick a number 3000 ISVs. The Marketplace were mostly infrastructure vendors. What we’re seeing now is more and more business application providers, Salesforce announced late last year, that they’re teamed up with AWS to go through the marketplace. We do a lot of work with zoominfo. So another great business application going through the marketplace. So we’re seeing that the next horizon we think is very likely vertical industry applications interesting. Little more traditional, those industries move a little slower. Sometimes they sell 10 year deals to utility companies. So just the evolution of that’s going to take a little bit of time. You hear about data marketplaces and ml marketplaces, I think we’re really going to see a proliferation of the types of things you can buy through these marketplaces, which is going to be a big change.

Sanjay Mehta 14:58  

We’ve seen deal sizes go up so there a lot of myths around these things like it’s only really startups selling to small customers. Not true, right? It’s so the biggest companies, also the biggest companies in the world, and also the biggest buyers in the world and all around the planet, right marketplace is not a US phenomenon anymore. It’s a globe Well phenomenon the, the best ISVs in terms of performance are going 50% In the US, maybe 25% or so in Europe, another 25% in a and Zed and in a pack. So we’re seeing that we’re seeing bigger deals, like in the early days, it was 20,000 or transactions $40,000 transactions. Now we’re seeing 100 million our transactions. So he’s the type of business that’s going through is changing. So I think just the validation, even though it’s early, we think only about 2% of global b2b commerce went through these channels last year, we think $100 billion, might be under called in 2026, because we’ve seen massive acceleration and marketplace throughput. But the validation of this is a channel that’s here to stay and to grow, I think is really firmly validated. And now you’re seeing more and more vendors jump on.

Vince Menzione 15:42  

Yeah. It’s astounding to see the growth and how quickly it’s Yeah.

Erin Figer 15:46  

And I think, I think also like, yesterday, I think it was in the Transcend event session where Ashley was talking about, you have to also look at your customers. And again, going back to like, where are the customers buying? And sometimes those customers aren’t buying yet in the marketplace, like regulatory industries might have challenges. The educational institutions, nonprofits, like are they really buying in the marketplaces yet, but I think that, as we as the marketplace evolves, and addresses some of these challenges that has caused these industries to have such specific buying mechanisms, that the marketplace could become a more universal buying mechanism to then bring, like, if we want to get to the all of that b2b software sales to the marketplace, we’ve got to unlock these other traditional buying mechanisms, contracts and well. That’s impossible and, and universal in the marketplace. I think that’s really the opportunity is when we can evolve our marketplace to be able to do that for us and take care of that. Then the rest of this, this customer base will start to come there. And we’ll start to see more of b2b sales go through the marketplace.

Vince Menzione 17:07  

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Vince Menzione 17:59
So at your event, last month, you talked about the data and the underlying data that you’ve been aggregating. Now, I want to dive in here a little bit on that point, because between the CO selling platform, Aaron’s company that was acquired core was acquired by tackle almost two years now 18 months ago. Wow, that went by fast. And tack ball tackles work over the last 898 years. Tell us about the insights that are coming out of this coming from that data.

Sanjay Mehta 18:31  

Yeah, so we announced in December that from the founding of the company until December last year, we saw $5 billion go through our platform. And the vast majority of that was really in the last two or three years. From December last year to today we’ve seen almost another $5 billion. So crazy, the rate of growth is really astronomical just

Erin Figer 18:49  

six months. And just as

Sanjay Mehta 18:52  

we take that data as well as third party data, we source demographic data infographic, data, technographic data, and we compile that together, use some ml on top of it to indicate where a customer is most likely to buy. The most likely they’re buying Amazon or Google or Microsoft, is it high as a medium is low? The reality is most big enterprise companies bind multiple places because they, they might do that just to diversify their suppliers. They might do that because they grew through acquisition. But for a bunch of

Vince Menzione 19:19  

reasons. The biggest part is my collaboration platforms absolutely lying. And our stitching solution runs better here than there. That’s right.

Sanjay Mehta 19:27  

So we’re seeing a lot of that, but we take that data to start to help our customers get a little more educated on where they’re most likely to succeed. And it’s hugely important as you enable your Salesforce right? If you just go to a Salesforce and say, there’s this new way to sell, it’s called Cloud or go to market. And you’re talking to a sales team that’s done the same thing for 20 years and beat their number. They’re not that likely to change unless you give him a good reason. So we’re trying to use data to really power the story. And then our customers and our customers do they push the hell out of our customers like what else can you do with the data so today, it’s almost a little bit more reactive.

Sanjay Mehta 20:02
Like I’ve built my pipeline. I want to analyze my pipeline and make some decisions in the red zone, if you will, for NFL analogy, like I’m inside the 20. Now how do I navigate to the endzone and the best way, we want to actually figure out, like, on the other end of the field where they got the ball in their own two yard line? Like how do you start to look at your ICP at your ideal customer profile? Use tackle data and say, Where should I actually? Like, how should I execute my place? Right? I love it. Where’s my pipeline? So we think that the data store is one that’s hugely powerful today, and we’re seeing awesome use cases, we think it’s going to evolve a lot. For the sales persona. We saw the marketing persona jump in. So we have all this great data, we saw marketers say

Sanjay Mehta 20:40

Oh, I have six sense data, that showing me some buyer behavior on my website, and the intent and what they plan on doing. And we can say, You know what, we can pair that up with cloud data. So now when you do an Account Based Marketing Campaign, to that buyer, you can actually speak the language of the cloud that they’re in. We saw Reb ops leaders team up with sales leaders to say when I do territory design, I can now look at the density of my buyers by cloud, and start to think like, do I go Northwest southwest, or I say like, this is my Google region, this is my Amazon region. This is, you know, my particular use case region. So our customers are trying to do really amazing things with the data, it’s going to, it’s going to push us really hard to continue to drive that innovation edge. But how

Vince Menzione 21:15  

are they consuming the data? I mean, I know you do a lot of work with individually with clients on the CO selling methodology, the operationalizing. How are other clients that taking advantage of the data?

Sanjay Mehta 21:25  

Yeah, what we started our journey with the alliances persona, because they own the cloud relationship. But what we found is as revenue goes from like, zero to 2%, to 5%, so around 5%, and certainly by 10%, the CRL in the CFR like, what is that thing? And it’s arguable that will be your single biggest channel on the planet that operates consistently, right? You no longer need all these distributors, and all these channels and operate in different ways. Like, it’s one way to do business, which is hugely powerful. So during that transition that was here, I was like, I don’t need my people logging into tackle, right. And I don’t want to just continue to expand my deal desk.

Sanjay Mehta 22:01

Like directly for every additional deal, or 10 deals I do I need to add another one hour of, of human capital. So they said, Can you pump this stuff into my CRM system. And for the vast majority of our customers that Salesforce sometimes it’s dynamics or HubSpot, or something, but the vast majority of the ISV business runs in Salesforce. So we’re now taking all of this data, and we’re pumping it in an account level. So in the tool the seller is living in, they can say this is the profile of my buyer. So you’re integrating into Salesforce directly to Salesforce, and then you can initiate your coastal activity and initiate your private rock private offer activity, all within Salesforce. So you don’t need to leave the digital tech stack that you already know love

Vince Menzione 22:33  

propensity to buy, you can look at under underspend commitments, all of those user

Erin Figer 22:39  

scenarios you just walked through, like your marketing team can now engage in this content and start to pull it into their campaigns as they start to build out the audiences that they want to reach for their campaigns using Salesforce, they’ll have that as a data point to help them. The great thing too about the data, and how you can engage with it is it if you think about our maturity model, in every phase of that maturity model, you can be engaging in our data to help you it just shows up a little differently in like establishing the foundation, it’s giving you that compass, like how do I get started, which customers and where and, and it gives you more of a validation of like these customers with this cloud provider around this solution. And as you move into establishing the foundation, it becomes a tool to really support all of the enablement effort you’re doing. I’m trying to get your sellers educated on this solution and how we’re trying to co sell and go to market with our cloud partnership. So that data now supports my enablement effort. It really helps the seller enablement get sticky and get engagement out of my sellers. So that when I go to driving adoption, and scaling adoption, I now start to just use this data in building my automation to say when things look like this, and has this data set there, and the data looks like this, automatically do these things.

Vince Menzione 24:03  

Nice. That’s fantastic. What a fantastic value you’re providing. Yeah.

Erin Figer 24:06  

And that’s data driven. Yeah. Right.

Vince Menzione 24:09  

So we covered a lot of ground yesterday at our event. And I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted.

Erin Figer 24:17  

It was a busy day. It was

Vince Menzione 24:18  

a busy day. Maybe it’s just some highlights from each of you on your sessions. Maybe just a couple of points for those who are weren’t maybe didn’t watch the whole seven and a half hours and are just listening to the podcast driving their cars today to wheeling around or watching us on YouTube. And I find that people like want to why they want that they want the salient points quick, right, the Tick Tock moment. Sanjay over to you like what was the essence of your session? What would you what would you ask our partners to go learn and go do differently?

Sanjay Mehta 24:46  

I’d say jump on board. Like the road is now paved, which is nice. It’s not Oban people had a drive on it and a lot of people were leaning in the community to help lift everybody else up. So if you’re not in it’s not too late. Like they’re really is 98% of the market still ahead of us? The power of the ecosystem, hugely important, a data driven approach, hugely important. You don’t have to leave your channel behind. In fact, embrace it, bring him along for the ride. Absolutely. So those are probably the top three or four things that we touched on.

Vince Menzione 25:16  

And like you said, it’s a massive opportunity, because it’s really only what the top two 5% of ISVs that are really consuming at scale. Yeah,

Sanjay Mehta 25:23  

maybe 10% of the ISVs are driving 80% of the business pretty typical stuff, right. And if you think about the overall b2b software market until the really big players show up, and gravity is hard, right, like you said it earlier, like Mac was the year of the marketplace for Microsoft. They’ve got the most sellers, tons of ISPs a global channel, but 90,000 strong or something. But all that gravity also makes the barge a little slower to turn, but when it turns, it’s gonna be really, really powerful. It’s a big battleship and a narrow river. Yeah, absolutely. So I think you’re gonna see as those as those things open up for more ISVs. And as the big ISVs join, you’ll see that acceleration from 2% of b2b to 10 to 20, pretty fast so and your customers more and more are going to drag you that way. So you can either get out ahead of it, and be strategic, and make it part of your rhythm. Or you can respond when your customer is late. And we see it all the time. Like an ISV selling to a buyer, the buyer is like I need to buy through that through the marketplace, then we get the call to say can we be listed in three days? Because, you know, June 27, and my quarter is almost over. So we help as much as we can. It’d be nicer to help with a little bit more time.

Vince Menzione 26:28  

Yeah. Well, that’s always the Yeah, hurry up. How about on the cosell side? You had an incredible panel yesterday. I mean, like, Wow, what a lot of power in the room if you haven’t, if you want if you haven’t watched that session on our on our YouTube channel.

Erin Figer 26:41  

Yeah. Operationalizing cosell, I mean, the session was spent a lot around partner center and kind of demystifying partner center. But if you if you take that topic operationalizing cosell to really operationalize QSL, effectively, you have to take a step back and say, what is what is my product? How does that impact consumption or utilization of the cloud provider? How do I engage my channel? And how does it help drive the things that my channel partners care about? to then say, Okay, now, how do I align this partnership to my overall company strategy. And then once you understand the strategy part of that, then you can say, Okay, here’s how we’re going to go operationalize that. But just to go in and operationalize and say I’m going to connect, I’m going to build this API, or I’m gonna connect this widget, and I’m going to start passing all this data, it just creates a lot of noise with not a lot of value and outcomes from that, or it takes you a lot longer to get to that value and outcome.

Erin Figer 27:39  

If you go slow to go fast, and take a minute to say, Okay, what’s our strategy? How does this solution really drive the thing? The metrics that matter for all the players involved in how do I start to cosell with them, then operationalizing, your cosell strategy will happen quicker. And the data that you’re using will be more meaningful, and you’ll get those outcomes and you’ll reach that revenue faster.

Vince Menzione 28:18  

I was thinking about the flywheel. Yeah, right? Totally. It’s all about the flywheel start out small, meaningful, go slow to go fast, go slow to go fast. And then that flywheel goes faster and faster. Before

Sanjay Mehta 28:29  

cannon balls. That’s my favorite Jim Collins.

Vince Menzione 28:33  

Well, I can’t believe we’re at the halfway point of this calendar year. Right. Microsoft’s 2024. I flail. Like I was just wishing you a happy new year, the other day, it seemed like on text, any last words of guidance for all of those watching, listening today on how to optimize for their success moving forward for the second half of the calendar year, first half of Microsoft, Cisco, and we care about the other two as well. But what would you say to them now?

Erin Figer 28:58  

I think in our theme yesterday, we talked about how do you get ready, be ready? And then how do you stay ready, and it’s that like, stay ready, stay ready. It’s not a one and done this entire go to market strategy is not like I’m going to create this go to market strategy. It’s beautiful. And then I’m going to put it on a shelf and never touch it. Again, it is always evolving. And you have to be ready and be ready to constantly evolve and change and stay current and adapt right with where the market is going with how buyers are buying and who is surrounding your customer and how you’re reaching them and CO selling with them to support the overall solution that’s going to solve that customers

Vince Menzione 29:47  

combined to me once you know once you build the plan, you have to apply maniacal focus to it you do maniacal focus and then you pivot. You pivot because things are gonna continue to change. Right.

Erin Figer 29:58  

Always maniacal focus always on There’s always now called Focus. You’re constantly pivoting and just keep learning growth mindset. keep learning, keep testing out possible theories. And just keep evolving.

Vince Menzione 30:11  

I love it. I love it. Yeah. So good.

Sanjay Mehta 30:14  

Yeah. So I’d say when, before coming to tackle, I was in a cybersecurity company and actually hired Aaron’s company to help me figure out cosell. And one of the things I liked was this concept they introduced called vocalizing your wins, which was all about advertising your six event success back in your own organization, your partner, your partner organization, I changed that this year events inside of the company, and I call it be a Kardashian be a Kardashian, I encourage all ISVs to be a Kardashian. And behind that it is all about ruthless self promotion. The market is crowded, right, and it’s noisy, and it’s hard. And it’s tough. And it’s a terrible time to be in software in the history of software, I still think it’s an awesome time to be in software, it’s an awesome time in tech.

Sanjay Mehta 30:52

And so you gotta get your word out there. And you have to do it often. And you need to use it to retain wide and your relationships so people know what you’re doing and what you’re driving. And people automatically think, like, only about a customer success story. But the other thing to think about is how did that help the cloud provider? What did they not have to do? Because you did it better or faster? Or to compliment them? So I’m telling everybody be a Kardashian, it might be my new year’s resolution in 2025. If this goes well, those are my words. Add to that

Erin Figer 31:19  

for a minute. I mean, you can’t top a Kardashian. Yeah, but I think it’s it’s twofold, right. So we spent a lot of time yesterday talking about how to show up correctly in the tools, your you need to make sure that you are showing up correctly in the systems that your partners are in and your cloud providers are using. So there’s the data side of it and making sure you show up correctly and those tools, plus the Kardashian philosophy that you have of like making sure you vocalize your wins and vocalize your success, because that’s then going to drive them to go look inside their tools. If you’re doing the tooling correctly, and you’re showing up correctly in their systems, the two of those things is really what will boost your brand and make you rise above all the other partners in the ecosystem that are fighting for that attention. And you

Vince Menzione 32:11  

might need some help along the way. We had Ashley Vox that lead that session on pet with the pinnacle partners, some three very strong award winning partners. And she talked about that too. Like you need to build an awesome story that you have to deliver around why you’re better and different. And why you deserve the success. And in her case, the award winning partnership, yeah.

Erin Figer 32:29  

And then make sure you’re showing up in the system. And then make sure that you take that awesome story. And you continue to show like how that awesome story came to life in these customers, your success that you’re having. So we had this differentiator and powerful story we showed up correctly and the tools and now we’re vocalizing all those wins to validate that this thing was really awesome.

Sanjay Mehta 32:49  

Just brought it together. You’re gonna you’re gonna say get on the scoreboard right get on their cloud provider scoreboard. I’m gonna get you to dance on the Jumbotron.

Erin Figer 32:58  

Oh yes

Vince Menzione 33:01  

this has been so much fun. So great to see you both. So great to see you my friend. Great to see you, buddy. So much. Great to have you on Ultimate Guide to partnering. Yeah, it’d be bad for your sponsorship for your friendship. And just so great to have you both here. Thanks so much. Thank you got some slick you. Thank you for following along. And I’m gonna get some sleep tonight because it’s been a long couple of days here in Boca Raton. Welcome to The Ultimate Guide to partnering.

Vince Menzione 33:24 
I’m Vince Manziel. And thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting us. And if you haven’t subscribed, please hit the subscribe button on either Apple, Spotify or our new YouTube channel. Thank you so much for joining the ultimate guide to partner. Thanks for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partnering. Hopefully, this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something. Have you implemented everything you’ve been learning? And are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve? If not, it’s time to take action now. Join ultimate partner experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about. With up x you get access to exclusive Industry Insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now visit our website, the ultimate partner.com and sign up today.

Microsoft’s Jason Rook joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering

Jason Rook is an accomplished channel and sales leader with a wealth of experience in cloud computing. As the senior director of Product Marketing and commercial Marketplace Channel Sales at Microsoft, he leads strategy to help Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) build and sell applications through channel partners. 

Before Microsoft, Jason was the Global Modernization Program Lead – Systems Integrators at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he grew revenue and created innovative service offerings with AWS consulting partners. He also served as Business Development Manager – Global ISV Modernization at AWS, enhancing customer service through agility and innovation.

Jason has contributed significantly as a Microsoft Partner Advisory Board – Inspire member, providing feedback on Microsoft’s partner strategy and events. He was also the Senior Vice President of Business Development at 10th Magnitude, now Cognizant Microsoft Business Group, driving revenue growth and earning recognition as a 4x Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year.

With over two decades of experience and a proven track record of driving growth and innovation, Jason Rook remains a leading force in cloud computing and partner ecosystems.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode

0:02 – Partner Growth and Success in the Cloud Computing Industry

3:59 – Azure Marketplace Growth and Partner Support

9:05 – Marketplace opportunities for ISVs and Channel Partners

13:35 – Microsoft Partnerships and Marketplace Deals

18:11 – Partner Relationships and Opportunities in the tech industry

21:58 – AI Opportunities in Microsoft’s Marketplace

28:08 – Leveraging Marketplace Transactions to Build Better Microsoft Relationships

33:41 – Successful Partnerships and Key Strategies

37:45 – Microsoft Partnerships and Marketplace Opportunities

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from one of the industry’s leading experts on how to navigate and succeed in the Microsoft commercial marketplace. Whether you’re a software publisher, channel partner, or just interested in the tech industry, this episode is packed with actionable insights.

https://youtu.be/fpIFOpfGrhE

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For more insights and detailed discussions, tune in to the full episode of The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. Subscribe to stay updated with the latest trends and strategies in the world of technology partnerships.

Transcript

Keywords: 

Microsoft commercial marketplace, Azure Marketplace, ISVs, channel partners, cloud computing, AI opportunities, Microsoft relationships, tech industry, partner growth, marketplace deals

Transcript (Generated by Otter A.I. – Please Excuse Any Typos)

Jay McBain 0:02  

Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent you

Vince Menzione 0:13  

show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every

Sharon Schoenborn 0:18  

day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning

Vince Menzione 0:23  

that flywheel success is where you will build momentum. And that momentum will continue. And then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince BenZion, your host, and I’m on a mission to empower every individual organization and partner to achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Much of the discussion we’re having is around the tectonic shifts, this decade of the ecosystem, the increasing dominance of the three hyperscalers the changing buying behavior, and this marketplace Moment. Today, I’m going to double down with a friend who’s leading the charge at Microsoft around marketplaces, and Channel Sales ecosystem led growth. Jason rook Jason, welcome to the podcast expense.

Jason Rook 1:12  

Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here. Great

Vince Menzione 1:15  

to have you in Boca. So a little side note for people I’ve been listening for seven and a half years, Jason was episode 13. Like one of the very first podcast we did. We were back, I was back in the like the home office or I was maybe a second bedroom of the third bedroom at the time, and recording on zoom in those days and had you on. You had been in a row we’ll talk about I want you to talk about your career. But you had been in a role at Microsoft. And then you had left and you joined a fast startup, an organization that was really growing around Azure. That was like a big thing back in the day. We’re just starting to launch into the cloud in a big way.

Jason Rook 1:52  

Yes. And we that first conversation was all about kind of that that growth, right. And at that point, people still didn’t really know what Azure was in some cases. Yeah. So that was fun.

Vince Menzione 2:01  

Yeah. We got to meet we got to work together in the same organization at Microsoft on the US partner team has when I brought my public sector team over to us partner became part of the leadership team. And you were running this high growth group you had, in fact, you had been invested in I believe, from the Azure team. Yeah. This was at the point where we were kind of almost like the black belt type approach. We’re, we’re doing this fast start into Azure into cloud. And we didn’t have a lot of partners at the time that were dead, understood cloud and understood Azure. And you were late leading the charge. Yeah,

Jason Rook 2:33  

you think about it. We had, we had no partners at that point, right? Because it was this point in time where everyone was confused in the initial reaction was let’s go get the biggest partners, the more traditional Microsoft partners. That’s right. And and they weren’t on board. No, it was a well, and so that team, that team, what we discovered, you know, the phrase that someone coined, we don’t know who it was, but the board in the cloud, or the cloud, I know. Yep. And that that partner, you know, that was what accelerated the Azure growth. And, you know, some of those partners. lucky enough to be a part of that some of those partners just had rocketship exits. It was it was a lot of fun. Now you look around and it I always kind of joke. It’s kind of like SharePoint at one point. Nobody did SharePoint, and then everybody’s a SharePoint partner. And now everybody’s an Azure part. Yeah, right. So

Vince Menzione 3:22  

and at that point, we were trying to help organizations understand from the best of the best, you had left Microsoft, you had gone to an organization that was really considered the best of the best in class, and was on that rocket ship. You were part of that rocket ship. And tell us a little bit more about that journey and how you have led here.

Jason Rook 3:40  

Oh, wow. Yeah, so that was, it was a lot of fun. That rocket ship was a rocket ship. And it was at a time when, you know, I think it was interesting, because we had customers that a little further down the cloud path, because, you know, there’s some other competitors that were kind of leading the way and Microsoft was catching up. And, and we had just this ecosystem of partners. And the story was interesting, because Microsoft’s product was more app dev focused, you remember, we made this pivotal moment when would Azure became kind of an infrastructure platform, and then everybody got on board, but in those in those early days, it was really about bringing the expertise to the table along hand in hand with the Microsoft account teams to close you know, in those days, what were mega Azure deals today those those titles or monthly payment but if those times, right, those Azure deals were really significant. That’s what kind of crossed the chasm for Azure.

Vince Menzione 4:38  

I mentioned to you yesterday at our van or executive summit that like a million dollar quota for Azure was considered that was like the that was like the business quota for public sector when when it first came

Jason Rook 4:50  

out. Yeah, that’s the company that I joined to the bank to they were involved in one of the first Azure deals and it was like a 250k deals huge and it was on Herta right It was, I think you remember at Lincoln Square, we had these big poster boards and like the top as your board of the cloud party, so people wouldn’t know what a partner looked like. And here’s the part of it closest to our TK deal. That’s like mind blowing.

Vince Menzione 5:11  

I remember those battles was in the office back. So you came back to Microsoft almost two years ago. Tell us more about that. Yeah. So

Jason Rook 5:19  

well, you know, if you think about the work we were doing at 10th magnitude, and I kind of started story in in roughly 2019, there were two things going on at TIFF, maybe two that were pseudo marketplace related. So the first of which is that, you know, our bread and butter was really helping customers get to cloud and one of the sweet spots for us were ISVs, you had ISVs, that were either startups or ISVs, that had a real legacy on prem infrastructure architecture. And we would go in and help them get to cloud, right? Cloud shift back in the day model, lift and shift in the ISP space, it was more apt of DevOps focus, more redesign, but we were doing quite a bit of lift and shift, as well. And we noticed as we worked with some of those that some of those ISVs were like, even in the M 12. portfolio, and they started to tell us, hey, we want to transact in cloud marketplaces. And Microsoft started to push us that direction. We want to do that in one of those 12 ISVs. If you don’t know him, 12 is the Microsoft VC fund. Right? I was gonna ask you that. Yeah. So one of those ISVs we actually help them get their app into marketplace. And we thought, wow, there’s a business here for us. Yeah. But we were equipped to help people with the publish aspect. So we started to strike up a relationship with all people tackle IO, right? We have, we’re having a conversation with John the team there. And as well with the Azure Marketplace team, all the way back in 2019. About Hey, could we be kind of the front end of this is V motion, right to get the ISV to cloud and knowing that one of the exit paths for that ISP was to get to Cloud Marketplace, and that’s where tackle 

would pick them up and run. So that was the one big thing. 

Jason Rook 7:34

The other thing that was really interesting is the ISPs that we worked with, were really pressing us on will you sell our stock, and back then it was hashey Corp. And Jeff software is really no longer around the same scenario, New Relic, those ISVs were coming in saying, Hey, you guys do a great job. But design implementation support, yeah, but the whole relationship gets really rocky when we have to bring in another reseller to sell Yes. And so if you’ve ever been around a pure play pro serve, organization, going from Pro surf to I’m gonna sell software is an incredibly heavy left very, it’s heavy, and you know, different motions. If you’re in a high growth organization like that there’s, you know, a list of 10 things, you’re gonna spend capital on selling software, very bottom right. And so we started to, we started to see, hey, in our CSP business, and what a lot of people don’t know is, even back in 2019, you could sell ISV apps through marketplace on CSP contracts, which blows some people’s mind, right?

Jason Rook 8:05

But we were doing it and we would tell the customer, hey, you’re gonna buy some Azure from us, you want some SendGrid? We’ll add that to your you know, we’ll add that to your to your CSP bill. And we started to think this is the path for how we’re going to sell software in the future. Interesting. Yeah. So you know, COVID hits to the bank, two exits, we kind of you know, the world changed a little bit. I was at another hyperscalers doing some really interesting things. And research, Project research, research. Yeah, it was, it was an awesome experience. I really, really was. But a friend of mine connected me with Yvonne, who did your show a couple episodes ago. And Anthony Joseph, who keynoted for us in Dallas, amazingly blue repeat that. Yes. Yeah. So I was having conversations. And Anthony’s message was, hey, you know, this marketplace thing. And Microsoft’s being kind of rebooted, a real shot in the arm, and it’s going to have some explosive growth. But if you look at the big puzzle of marketplace, there’s a puzzle piece missing. And that’s channel partner. So come over here and help us figure out that puzzle piece. So that’s what I’m doing now is working on how we the channel partner, and we use channel partner, broadly, right? Think of it as non ISV. How do we get the non ISV partner and those 400,000 partners go? So ISV apps?

Vince Menzione 9:05  

So I’m just going to say not? Because you’re sitting here, I think it’s one of the most important roles in Microsoft, because we talk about the mid market, huge opportunity in the mid market. We talk about the Marketplace moment. And it’s really driven not because of Microsoft, Amazon or Google so much as the changing and buying behavior. The older things that are happening, right the dominance of the hyper scalars, the cloud commitments, the role of marketplaces, the decision making process changing and the ability to consume against that. But it’s right now it’s just a it’s it’s just a one to one between an ISV or an SI and on Microsoft, Amazon or Google, right. We we forget about this buying process and we forget about the influence strategy that’s happening. What the customer is really doing is they’re not directly buying from these ISVs necessarily. They’re buying through their trusted relationships, their existing agree Minutes, the people that have been surrounding their organizations for years and years and years, these trusted IDs, and they’re not necessarily somebody at the ISP. Yeah. If

Jason Rook 10:09  

you look, you think about every analyst slide, you know, we talked about that a little bit yesterday, the numbers are big no matter who does the slide, right? That’s right. But that ISV marketplace opportunity number, it’s big. But what you don’t see on this slide is, the channels are part of that, right? And the channel parts not going to go away, they’re not going away. None of these top 100 300 ISVs are all going to say, we’re out of the channel business, right? Nobody’s gonna say, Well, I’m gonna replace my channel and build an entire sales force to go do this, right, the GMO is gonna have value. And that’s, that’s not going away, it’s probably even gonna get bigger in the marketplace,

Vince Menzione 10:42  

right? The big guys aren’t gonna rip and replace the small ISVs. They need scale. So they need the partners and that’s figured out so you know, you you hosted a session yesterday, you Greg gold camp, and Sanjay Mehta from tackle on stage talking about the staggering growth of cloud marketplaces. I was hoping we could dive in a little bit here and talk more about your session.

Jason Rook 11:04  

But my session yesterday, yeah. So first of all, it was just a fun conversation, the way we approach that, right? We just kind of got together as a group of folks on the phone and said, Okay, what do you hear? And what do you hear it and then we kind of broke it out into topics, I thought the flow was really good. But the the gist of the session was, you know, these are the top things that we hear from execs, whether it’s a customer exec ISV, or partner exec, and it started all the way with, you know, we get in the room, and some people will say, is marketplace for real, right, like, Yeah, where are we at on the on the hypo meter? And so we talked about Yes, Mark, please. Absolutely. For real, you can see it in the numbers that we talked about. Okay, it’s for real, but what is it right, and we still spend a lot of time on that. And then we talked about once you’re kind of you believe it’s for real? And you know what it is, then what do you do about it? And that was that’s where the conversation gets really interesting.

Vince Menzione 11:59  

So what are you doing to accelerate and capture this opportunity?

Jason Rook 12:03  

So me in particular, in the role that I’m serving today, I think the focus is on this channel partner sales model. And the way that we kind of think about marketplace, we think about marketplaces a product. And within marketplace, there’s in within that product, there’s a number of features, and they’re really kind of two core features that enable a non ISV channel partner, we’ll call them a channel partner to go sell marketplace or an ISV after marketplace. And the one is the CSP notion. I mentioned that that’s been around for a long time.

Vince Menzione 12:34  

I remember when we when we instituted Yeah, CSP. Yep.

Jason Rook 12:37  

And the ability to attach that third party app has been there only recently. And why say recently, two and a half years ago, February 2022, we launched the private offer functionality with SMA to do a custom deal. And you know, partner can earn margin, the customer can pay below list price, all those types of things. And then, in July last July, we launched what we call multi party private offers, to US customers only. And I’m sure we’re going to talk a little bit about that expansion today. But it that functionality allows any Microsoft partner to sell an ISVs application through marketplace into an enterprise customer, which is where it gets really interesting because the enterprise space, we have customers that have cloud consumption committed, right, and they can use those commitments to purchase ISV apps. So when I say any partner it really, like we designed that feature with an incredibly low bar. Yeah. Because we want everybody to participate in this motion. Right? When I say all you need is a Microsoft AI cloud partner program ID formerly known as an NPN. ID, which you can get one of those. I have one Yeah, you have one of those. to transact the deal today. We should do it. Let’s go decrement somebody’s Mac. Yeah.

Vince Menzione 13:43  

Well, what’s important here too, is that it means that Microsoft’s going to do the direct billing to the customer. Yes,

Jason Rook 13:47  

yeah. Yeah. So you don’t have to collect Microsoft’s gonna do the collections in Microsoft’s gonna pay you on defined terms. I mean,

Vince Menzione 13:54  

and they’re gonna pay you on time on time, if that’s the

Jason Rook 13:57  

like, that’s not new, right? Anybody who’s a Microsoft partner, one of the reasons you’d love to be a part of Biff or Sif or any of those programs is, you know, while there’s lots of hurdles, and lots of work, you know, the checks gonna come on time, right?

Vince Menzione 14:08  

Yeah. And it might come early with a discount. Yeah, nothing. We know any of that. So one of the concerns I hear from partners is that the marketplace opportunity is clear for ISVs, but maybe not so clear for the SI world. Yeah,

Jason Rook 14:23  

that that’s true. I’d say it’s true. Everywhere. Very true in the Microsoft ecosystem that can be high. Is that the case? Well, I think there are a couple of things. Especially the Microsoft ecosystem, the traditional Microsoft partner, the one that you’ve you’ve had a lot of them on your show. Yeah, don’t sell software. Right, right. So there’s an investment they’re gonna need to make Now earlier, I said the the bar is lower with marketplace, but you still have to invest, right? You still have to build that muscle in the strength to go do that. And so a lot of those partners are saying hey, you It’s not clear to me that that’s worth it for me and what I need to go do to be able to transact software, right. So I think there’s part of that. There’s also some confusion around, hey, I’m a partner, and I want to sell my professional services and an ISP app, right. And so that’s not necessarily functionality that’s available yet. That’s a feature that we’re working on, we’re actually in private preview to allow that systems integrator to sell their, you know, $100,000, Azure migration, along with, you know, a million dollars in New Relic or whatever the ISV product happens to be, which is what the customer wants, right? The customer wants one stop shopping, they want it super easy. The partner wants friction free, easy transactions without a lot of Microsoft tax on top of

Vince Menzione 15:46  

those, right? And when does that feature and functionality come? So we’re private

Jason Rook 15:49  

preview for that right now for the US, Canada and UK. And so will at some point, we’ll launch into general availability, and then that that will follow kind of the MPO expansion across the globe as we get to that point. So

Vince Menzione 16:02  

as you you’ve been rolling out this MPO program, I think, since the start of the fiscal year, maybe a little bit before then. Right. We, for general availability started the fiscal year started the school year, what have you learned along the way? A

Jason Rook 16:14  

couple things. I think one of the things that I’ve been, we kind of expected this, but I’ve been shocked at how, how lopsided the managed versus unmanaged is. And I think interest I should clear that Yeah, yeah, in in the, in the Microsoft world, you have all kinds of partners, everybody can participate. But there are those partners that are managed, right. So they’ve got an FTE of some type or vendor of some type that looks after them within the Microsoft space. And normally, those are the ones that drive significant amount of revenue. They’re participating in all the programs, that’s pilots, CSP, its solution, assessments, whatever it happens to be, they’re participating in all those things. Those are not the partners that are driving the majority of the MPO deals. It’s the Microsoft partner, who is a reseller of some other type of software as well. And I always kind of framed it up, hey, it’s the it’s the Microsoft partner, you know, back in the day, when we were kind of getting started is that partner that was they were the partner in town, and then they build a Cisco business, or then they build a VMware business, then all of a sudden, they’re no longer a thought partner in town, and somebody swooped in and took that spot. Now what’s happening is we need that partner to come sell Cisco, or VMware or Red Hat, or any of those products. And they’re swooping in to enterprise customers, because they’re experts at that sale. They’re experts at that product deployment and that customer in that they know that customer that inside and out yeah, in their swooping in and selling these deals. And now the account teams are like, wait, I, where did you come from, right? Like we’ve rolled through five reps since the last time we entered interacted with you. And those partners are selling marketplace deals, and they’re not small. They’re huge marketplace deals. And all of a sudden, they’re on the radar. Again, I think we knew that would happen just because of the nature of marketplace. But the pace at which it’s happened. And you know, the the wind wires that we see and those types of things are pretty staggering.

Vince Menzione 18:11  

And are they bigger partners are smaller, smaller parts smaller. So this goes back to the trusted relationship piece, right? The seven seats at the table, these are the organizations that you as a customer, and you might have a Big Mac agreement with Microsoft. Yeah. And yet you trust this local relationship to

Jason Rook 18:26  

win because you trust that local relationship because they’re experts in titanium or VMware or whatever that happens to be right. Now, granted, the big guys are doing well. But it’s staggering how good the little guys are doing. It’s It’s really It’s refreshing to see right? Because we’ve got this 400,000 partner ecosystem you often wonder like, hey, where does everybody play? Yeah, and people are finding a new path. We

Vince Menzione 18:51  

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Vince Menzione 19:47  

I think that’s fascinating about this and I don’t want to digress is that we Microsoft had this concentration at one point when I was there around these large account resellers and then became LSPs. And it was a concentration of All of the revenue up to a few. And what you’re saying is it’s spreading out, it’s thinning out along along the long tail a little bit. Maybe not quite the longtail, but a little further down to smaller. Well,

Jason Rook 20:11  

specific to marketplace. Yeah. This market marketplace. Yeah, there’s just because there are things that other partners can do very, very well, that now drive and marketplace Sell Sale, which then drives Azure. Right. And it’s in, that’s a really unique opportunity at this point in time. And I mentioned like, we set that bar very low to be able to participate, because we wanted to see that happen. I think it’s an interesting you think about Microsoft, right? The waves of opportunity, right? There was the, you know, I’m

Vince Menzione 20:45  

gonna bring this up with you. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I

Jason Rook 20:48  

was looking up, you know, I kind of came at the wave of which was, you know, the windows 2000 AD, the mail wars, right, the notes versus exchange, that was a wave. And then there was the dotnet days, and then SharePoint and Azure. I think there’s a window right now for partners to step into this marketplace motion. It’s not going to be a wave, like some of the other waves we’re probably going to talk about today. But it is it’s a window of opportunity to kind of reinvigorate your Microsoft relationship and reinsert yourself into some of those things that you may have wanted, like deep relationships with account teams, the ability to sell with and across Microsoft. Yeah,

Vince Menzione 21:23  

yep. So new opportunity areas to engage with Microsoft sell selling teams. Yep. Being first being first in an area. So same way that your other organization was with Azure. Yep. Yeah. You mentioned you alluded to Geo expansion. You talked a little bit about moving from the US market into the UK, Canada. Yep. Tell us more about that. So

Jason Rook 21:44  

we don’t disclose a lot about the geo expansion. And I think the reason why, and you can kind of look at how other hyper scalars have rolled theirs out, as well as that. It’s not a technical lift. It’s a lot of tax and regulatory. Right. Yeah. So there’s just on commerce engine below. Yeah, absolutely. So there’s ongoing conversations, but we do know that we are on track to launch in Canada and UK that previous one really well. So in the summer timeframe that will go live there. And then we’ll start to look at what the next geographies are. After that. It’s obvious if you think about where we want to go, it’s we want to go everywhere, right. But there are definitely markets that are larger, that are a lot of opportunity. There’s definitely some of those markets are also highly complex regulatory perspective. Right. So as I think the plan, you know, we’ve done a much better job over the last two years of kind of putting this roadmap out. The next probably roadmap, you know, it’s always the Inspire timeframe, which I know, we can’t say inspire timeframe anymore, because that’s kind of gone. But

Vince Menzione 22:43  

it’s July 1, beginning of the fiscal year Microsoft, and inspires usually mid July. Right. So

Jason Rook 22:48  

normally, we say inspire timeframe. But uh, you know, we’ll probably get more updates on that in that July timeframe. The

Vince Menzione 22:54  

July timeframe, we’re gonna call it from now on, right, it’s, it’s changing. So you alluded to something else earlier, too. And, you know, it’s like the elephant in the room. We can’t have a discussion any longer without talking about AI is huge AI opportunity. Right. Jay was with us yesterday $158 billion channel opportunity by 2028. Probably under call that he once said to me that he thought it was a hype moment around AI. He has since said that sentiment has changed. And he’s he’s pulled back from that hype moment and saying that this really is the moment for AI.

Jason Rook 23:27  

I mean, obviously at Microsoft, we think it is. I think, you know, if I think channel, right? I mean, that’s what this conversation is all about, I think, what would be interesting to as to figure out as to see who figures out the AI opportunity and what it looks like, right? So I don’t sit on as many as virus reports. I used to now that I’m at Microsoft, but I do spend some time with a dynamics partner. And one of the pieces of feedback that they’ve given me is that, hey, we go in and we do these copilot presentations. And we turn it all on and we leave and then we come back to start to prospect and the customers like great, we got copilot. We’re copilot everywhere. We’re done. Thanks for showing us right. And so their concern was, hey, is this AI motion going to really kind of cut into our opportunity? Yeah. And what they’ve started to do is kind of dust off some of the old things. They were you know, like most partners, they were exchange shop and office 365, SharePoint, Azure dynamics, they started to go back and kind of dust off some of that SharePoint playbook and say, Okay, we’re gonna go run around all the business departments. And now that you’ve got AI, let us show you how we can do like Intelligent Automation. Let me let me show you how we can build internal apps. So I think there’s a path there where people are going to pick up some of that muscle. I think there’s, I think, you know, app dev and AI might be easier. I know. Yesterday, we had a session to talk about All right, we talked about all the co pilot toolset, yes, the studio. But there’s going to be kind of a resurrection of those guys that go in right Apps customers. I think there are going to be that’s going to be some super cool work that’ll happen. If people go straight to the hey, we’re gonna get to build a data governance packet or practice. I didn’t know, you know, it took me two, we went down that path with data, right? We hired a bunch of data scientists. And what we found out is that customers wanted to do their own data work, right? Yeah, I’m not gonna let some partner come in here and tell me what my data means. But usually they don’t they They’re a mess with their data. They’re a mess. So there’s probably some some governance in the arc and some guidance there. But I don’t know. Well, time will tell. But if I were building an AI partner today, boy, it would be a little more apt heavy. And I’d be building that tool set.

Vince Menzione 25:36  

I want to ask you another question about AI. And I remember having this conversation with somebody who was on the global blackbelt. Team. Yeah. When copilot first came out, and it was we were getting calls from every CEO saying come in here. And it was the first time maybe in years that Microsoft was getting that level of attention. Right? AWS had basically had the data state, they had most of the, because they had the eyes dominance, right. And that kind of shifted with AI. So that was the other thing. We’re not just the technology, but I think the the buying behavior and the customer persona changed for Microsoft and for Microsoft sellers. How do you think that’s impacting the marketplace, business and business opportunity? As you said?

Jason Rook 26:19  

That’s a really interesting question. I can only speak to what I see. There’s a couple things that I see. Luckily, I’ve been to bonds org and I know Yeah, had you been an ISP success? The excitement, from ISV success participants about building AI into their apps interesting is off the charts. Like it is really, that’s, that team’s a really exciting place to be right now. Because you’re having to, with every ISV, you talk to you, you’re having that conversation about AI, and they’re in there, and but they’re asking for a lot of things like, hey, help me do this, I want to build AI into my app. I think that’s really interesting. The thing that I also see in my seat, is, for some reason, I get routed a lot of systems integrators, who are now hey, we’re going to become a software provider, right? And AI is going to be what drives that, right. And that’s a, that’s a heavy lift to build to take a systems integrator and then go spin out a software piece,

Vince Menzione 27:15  

right? I’ve seen it done before, but it is a heavy lift, it is a heavy

Jason Rook 27:19  

lift. And most of those, you know, historically, most of those become practice offerings, right. So they’re not in their services, 20% software. And that’s not that doesn’t work well in a marketplace construct today. But I think that there’s a number of those types of partners that are going to shift and they’re going to become multifaceted in that way, they’re going to sell software, probably under a different banner, right? Because they’re going to try to sell through marketplace through channels, those types of things. They don’t want the friction of hey, you know, I’m ABC S, or you know, Si, and now I have ABS, ABC si app that I want to sell, and I want you to go sell my app for me, they’re going to spin those out. But I think it’s really exciting to see that component. And that’s like this really interesting integration between AI and marketplace, beyond all the other cool stuff that we’ll be able to do with AI in the in the storefront experience, right. But if you think about building a business, or building a better product, it’s a super exciting time.

Vince Menzione 28:13  

Yeah, it’s very exciting. So for our listeners and viewers watching us today, then maybe haven’t taken the leap. And yet, right maybe they’re an SI, maybe their channel partner, you’d like to call them selling partners, right? The ones you work with

Jason Rook 28:25  

bounced that term around, right? Because it’s really what is the how does the ISP refer to them? Right? And when we sit have these conversations, the distance we’ll call them vendors, or resellers and vendors, and we kind of tried to map to what is the broader ecosystem look, but you know, if you think about it, the non ISV that wants to sell an ISV app.

Vince Menzione 28:45  

Yeah. What do you say to them now? To get them on board?

Jason Rook 28:48  

The channel partners? Yeah, um, depends on there’s a lot about persona, right? Because if you think about that ecosystem is huge. It’s every day from the distributor to the VAR to the all flavor si local, regional national to the niche player to the 1000s of MSPs. You know, the top end, if you think about kind of the distributor in the large reseller, it’s so easy way to expand your Minecart. Yeah. It’s some ways to tell you’re getting this pressure from the ISP or depending what’s the vendor, they’re telling you, hey, I want to go to marketplace I mean, marketplace. When a ISP moves to a marketplace driven sales motion, it drives a lot of cost out of their business, right? So they’re getting that pressure there. So hey, some of its Hey, not carrot more stick, and they’re getting that from us in the US the hyperscalers. And the ISPs. You know, in some cases, it’s Hey, you can now participate in another revenue generator for you. Now granted, sometimes your perception might be you’re taking away my top line revenue and just leaving me with the mark. Yeah, that’s always been an issue. Yeah. And that’s going to continue to be an issue and I think there are some that are evolving pretty quickly to figure that out. But in some of these some partners that haven’t historically been a part of the software transaction, that’s new money to them. I think the other way that we kind of position it is also a little bit of if you’re not doing it, somebody else is going to do it. And we see that in some of the, you know, some of the mega deals, or I should say, large marketplace deals. The channel partner that sold the deal was not necessarily like the incumbent, right. And the story always still is, you don’t want to be that systems integrator. That’s in doing a lot of great systems integration work, right,

Vince Menzione 30:36  

your digital partner of record back in the day and Microsoft terminology, but you were the incumbent, I guess, is what I would say, right?

Jason Rook 30:43  

You don’t want to be you don’t want to own the Azure piece and all the design development, and then you get the 11th hour and the customers like, oh, I also need this additional firewall to run on top of Windows Firewall. And I also need this data tool from that app. And I need this tool from New Relic and blah, blah, blah, and now I need to go aggregate those, and I’m gonna go pull those from somebody who is a reseller. When you’re that systems integrator, you’re like, wow, I could just set all that up and marketplace for you right now and maintain account control. Yeah, I think that’s a big piece as well. And then the other piece that I think you just hear all the time, it’s gonna be the path your as much support, you’re always looking for the path to how do you build that crisp relationship with the people that carry the bat? Right. And I think this is going to be that path.

Vince Menzione 31:22  

What do you see from the best? You know, you mentioned that account control, that partner has the account control, but what else do you see from the best of the best that you work with? Implementing this MPO?

Jason Rook 31:33  

So I would say there’s a couple things. On the high end, the larger partners, the ones that are starting to shift their go to market strategy, and their comp plans comp plans. Yeah. So when there’s hard drives behavior comp drives behavior, so when they make a marketplace transaction equal to an off marketplace transaction, and in some rare cases, already, a marketplace transaction more lucrative for the seller than an off marketplace transaction. That’s a huge best practice. Then I think there’s a next click down, we’re seeing something really interesting with a handful of partners. Again, we’re only in the US today. So I will tell you the what’s going on in the UK with the private preview, like there’s partners over there. Soft cat bites, compu Sen, a lot of UK names that you might have just know, they’re already doing marketing events, right? They’re like, we’re not even GA yet. They’re already out there. Right? So there’s a lot of that. But in the in the US, there’s a couple of partners that kind of are those larger reseller space. And what they’re doing that’s really interesting, is they’re going around, and they’re educating Microsoft account teams on marketplace. And if you think about, if you think of it, I love this because it took me through we did that all the time. Azure, yeah, we would go do these Lunch and Learns not with customer, but with Microsoft account teams to teach them about Azure. Like, I can’t tell you how many times I went and taught somebody what DevOps was right, and how that led to an Azure sale. And there’s a handful of these resellers that are starting to do that with marketplace. What’s really interesting is that they come in and say, Hey, in reality, we’ve been doing marketplace in this motion for four years, guys, like we know the marketplace motion, you don’t. And let us show you how a marketplace sale takes place. And we’ll just we’ll we’ll swap in the right hyper scalar for this conversation. And I think those partners are having a lot of success. And they’re using marketplaces, this wedge to build better Microsoft relationships, right? And then when they leave that account team or that eight year that’s do they, they don’t think of that as a marketplace conversation like oh, this partner does marketplace, but they also have an AI practice. They also have an Azure practice those types of things. So I think that’s one of the things I would

Vince Menzione 33:41  

say it’s comes down to the fundamentals, the foundation of what makes a successful partner, you did it attend Matt Intuit, you mentioned this, and then it’s about building that brand. And that story of being known for that one thing. And being that trusted adviser to an account seller who’s trying to make quota as 100, maybe a couple 100 partners calling on him every day, if you’re the quickest path to them making their number and maybe helping them get to where they need to go to maybe a red jacket as we still refer to it. Yep. And today. Yeah, I mean, that’s the path to success. And then you become known for that one thing, you become the partner, the ego to partner, right. It’s very, it’s fascinating that you brought that up.

Jason Rook 34:21  

Yeah, there’s a handful of ISVs that were early in the US preview that had some of the early deals that we already know, they’re they have the early deals in the UK preview, right, like they’ve repeated, they rinsed and repeated that motion. And it’s, it’s pretty smart.

Vince Menzione 34:39  

So got a couple of other questions. I want to ask you about multi party offers in marketplace, but I want to I want to flip into a personal question. I love asking each of my guests. So Jason, you’re hosting a dinner party, anywhere in the country, maybe anywhere in the world. In fact, since you’re gonna be doing a little bit of a roadshow, you might pick someplace else You can invite any guest. Three guests, in fact, from the present or the past of this amazing dinner party, whom would you invite and why?

Jason Rook 35:09  

So here’s the problem with being episode 3230 something right now, I’ve seen this show so many times. I think the challenge is you don’t want to answer this question. You don’t want to take somebody else’s answer. Right. But I will,

Vince Menzione 35:23  

though Elon Musk’s. You know, Bill Gates, has

Jason Rook 35:27  

been a couple interesting. You’ve had a couple of guests that have like, pulled some themes together. I mentioned Jay like Jada, this got Canadian come comedians, right. Yeah. So I’ll do the kind of a similar theme, I think.

Vince Menzione 35:40  

Heroes of Ohio, Heroes of Ohio.

Jason Rook 35:43  

So let’s theme this one out. So the first one would be Thomas Edison. So New Jersey, come on, yo, he was born in Milan, Ohio. I did not every kid in northern Ohio that you at one point third or fourth grade, you go through his boyhood home, right. So love that. Yeah. So so there’s like the split this time in Milan, Ohio that everybody gets. So that would be one. The other. The next one is kind of another inventor, kind of interesting guy. When I was in elementary school, I had to do this book report on famous Bo Vermeil. And I picked Eddie Rickenbacker. And if you’ve ever know there’s an airport in Ohio, named after him, and he was a World War One fighter pilot, he was interesting guy, racecar driver. He’s the guy that kind of he’s, I guess, coined with he was the founder of the soapbox derby. But when I was doing that research, when I was looking at what I found this article about Edie Reichenbach or we’d go hang out and smoke cigars with the Wright brothers. And so think about like, stories that he could tell like, Hey, we’ve got some plywood and some wax paper. Let’s, let’s see if we can take that airborne, right. So I think that would be really interesting. And then the third is like the patron saint of Ohio, which would be Woody Hayes. So obviously, the greatest football coach in history, for at least most of us, but the interesting thing about him as well. And I know you’ve been through a lot of like the Microsoft exec training the bench program that you always have to pick up on your mission statement, that type of thing. And I, mine has always been you win with people, right? And I didn’t make that up. I kind of stole it from the title Woody Hayes his book, right? And so I love he wrote a book. And that was always his big thing is you win with people. So I think that would be fascinating. He was quite the character as well. So if you think about those three guys, and Woody Hayes kind of leading the conversation, that would be a great dinner party,

Vince Menzione 37:27  

I still want to ask, I’m gonna come along and bring dessert if you don’t mind. But I want to talk to Thomas Edison about how why he went when it good. Why did he come to New Jersey, then

Jason Rook 37:36  

it will, he also did a lot of his work in the state of North wood, which would be a really interesting conversation between him and Woody Hayes.

Vince Menzione 37:41  

I love it. I love it. It was a fascinating list. All right. So we are at the we’re at that point, right, the new beginning of the new fiscal year for Microsoft, lots of great excitement, lots of great energy about ready to happen. What advice would you have for our viewers and listeners here today on how to achieve their greatest results, how to optimize for success in this new fiscal year with Microsoft?

Jason Rook 38:05  

So kind of parting thoughts going into the Microsoft’s next fiscal year, marketplace related or in general?

Vince Menzione 38:12  

We can go marketplace. That’s what we’re Yeah, that’s what we’re here for. Right.

Jason Rook 38:16  

So I think, from a marketplace perspective, I think the vast majority of Microsoft partners still need to lean in and get educated. Yeah. Because it’s not for everyone, right? And no, no, there’s not one Microsoft motion that everybody jumps on, everybody’s gonna jump on AI but in their own flavor, right. I think you need to understand where the marketplace fits for you and your business. Whether you you know, if you don’t sell software today, you need to understand like, hey, if I get in a situation where I needed to sell software, am I going to be able to do this motion with Microsoft? If you’re a CSP? I think we use we yesterday you spent yet a whole session kind of talking about like the momentum and SMC. If you’re a CSP partner. You definitely need to understand the I should make sure I’m clear on so it CSP so CSP is a really fun term it myself, right. So if you’re a customer, you can buy Microsoft, you don’t buy directly Microsoft buying a cloud solution provider contract was sold to you by a cloud solution provider who can be a direct cloud solution provider or an indirect cloud solution provider who sells the indirect cloud service provider resellers. Right?

Vince Menzione 39:23  

So if you’re in that mix, people say it’s so complex Yeah, to work with Microsoft. But if

Jason Rook 39:27  

you’re in that mix in you know what CSP is, you should understand the marketplace. Yes model because if you think about that, the opportunity in SMC SMC customers can be SMB. They can be larger upper upper upper enterprise customers, they can buy direct on an enterprise contract, the MPO that could buy off a CSP contract CSP, right and I think those partners are going to need to really lean in and provide some value and coach those customers Along the right path. Yeah, yep.

Vince Menzione 40:02  

And they have an opportunity to make more money selling an ISV solution on top of the other services that are providing. Absolutely. Yeah. I

Jason Rook 40:07  

mean, it’s the other thing is you don’t want to leave any money on the table. Right. So I think that the partners that figure that out in that space will be really critical. The other thing is that there’s I think, if you’re one of those partners who you kind of been on the fray, right. You’ve always been in the program, but not in the program type thing. But you’ve got a really strong relationship with an ISV, who sells a lot through marketplace. Usually net, right, the opportunity might be coming for you, right? That’s an important piece. Yeah, yep. Yeah. And

Vince Menzione 40:38  

stay, you know, we we we use ultimate partner in the events we do to really educate people on what’s been happening, right. They’re a third of a trillion dollars in cloud budgets, right this marketplace moment. Satya said 80% growth in 100 million dollar cloud commitments just in quarter to quarter growth. So if you’re not looking at this as a huge opportunity, or you’re missing, you need to lean in. Jason, I want to thank you for being here. So great to have you in the studio. Glad you finally got 13 to now what a change has been, I want to thank all of our followers, listeners, supporters of ultimate guide to partnering and for listening tuning in, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you follow along, we’ll be able to get more incredible guests like Jason to come join us. Thank you for your support. Thank you for listening to The Ultimate Guide to partnering. Thanks for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partnering. Hopefully, this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something. Have you implemented everything you’ve been learning? And are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve? If not, it’s time to take action now. Join ultimate partner experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about. With up x you get access to exclusive Industry Insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources, and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now visit our website, the ultimate partner.com and sign up today.

Trunal Bhanse, Co-Founder & CEO at Clazar, joins the Ultimate Guide to Partnering.

On this episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering, we dive into the intricate world of cloud marketplaces and AI with our esteemed guest, Trunal Bhanse, Co-Founder and CEO of Clazar. Trunal’s journey from engineering leader to innovator in the marketplace ecosystem is nothing short of inspiring.

Whether you’re a tech alliance leader, ecosystem leader, or an entrepreneur, this episode promises invaluable insights into how Clazar is shaping the future of marketplaces, co-selling and market dynamics.

The Dominance of Hyperscalers

Trunal and Vince kick off the conversation by discussing the substantial impact of the three hyperscalers—AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. With over a third of a trillion dollars in durable cloud budgets, these giants are driving significant growth and innovation in cloud technologies. As Trunal notes, the technology and support provided by hyperscalers have evolved dramatically, offering robust APIs and comprehensive documentation that empower businesses to leverage cloud marketplaces effectively.

Evolution and Impact of Marketplaces

The transformation of cloud marketplaces is a central theme in this episode. Trunal shares his experiences from Yahoo, LinkedIn, Airbnb, and Confluent, illustrating the rapid advancements in marketplace technology. These platforms have shifted from rudimentary beginnings to sophisticated systems that are now crucial channels for software sales and procurement.

The Role of AI in Modernizing Software Sales

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the SaaS ecosystem. Trunal emphasizes how AI is not only enhancing product capabilities but also streamlining operational efficiencies, reducing the time required to bring new products to market. This dual impact of AI is creating more opportunities for innovative and differentiated products in the marketplace.

The Three-Body Problem Analogy

One of the most compelling parts of the episode is Trunal’s “three-body problem” analogy. He explains how the constant interaction between hyperscalers, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), and evolving market conditions necessitates continuous adaptation. This analogy provides a nuanced understanding of the complexities and dynamic nature of the cloud marketplace ecosystem.

The Vision Behind Clazar

Clazar was founded with the mission to modernize software sales. Trunal and his co-founder, leveraging their extensive experience, aim to create a platform where every software seller can efficiently buy and sell products. Their vision is to drive the next phase of marketplace evolution, ensuring that technology adoption continues to accelerate.

10 Things You Will Learn Listening to the Episode

1. Tectonic Shifts in Technology: Understanding the major changes in the technology ecosystem over the past few years.
2. Dominance of Hyperscalers: How AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are leading the cloud market with significant budgets and influence.
3. Evolution of Marketplaces: The transformation of cloud marketplaces from rudimentary beginnings to sophisticated platforms.
4. Role of APIs: The importance and improvement of APIs provided by hyperscalers, enhancing marketplace functionality.
5. Human Behavior in Marketplaces: Shifts in how buyers and sellers interact and the increased acceptance of marketplaces as a primary procurement channel.
6. Trunal’s Career Path: Insights into Trunal’s journey from Yahoo to founding Clazar, highlighting key experiences and learnings.
7. Mission of Clazar: The goals and vision behind Clazar, focusing on modernizing software sales through marketplaces.
8. Impact of AI: How artificial intelligence is transforming product development and operational efficiencies in the software industry.
9. Three-Body Problem Analogy: An innovative analogy explaining the dynamic interactions between hyperscalers, ISVs, and market conditions.
10. Future of Software Sales: Predictions and strategies for navigating the evolving landscape of software sales and cloud marketplaces.

5 Memorable Quotes by Trunal

1. “The technology and support from hyperscalers have accelerated to a whole new level, with fantastic APIs and documentation now available.”
2. “We started Clazar with a singular mission of modernizing software sales, leveraging the tectonic shift towards cloud marketplaces.”
3. “AI is not only disrupting verticals by enhancing products but also changing the SaaS ecosystem by reducing time to market.”
4. “The three-body problem analogy captures the constant interaction and evolution of hyperscalers, ISVs, and market dynamics.”
5. “Our goal is to become the singular platform where every software seller in the world comes to buy and sell software.”

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Transcript

Generated by Adobe AI – please excuse any typos and incorrect text.

00;00;00;00 – 00;00;05;06
Trunal
The right analogy in my mind, is the classic physics problem of the three body problem that we talk about.

00;00;05;06 – 00;00;10;21
Vince
The three body problem. All right, Take me through this one.

00;00;10;23 – 00;00;27;19
Vince
Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear and finding this buyer intent. You show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every day.

00;00;27;19 – 00;00;31;22
Vince
I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning.

00;00;31;23 – 00;00;54;03
Vince
That flywheel success is where you will build momentum and that momentum will continue, and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did, this is how we did it together. Welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Manziel and your host, and I’m on a mission to empower every individual, organization and partner to achieve their greatest results through successful partnering.

00;00;54;05 – 00;01;24;07
Vince
Much of the discussion we’ve been having these last several months have been on the tectonic shifts that we’ve been seeing in our world and in our lives, and the increased dominance of the three hyperscalers Google, Microsoft and AWS. And now we turn our attention to the technology that’s fueling this marketplace transformation. I’m excited to be joined in the studio today with an innovative leader helping to drive this transformation.

00;01;24;10 – 00;01;37;08
Vince
My friend Truant is the CEO of Clazar and joins us for a deep dive on the state of the cloud ecosystem and marketplace moment. Trunal. Welcome to the podcast.

00;01;37;10 – 00;01;39;19
Trunal
Thank you so much for having me, Vince. Excited to be here.

00;01;39;20 – 00;01;48;14
Vince
I am so excited to have you here in the studio in Boca Raton. flew in late last night. You look you look pretty chipper, though. Yeah. I have to say, you.

00;01;48;14 – 00;01;54;09
Trunal
Know, I got only, like, maybe four hours of sleep, but it’s it’s it’s it’s, you know, I’m excited. I’m excited for this. This recording.

00;01;54;09 – 00;01;57;11
Vince
As an entrepreneur, when do you get more than four hours sleep? Come on.

00;01;57;11 – 00;02;01;12
Trunal
Yeah, yeah. Entrepreneur. And a father of two young girls.

00;02;01;13 – 00;02;23;10
Vince
Oh, yes. Yes. I went I went through that stage. I was a long time ago. But, I am so excited for our conversation today. as I mentioned in the opening, like, you are helping to drive this new marketplace moment, right? Your organization and you and I actually got to meet when you were an ISV, confluent.

00;02;23;12 – 00;02;43;29
Vince
And, so you were in the thick of things working with the hyperscalers, and then you made a you made a transition. So, but for our listeners and viewers, they’re watching us today that don’t know true now and don’t know your organization. I thought you’d take us on a little bit of a journey. your your organization, your mission and your role within the organization.

00;02;44;03 – 00;02;50;27
Trunal
Absolutely. Do you want me to start at where? Closer is or start a little bit before on my how I got to the story of I think.

00;02;50;27 – 00;02;53;19
Vince
It’s I think it’s both I think it’s both. Take us on the journey.

00;02;53;20 – 00;03;11;29
Trunal
Okay. So, since I’ve been a product and engineering leader for about a decade now, you know, as you mentioned, I live on in California on the, on the West Coast. and I started my career, in around 2008, 2007 timeframe. I started with, Yahoo. As if you remember.

00;03;12;00 – 00;03;19;20
Vince
That’s fantastic. I was looking at your. Yeah, your LinkedIn profile. You’ve had you’ve been at all the hot spots at periods, different periods of time, I love that.

00;03;19;21 – 00;03;44;10
Trunal
Yeah. Know I’ve been lucky to, you know, be interested by all these organizations to be, to allow me to be a part of the success story, starting with Yahoo. Then I went to LinkedIn. then Airbnb happened, and then the last one was confluent, which is where I which is where, you know, my I really had this light bulb moment where, you know, maybe if I start a company in this space, it would be successful in certain in certain ways.

00;03;44;10 – 00;04;13;22
Trunal
Right? so that’s the entire story of me, like, at, let me not go too far back, but like, let’s say at Airbnb, I was the I started as an engineer, and then I, eventually left as the head of homes, host organization, which is a team of engineers and product managers and everyone where we, we had really had a mission to, help the host on Airbnb side understand and then become successful on the entire Airbnb host journey.

00;04;13;28 – 00;04;32;20
Trunal
And I learned through the through that journey of four and five years, I learned so much. And I really got in love with building products, building really fantastic engineering systems. Yeah. and that’s the experience that I got to confluent. And then, then, then confluent as, as as, you know, like, you know, I was the head of, engineering for cloud marketplaces, billing and growth.

00;04;32;27 – 00;04;49;01
Trunal
And that’s what the inception of the idea of, you know, what would a technology powered, super automated platform look like in this, in this ecosystem, which can, you know, which which customers might love? And that’s what the story of Plaza is, and that’s how close I was born.

00;04;49;08 – 00;05;07;19
Vince
Yeah. So what I hear loud and clear. Right. So engineering excellence to organizations that really set benchmarks in terms of the work that they did. And now you launch into closer. And let’s talk a little bit more about like what what you do is your goal with closer. Like where do you see this organization five years from now?

00;05;07;22 – 00;05;26;23
Trunal
Yeah. When we started laser events, you know, I and I was I was co-founder and CTO based out of Austin here and I work closely together at Airbnb and, you know, and this was like, gosh, like eight years ago at this point in time, but we kept in touch all along and we wanted to always start a startup of our own.

00;05;27;00 – 00;05;50;08
Trunal
but we were waiting for the right time in our personal lives and also in a, in a professional context, which, we were waiting for the moment that felt like, oh, the right moment for us to take the leap. And when I was at confluent, I really got to see, got the front row seat on to how the marketplaces are evolving the business and disrupting the whole buying and selling cycle of the enterprises.

00;05;50;10 – 00;06;19;11
Trunal
so when I looked at that, I’m like, okay, maybe there’s something in here that we can start looking into, and that’s this. That’s where the story of, of marketplaces for me started. So closer was started with a singular mission of helping and modernizing the modern sales. for the software sales. Right? Yes. We started with marketplaces because we are seeing this tectonic shift where now majority of the organizations are considering this as a primary channel of procurement and sales.

00;06;19;13 – 00;06;31;13
Trunal
so we thought that would be a good, opportunity for us to come in and start a business there. But eventually we want to be at the singular platform that where every single seller software seller in the world comes to buy and sell software.

00;06;31;15 – 00;06;53;07
Vince
Wow. That is a big, bold mission. I love that. And as you know, I talk about tectonic shifts. I’ve been talking about this moment that’s been happening with marketplaces, these three hyperscalers. We were just talking right before we got started here. I mean, it’s astounding. Right now, there is a third of $1 trillion in cloud commitments around the Big Three, and that’s growing rapidly.

00;06;53;09 – 00;07;18;26
Vince
Microsoft saw an 80% increase in commitments over $100 million or more just this last quarter, in fact. And, and then we talk about AI, you talk about this ecosystem piece, and we’re going to we’re going to dive in a little bit here. But yeah, this is really been, quite a moment. I would say that, you know, AWS had the they had the early, start in, in IaaS, but the other two have followed.

00;07;18;26 – 00;07;36;22
Vince
That’s followed in many respects. we’ve seen a quite a bit of acceleration this year. Right. And Google, as you mentioned, also is also coming on strong. Let’s talk about the evolution of marketplaces. Like we’re in a different place than we were five years ago. Probably when you were at confluent, you were probably in the very early stages of that.

00;07;36;24 – 00;07;40;12
Vince
What changes and advancements have you seen?

00;07;40;15 – 00;08;11;11
Trunal
so the changes and advancements, Vince, I’ve seen in multiple aspects. So let’s first talk about the technology. So when the marketplace started, it was, you know, very rudimentary. It was very early days for them. and each of the hyperscaler was have been in different like a piece of their own, as you know. but what that did is that also reflected in the availability of APIs, the technology, the infrastructure that engineers like myself or my teams needed at the time, that has drastically shifted.

00;08;11;15 – 00;08;40;22
Trunal
It has it has accelerated to a whole new level. Now there’s fantastic APIs available. There is amazing support available. There’s fantastic documentation available from all the hyperscalers. Right. So that’s change number one. that’s on the technology side. The other change is on the human behavior or the, the business side of the equation. Initially, you know, when we went out to the market, like we had to convince a lot of the buyers and sellers to even educate them what the channel is.

00;08;40;22 – 00;09;00;21
Trunal
And there’s still some of that happening out there. And, you know, it will continue to happen. But now there’s lots and lots of interest and lots of, education that has already happened in the industry. and credit goes to the hyperscalers because amount of the investment that has gone into the space is, you know, much more than what it was a few years ago.

00;09;00;21 – 00;09;19;25
Trunal
Right? So those are the two trends that I see today, and I can only see them growing, like if you look at just, you know, as a data point, if you look at the number of articles and number of, posts that are happening in this area, on LinkedIn, like you, I’m sure you can, project like, you know, how few there were a few years ago and how many there.

00;09;19;25 – 00;09;20;14
Trunal
Yeah.

00;09;20;16 – 00;09;40;12
Vince
Well, I think about it is more of a marketing function at first. Right. The marketplace was was set up basically as brochure aware in many respects. I think AWS certainly accelerated the transformation with their because they were cloud commitment first. they made it easier and then they and they led the pace in terms of like now you can buy off of our cloud commitments.

00;09;40;12 – 00;10;04;28
Vince
Right. And they they set the tone and then Microsoft and Google have followed along here. you know, we’ve talked about how much has changed just in this brief period of time. Right. Canalys said Jay McBain has been sitting in that seat and talked about how we they had predicted $45 billion in commitments or transaction within 2026, I believe they originally said.

00;10;04;28 – 00;10;32;01
Vince
And then they called it back to 2025. And then they said they’ve under called it. And then, another organization that you, compete with, we’ll just we’ll just call it that. They said $100 billion by the end of 2026. some believe that we and I use the Jeffrey Moore, analogy of crossing the chasm, right. Because I was a big fan of that technology adoption lifecycle and, and the work there.

00;10;32;03 – 00;10;54;15
Vince
But you’ve indicated to this, right, it’s not the right analogy to talk about crossing the chasm, that there’s there’s more at play here than just a linear transformation that’s going on. I was hoping you could share a little bit of your analogy and how this applies to this whole, I would say, the tectonic shifts and the confluence that we’re seeing amongst amongst the hyperscalers in the markets that we serve.

00;10;54;18 – 00;11;05;07
Trunal
Absolutely. Events. so like, you know, we’ve talked about it like crossing the chasm may not be the right analogy. The right analogy for in my mind, is a classic physics problem of the three body problem that we talked about, the.

00;11;05;07 – 00;11;07;23
Vince
Three body problem. All right. Take me through this one.

00;11;07;23 – 00;11;31;28
Trunal
All right. So like, imagine there’s like three like bodies and they’re constantly interacting with each other. Yeah. And that changes the way we as an ecosystem observer are supposed to change our reaction to them. And in this specific example the three bodies are the following. First is the hyperscalers AWS, Azure and GCP. And they are constantly changing evolving APIs, evolving strategies.

00;11;31;28 – 00;11;42;10
Trunal
You know, different level of funding that goes through like it is on the on the rise now with everyone inputting a lot of, funding to the ecosystem, but it can change a lot along the way.

00;11;42;10 – 00;11;56;29
Vince
Well, and then the build out. Right. So all the investments that are going on, Microsoft’s going to do $14 billion a quarter and then you layer in AI. Right? So this is a big, big function that’s now changing changing their roles. In fact in terms of what they’re what they’re providing back to the markets.

00;11;56;29 – 00;12;14;26
Trunal
Absolutely. And then like now there’s new kinds of marketplaces come in like, you know, Divo on my podcast, you mentioned about the data exchange or the the data provider marketplaces. I believe AWS already has one, and stuff like that. So that’s the one part of the Three-body problem. Part one. Part two is the ISV is the sellers.

00;12;14;26 – 00;12;30;23
Trunal
Yes. And if you think about, and you’ve been in the space a long time when yourself. Right. So when you, when you, when you, looked at the journey of the ISV is that has to change because the way you were selling even like you one and a half, two years ago when the economy was booming.

00;12;30;25 – 00;13;02;18
Trunal
And now where, you know, the budgets are getting cut, there’s lots more scrutiny on every single purchase that’s been made there. Like, literally SaaS companies out there who help you evaluate if your SaaS, spend is is, is is going through the roof is optimized. Exactly. So like we are at that phase right now. So like, you know, I seasoned leaders such as like myself or, you know, other SaaS companies out there, we have to be really, on our toes to make sure that we are, reacting in the right fashion to this, this change on the ISV side.

00;13;02;18 – 00;13;20;02
Vince
And I’ll, I’ll tie in I again to because now it’s now it’s all about like, how are you infusing AI into your solutions? So each of these ISV solutions, maybe not every single one of them, but there are a lot of them are looking at like, well, what’s our role in this, this AI journey that the world is going on right now?

00;13;20;03 – 00;13;44;25
Trunal
Absolutely. And I plays like, a role in two specific ways. One is disrupting the vertical, like, you know, how do you actually bring AI into your product to provide a better service to your end customers? So that’s part one. But the other part is like every single, like, you know, the the ease of, ease with which now you can build products because of AI is also changing the SaaS ecosystem.

00;13;44;25 – 00;14;03;07
Trunal
Right. Interesting. Now you have lots like lots of options available. You needed a, you know, five, six, ten humans to do certain job that are no longer needed. That can be very efficiently done via AI, which means the a value to market and the ability for you to try out and bring products to the market has also been reduced.

00;14;03;07 – 00;14;21;13
Trunal
The time has been reduced now, right? So I truly believe that ISV is will have more and more, opportunities to bring really differentiated and volume products to the market in the coming years because of AI. and in the three-body problem, going back to the three body part, the last is I know this is your favorite is the channel partners, right?

00;14;21;13 – 00;14;25;24
Vince
Yes. And the ecosystem is exactly.

00;14;25;26 – 00;14;46;08
Trunal
so for the channel partners, again, like the traditional way of doing business is, is, is kind of getting disrupted. And it is where, you know, you have to have this, a skill of routing the deal with the marketplace and understanding how that whole ecosystem works and, and, and really be on top of this new mechanism that’s coming into the picture.

00;14;46;09 – 00;14;59;23
Trunal
Right? So like when you combine these three, that is the three-body problem that we constantly talk about internally at laser. And that’s the kind of, you know, ecosystem that you want to be a part of because it’s challenging and fun.

00;14;59;25 – 00;15;17;23
Vince
I want to break this apart because this is fascinating. And you’ve got me a new model here. I it might it might find its way into my talk track. It’s on my presentations, if you don’t mind, but let’s talk about the hyperscalers for a second here. Right. And we talked about the dominance already. Right. And it’s it’s becoming more and more profound.

00;15;17;25 – 00;15;35;19
Vince
chat GPT just announced for. Oh, right. And that tells me that Microsoft is going to have some additional advancements and capabilities that it didn’t have just a week ago. Two weeks ago. it seems like Google is really playing fast catch up here. Where is AWS in the AI journey.

00;15;35;21 – 00;15;54;13
Trunal
In terms of, like the what we see is we do see in terms of the customers that we see, we see customers across the board on all of the, on, on, on all of the hyperscalers. there is slight differences between each one of them, does I, and slight differences in between how much of support they, each one of them provide.

00;15;54;14 – 00;16;17;12
Trunal
Yeah. It’s very clear that all three of them are trying, to capture the attention of the, the these companies will bring in AI to the market. Right. as I know, AWS gives a certain number of credits or, you know, GCP gives or I’m sure there’s credits on the, Azure side as well. but specifically what we see is typically, customers start with one cloud.

00;16;17;14 – 00;16;23;25
Trunal
and then that cloud marketplaces and then replicate that across across the other hyperscalers as well.

00;16;23;27 – 00;16;36;01
Vince
The difference is that the AI is not the same like you could do. I won’t call it a lift and shift. It’s much more elegant than that. But you can take your application as an ISV from one cloud to the to the next. There’s migration tools.

00;16;36;01 – 00;16;36;17
Trunal
Yeah.

00;16;36;19 – 00;16;41;20
Vince
I is a whole nother game, right? Because once you’re infused or locked in, it seems like it’s hard to uncouple.

00;16;41;24 – 00;17;05;01
Trunal
Yeah. I mean, and this again, like in a classic infrastructure or an engineering, parlance, like, you know, you could have like a pure SaaS way, which, you know, all of these hyperscalers have some solution, again, and a various degree of of maturity. Yes. And all of them also have, a way for you to ship the binary, like the code directly to them and then have a deeper, research and analysis.

00;17;05;01 – 00;17;10;11
Trunal
And each one of them have different, like, pros and cons and just depends on what you want as a business.

00;17;10;13 – 00;17;33;18
Vince
You talked about the ISV. You talked about what I refer to as the economic headwinds. Right? We we saw this big, you know, Covid accelerated a lot of things. Yeah. It accelerated with Satya Nadella said seven years of transformation in seven months. And truly it moved us. It changed our it changed our lives in many respects. And which meant that a lot of technology got deployed very quickly.

00;17;33;21 – 00;17;54;24
Vince
So we had this big infusion of spend and then kind of a pullback. Right. That’s where this economic headwinds comes. And close to a half a million people in the tech space were laid off last year. A lot of the do more with less that we’re seeing. And these organizations now again a lot of a lot of startups, a lot of investments in startups.

00;17;54;24 – 00;18;16;09
Vince
Yep. Congratulations. You, secured some additional funding recently. Thank you. but we’re also seeing the fact that a lot of these ISV are going and saying, okay, well, now, how do I find how do I find the customer? And this is where this is where the co selling, really becomes even more important. That gets us that gets us to the customer directly by working with the hyperscalers.

00;18;16;17 – 00;18;37;17
Vince
But that’s not necessarily how the customer buys. Right. And this is this is tied as this ties into this channel conversation. The third element. Yep. So the ISV is are saying, okay, now I’m, I want to hitch my wagon to the Hyperscaler and sell with them. But wait a second. The customer is down here and they’re buying from a reseller or a systems integrator or transactional partner like a CD.

00;18;37;20 – 00;18;54;17
Vince
She or an insight, how do I get there? And this is the third component that you mentioned. The third, the third piece of the model, which is the channel, the ecosystem. And I feel like that piece isn’t fully articulated yet the way the other two. And this is why I’m really fascinated, where are is going to take us?

00;18;54;17 – 00;19;01;10
Vince
Because you’re you have now said here at the table that it’s not just about cloud go to market. It’s really about the whole buying journey.

00;19;01;14 – 00;19;02;02
Trunal
Absolutely.

00;19;02;02 – 00;19;04;02
Vince
So take me there a little bit further.

00;19;04;02 – 00;19;21;23
Trunal
Yeah. And Vince, if you look at the innovation that has happened in the space, right. like there’s lots of innovation in like I like we’ve spoken about just in, in the last ten minutes. Like so it’s so much about AI itself. Right. but that innovation is now slowly making to the, the traditional businesses and channel partners.

00;19;21;23 – 00;19;25;05
Trunal
I would say I have been around for the longest time. It’s a very.

00;19;25;08 – 00;19;27;00
Vince
40, 40 plus years. Exactly.

00;19;27;02 – 00;20;06;11
Trunal
It’s a very mature, system and a very mature, ecosystem and, and and stuff like that. Right. So now what I do see is I see a lot of, increase understanding of the space because of the cloud marketplaces and how they are, disrupting and helping some of these ecosystem players. Right. So what’s going to happen is just like Lazada, I’m anticipating more and more innovation happening in this space because now it’s it’s, caught the eye of the engineers and the product people who are like, okay, wait, if I’m building a product, if I’m building a service, if I have to take it to the customer, I can no longer

00;20;06;11 – 00;20;20;04
Trunal
just, like, ignore this thing that I first of all, I didn’t even know existed. And now that I didn’t know it existed, there’s so much opportunity for me to go in and automate and bring real value to end customer. So I think that’s what I’m anticipating seeing.

00;20;20;06 – 00;20;44;18
Vince
What’s interesting to me is where I’m using coupling and decoupling quite a bit here, but where you’re decoupling from the old methodology, which is, you know, the channel was created 40 plus years ago, actually, down here in Boca Raton. I always refer to Bill gates coming down in Boca Raton, signing an agreement with IBM to license software and then resellers and, and OEMs developed hardware and software.

00;20;44;20 – 00;21;05;07
Vince
And then then there was a need to get those to market right. It started off with like, you get a you’d get a magazine sent to your business saying, here, buy pieces from us, buy software from us, buy networking hardware from us. And so that was a way that organizations purchased, organizations of all sizes, SMB, up to enterprise is would would buy that way in many respects.

00;21;05;07 – 00;21;32;15
Vince
And then those organizations got built out. They have thousands and thousands of sellers now embracing this customer. And now I’m up here on my journey as an ISV, working with a Hyperscaler. And it feels decoupled from that journey. And, you know, the each of the hyperscalers are various. I’m going to I’m pointing to the hyperscalers here. There are various stages of getting that glue between the two motions there cloud go to market and their ecosystem.

00;21;32;21 – 00;21;52;21
Vince
But it seems like a lot needs to happen here in terms of the development, because you have existing models, you have, compensation models, you have, procurement. Everything that comes to all the I’ll call it the supply chain. That takes everything through to the customer. How do we how do we streamline that? Like how do we think through it?

00;21;52;23 – 00;22;20;12
Vince
It seems that AWS has done a better job here than the other two. Maybe because they had a couple of years head start. They had five organizations go to $1 billion in transactions last year. Yeah, right. Yeah. Jay sat in that seat and said, you know, we they became the fifth largest distributor last year. Yep. And they basically, shot across the district distribution channel directly to the ISV, directly to the customer or to the channel to to the customer.

00;22;20;14 – 00;22;24;09
Vince
How are we going to streamline it? Like where do you see your role in that process.

00;22;24;09 – 00;22;50;02
Trunal
Yeah. So I’ll I’ll answer that in two ways. Right. One is like I’ll tell you a story before we actually get to the actual answer. I love it. like when I was a guy, B and B, the motivation for engineers and product people was eventually a metric on the customer side. So I strongly believe that any company has such a culture is going to be successful because everything is tied to eventual customer goal right now.

00;22;50;02 – 00;23;07;24
Trunal
If you take that example and bring it to the enterprises, which is kind of the, the shift that I did in my career, like I have been at, you know, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Yahoo, all of these consumer companies. Then I went to confluent, and I really saw what the enterprise world looked like, and I was fascinated. I’m like, I’m never leaving this world ever again.

00;23;07;27 – 00;23;09;21
Vince
It’s very different than the consumer world, very.

00;23;09;21 – 00;23;32;12
Trunal
Different, very different. And there are some parallels like this one. Right. So now if you bring that value to companies like let’s say closer are where we value the customer value. a lot. Now what’s going to happen is engineers are going to figure out, okay, like if I have to figure out a way to sell my whatever software that I’m building, I can no longer ignore the the, the entire channel partners ecosystem.

00;23;32;12 – 00;23;58;02
Trunal
Right. Because that plays such a huge part. And especially as your organization starts maturing, it plays even bigger part. Right? and has all of those benefits like, you know, cost benefits, distribution benefits, all of that. so when engineers come to that, like that is going to like disrupt some of these equations. And then, you know, these hyperscalers have, have done a really good job, I would definitely say AWS as the CPO process, which is really well loved by our customers.

00;23;58;02 – 00;24;17;10
Trunal
And, you know, we always get good feedback. And GCP has it’s coming up with something like, you know, Azure has their MPO process. Now this is where the technology and automation can actually help accelerate the motion of of the of the business. Right. And now this is specific to the hyperscalers. Now imagine a world in which, the hyperscalers are there.

00;24;17;10 – 00;24;22;01
Trunal
But there’s also the other a business that happens outside the hyperscalers. And how does that automation work?

00;24;22;01 – 00;24;22;16
Vince
That’s right.

00;24;22;16 – 00;24;33;00
Trunal
I do definitely see some of these learnings that have happened over the past decade with the hyperscalers will be brought to the direct channel and and things will be better for the future. Yeah.

00;24;33;00 – 00;24;58;14
Vince
And you mentioned things like multi-party offers, which is Microsoft’s term. And then there’s the channel partner private off offer. Yeah, these acronyms roll off the tongue. But essentially what they’re doing is they’re coupling the channel with the buying behavior of the ISV with, with the Hyperscaler and pulling it together. Yep. And ultimately, I see it as the customer is going to be pulling you talked about the customer experience.

00;24;58;14 – 00;25;19;17
Vince
The customer is going to be pulling a solution together. Right. The what’s what’s fascinating to me, we talked about the cloud commitments. These decisions are no longer being made in the lines of business. These technology purchases, these cloud commitments are being made at the board level. Vodafone just made a big agreement with Microsoft for $1.5 billion buying over a billion.

00;25;19;19 – 00;25;38;13
Vince
I mean you can just you rattle off all the fortune 500 right now. You know, these decisions are being made at the board level. And so then the the actual solution purchases, which is really like how do we solve for a problem? We have a security requirement. We maybe need to couple together the three ISVs to solve for, backup and recovery.

00;25;38;16 – 00;25;56;03
Vince
And then we need a systems integrator and we need another organization to do managed services around that. Right. So I need to put, like, all five of those together, and I want to buy off of my billion dollar cloud commitment. This is where the party or the CPO comes in, right hundred percent. And so how do you help how do you help to streamline that process for them?

00;25;56;10 – 00;26;09;14
Trunal
Yeah. So in in terms of the, the technology enabled, these like there’s some certain tools out there and, you know, there’s certain solutions, but by and large it’s still a lot of manual work, which as you probably know, yes.

00;26;09;17 – 00;26;14;26
Vince
it’s a lot of paper, paper shuffling going on here a little bit too much radio.

00;26;14;28 – 00;26;32;14
Trunal
but I mean, I would say hyperscalers have done a really good job, like, especially with the, you know, multi-party offers or the Cpos is fantastic APIs available. Yeah. So we build an experience on top of it that combines some of those elements. And that’s the that’s the that’s the early signs of stream, you know, streamlining some of this flow, the procurement flows.

00;26;32;14 – 00;26;42;14
Trunal
Yeah, I would say I wouldn’t say that we are in a, in a, in a space where this is like solve problems like that. The things will evolve as, as we go and time will tell how it how it works.

00;26;42;17 – 00;26;58;06
Vince
You know, now I take your model apart now, now I’ve got it. So you’ve got, you’ve got a three body model, but with each with any, each one of those three body models, there might be another technology curve going on and each one of them independently of one another. And they overlap. Maybe this is a 3D model.

00;26;58;07 – 00;27;17;14
Trunal
Yeah. No, you’re absolutely right. Say it is a 3D model because it feels like the three models again, like the hyperscalers is the ice V’s and the channel. And each one of them is a behemoth of a system. Yes. And they have their own like micro ecosystems going on within them. That’s going to change the way the entire ecosystem operates.

00;27;17;19 – 00;27;18;20
Trunal
So it’s just a fascinating.

00;27;18;21 – 00;27;42;00
Vince
And they’re each at different, levels of maturity along their journey. Yeah. The ISV are a different levels of maturity on their journey and the channels different levels of maturity on their journey. And I know from working with the channel partners, some are and I’ve had I’ve had insight on the podcast just recently, in fact, Tony Savoy and Andy Burger, the president of Insight North America, they’re much further along the journey than some of these other resellers are right.

00;27;42;00 – 00;27;54;21
Vince
They get ISV, they get solutions selling, and they’re bringing that down to with, you know, their tens of thousands of customers and they’re they’re stitching it all together the way we discuss. Absolutely. But others aren’t there yet.

00;27;54;21 – 00;28;20;10
Trunal
Yeah. Yeah. And then how can technology help with the acceleration. Like when whenever I like think about technology technologies job is to accelerate something. Right. Like whatever’s happening organically in the world. Yes. Technology should come in and accelerate that value for for the people and and the and the and the humans out there. Right. Like Tesla is doing something similar where, you know, accelerate the, you know, transition to sustainable energy.

00;28;20;13 – 00;28;27;12
Trunal
But like technology plays this really critical role. And I’m seeing similar kind of role will be played by technology in the channels of partner space.

00;28;27;14 – 00;28;29;10
Vince
So it’s a fascinating time we live with.

00;28;29;11 – 00;28;30;03
Trunal
Absolutely.

00;28;30;03 – 00;28;43;10
Vince
So you think it’s going to be a five year journey down the line. You think it’s going to take that long or do you do you see an acceleration? It seems like AI is accelerating so fast right now, while marketplaces accelerate at a slower pace than, I guess is the question I have.

00;28;43;12 – 00;29;07;09
Trunal
Yeah, I think like, you know, five years to really mature. I would say, but I think you would start seeing some really cool technology emerge in the next 1 to 2 years timeframe, and then it’ll take some. It’s on course to mature like there’s there’s so much AI out there. But, you know, I do believe that eventually in the in the longer run it will settle and you will have fewer AI tools that really get the job done.

00;29;07;14 – 00;29;28;20
Trunal
And everything else would be, you know, kind of non-existent. Similarly, in the space, like you would see some innovation happening. And that’s the thing with innovation right then. So like you, you have to try something, but guaranteed some of those things are not gonna work. But the things that do work, they stick for the longer time and that that takes time, that takes, effort and time to, to really mature.

00;29;28;23 – 00;30;02;21
Vince
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00;30;02;27 – 00;30;24;11
Vince
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00;30;24;13 – 00;30;43;29
Vince
What about the laggards? Like we talked about this 3D model. Now there’s laggards in in each maybe maybe not so much at the hyperscale level. But within the ISV community there’s still some laggards. Yeah I saw organizations that were were selling the old model. Right. They were still selling the on prem software or the old subscription model, which wasn’t a true a truly cloud model.

00;30;43;29 – 00;31;02;03
Vince
Yeah. and then, yeah. And then there’s the born in the clouds as well. And then on the channel side, certainly we mentioned the, the, the early adopters are the ones that have accelerated and there’s laggards there as well. What do you what what are you seeing from those laggard organizations in terms of being slow to adopt marketplaces.

00;31;02;06 – 00;31;22;10
Trunal
Yeah. So I’ll talk about the ISV first. on the ISV side, like, you know, a few years ago, like not many people even knew about it. And then, like the examples that I’ve seen, people are trying to, people are almost like, skeptical when they’re like, hey, you know, who’s going to go to buy, go, go buy an enterprise software by going to.

00;31;22;13 – 00;31;23;13
Vince
it’s a waste of time.

00;31;23;13 – 00;31;43;01
Trunal
Or waste of time, like, all right, let’s put a couple engineers and see what happens. And and some people give give it that chance. And those early adopters who really leaned in and try to really go deep and figure out how this thing works, actually were rewarded with handsome rewards with in terms of IRR, in terms of, you know, increased deal size and all of that.

00;31;43;04 – 00;32;08;01
Trunal
Still, like if you look at the DNA age that we live right now, there’s still a lot of, apprehension. I do see less than previously for sure. Right. But still, there is. And what that means is the startups that are coming to the scene and the the companies that are now maturing and going into the series B, C, C, series D, level D, now all of a sudden need to have a really good understanding and grasp of this channel, which they do not.

00;32;08;08 – 00;32;25;01
Trunal
Yeah. And the reason being like as you start growing the pressure to grow revenue and you know, find new channels to, to increase your sales is growing as well. And you can no longer ignore this channel because of the, the, the, you know, 30, 60 billion committed spend that we just talked about. That’s right. Which is locked into the hyperscalers.

00;32;25;01 – 00;32;28;09
Trunal
So you don’t really have an option like it’s it’s like it’s you.

00;32;28;09 – 00;32;29;04
Vince
Can’t ignore that.

00;32;29;05 – 00;32;37;10
Trunal
You can’t ignore that. And events you know, this, but you know the the projection for this summit, it’s going to go to $1 trillion in the, in the next, you know, few years.

00;32;37;15 – 00;32;39;07
Vince
It’s going to happen sooner than later.

00;32;39;09 – 00;33;07;12
Trunal
Exactly. so it’s no longer a channel that you’re, you can, have an afterthought about. And just like, like I give this example to, you know, every, each one of our customers and prospects and everyone, like, every single channel, like marketing. Marketing is a channel. Sales. Outbound is a channel. Partnerships is a channel like marketplaces. And you need to invest time to get the get the rewards out of it is really I mean, if you just put up a website and expected, you know, customers to flow in, it’s not going to happen.

00;33;07;12 – 00;33;10;17
Trunal
You need to do SEO, you need to do paid marketing, you need to do all of that.

00;33;10;18 – 00;33;12;19
Vince
You might need to do a podcast. Yeah, exactly.

00;33;12;26 – 00;33;25;02
Trunal
Exactly. So is this similar a similar kind of motion. And the the laggards that are, that are now lagging will actually be heavily if they don’t, you know, accelerate their understanding of the.

00;33;25;05 – 00;33;47;11
Vince
This is reminds me of a conversation 12 years ago, getting up on stage at a channel event and speaking about the cloud to all of these organizations that were looking at me like, DOH, I’d like, why should I change my business model? Right? The ISVs were selling on prem software back in those days. resellers were selling Dell computers in target’s bags.

00;33;47;11 – 00;34;02;11
Vince
And we were sitting back there at Microsoft going, we want you all to come to the cloud with us. And I feel like we’re on the same journey with marketplace. I feel like it’s accelerate a little bit faster than I expected, but I think that’s the the way the laggard thinks about it. Absolutely. What? Why is it why is it relevant to me?

00;34;02;11 – 00;34;21;25
Vince
Why should I change my business model? Yeah. what is the future of go to market look like? And how does software sellers sell in the future? Like how does this change? Like I’m a seller working for an ISV, or I’m working for Microsoft or I’m working in the channel. What is my future sales process look like, and how do you help support that?

00;34;22;01 – 00;34;44;07
Trunal
Absolutely. So, like I strongly believe that, you know, now what we are seeing and JJ MacBain talks about it a lot where the buyer behavior has changed. Yes. You know, the traditional buyer who was like, you know, pen and paper and, you know, pick up phone calls and talk, that still has a lot of value. But the buyer of this, this era actually comes in with a lot of research points.

00;34;44;07 – 00;35;07;06
Trunal
They know exactly what they’re looking for. That’s right. They know exactly what what their value proposition is. And then exactly how to extract the value. When we talk to our customers, some of our customers are extremely tech savvy, like they do a proper POC with us. They understand each and every feature that we have. We have a team that helps them understand the, the, differentiated value of the of the of the product and platform.

00;35;07;08 – 00;35;20;22
Trunal
but that is a change that is happening in the world right now where, you know, and then in the future this is just going to happen more and more like, you know, I can’t imagine my daughter is going in and like, picking up. They might not even drive their cars like the cars are going to.

00;35;20;22 – 00;35;22;06
Vince
Drive the car. Yeah.

00;35;22;09 – 00;35;39;07
Trunal
Exactly. So they may not know how to like I drove a stick shift when I grew up to and that’s, that’s that’s going to be a thing of a past. Similarly like what does that do to software procurement? That’s right. Software, business overall is going to be a whole lot of different world looking like in in not near near future.

00;35;39;07 – 00;35;39;21
Trunal
Yeah.

00;35;39;24 – 00;35;57;28
Vince
Well it ties into the whole ecosystem conversation in such a strong way. Like Jay Jay again. Jay you you’re getting a lot of kudos. You’re not even in the room today. but we talked about the the eight seats at the table or the six seats at the table. Right. Because you’re making that decision process by talking to all of your trusted.

00;35;57;28 – 00;36;24;27
Vince
So there might be other technology organizations you’re working with, the millennial buying behavior, which is changing, which says 75% want to get to end of job without actually talking to another human. Right. So selling changes in a big way, right. The, the cookie that that whole, that whole process that was so prevalent just 5 or 6 years ago that you had, you had a you had modern marketing, you had stars, you had the seller coming in and doing the clothes.

00;36;24;27 – 00;36;26;24
Vince
Right? That’s changed. That’s gone.

00;36;26;24 – 00;36;27;14
Trunal
Yeah, yeah.

00;36;27;14 – 00;36;33;27
Vince
And you’re saying is I’m doing all the research and I’m coming to you and saying, okay, I’m now I’m ready to procure. Yeah, I want to buy it off of this marketplace.

00;36;33;27 – 00;36;53;00
Trunal
Exactly, exactly. And also, like, you know, lots of, customers. I mean, when we, as engineers, when we looked at software to procure this, like, different methodology that we use, we actually almost always went to the website of the vendor. We looked at the quality of the APIs, the quality of the documentation. Is the pricing public or not?

00;36;53;00 – 00;37;04;09
Trunal
Like, do I do I get what I pay for? Right. And in gone are the days of you know, my pricing is opaque. Like I’ll tell you, let’s get in a conversation like that just doesn’t trust.

00;37;04;13 – 00;37;05;03
Vince
That’s right.

00;37;05;06 – 00;37;34;18
Trunal
and then anything that you could do to build trust with the buyer is going to be paramount. So, like pricing is one and on the same trust topic, like if you can attach your software to the hyperscalers, that automatically increases your scale, of trust 100 x. Yes, these these are household names. Everyone knows about it. People almost assume that you are a legit partner, and that you’ve gone to, and you do have to go through, you know, stringent security, question and, and check before you do get listed on the marketplaces.

00;37;34;20 – 00;37;37;08
Trunal
So all of these factors play into the trust factor.

00;37;37;09 – 00;37;37;27
Vince
Yes.

00;37;37;29 – 00;37;39;09
Trunal
It’s going to change the way we license.

00;37;39;10 – 00;37;58;18
Vince
Yeah. And it ties in. And then it comes down to the fundamentals of partnering, which I always talk about the seven principles and trust mutual trust being so prevalent important in the process. And then building your coastal methodology like building your trust with the partner that you’re working with, which is just so important. But now I want to dive in on closer, right?

00;37;58;18 – 00;38;14;20
Vince
I really feel like we know we’ve touched on the trends we’re seeing, and it’s a terrific conversation. But as you know, you’re not the first one to market here. Yep. Right. And there are been some other organizations, some have been on this podcast. We went on to mention a name. Some are friends. and as you are.

00;38;14;25 – 00;38;28;14
Vince
But I also feel like, okay, so why now? Like, why did you decide to do this? What what is the problem you’re solving that’s differentiated? And why is Clazar unique in this market, this amazing market that we both playing. Yeah.

00;38;28;14 – 00;38;54;22
Trunal
Events. And then like, you know, the way we think about the space is we are in the space of helping software and buyers and sellers buy and sell more and making it easy. Right. We started with marketplaces because of the tectonic shift that we talked about, just, you know, at the start of the podcast. So like if when we looked at, okay, here’s our mission, here’s we want to get to, here’s the ideal outcome that we want to have in terms of what our mission is.

00;38;54;22 – 00;39;12;06
Trunal
Our mission is that, you know, buyers and sellers of software, business are able to procure the software in the most easiest fashion, and sellers are able to reach the buyers that they want without much friction. So that’s the vision now if you like. And this is kind of what we did. Do it closer all the time okay.

00;39;12;09 – 00;39;33;26
Trunal
Here’s where we want to get to. What are all the ways that we can get to here and what’s the fastest, most efficient way of achieving that outcome. And we do that on the project basis, on engineering basis, on product basis, but also on the vision basis, which is, hey, here’s where we want to take the company in the next one two years, next five years, ten years, whatever that might be.

00;39;33;28 – 00;39;51;09
Trunal
What is the fastest way for us to get there and what we concluded was, okay, the, the no matter what we do, if we do not catch on this trend of cloud marketplaces and coastal, it’s like we are going to be, swimming against the tide. Yeah. So that’s why we we started a company in this space.

00;39;51;09 – 00;40;08;16
Trunal
But eventually what we want to get to is we want to get to a platform that is the singular platform that anyone needs to buy and sell software, and that’s a differentiated value that you will start seeing as the company grows. Like, you know, we’ve been we got a series A company right now. We’re growing really fast. But we are investing a lot in product.

00;40;08;16 – 00;40;12;28
Trunal
And again, motion to bring that value, differentiated value very, very soon.

00;40;13;01 – 00;40;19;16
Vince
So you’re taking a lot of the complexity out of the process. It’s still not as easy today as it looks from my side of things, right?

00;40;19;17 – 00;40;37;12
Trunal
No it’s not. And it’s like, you know, if you look at the company, the each company has a DNA. Like I firmly believe that. Yeah, I worked at LinkedIn. It had a different DNA. I worked at Airbnb, different DNA concert, different DNA. Right. So if you look at each of the companies DNA, they have a unique value prop and a unique reason why they are a certain way.

00;40;37;12 – 00;40;55;09
Trunal
It’s just like exactly like human beings. Right? Right. Glazer’s DNA is if you look at the quality of engineering, the quality of, of of product, like, you know, my background, eyelashes, background, all of these folks that we put together, we have a fantastic group of individuals. so that is what’s going to differentiate us. And that is the the value prop that we bring to the table.

00;40;55;09 – 00;41;19;13
Trunal
And that brings into the quality of the platform, the quality of integrations, the quality of customer service that we provide. And that is going to be eventually a different differentiator. I do believe, like, you know, events like companies, there’s thousands and thousands of companies out there, right? It’s it’s like differentiators can be on different angles. But at the end of the day, the quality of customer trust that you are able to earn is the only differentiator that matters.

00;41;19;16 – 00;41;36;08
Trunal
Because and that can take in different shapes. Like, you know, some people like your API, some people like your SDK, some people like your, you know, the quality of documentation as you talked about, like stuff like that. But eventually all that boils down to how much trust are you able to get with your customers, and how can you serve them for a long time?

00;41;36;15 – 00;41;46;02
Vince
And coming at it from a, an engineering pedigree, I would say in engineering DNA, and then and then solving for complex problems. Yeah.

00;41;46;02 – 00;41;46;13
Trunal
Yeah.

00;41;46;15 – 00;41;51;05
Vince
And and maybe not stitching or trying to cobble together to get there.

00;41;51;05 – 00;42;08;23
Trunal
Yeah. Exactly. And this is one of the other things that I would like to mention is like our mantra or our, DNA is always to have very high quality engineering, and, and a product that you love like this was long time ago when we, me and I were trying to, like, figure out, okay, what kind of company do we want to build?

00;42;08;29 – 00;42;19;02
Trunal
And then we actually made a list of products that we said, okay, what are the products that we absolutely love that we use on a day to day basis? Like, I love using Airbnb whenever I go out, you know, I oh.

00;42;19;02 – 00;42;20;03
Vince
It’s a fabulous I.

00;42;20;03 – 00;42;24;04
Trunal
Mean, the plastic service. Yeah, I am biased because I work there, but still I think, you know.

00;42;24;04 – 00;42;28;20
Vince
I and LinkedIn link developed into that very, true to business fashion.

00;42;28;24 – 00;42;39;13
Trunal
Yeah, yeah. But on the consumer side, like, you know, products like one password, which, you know, it’s just, I’m not sure if you use it, but it’s one of the favorite products that we’ve had. Slack is a fantastic product. It is used on a daily basis.

00;42;39;16 – 00;42;44;11
Vince
I still use teams because of Microsoft, but yes, I do use slack occasionally. Yeah.

00;42;44;13 – 00;42;57;05
Trunal
But these these products are evoking an emotion of of love and of of of of you know, really liking and absolutely loving that product existence in the world. And that is what we want to do.

00;42;57;07 – 00;43;18;01
Vince
Yeah. And, you know, you talk you reminded me. And I don’t want to digress from the conversation, but you reminded me that the three hyperscalers all came about it from a different pedigree. Microsoft came from the on premise software world. Absolutely. AWS came at it from being a retailer and having you swipe a credit card to get access to their data centers, and then Google from search.

00;43;18;03 – 00;43;23;21
Vince
and they’ve, it’s funny because they’re now in a common, arena that they’re playing in right now.

00;43;23;21 – 00;43;41;18
Trunal
Exactly. And this ties back to the, the DNA conversation. Like if you look at these three behemoth and super successful companies, but still they each have a different DNA. And that when you look at the, the way they are, they are approaching the problem of ecosystem as you talk about is slightly different.

00;43;41;21 – 00;44;11;03
Vince
Slightly different. Yeah. And and you can see it. Right. Because Microsoft is, is solving for the enterprise in many respects. They think enterprise first even though they play down market. Google is coming at it from data and AI because that’s where search led them. And AWS is coming at it from the customer, because the customer, you know, the customer obsession piece, the Jeff Bezos principles, and then also the marketplace, their learnings in marketplace are astounding, right?

00;44;11;03 – 00;44;26;07
Vince
I mean, they’ve got the most successful marketplace in the in the hemisphere in the world. so yeah, you can see that. You can see how they’re how they and their lineage has gotten them there. Absolutely. And and it’s also where their benefits are, like on their on the other side, when you’re sitting there is one of the ISV is trying to figure out where do I partner.

00;44;26;07 – 00;44;26;18
Vince
Yeah.

00;44;26;19 – 00;44;26;26
Trunal
Yeah.

00;44;26;26 – 00;44;28;03
Vince
Because that’s essentially where you go.

00;44;28;03 – 00;44;44;15
Trunal
And then what I’m excited to see is as the time goes along, like, because this is such a wide and huge space that we are playing with, how do these, these, three huge organizations help shape the future of where this is going? It’s going to be fascinating.

00;44;44;15 – 00;45;00;24
Vince
To watch from, from an engineering perspective and from Closer’s perspective. How do you have to watch there? Like we talked about the three models, but how do you have to think about the Hyperscaler model changing? Like how do you have to adjust or pivot your business? Pivot is always a big important factor for me in terms of business transformation.

00;45;00;24 – 00;45;19;02
Trunal
Yeah. So the way I look at it is, you know, this this like, you know, whenever we start any business, the first rule of thumb is try to go to a market that is massive. And we know that, you know, if the three hyperscalers are in this market, this this is going to be a huge market. Also, these three hyperscalers are all growing all the time.

00;45;19;02 – 00;45;43;28
Trunal
And they’re I wouldn’t say they’re converging. they’re evolving in their own ways. Yes. What that does is that gives an opportunity for a company like Lazaar to come in and simplify the cross. Hyperscaler. it’s just basically like the multi-cloud strategy that we talk about in the cloud infrastructure world. But this is for the GDM side of the house where you have to make sure, all right, my customers are across all of the three hyperscalers.

00;45;43;28 – 00;45;50;22
Trunal
And perhaps maybe there’s a fourth, you know, marketplace up and coming, and maybe even like we have some customers there.

00;45;50;25 – 00;45;54;27
Vince
What do you think the fourth is, is is it Oracle. Is it where do you where do you see I think.

00;45;55;01 – 00;46;20;24
Trunal
Oracle might be the, the fourth one. I’ve, I have heard some, you know, developments that they are, they’re working on, but, you know, nothing nothing official from the message. But that might be the that might be the other one. There might also be the local ones, like, you know, the regional ones. they are, you know, in the region like APAC market or the Asia market or the Mena market, like they might be local ones out there who might just replicate the model that we’ve seen.

00;46;20;27 – 00;46;31;23
Trunal
It could potentially be the hyperscalers replicating the model already or some of the local ones as well. but that’s that’s kind of what, what I anticipate seeing. Yeah.

00;46;31;26 – 00;46;47;03
Vince
Fascinating conversation. We could be here all day right now discussing this in greater depth. But as you know, I’d like to pivot. I, I’m fascinated with the personal career journey. We talked a little bit about it. Yeah. I noticed you spent some time at Arizona State University.

00;46;47;03 – 00;46;47;28
Trunal
I did.

00;46;48;00 – 00;47;04;22
Vince
I did an executive program. I wasn’t there for two years like you were, but I did an executive program there. So, kind of the heat that we have here in South Florida this time of year, you I’m sure you became accustomed to it, but I’d love to talk about, I, I use this analogy of the dinner party.

00;47;04;24 – 00;47;26;24
Vince
this my favorite question to ask each of my guests. And so tonight, you are hosting a dinner party, and you could host this dinner party anywhere in the world. I’d be fascinated to hear about that as well. And you can invite any three guests from the present or the past to this dinner party. I have even had a guest or two said, somebody in the future that they wanted to invite to their dinner party.

00;47;26;27 – 00;47;31;07
Vince
Whom would you invite to this incredible dinner party and why?

00;47;31;10 – 00;47;46;11
Trunal
Okay. All right. So let’s first talk about where I would love to host it. So I grew up in India and grew up in the town of Mumbai or Bombay as excuse to call it the I love the city. I go there, you know, quite often my parents are still there. you know, lots of friends still.

00;47;46;11 – 00;48;07;12
Trunal
So I my entire, like, early life, family is is all there now. We live in California, so it’s a it’s a little bit hard, but we still love to visit. Yes. So I would host the party in that city. That’s one very nice. And then I would invite, invite the following people. First I would invite, Lewis Hamilton, you know, you know, that is.

00;48;07;12 – 00;48;08;26
Vince
I don’t who is Lewis Hamilton.

00;48;08;26 – 00;48;11;27
Trunal
So I’m a huge fan of, F1 races.

00;48;11;27 – 00;48;12;12
Vince
Okay.

00;48;12;16 – 00;48;23;02
Trunal
And I’ve watched, growing up, you know, I was always watched all of these races and, like, you know, Michael Schumacher, all of these names I was familiar with. But the recent name that you might want to look him up like he’s.

00;48;23;02 – 00;48;27;28
Vince
I’m going to I went last year to the one in Miami, so. Oh did you. Oh I see he was probably racing right.

00;48;28;04 – 00;48;47;23
Trunal
Yes. Yes. Yeah. He’s around. so he’s like a seven time world champion of, of of, of F1 races. But that’s not the reason why I want to I want to have time with him. Like I watch his videos. I’m a huge fan of him. And I think that is like, you know, when people become successful, like, I do believe that they have to have a purpose.

00;48;47;23 – 00;49;16;00
Trunal
And I feel like he’s the way he is going about his thing. Like, you know, seven time world champion has hasn’t happened before, probably will not happen again. but that’s not what he talks about when you, you know, watch his content online. What he talks about is a lot about, okay, what am I doing that I’ve gotten to this place to affect a change in the world, because if I don’t use my whatever resources that I have now to do that, then it’s not useful, right?

00;49;16;06 – 00;49;19;05
Trunal
That’s a fascinating thought to have. So I would love to spend some time with you.

00;49;19;05 – 00;49;26;10
Vince
It’s fascinating that a Formula One racer would think about it. Yeah, I mean, that in itself. I wouldn’t be thinking that. They would think that that aforethought.

00;49;26;11 – 00;49;33;09
Trunal
Exactly, exactly. So that’s one person. And the other person that I would love to invite is, Kobe, Kobe Bryant. Very low. Yes.

00;49;33;09 – 00;49;38;16
Vince
Yes. tragic. My my son was a huge is was a huge go is still a huge Kobe.

00;49;38;16 – 00;50;00;20
Trunal
So I know yeah it’s it’s it’s it’s such a tragic but like I’m just fascinated by the personality. And the reason why I’m fascinated by it is, is because there’s like I follow this principle of, of really investing a lot of time in the process and not worry about the outcome, because the process itself is is the journey itself is the destination is it’s not the destination itself.

00;50;00;20 – 00;50;18;03
Trunal
And I feel like you know, Kobe was the it was the epitome of that. Like, you know, he was all about the process whether you win or lose. Like it’s the same process that you follow and being able to extract like the joy out of it. And it’s really hard, Vince, because we are human beings, we have emotions like when you when your high, when you lose your low.

00;50;18;03 – 00;50;30;00
Trunal
Right. But how do you maintain that like a singular or or same emotional quotient all along the way is a very hard thing. So I would love to, you know, pick his brains if I could, on that one.

00;50;30;06 – 00;50;32;18
Vince
Fascinating. You still have one more person, though.

00;50;32;21 – 00;50;42;23
Trunal
One more person. All right. let’s do, let’s do, Novak, Novak Djokovic, the tennis.

00;50;42;24 – 00;50;46;26
Vince
Yeah, yeah, very, very interesting group here. Yeah. This. Yeah, yeah.

00;50;46;28 – 00;51;07;00
Trunal
No, the. And then the reasoning for that is I feel like he wasn’t the first one or he wasn’t the, the, the the most like like Federer who’s like, you know. Yeah. Apparently gifted. I think he’s done everything in his life because he worked extremely hard towards it. And he’s been focused and disciplined. And like if you look at his diet like it’s, you know, it’s it’s it’s he’s incredible.

00;51;07;00 – 00;51;09;03
Vince
He’s he’s an incredible incredible athlete.

00;51;09;03 – 00;51;15;08
Trunal
And so that level of discipline I would love to have that in me if I could and so know I would love to think has been.

00;51;15;10 – 00;51;23;17
Vince
Yeah. And the mindset to, tennis is such a hard sport both mentally and physically. Yeah. People people discount it. I mean, these are incredible athletes.

00;51;23;17 – 00;51;24;13
Trunal
Incredible athletes.

00;51;24;20 – 00;51;28;23
Vince
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, we have we have a tennis pedigree in our family.

00;51;28;23 – 00;51;29;23
Trunal
So I love.

00;51;29;23 – 00;51;32;22
Vince
Watch I love watching him and all the other amazing tennis players.

00;51;32;22 – 00;51;33;18
Trunal
And,

00;51;33;20 – 00;51;58;02
Vince
So, we are. I can’t believe this. We are at the midpoint of 2024. Like what happened? Like, I was just wishing you Happy New Year. I just felt like last week, for all of our viewers and listeners out there, we’re we’re going through this journey. I was hoping you could help us and help them. What do we need to be thinking about for the second half of the year?

00;51;58;03 – 00;52;13;23
Vince
Where should I be leaning in if I’m a partner or if I’m a technologist in this space? And where can I optimize for success going into the second? We don’t have a crystal ball in terms of where the economy we have, we have elections going on. I mean, it’s it’s an interesting time right now in our lives and our journey.

00;52;13;25 – 00;52;19;05
Vince
But what would you say to our listeners and viewers about how they can optimize for success for the rest of this year?

00;52;19;12 – 00;52;38;26
Trunal
Yeah. And, what I would say events is being aware of, of what’s happening in the industry is like, that’s one of the biggest moments for startups, founders like myself. you could be like a, you know, early one, like seed pre-seed or, you know, on a hyperscale journey like us or maybe a little bit more mature on CDC.

00;52;38;26 – 00;52;59;11
Trunal
CDC. Yeah. But along the entire spectrum, the one thing that you have to figure out is, okay, how is the world changing around you? And then go and react to it in a way that you are still in time. Ideally, you don’t want to be reactive. You want to be proactive where you anticipate the change and then align towards that change and be ahead of the curve.

00;52;59;14 – 00;53;23;26
Trunal
Many times it is possible. Sometimes it is not, but in the case at least, like I don’t, I don’t like, you know, worry about missing a train or missing a boat, like stuff like that. There’s always time, as long as you are cognizant of your surroundings. So that that’s what I would say. What I’m seeing out there in the market is this entire, like, marketplaces plus course, a motion is picking up really, really well and it’s only going to accelerate from here.

00;53;23;29 – 00;53;44;08
Trunal
So if you do not have a strategy around it, or at least if you’ve not like, done some research, there’s plenty of content out there. We put out good, good content on our on our website, on our LinkedIn as well. So feel, you know, viewers can feel free to consume it. but that’s what I would say. Like if you are if you’re not, if you make a conscious choice to not invest, that’s that’s I would say that’s step one of it.

00;53;44;11 – 00;53;47;03
Trunal
But not knowing about this is not an option anymore.

00;53;47;03 – 00;53;56;29
Vince
Yeah, yeah. Be cognizant research. I would say lean in in a big way. I think organizations that lean in the most opportunity for success right now.

00;53;56;29 – 00;54;04;14
Trunal
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We didn’t really get into the whole deep, you know, causal and what the mechanics of, like, you would be here for 2 to 4 hours.

00;54;04;16 – 00;54;17;15
Vince
Well, I love that. We’re going to have to have you back so that this year we’re going to give you a reason to. Or I’ll have to come out to San Francisco. Yes, and we’ll do. We’ll do it on. You know, it’s gets hot here in Florida this time of year. So I’d be happy to come to San Francisco this later this summer.

00;54;17;15 – 00;54;35;07
Vince
So, now you’ve been a fascinating guest. You’ve been an incredible guest. I’ve been so excited to have you come join us. And we’ve been anticipating doing this for quite some time now. So true. Now, I want to thank you again for your time, for making the trip out here to Florida and to being here for our listeners and viewers on The Ultimate Guide to Partnering.

00;54;35;10 – 00;54;35;22
Vince
Thank you.

00;54;35;25 – 00;54;43;28
Trunal
Vince. Thank you so much for having me. It’s a beautiful part of the country. you know, I’m looking forward to spending some time here today. And then I looking forward to hosting you in San Francisco.

00;54;43;28 – 00;55;06;01
Vince
I love that. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering. Hopefully this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner’s strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something. Have you implemented everything you’ve been learning, and are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve?

00;55;06;03 – 00;55;38;02
Vince
If not, it’s time to take action now. Join Ultimate Partner Experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about with you. You get access to exclusive industry insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now! Visit our website, the Ultimate partner.com and sign up today.

Laurent Mechain, Vice President of Strategic Alliances at Elastic, joins the Ultimate Guide to Partnering.

With an impressive background in cloud technology and strategic alliances, Laurent Mechain brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the role of VP of Strategic Alliances at Elastic. Laurent has played a crucial role in driving the company’s success in the highly competitive cloud industry, rising to Pinnacle Partner Status with all three Hyperscalers..

The Journey of Laurent Mechain

Laurent Mechain, originally from France, has spent almost 20 years in the U.S. After 17 years at Microsoft and a significant stint at AWS, he joined Elastic four years ago. Today, Laurent leads Elastic’s Strategic Alliances team, focusing on partnerships with hyperscalers. His journey in cloud computing and his role at Elastic provide a unique perspective on the industry’s evolution.

Elastic’s Mission: Empowering Through Data

Elastic is a company that enables organizations to find answers with data at speed and scale. They focus on making the most of all data, using the power of search, AI, and analytics. Elastic offers out-of-the-box solutions for observability and security and a customizable search platform. Their mission is to help customers extract real-time insights from their data, enhancing operational efficiency and security.

Evolution of Search: From Keywords to Relevance

Traditional keyword search is no longer sufficient in today’s data-driven world. Laurent explains the shift towards semantic search, which connects context to provide more relevant and accurate results. This evolution emphasizes relevance over mere keyword matching, enabling users to get higher-quality answers to their queries. Elastic’s search technology leverages AI to enhance this relevance, making it a powerful tool for businesses.

Recognized Excellence: Awards and Partnerships

Elastic’s success is highlighted by its recognition as a partner of the year by all three hyperscalers: Microsoft, Google, and AWS. This distinction underscores Elastic’s integrations’ quality and ability to create unique, market-leading solutions. Laurent attributes their success to three key factors: building strong integrations, effective go-to-market strategies, and robust customer engagement.

The Power of Data: Driving Business Transformation

Data is at the heart of modern business transformation. Laurent shares insights on how data drives customer experiences, operational resilience, and security. With the exponential growth of data, businesses need advanced tools to make sense of it. Elastic’s platform, combining search and AI, is designed to extract valuable insights from vast amounts of data, helping businesses stay competitive and innovative.

Innovation at Elastic: Leading the AI Revolution

Elastic is at the forefront of integrating AI into its search capabilities. They were early adopters of machine learning and have seamlessly integrated large, publicly trained models with private enterprise data. This combination ensures that data remains secure while leveraging the power of AI to provide insightful results. Laurent highlights Elastic’s continuous innovation, including new technologies like the Elasticsearch relevance engine and AI-powered search assistance.

Marketplace Strategy: Meeting Customers Where They Are

Elastic’s marketplace-first initiative has significantly boosted its cloud business. They have seen tremendous growth by ensuring customers can buy, deploy, and manage Elastic solutions through cloud marketplaces. Laurent shares that in 2021, less than 10% of their cloud business was transacted via marketplaces. By the last quarter, this figure had jumped to 47%, showcasing their successful strategy in aligning with customer purchasing preferences.

Looking Ahead: Embracing Future Opportunities

As data continues to grow and AI technology advances, Elastic is poised to remain a leader in the cloud industry. Laurent’s insights into the evolving landscape highlight the importance of innovation, strategic partnerships, and a customer-centric approach. Elastic’s commitment to empowering organizations through data and AI will undoubtedly drive their continued success in the future.

Conclusion: Lessons from a Cloud Pioneer

Laurent Machan’s journey and Elastic’s achievements offer valuable lessons for any business aiming to excel in the cloud industry. Organizations can unlock new opportunities and drive significant growth by focusing on innovation, building strong partnerships, and leveraging data and AI. Stay tuned to The Ultimate Guide to Partnering for more insights from industry leaders shaping the future of technology.

Tune in to this episode to learn more about Laurent Mechain’s vision for Elastic and how the company is shaping the future of cloud technology and search.

https://youtu.be/rAatXdKpInM

LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP

What You’ll Learn

• The Power of Relevance in Search: Laurent shares insights on how Elastic is transforming search with AI and semantic technology.
• Building Strong Cloud Partnerships: Discussion on Elastic’s strategies for creating successful integrations and go-to-market initiatives with hyperscalers.
• Leveraging Data for Success: The importance of data in driving customer value and operational efficiency.
• The Value of Multidisciplinary Teams: Insights into how diverse roles within a team contribute to success in strategic alliances.

Quotes from Laurent

“Relevance in search is about connecting contexts to bring quality answers to complex queries.”

“Elastic’s mission is to enable real-time data insights, helping customers make the most of their data.”

“Success in the cloud marketplace is driven by strong integrations, collaborative go-to-market strategies, and effective sales execution.”

Transcript – Created by Adobe AI

00;00;00;00 – 00;00;31;29
Vince
Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Menzione your host, and my mission is to empower leaders like you to achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. At the ultimate Guide to partnering, we bring you the leaders driving this transformation the best in the business and the award winning partners. Today, I’m excited to spotlight one of the pinnacle partners in our industry and one of its leaders. Lauren Machan is the VP of Cloud at Elastic, an award winning partner on all three of the hyperscalers.

00;00;32;02 – 00;00;33;18
Vince
Lauren, welcome to the podcast.

00;00;33;25 – 00;00;35;12
Laurent
Thank you Vince. Very happy to be here.

00;00;35;13 – 00;00;39;28
Vince
So excited to have you in the studio here in Boca Raton. Yeah, all the way from Seattle.

00;00;39;28 – 00;00;45;06
Laurent
It’s lovely hot and warm in in Florida, back to Washington State. But it’s great to be here.

00;00;45;07 – 00;00;49;21
Vince
Well, we want to talk about the weather, but you do have great summer weather in Washington state.

00;00;49;22 – 00;00;52;09
Laurent
Yeah, from July 4th until Labor Day.

00;00;52;10 – 00;01;10;02
Vince
Yeah. July 5th. Every Wednesday after 4th of July gets the highs out. Well, you know, you and I got to know each other a little bit better this year. you participated with me. We had the privilege of having you join me in a cloud marketplace conversation at the Channel Partners event. That was back in March already? Can’t believe it.

00;01;10;02 – 00;01;31;27
Vince
Yeah. we were supported by, Google. Devo from Google. Ryan Walsh from, pax8. And yourself for this conversation, really, about helping organizations better understand marketplace moment and how they need to lean in. And these were organizations that are not really in the hyperscaler world or in the purview that we talk about, but just that really rich conversation that we had.

00;01;31;27 – 00;01;35;04
Vince
So I’m really glad that you and I get this time for this deep dive today.

00;01;35;06 – 00;01;36;14
Laurent
Thank you.

00;01;36;17 – 00;01;50;03
Vince
Your organization is, an incredible organization. We’ll talk more about your rise to success. But first, for our viewers and for our listeners, maybe a little bit more about you, your role and elastic.

00;01;50;06 – 00;02;09;09
Laurent
Yeah. So thank you. So thank you. I’m great to be here. I’m lovely to to spend a few minutes with you today. so my name is in French people. Amisha in English people say Laurent, we train. you pick the one you want. I’ve been, you know, I’ve been living in the US for almost 20 years now, so I know that my accent will never go away.

00;02;09;12 – 00;02;41;00
Laurent
but, you know, I worked I work in cloud companies for a very long time. I worked, spend almost 17 years at Microsoft. Got the chance to work at AWS. and joined elastic about four years ago today, what we call the strategic Alliances team, which includes, of course, the partnership with hyperscalers. elastic is you know, I try to keep it simple for as we get started, but what we do is we enable everyone to find the answers that they need with data at speed and at scale.

00;02;41;02 – 00;02;54;28
Laurent
So we able to enable customers to really make the most of all their data and sign real time answers to the questions using the power of search, AI and analytics. And I know we’re going to talk about more about this today and especially around AI.

00;02;55;00 – 00;03;02;01
Vince
And what is different about Elastic view on search and what you do and your customer persona than just general search as we know it today.

00;03;02;03 – 00;03;20;28
Laurent
Well, I think, you know, general search, what we used to know is around keyword search. Yeah. You know, you you go online, you say, okay, let’s search something. But cause, you know, a car or a, a device that you want to buy. And the search has been for long term, anchored around or on just keyword search.

00;03;20;28 – 00;03;21;15
Vince
Yes.

00;03;21;18 – 00;03;43;20
Laurent
But it’s not enough. I think today people want more. It’s not just about search is what I call relevance. Relevance. Today it’s more relevance than just search. and when you think about what relevance you think about what it semantic search, when you can start in connecting context, we will discover to bring much more, better response, to to a customer search.

00;03;43;22 – 00;03;56;02
Laurent
in a more complex way. Like you need to be able to search in your own language, you know, for English like I do. but you need to able to do this with something that brings more and more quality of answers to your your queries.

00;03;56;02 – 00;04;00;27
Vince
And what and what are the typical use cases and personas of people that use your platform?

00;04;00;29 – 00;04;26;08
Laurent
Well, we, we have two ways to use elastic today. the first one is we have what I call out of the box solutions that customers use every day. The first one is around elastic. It’s called elastic observability. So people use it for functional use cases like log analytics, like, application performance monitoring, like metrics. all of this is around the domain of observability.

00;04;26;08 – 00;04;32;19
Laurent
And that’s the first use case. But when customers choose to use elastic, that’s usually the one that we see the most adoption and.

00;04;32;21 – 00;04;35;01
Vince
The buying personas in the technology sector.

00;04;35;01 – 00;04;57;02
Laurent
Yeah. It’s yeah, it’s, you know, most of all users are all technologies developers, you know, DevOps, security operations. We are in this in this technical space, of a second out of the box solution that we have is around security. Okay. You know, what we call security information and event management Siem, you know, endpoint management of all the security data points that you can collect with.

00;04;57;06 – 00;05;32;26
Laurent
So we have two our out-of-the-box solutions which customers can bring the data into elastic. And the third component which is more AI, a platform. It’s search, and customers can use elastic to really build and custom vis such applications. And we have hundreds of customers that started with this. You know, this is what historical platform. You know, when we were born about 12 years ago, it’s, you know, to build a, you know, or a vendor, you know, couldn’t find an application to help you find a recipe on the internet and decided to write an application for this.

00;05;32;28 – 00;05;35;09
Laurent
And it’s because such was born.

00;05;35;12 – 00;05;45;01
Vince
So, you know, we talk about AI, the role of AI, the importance of AI, this AI moment. How is what you do differently, or are you embedding AI into this as well?

00;05;45;04 – 00;06;05;07
Laurent
Well, we we’ve been we because search and data is what we do. We’ve been it’s it’s been a very easy transition. Yeah. And we were able to react very quickly to what you know the with the transformative AI revolution that happened about what, 18 months ago. Right. you know, we we’ve been using machine learning, you know, technologies for a long time.

00;06;05;09 – 00;06;30;26
Laurent
But the core of a technology, what we call Elasticsearch, has been AI ready for a long time. But really, what we do today, you know, in the world of AI, is combining the large, publicly trained model with people. So now we run the, you know, Chronicle last week at Microsoft called the, you know, the, or domain specific language models with the data that customers bring into Elasticsearch.

00;06;30;26 – 00;06;45;11
Laurent
We don’t want this data to be in the public domain. So we we use via the power of elastic to combine enterprise data in a secure way with a power arms. And that’s something that we’ve been ready from, from for many years.

00;06;45;16 – 00;07;21;01
Vince
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00;07;21;01 – 00;07;43;16
Vince
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00;07;43;18 – 00;08;05;19
Vince
So you’ve been recognized by all three hyperscalers. I think this might be a distinction. I don’t know if any others have this distinction. As an as an ISV independent software vendor, but multiple times now you’ve been partner of the year, award winner, Microsoft partner, your award winner, Google’s partner, AWS, each of them multiple times. Now tell us a bit more about that success and what you believe it takes to be an award winning partner.

00;08;05;24 – 00;08;32;10
Laurent
Well, first of all, I it’s always an honor to be, to be recognized by by APIs kiddos. I know we it speaks volumes to the to the quality of engagement we have. but the way we, we look at it is across three dimensions. the first one is around what I call the build side is we want to build the best integration with first party services.

00;08;32;12 – 00;08;54;20
Laurent
We want to create integrations that are differentiated, unique, uniquely positioned to a market that creates via. So something but not every competitor as as with elastic between elastic and the cloud providers. I think we’ve done this extremely well with Microsoft over the years. We are natively integrated in the Azure console. and we are inspiring to do this.

00;08;54;20 – 00;09;23;16
Laurent
And we did that by using Google Cloud. the second level is really around the how we create this differentiation into better to give a story. so it’s the market side, you know, how we go to market with the APIs is, this is where you where we work with marketing teams, and the first dimension is with more with the product teams, and how we create this, the demand engine around, around this differentiation that developed in the first place.

00;09;23;18 – 00;09;40;04
Laurent
But at the end of the day, the rubber hits the road when we sell it together. and then we go together to our customers, and when we, we bring the value of elastic cloud running on, on any of these clouds, and turn this into growth engines for both, for all companies.

00;09;40;06 – 00;09;59;29
Vince
You know, we’ve been talking about two tectonic shifts, this one third of $1 trillion in durable cloud budgets. Now, it’s astounding. Right. And you and I were both at Microsoft at the same time. We were talking about the earlier about the bomber years in the South, in the Dell years and and the build years. what are you seeing now that’s different?

00;10;00;02 – 00;10;10;14
Vince
during this time in this marketplace opportunity, this huge untapped market. I know you’re on a tear. You just recently had an earnings report and it was very successful. So tell tell us more about what you’re seeing. What’s your view.

00;10;10;15 – 00;10;31;04
Laurent
Here? Well, I think you know, there’s something that’s driving all of this is data. I think customers what do you think about all the, just the problems that customers are trying to solve today? It’s all goes to data, you know, data for elevating customer experiences, data for improving operational resiliency. Yes. Data for, you know, mitigating security risk.

00;10;31;05 – 00;10;32;18
Vince
Just thinking about that. Right.

00;10;32;20 – 00;10;51;26
Laurent
So number one, yeah. You know, when you think about data, you know, I was reading something from IDC the other day. IDC predicts buy in by the end of 2025. Each day, 400 exabytes of data will be produced every day around the world. And I can’t even tell you guys how much data that is.

00;10;51;26 – 00;10;55;03
Vince
How often are we doubling now? Our data?

00;10;55;05 – 00;10;56;03
Laurent
I don’t know, but it.

00;10;56;03 – 00;10;58;07
Vince
Used to take years. Yeah, I used to take yours.

00;10;58;07 – 00;11;24;15
Laurent
Yeah. Yeah. So? So you can’t make sense of this data. We’ve just what you have today. And this is where generative AI and the AI comes into play. You can’t really extract the value and insights of this data without the help of AI and search. And this is where we are uniquely positioned. You know, I mean, you yesterday during the conference, you talked about 100 million, 300 million users of ChatGPT in less than two months.

00;11;24;17 – 00;11;42;27
Laurent
You know, we talked about the the hundreds of millions of jobs that are going to be disrupted by, I mean, and the hundreds of millions of new opportunities that’s going to seize market. And. Right, you know, all this technology shift that we’re going to see around productivity, automation, all of this creates a need, to for everybody to react.

00;11;42;27 – 00;12;11;14
Laurent
You know, we, I was blown away. but the amount of innovation I saw from Google Cloud at the next conference in April, and what Microsoft announced at build last week, and really, for, for partners, it’s really about, being being ready to adopt to, to embrace these challenges. They’ll be able to, to transform, quickly, and for elastic, you know, it comes around a few things is innovation.

00;12;11;14 – 00;12;33;17
Laurent
First, you know, we are a product company or a technology company. so we focus on innovation, you know, we we launch, we announce or first integrations or engineer. You know, in April last year, I, during Microsoft Build, in 2023, we were to announce some integrations with Azure, OpenAI, and since then, it’s been a, you know, incredible focus for the company.

00;12;33;19 – 00;12;59;14
Laurent
You know, in the in the past 12 months, we announced new technologies like which we got something of Elasticsearch relevance engine. You know, I was talking about combining the power of publicly trained data with private data versus whatever, you know, customers to do this. We don’t run assistance. So now for observability and security or two out of a box solution, customers can use AI assistance to accelerate the resolution of their, you know, other voice search with elastic.

00;12;59;17 – 00;13;15;24
Laurent
we, it’s just it doesn’t stop. we announced new query languages called elastic, Query Language SDK. to really, accelerate the, finding and creating data. You know, we’ve all of the volume of data we have.

00;13;15;24 – 00;13;19;22
Vince
Is that for it? Would you embed that in your code as an example? Would you use that query?

00;13;19;27 – 00;13;38;12
Laurent
Yeah, yeah. Just of customers can use it. And this is something that we asked for years to in order for us to recreate the data in a faster way. And but for us also, it’s not just about the, you know, how we address these challenges. It’s not just about the product side. No. We’ve talked about marketplaces before and those success with marketplaces.

00;13;38;12 – 00;14;03;04
Laurent
And, you know, we, we created this marketplace first initiative at Elastic a few years ago. And it’s a company wide effort, you know, from from product to finance to sales to multi partner and marketing, because we wanted to make sure that we could meet customers where they want to buy, deploy and manage elastic. we, you know, just to give you, some, some figures that led to some of your worlds.

00;14;03;04 – 00;14;17;16
Laurent
We just talked about, you know, in, in 2021, less than 10% of all cloud business, Elastic Cloud was transacted via cloud marketplaces in the last quarter, which we, we reported yesterday, during earnings, we were at 47%.

00;14;17;17 – 00;14;24;16
Vince
47%. So you’re in the top, top of the tier there really, because we’re talking about organizations getting into past that 20% threshold.

00;14;24;23 – 00;14;29;27
Laurent
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we got there by, you know, by thinking about a very simple winning formula.

00;14;30;00 – 00;14;30;23
Vince
And what is it?

00;14;30;26 – 00;14;52;06
Laurent
Well, we want, you know, we want us to sell all cloud offerings. I think this is where customers get the most value for investments into elastic. that’s for elastic sellers. for hyperscalers sellers, it’s sort of bots, you know, so selling cloud and selling cloud commitments to their own customers and we know what the total backlog, what we call, you know, total spend commitments from hyperscalers.

00;14;52;06 – 00;14;57;22
Laurent
No friend with $40 billion. and I think it’s it grew almost 50% since last year.

00;14;57;22 – 00;15;00;06
Vince
Yes.

00;15;00;08 – 00;15;23;24
Laurent
so when you, when you sell cloud, and it retires commitment. What is the best place to to buy this for customers is via marketplaces. Because marketplaces bring some benefits about burning down these commitments. Yeah. So it’s a winning formula for customers because we have retail. You have a commitment to burn it down. It’s for hyperscalers because it drive consumption and for elastic because we sell cloud offering.

00;15;23;26 – 00;15;28;16
Vince
And how do you drive more consumption of the cloud. Because because of all the data that’s involved in it. Yeah.

00;15;28;16 – 00;15;48;05
Laurent
Yeah. For us it’s a very simple model for customers. They pay we don’t service solutions one by one. You know customers invest in elastic. We paid on resources and and and and storage and data. So it’s more about the resources they need to run all their workloads more than you. The use cases that we that we deploy elastic for.

00;15;48;10 – 00;15;53;17
Vince
Yeah. And and you have the ability to just work on, on public data as well as their enterprise data.

00;15;53;17 – 00;16;12;24
Laurent
That is correct. So elastic you know we ingest of the data we bring into elastic which is the starting point can come from any sources. it can come from from on premise, which, you know, we were we’re not born on the cloud company. You know, when we’re born in 2012, we know a lot of the usage was on prem, and we still have a lot of customers using on prem.

00;16;12;24 – 00;16;31;20
Laurent
I think, you know, yesterday we we share that about 40 to 44% of revenue comes from cloud. So we almost had a 50% market. Yeah. but you know we see more and more cloud adoption as well. Interesting. Across all cloud. So customers can use elastic a single customers can have sources of data coming from on prem or any clouds of their choice.

00;16;31;22 – 00;16;52;27
Vince
So fantastic growth and trajectory of your organization. We have quite a few partners watching listening to this podcast. They want to learn how to get to your pinnacle level, like what advice to builders. And I refer to ISV sometimes as builders and other partners looking to accelerate their success during this incredibly transformative time. Yeah.

00;16;53;02 – 00;17;13;01
Laurent
You know, I yeah, I’m old, and sometimes I’m thinking about my maybe to learn new things is, is is is declining every year. but, I think, you know, AI and all this world transformation is going to require a lot of, a lot of reskilling. You know, I was blown away last week at Microsoft Build.

00;17;13;03 – 00;17;28;11
Laurent
I realized that I could become a developer again. You know, I was a software engineer. I went to when I graduated from school. I wasn’t very good at it. And then I realized suddenly they could write a ton of code by just, you know, speaking to a time machine. but I think there was getting it in mind is going to be, is very important.

00;17;28;11 – 00;17;52;29
Laurent
I think there’s a there’s a new partner ecosystem that’s really reforming around the AI. and the speed of transformation is, is crazy. so what does that mean is all the partners are going to reinvent themselves and and some of them already, others are not, but they’re going to reinvent themselves. All we can, you know, take, make, take benefit of all this technology that’s coming up.

00;17;53;02 – 00;18;11;16
Vince
It’s it’s fascinating time. It’s a fascinating journey that you’ve been on as well. I’d love to spend a moment. I love to have this question, discuss this question with each of my guests. as you might know, it’s a favorite question of mine. Let me do that again. I’m going to start from the beginning here, Mike.

00;18;11;18 – 00;18;28;17
Vince
So the right I’d love to pivot. I have a favorite question I’d love to ask each of my guests. you’re hosting a dinner party, and, you can host this dinner party in anywhere. Anywhere in the world. maybe Seattle in the summer. We could talk about other locations, maybe France. Yeah, south of France, but possibly.

00;18;28;23 – 00;18;29;17
Laurent
southwest of France.

00;18;29;17 – 00;18;38;24
Vince
Southwest of France. Even better. Yeah. and you can invite any three guests from the present or the past to this amazing dinner party. Whom would you invite and why?

00;18;38;27 – 00;18;53;14
Laurent
that’s a tough question, but I, you know, I if you look at me, you wouldn’t believe it, but I’m actually a sports geek. you know, I used to do lots of sports when I was young and, you know, favorite sport? favorite sports? since I moved to the US, it’s American football.

00;18;53;14 – 00;18;56;20
Vince
American football? Yeah, I bet you were going to tell me real football.

00;18;56;20 – 00;19;09;12
Laurent
No, no, I you know, I, you know, I use, I use me but soccer for a real football now. But, you know, I discovered that American football when I moved to the US and, you know, so I love sports. I’m a favorite team. Seattle Seahawks.

00;19;09;14 – 00;19;09;19
Vince
Go.

00;19;09;19 – 00;19;10;17
Laurent
Hawks.

00;19;10;19 – 00;19;16;01
Vince
you know, we’ve had Mike dovey on the podcast four times. It was the hype and, you know, Mike from your time. But I guess that’s right.

00;19;16;02 – 00;19;34;06
Laurent
Yeah. Yeah. So so I think it’s a it’s it’s a good question. I’m pretty going to stay in the domain of sports. if you don’t mind, I’m, you know, I, I think the first one that comes to mind is Muhammad Ali. You know, I think, you know, we, you know, legendary boxer, amazing career in boxing out.

00;19;34;08 – 00;19;55;05
Laurent
I remember at Microsoft, you were showing me the fight as we’ve against Joe Frazier in there in the free guy, you know, and know my you know, I think it’s that really doesn’t translate into was Ali kill him. but yeah, it was just a fantastic sports legend. But I think for me, what’s really important is all these guests that my dinner relate to my values.

00;19;55;08 – 00;20;09;21
Laurent
Yeah. I don’t want to think about Muhammad Ali. I think it was his site in during his life for justice and Equality. Yes. and this is something that not my admire for what he’s done for the African-American communities and and everything around.

00;20;09;24 – 00;20;24;00
Vince
And he fought hard over, you know, it was very unpopular war going on in the United States. A lot of young people were going over and fighting and Vietnam. Yeah. And he said, I’m not going to go. I mean, and that was, he was shot and he was shunned from his sport. His title was taken away.

00;20;24;01 – 00;20;32;23
Laurent
That’s right. It’s my fourth amazing story. So that’s my guess. Number one. Number two. And this one, you know, it’s Pete Carroll, you know. So Pete.

00;20;32;23 – 00;20;33;08
Vince
Carroll.

00;20;33;08 – 00;20;52;23
Laurent
Yeah. Some people is still with us. You know, he, he was the head coach of a Seattle Seahawks until, until last season. but I think what I like with it is not just, I mean, he brought, the first Super Bowl to Seattle. And of course, everybody was excited about this, but is mindset was always complete.

00;20;52;25 – 00;21;22;00
Laurent
Yeah. and he you wrote a book called Win Forever. and for me, this always compete is not about, you know, killing the competition. I mean, it matters when you’re a sports coach. Yes, but it’s more about the mindset you bring every day to what you do. and thinking about being always better, and always relentless about your pursuit for, you know, improving, you know, I, I have another expression for this, you know, always competition.

00;21;22;03 – 00;21;34;16
Laurent
it’s every day is an interview day. And people said, look at me and say, what do you mean? I love that? It’s it’s the mindset is about bringing your A-game every day, whether it’s about work every day, you know, you never know. You can get a phone call. You need to be on your A-game immediately.

00;21;34;16 – 00;21;35;05
Vince
Absolutely.

00;21;35;05 – 00;21;57;20
Laurent
So Peter is the second one, and the last one, I have to say, it’s something that happened just a few days ago, and, I don’t know if you know Bill Walton. Bill Walton. Oh, yes. Star. Yeah, yeah. and, you know, I, I, you know much about Bill Walton, you know, until, until recently. But my, I know someone you knew they were done extremely well.

00;21;57;23 – 00;22;24;12
Laurent
they, they work together. you know, Bill Walton was a superstar with the Portland Trail Blazers in, in, in Oregon. he brought an NBA title to the Blazers and, 1974, I believe. and but Bill, also an amazing career after basketball. And he became a sports commentator, and he became very, very famous for his t shirts.

00;22;24;15 – 00;22;43;08
Laurent
but also the way you approach, you know, life after basketball. And to me, what when I think about Bill, it’s about, you know, I, I read a lot about Bill since his passing last week, and I was really, really inspired by the way he thought about, you know, life and and fun, after basketball. Yeah.

00;22;43;08 – 00;22;44;23
Laurent
So that would be my three guests.

00;22;44;23 – 00;22;46;24
Vince
And he played for the UCLA Bruins.

00;22;46;24 – 00;22;47;14
Laurent
That’s right.

00;22;47;16 – 00;23;02;28
Vince
That’s one under John. I’m going to remember his name. Well, he played for the UCLA Bruins. Yeah. Which, what a fascinating career. Yeah. Yeah. So I love it. I can I can come along to this dinner party. Maybe I can bring dessert.

00;23;03;00 – 00;23;05;19
Laurent
Please. Please bring dessert or some French wine. You know, from.

00;23;05;19 – 00;23;06;06
Vince
The bring some from.

00;23;06;08 – 00;23;06;19
Laurent
The rich.

00;23;06;19 – 00;23;11;10
Vince
Yes. Okay. That sounds that sounds great to me. I and that is this. We’re going to be in the southwest.

00;23;11;10 – 00;23;15;28
Laurent
We’d be in the southwest. We’d have some very nice cabana meadow. yes. That’s where we’ll be.

00;23;15;28 – 00;23;28;17
Vince
And sounds fascinating. So, Laurent, I’ve so enjoyed having you as a guest here and ultimate guide to Bartering. I can’t believe we’re about to dive into the second half of the year. The first half of Microsoft’s new fiscal year.

00;23;28;17 – 00;23;29;13
Laurent
Yeah.

00;23;29;15 – 00;23;46;12
Vince

1. Wow. For our viewers and listeners watching today and those they all agree and aspire to be like elastic. What would you say to them now to lean in? What do they need to do to optimize their success? Working with the hyperscalers, working with the tech giant?

00;23;46;14 – 00;24;04;03
Laurent
I think there’s two things that we, you know, I think we have to focus on is generative AI. If you’re not working on this today, you know, customers are talking about this all the time. You know, we don’t really know what we want to do with it, but we’re asking for advice about what are the use cases that we can deploy for.

00;24;04;06 – 00;24;25;27
Laurent
So we can we can use Jennifer. So I think number one is genius. And at elastic is bright right. You know, Wisconsin’s innovation. we we we can we continue to make investments in to integrations with hyperscalers. We announced new more integrations with Microsoft last week at Microsoft Build. and we’re going to continue investing in that space.

00;24;25;27 – 00;24;45;14
Laurent
So I think for for partners is when you think about how do you create incremental value around AI and generative AI, that’s number one. But you can’t do all of this. And that’s probably the second priority you’re on without cloud. and I think that, you need to think about helping customers as they’re transition to cloud. Yes.

00;24;45;16 – 00;25;07;24
Laurent
and the value that you can bring along the way, you know, I think elastic we, we’re well positioned because we already in the cloud world, we have, you know, an elastic cloud offering that we as customers can use us in an hybrid environments. But we also launched some new offerings, and we’re about to we just launched a public preview of our serverless offering.

00;25;07;25 – 00;25;24;16
Laurent
That’s going to make it even easier for customers to deploy elastic. So if customers want to try elastic today, they can go to elastic that’s you. And sign up for public preview of Elastic Serverless. but I think for or for all partners is about, it’s about cloud adoption along the way.

00;25;24;18 – 00;25;32;06
Vince
And I’m reading, constant innovation. You’re in a constant innovation cycle at elastic. And so what I’m hearing loud and clear from this conversation.

00;25;32;10 – 00;25;33;20
Laurent
Yes. Absolutely. Yeah.

00;25;33;22 – 00;25;38;21
Vince
So iterate, continue to pivot. Continue to iterate release release release. Yeah.

00;25;38;23 – 00;25;51;19
Laurent
And we have a we have a platform for this. I think we’ve been building up this over the years. So I think we’ll transition was pretty easier than other partners. But that’s a new rule of the game. And it’s a fantastic and exciting, road ahead.

00;25;51;22 – 00;26;08;05
Vince
So we didn’t ask this question, but I’m going to ask it now. Like, what is the secret sauce to getting to this award winning partner? Like what was there? Was there a secret sauce in the in the mix or what? What was really what really did you do differently that others didn’t do?

00;26;08;07 – 00;26;28;06
Laurent
I think it’s, it’s it’s a, it’s a company wide effort. Yeah. You know, I always, you know, I always wait for the, the moment I’m going to get a slack message from we’ll see you and says, why did we miss this announcement from Microsoft, Google Cloud, AWS and it happened a few times. and I think this is with sprints.

00;26;28;07 – 00;26;53;14
Laurent
Let’s focus on building the best possible engagement with all the cloud providers. and it starts from the C-suite, from CEO, CPO, CFO, CSOs. Yeah. So all of these functions are critical for success. You know, as I said, we operate across three pillars of build, market and sell. Yep. but we also governance, you know, we understand the, the how much your success and how we’re going to measure it.

00;26;53;16 – 00;27;08;28
Laurent
we, we, and we inspect the qualities of success, and we course correct when we need it. and we have a full commitment from the entire company to, to this. And I think that’s not just partnerships today is people say, well, it’s the alliances team at elastic. It’s the Ontario.

00;27;08;28 – 00;27;12;28
Vince
Company, the entire company, I love it. It’s core to your mission.

00;27;13;01 – 00;27;14;22
Laurent
I’ll just percents you know the amount.

00;27;14;24 – 00;27;39;23
Vince
It has been a pleasure to have you as a guest and ultimate guide to partnering. And so glad to have you join us here in Boca Raton for our event, and also to stay an extra day for our spotlight session. I want to thank our listeners and viewers for supporting Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Benson, and as you know, my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results by having leaders like Lauren come to tell their story and how you can achieve your greatest results.

00;27;39;25 – 00;28;01;10
Vince
If you like the podcast, please subscribe and thank you again for your support, for listening, for watching The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering. Hopefully this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something.

00;28;01;13 – 00;28;30;28
Vince
Have you implemented everything you’ve been learning, and are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve? If not, it’s time to take action now. Join Ultimate Partner Experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about with you. You get access to exclusive industry insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources, and support from a community that shares your goals.

00;28;31;00 – 00;28;46;10
Vince
Join us now! Visit our website, the Ultimate partner.com and sign up today.

….

In the latest episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering, host Vince Menzione sits down with Nicole Dezen, General Manager of Global Channel Sales for IoT at Microsoft, to explore the transformative potential of IoT and how Azure IoT solutions are driving innovation across industries.