Ultimate Partner®

Master the new Microsoft Marketplace ecosystem. Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Discover the tectonic shifts happening within the Microsoft ecosystem as Cyril Belikoff and Jon Yoo dive deep into the unification of the Microsoft Marketplace and the explosive rise of AI-driven commerce. This comprehensive discussion explores how the marketplace is transitioning from an incubation island to the mainland of Microsoft’s go-to-market strategy, allowing partners to tap into massive Azure consumption commitments. Learn how product-led growth, AI agents, and optimized digital flows are replacing traditional sales motions, making cloud marketplaces the default engine for scaling revenue in 2026 and beyond. https://youtu.be/cAeSIEXbnNo Key Takeaways Microsoft unified its various marketplaces into a single digital flywheel for customers to discover, try, and buy applications. Applications, such as Copilot certified agents, are contextually surfaced directly within Microsoft products to meet users in their flow of work. Customers are making massive Azure commitments, and purchasing full software stacks through the marketplace retires those commitments entirely. Cloud marketplaces have evolved from a secondary channel into the default go-to-market engine with triple-digit revenue growth. Partners must shift from deal-led transactions to product-led growth by optimizing their digital marketplace listings for AI and search engines. The future of software procurement will increasingly involve AI agents acting on behalf of organizations to seamlessly integrate multiple smaller applications. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Microsoft Marketplace, Azure commitments, AI agents, Frontier transformation, M365 Copilot, Foundry, digital flywheel, co-selling, product-led growth, ecosystem shift, SaaS distribution, REO, resale enabled offer, listing optimization, search engine optimization, agentic commerce, cloud go-to-market, revenue recognition, multi-party private offers, Hyperscalers Transcript: Cyril Belikoff and Jon Yoo Audio Podcast [00:00:00] Cyril Belikoff: Why do you have to outsource this or create this vi? Just edit the video right there yourself. Like why do you have to just go do the, as a marketer you want to create a beautiful piece of content, just go and create it. ’cause it can create it for you. Now [00:00:13] Jon Yoo: you can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way Hyperscalers are partnering. [00:00:19] Jon Yoo: How AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:25] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Manzione, your host. [00:00:30] Jon Yoo: We just wrapped up two days in Bellevue with some of the sharpest partner leaders in the business, and what we heard wasn’t incremental, it was tectonic. In this series, we’re going deeper into these conversations, the insights, the frameworks, the real movement we’re seeing in this market right now, because being in the room changes everything and we’re bringing that room to you. [00:00:55] Vince Menzione: And I am thrilled actually for this next one. Uh, I’ve had this opportunity to spend a little bit of time with this gentleman before, and welcoming him back is a pleasure and an honor. Cyril Beov, the vice president. I’m gonna botch up your title ’cause I always say marketplaces, but it’s much more than that. [00:01:14] Vince Menzione: So come on up, zero. And we’re gonna have a conversation and Cyril is amongst other things at Microsoft. Good to see you, sir. Yeah, [00:01:24] Cyril Belikoff: you too, [00:01:25] Vince Menzione: uh, is responsible for the, the Microsoft marketplace. [00:01:29] Cyril Belikoff: Are these your notes here? [00:01:30] Vince Menzione: These are, um, what is that? Yeah, these is gonna be our, our questions, so we, yeah, I, I need help sometimes so prompting, but, uh, so great to have you. [00:01:38] Vince Menzione: So just for purposes of title and context, ’cause your role is much bigger than just marketplace. Yeah. And we’re, we’re gonna sit down and John, is this me? Yes. And then John’s gonna join us. [00:01:47] Cyril Belikoff: Okay. Great. [00:01:48] Joe, [00:01:48] Vince Menzione: well, we’re gonna get started and start having a conversation. And we’ve, we’ve done some of these things before. [00:01:53] Vince Menzione: I’ve, I’ve had, you had me on your stage Yes. In your event at Alyssa Taylor’s event. [00:01:57] Cyril Belikoff: Yes. [00:01:58] Vince Menzione: And then, uh, we’ve, we’ve done some nice things together on stage, both at, at our event in Redmond last year. Yes. Then at our big, uh, ignite breakfast back [00:02:07] Cyril Belikoff: and forth, we had Vince come to our wider org and sort of, uh, I got to do the reverse. [00:02:13] Cyril Belikoff: And so interview him in front of a bunch of, uh, 500 marketers on what do we have to think about for partners. And so he gave us sort of the what’s going on in the partner ecosystem, how to think about it as we think about it, our marketing. [00:02:26] Vince Menzione: And I tried to be candid and represent this group. [00:02:28] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, that’s great. [00:02:29] Yeah. [00:02:30] Vince Menzione: Was wonderful. Thank you for doing that. [00:02:31] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. [00:02:32] Vince Menzione: You, you work, you work in an amazing organization. Um, I’ve known Alyssa for many years as well, and you’re an incredible leader. And I just, I wanna frame this maybe with a conversation about, ’cause we’re gonna talk about what’s changed, but, but I think it’s still important for everybody in the room to understand what you did and what your team orchestrated around market. [00:02:52] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, [00:02:52] Vince Menzione: because it was fragmented, it was in different organizations, it felt very dis disorganized, I guess. Yeah. For lack of a better word. [00:02:59] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Thank you. Um, essentially we took it from incubation Island to the mainland Microsoft. I love it. Uh, GTM [00:03:07] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:03:07] Cyril Belikoff: Is the simplest way to think about it. Um, and, uh, come September last year now, uh, we unified the, the, the, the many marketplaces. [00:03:19] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, whether it was an Azure marketplace or AppSource and others, and we created the new Microsoft marketplace. Yeah. So one single place for customers to come, discover, try, buy, and for partners, software companies and other NSIs to put their wares up. And, uh, it was the first step in a vision for us to create this digital flywheel for us to bring our customers and our partners together in a more, you know, automated way. [00:03:47] Vince Menzione: Which it, it sounds crazy when you think about it, right? Microsoft has always been like the partnership leader, the leader in the technology, and to have fragmented marketplaces before, right? Yeah. And so what clarity to bring that all together. [00:04:00] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. It was a big, it was a big step for us and I think what we realized is that customers and partners were saying, Hey, uh, it’s all one place. [00:04:07] Cyril Belikoff: If I’m looking for a SaaS application or an agent or, and plug into teams or whatever it is. I just want to get it all in one spot. Uh, and, uh, and then we need you to connect us to your channel. [00:04:21] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:04:21] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, and your partners and, uh, can you build out, you know, partner capabilities for that Connects channel to software companies, to, to customers in a digital flywheel way. [00:04:30] Cyril Belikoff: Um, one of the things we actually also announced at that time was this concept of what we call. The marketplace framework. So it’s not just the fact that we have this digital experience or web experience, but that, um, applications that go into the marketplace, depending on the type of applications they get contextually surfaced within Microsoft products. [00:04:53] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:04:53] Cyril Belikoff: And so if you’re, [00:04:54] Vince Menzione: explain that for this Yeah. For me and for this crap. [00:04:57] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. So if you are a, um, if you’re a co-pilot certified agent. M 365 copilot agent, you’ll be in the marketplace, but you’ll also be automatically surfaced inside the M 365 copilot, um, product. [00:05:11] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:05:12] Cyril Belikoff: Same for, uh, large language models in foundry, add-ins in teams, those sort of things. [00:05:18] Cyril Belikoff: ’cause it’s one thing to be where people go to discover Tribu, but users also go into these stores, whether it’s a developer user or an end user. They go in the flow of their work and they want to move quickly. Yes. And so, uh, so they have access. We think that’s very attractive. And the feedback was, Hey, that’s quite differentiated. [00:05:35] Cyril Belikoff: ’cause we have, uh, hundreds of millions of customers in these products every day. [00:05:39] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:05:39] Cyril Belikoff: And so giving our customers access, our partners access to it and improving their customer experience, um, has worked out well. [00:05:47] Vince Menzione: And something else you did too, because at one point, you know, we were talking about co-selling and single-threaded. [00:05:53] Vince Menzione: And Microsoft has this incredible ecosystem and channel. [00:05:57] Cyril Belikoff: Yes. [00:05:58] Vince Menzione: And it, it was totally disconnected from the whole marketplace strategy, right? Yes. Yeah. [00:06:03] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. So we, uh, um, we launched, I think in, uh, sorry. At that time in September, we launched five of our largest distributors who were also federating the Microsoft marketplace into their marketplaces. [00:06:16] Cyril Belikoff: And then in the November timeframe at Microsoft Ignite, we launched resale enabled offer [00:06:23] Vince Menzione: RO, [00:06:23] Cyril Belikoff: which is REO, which is a new capability that is proven extremely popular, that connects the software company and the reseller, you know, um, to go and do more deals at scale faster. So [00:06:36] Vince Menzione: we have, we have four of the Es in the room, [00:06:38] Cyril Belikoff: right? [00:06:38] Vince Menzione: Some of the four at the top. Five or six. And then also one of your largest resellers software, one is here as well. [00:06:45] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Great. [00:06:46] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:47] Cyril Belikoff: Great. So it’s, uh, we’ve been busy. [00:06:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:49] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Like I said, um, uh, much more work to do. But we are moving from like this incubation project to mainland get it integrated into our core customer, go to market, uh, so that our, uh, software companies and partners have access to those customers. [00:07:03] Cyril Belikoff: And then integration, uh, with the channel. So [00:07:06] Vince Menzione: it’s been a lot happening these last 12 months. Uh. Then Frontier, let’s talk about Frontier. That’s another piece of this. [00:07:14] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. I’m sure Steven touched on, uh, frontier Transformational or becoming Frontier or Frontier Firm. So probably not helpful to me rehash that. [00:07:23] Cyril Belikoff: I think in general. If you go to a Microsoft discussion or session and you don’t hear about frontier or Frontier transformation, please like, raise your hand and give feedback because that is, um, [00:07:34] Vince Menzione: I kept away from the word frontier with Steve. We were talking about it, but we weren’t using the term frontier. [00:07:38] Vince Menzione: Yeah. ’cause I feel like it gets overused. It’s, [00:07:40] Cyril Belikoff: yeah, it does. It’s, it’s sort of, um, what we try to do with it is articulate it in a way that it’s not just about AI for AI’s sake. [00:07:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:07:48] Cyril Belikoff: But it’s AI based on what the customer outcome is trying to, what the customer is trying to achieve on their outcome. Um, and so as part of that, of course, you know, agents, AI applications is a big part of what’s driving customers’ capability of, uh, to become frontier. [00:08:05] Cyril Belikoff: And, uh, the marketplace is part of that. ’cause they can either custom build that. Uh, or they can, you know, buy off the shelf, right? Uh, or, and actually in Combin they do mostly they do both, right? And so, um, in order to accelerate their ability to become more frontier, we have these, uh, partners that build, uh, third party solutions through a marketplace. [00:08:27] Cyril Belikoff: And then, uh, uh, those same partners or others that build bespoke solutions around that. So, um, a lot of momentum around, uh, AI apps and agencies, as you can imagine. Um, we have, I think, 5,000 plus AI apps and agents. [00:08:43] Vince Menzione: I was gonna ask you what you’re focused on now, but you, I think you’re tying into this now already. [00:08:47] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Um, so of course that’s important. [00:08:50] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:08:50] Cyril Belikoff: But really for us it’s about doubling down on driving customer, customer demand. How do we merchandise the right things that customers are looking for? How do we, uh, accelerate any of our flows? Like we will spend hours just looking at like the flow of one scenario. [00:09:07] Cyril Belikoff: Where is it getting stuck? How do we improve it? Um, and then how do we connect it to the channel? And, and what, what more things can we do like EO or multi-party private offers and the like, and we have. Probably an announcement a month in the next three or four months. [00:09:24] Vince Menzione: Oh, come on. Let’s, [00:09:24] Cyril Belikoff: that will, [00:09:25] Vince Menzione: I know, I know it’s early. [00:09:26] Vince Menzione: I know it’s early, but you, you’ve got some, I know you’ve got some things. Think [00:09:29] Cyril Belikoff: about the customer experience. Think about the channel integration and dream about [00:09:33] Vince Menzione: what maybe more of a global scale with some of the offerings, maybe, maybe. Um, so, you know, I, so I, the earnings, we talked about the earnings with Steven, but I thought that there was a very compelling number around the commitment number. [00:09:46] Vince Menzione: Yes. You and you run your Azure as part of your remit. We didn’t go through your entire remit. [00:09:50] Cyril Belikoff: Yep. [00:09:51] Vince Menzione: It’s not just marketplace. You also, you also own the Azure number. [00:09:53] Cyril Belikoff: Yep. [00:09:54] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about that. [00:09:55] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Um. You know, it’s, it’s exciting times for customers. They want to do things not only with us, but with everyone in the room. [00:10:04] Cyril Belikoff: Um, and they are making very large commitments, huge commitments over the next two to three years to spend on Azure. Um, and so it’s now our joint jobs to go and help them identify the right business outcome and go and, you know, consume that commitment. It is just a commitment. It’s not actual. Consumption. [00:10:27] Cyril Belikoff: Yes. And so it’s all of our jobs to take advantage of that. The, the customers are saying, Hey, we have line of sight to the types of things we want to go do over the next two to three years. Uh, probably not everything is, you know, i’s dotted and t’s across, but they have line of sight to most of it. Um, and how do we go help them drive that? [00:10:46] Cyril Belikoff: Um, and so from an Azure perspective, obviously that’s very encouraging for us. It, it allows us to. Invest in more data centers and more capacity that we are doing as fast as we can. Um, and then, um, and then of course on marketplace, the marketplace can retire. [00:11:04] Vince Menzione: That’s [00:11:04] Cyril Belikoff: that Azure commitment. That’s, [00:11:05] Vince Menzione: I wanted to make sure [00:11:06] Cyril Belikoff: people understand that the, in fact, not only the Azure component from the marketplace, but the full software stack from the partner, uh, the software company retires the Azure commitment. [00:11:17] Cyril Belikoff: So if it’s. Uh, I’ll make it up if it’s, uh, a hundred bucks and it’s 50 50, it’s not 50 50, but, um, I won’t disclose any percentages, but let’s say it’s 50 50, it’s much more for the software company, by the way. Um, if it’s 50 50, it’s not just like the $50 for Azure that gets retired. It’s the entire a hundred dollars that gets retired on the customer commitment, commitment, which is great for the software company. [00:11:39] Cyril Belikoff: It’s also great for the customer that they can, you know. Bring that through, uh, to, uh, to their Azure commitment. And we do the same thing with our sellers. So the marketplace sales retire our sellers compensation. So we’re like checking every box so that there’s no friction in the system. So that, so the partner, the customer, our sellers, they’re all juiced to go and. [00:12:03] Cyril Belikoff: Deals with marketplace. [00:12:04] Vince Menzione: I, I hope everybody un understand. I mean, I understand this. I hope everybody else understand this too. ’cause I, I was, watch, you know, I, I, I watched LinkedIn and I see people post things and somebody made a comment about how difficult it was to use Microsoft Portal. And I was thinking to myself, do you realize that there’s, I’ll say 150 billion, but it’s probably a bigger number than that. [00:12:22] Vince Menzione: That’s a total addressable market available to you if you’re a Microsoft partner. You can access these customer commitments. [00:12:30] Cyril Belikoff: Oh yes. [00:12:30] Vince Menzione: If you bring your product on Mark over 400 now [00:12:32] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. [00:12:33] Vince Menzione: You bring your product into the marketplace, you have access and the customer can retire that commitment. [00:12:38] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. [00:12:39] Vince Menzione: Without having to justify a new cost justification. [00:12:41] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. They don’t have to go to procurement. They don’t have to. Yeah. [00:12:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I mean, it’s a huge opportunity. [00:12:46] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. [00:12:46] Vince Menzione: So, um, so you’ve been focused on quite a bit. We wanted to invite John on stage. [00:12:53] Cyril Belikoff: Great. [00:12:53] Vince Menzione: John, you from Sugar is here. Where’s John? Is John in the house? Where’s John? [00:12:57] Cyril Belikoff: There he is. [00:12:58] Vince Menzione: Who’s also an expert in Marketplace. [00:13:00] Vince Menzione: A great friend of Ultimate Partner. Great. Hey, how’s it going? He’s a great partner of Ultimate Partner. Great to see you, sir. All the way from San Fran. Oh, actually we’re on your side of the coast, so, uh, it’s long. He looks [00:13:12] Jon Yoo: cooler than us [00:13:12] Vince Menzione: though. He, he always looks cool. I said that about time. [00:13:15] Jon Yoo: You know, I gotta be comfortable. [00:13:16] Jon Yoo: I gotta be comfortable. [00:13:18] Vince Menzione: So John, good to, good to have you. You’re thanks for having us. You guys are like, every time I see a post from you, you’re moving into a new office space ’cause you’ve outgrown your office space. [00:13:26] Jon Yoo: Yeah, we’re, we’re really excited about the new office. We have hvac, which is a, a big, big, uh, it’s a big thing. [00:13:31] Jon Yoo: Improvements, high ceilings, you know, the whole works h help [00:13:36] Cyril Belikoff: sometimes. Yeah, [00:13:37] Jon Yoo: yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we have our, uh, office opening party if anyone’s an SF on Ally first. [00:13:41] Vince Menzione: Nice. Nice. Yeah. May, may, May 21st. May 21st. That’s right. Well, so, so you’ve been, you’ve had like a front row seat to all of this. I would love to get your perspective on what you’re seeing across partners and what’s changed over the last 12 months. [00:13:55] Jon Yoo: Yeah, so, uh, for those that don’t know, um, sugar is a, uh, a revenue platform for cloud marketplaces and co-selling. Um, so we partner very closely with Microsoft as well as either hyperscalers and other marketplaces like Snowflake, Alibaba, et cetera. And what we, what, what I’m seeing is a couple things. One marketplace is becoming a default to go to market engine. [00:14:17] Jon Yoo: So, you know, I think a lot of people see the stats about how the, the GMV, so, you know, the, the throughput through these marketplaces have been doubling. We’re seeing that in our data as well. So we’re seeing triple digit revenue growth from marketplaces. We’re seeing companies who, you know, maybe the earlier end of marketplaces were infra platform layer of software that used to really adopt it. [00:14:37] Jon Yoo: Now you’re seeing. You know, explosion in a business application layer of companies as well. And so that’s super exciting. I’d say the second piece is channel players are getting more and more involved. Um, I think, you know, I’m the Silicon Valley SaaS bubble, uh, or the AI bubble, so to speak. And I didn’t know as much about the channel world and even these big AI companies. [00:14:59] Jon Yoo: I mean, you’re seeing unprecedented, unprecedented demand, uh, for these, you know, LMS or these AI biz apps. And despite that, they are really working with a partner ecosystem because you’re realizing that most of the world do not really know how to adopt ai. Yeah. And they’re really leaning on expertise. [00:15:18] Jon Yoo: And these AI companies, AI native companies, are looking to channel partners who have these. You know, relationships with their end buyers on how to deliver change managements, how to deliver enablement, not just a system integration site. [00:15:32] Vince Menzione: And they’re also looking to the platform or platforms in the case, Microsoft here also. [00:15:36] Vince Menzione: Right. Which, because like what, where am I gonna do just go out and buy philanthropic or Claude or whatever? I need that to be integrated into my enterprise as well. Right, exactly. [00:15:46] Jon Yoo: So we’re definitely seeing like more adoption of Microsoft Foundry, for example, as people think about security and governance and whatnot. [00:15:52] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Very cool. Any comments on, on? [00:15:55] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, that makes absolute sense. It’s, uh, um, you know, lots of layers to AI from data. The a, the AI layer itself, the application layer, uh, and innovations happening at all of those pieces of the stack. Um, and so when a software company is trying to, you know, uh, modernize their thought process or build new. [00:16:19] Cyril Belikoff: They ha they have to think about all of those components. Foundry obviously is the AI layer and it provides them with capability to be agile and move quickly and do compliance and, and snap into an organization’s, um, architecture. But it’s the same applies to data, like how it’s fine to have AI but doesn’t, doesn’t do anything without data. [00:16:40] Vince Menzione: Right. [00:16:40] Cyril Belikoff: And so then how do they get data in the cloud? Um, uh, [00:16:44] Vince Menzione: and then how do you security [00:16:45] Cyril Belikoff: govern and govern, right? And how you secure govern, you know, all those sort of things. So obviously we have first party experiences, but they have partners with, um, their own solutions. They’re built on top of, [00:16:53] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:16:53] Cyril Belikoff: Those Microsoft layers. And, uh, you know, like John says, lots of momentum. [00:16:58] Vince Menzione: So let’s talk about the maturity curve. Like walk us through it. Where do you see partners in this room sitting today? And what does it take to move for them to move to the next stage? Like, what would be your guidance for, for this group? [00:17:11] Jon Yoo: So, you know, we, we work across the entire spectrum of companies. You know, we work with the, the largest enterprises who’ve done billions through these marketplaces like Snowflake, workday, to leading AI companies like Glean or OpenAI, uh, to earlier stage startups who are completely new to marketplaces and really look for, for guidance around what do I do in my first 90 days? [00:17:33] Jon Yoo: How do I get the attention of Microsoft sellers, or how do I. Optimize my marketplace operations so that we can be discovered, uh, really easily on Microsoft Marketplace and others. And the, the way that I think about it is companies first come on, because it is buyer driven oftentimes. So, I mean, that’s just the truth of the nature of you have these big enterprises that want to, you know, burn down their Mac agreements, for example, and that’s how they get started. [00:17:59] Jon Yoo: And or a, a as like this whole space maturing, you’re seeing. A new CRO come in and they’ve done this at X, Y, Z companies and they want to bring that playbook over. But then as they start to do a couple deals through these marketplaces, they think, and this is start of the the flywheel, right? Hey, what do I need for co-selling? [00:18:19] Jon Yoo: And there are systems, you know, integrations and playbooks that need to be done well. Once you do have co-selling figured out, how do I now know which opportunities to co-sell? So we have things like intense signals to be able to. Help them, you know, help overlay a cloud, go to market lens over your existing pipeline. [00:18:36] Jon Yoo: And then now it becomes less of a partnership initiative and actually elevates up to the CRO initiative. And across each of those, um, layers, uh, you have different automation needs because once you actually start to get the flywheel going, it becomes. Holy crap. Now I’m doing 10, 20, 30, 50% of my revenue through these market, you know, through, through marketplace. [00:18:58] Jon Yoo: And it’s creating different data pipelines of work to be done. And now I have to figure out my finance angle of how do I do revenue recognition through these indirect channels. And so that, that, that is kind of the maturity covers. I think about it when you try to retrofit like, uh, all the automation up front, it doesn’t go as well. [00:19:16] Jon Yoo: You have to do a crawl, walk, run approach so that you can also build and bring the rest of the organization with you. So if I look at ’em to the, you know, there’s some familiar faces, some folks that probably are wondering some new faces [00:19:28] Vince Menzione: as well. [00:19:29] Jon Yoo: Yeah. What, what Microsoft marketplace or what marketplace even is. [00:19:33] Jon Yoo: I’d probably say people are in that transformation bucket of, Hey, I’ve done a couple of deals, we’re in this early stages of co-selling. Now I, now I gotta figure out how to supercharge it because this is kind of the future, you know, we can talk more about agenta commerce and whatnot, but, um, I think a lot of people are figuring it out than looking for. [00:19:51] Jon Yoo: For guidance here, [00:19:53] Vince Menzione: zero. [00:19:55] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. You know, I would say, um, I’ll get what I call tactical yet strategic. [00:20:01] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:20:01] Cyril Belikoff: Which just think about product-led growth. Yeah. Just think about, uh, similar to the consumer world, if you wanna sell something, you need search engine optimization. If you are thinking about these marketplaces and Microsoft marketplace being one, how are you optimizing your listing so that when a user goes into like the search bar, it’s optimized to bring back the results that make sense to you? [00:20:29] Cyril Belikoff: I think historically we’ve had scenarios where some partners have used the marketplace primarily as like a transaction thing. They’ve done the deal, but then they’re transacted on the marketplace ’cause they wanna retire the the Azure commitment. And that is changing to be sort of product led and marketplace led, uh, versus deal led. [00:20:49] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, but you cannot have a generic one line sentence in your listing. You will not be surfaced unless the customer literally knows your name and will search for you. You’ll not be surfaced if they search for a particular category healthcare app that does something right. And if that’s your thing, you should have the right keywords, you have the right images, have the right videos, and we believed in it so much. [00:21:14] Cyril Belikoff: We actually built a listing optimization AI tool that will auto look at your listing. And based on our best practices, and we know what our search engine is doing, we will make recommendations to you on how to improve. Listing. And so it’s not like a read a document as a best practice. It actually will be an ai, uh, customized tool for your particular listing. [00:21:37] Cyril Belikoff: So lean into those types of things, you know, to, as John says, says, think about the digital flow. This over time will become much more of your, of your business. So make sure you’re thinking about, you know, if someone’s on the marketplace and they decide to trial something for you, how, how are you following up? [00:21:56] Cyril Belikoff: Like, how do you take the next steps? Um, maybe you, maybe you working with a reseller and you don’t have your own sellers, but how do you wiring that into your resellers so your resellers are following up? Or if you have your own sellers, you know, your own sellers are doing it. So you have to sort of digitize your thinking on sales and marketing in this new market, commercial marketplace world, versus in the same way we would’ve done in like the consumer marketplace on Amazon or, you know, um, as you search something on Google. [00:22:26] Cyril Belikoff: Maybe bing. Um, so, um, yeah, yeah. This [00:22:29] Vince Menzione: size. B Come on, come on. [00:22:31] Cyril Belikoff: I [00:22:31] Vince Menzione: had bing. [00:22:32] Cyril Belikoff: Um, [00:22:33] Jon Yoo: I do wanna double click on that, which is when, when we, you know, I talk about like, hey, a lot of it’s buyer driven. A lot of people think about private offers, but then the marketplace offers. But the reality actually, when we look at the data is that there’s a lot more self-service [00:22:46] Vince Menzione: correct [00:22:47] Jon Yoo: offers than there are what they call private offers. [00:22:50] Jon Yoo: So where there’s deal led and that, that, that, that shift. It’s super exciting to see where now these marketplaces are becoming where buyers or users go to discover new products. Let alone, you know, in the future where let’s say there’s an AI agent that has some reward seeking function, and in order to do its job, it needs to go purchase a tool marketplace might be the channel where this happens, which is all the reason why that your listing does need to be optimized. [00:23:16] Jon Yoo: So that one, the agent knows exactly what your tool does and it can match against. Reward. And then second, you have to win the a EO race, right? Yeah. Of, of how you show up in these AI engines. So just wanted to double click on how important that is. Yeah. [00:23:31] Cyril Belikoff: Makes, makes total sense. And we’re, we’re seeing that shift from private office to having a public listed price and a, a public offer as well. [00:23:39] Cyril Belikoff: And so we’re, we’re ourselves investing in our own marketing demand generation. Just in the last three to four months because we’ve seen that taking off and as soon as we saw the signal, we’re like, oh, we should pour fuel on that fire. Because if, if we see organically customers don’t do it, we should, you know, we should go after that and help them understand that we’re here. [00:23:58] Cyril Belikoff: And, uh, if it’s working for some that are doing it by themselves, it’ll work for others and we’re seeing really, really good results. Um, so yeah, get your listing optimized. Think about your digital flows. As John says, the flows of the future are probably agentic wise, maybe not even a human coming to the Microsoft marketplace. [00:24:17] Cyril Belikoff: So you gotta be thinking, not now, it’s okay. You have time. Um, but in the future, you know, six months from now, that quite easily is a scenario. So you really have to start thinking about those, uh, those, uh, digital flows. [00:24:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah. It’s so insightful. Well, it’s what you call product led growth, basically. Yes. And agent led growth. [00:24:35] Vince Menzione: Yes. Right. In some respects. So this is where like we need to think about that. The future model where the agent comes in and actually does the purchasing. We’re not there yet, are we? [00:24:45] Jon Yoo: No. With some products, you know, um, especially, especially if it’s like developer tools. We’re starting to see some of that, but, uh, no one’s gonna buy a cybersecurity solution. [00:24:55] Jon Yoo: Um, that’s seven figures or an agent’s not gonna do that. Right. But the eng the, the search functions are a little bit changing. [00:25:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So a lot of ai, you know, we had Steven Boyle on earlier, we were talking about ai, AI natives, you know, that’s Jason Grey’s organization does a lot of work in that area. How do these organizations need to think and act and how do they leverage the cloud marketplaces? [00:25:17] Vince Menzione: Or how do le how do marketplaces fit into the equation? ’cause most of them are coming from a different like paradigm or mindset. [00:25:24] Jon Yoo: I mean, uh, it’s like the number one question, you know, I’ll give a little personal story of like, I get a lot of parking tickets, uh, and I don’t know how to pay off my late fees. [00:25:34] Jon Yoo: So we set up a little open claw that will actually go and ask me questions, and it actually pays off my parking tickets on my behalf. Um, so, so, so, you know, on the other hand, like there, there’s layers to it, right? It could be like layer one, I ask ai, Hey, how do I pay off my parking tickets? Layer two could be. [00:25:52] Jon Yoo: Hey, you know, what’s the best way for me to structure my cadence to pay off the parking tickets? And then layer three is like, Hey, AI, proactively check if I have parking tickets and go pay it on my behalf. Here’s my credit card information, you know, stored in a secure vault. So, uh, what, what I mean by a native as a company bring that analogy is, uh, bringing it at its core. [00:26:12] Jon Yoo: So like a little for, for sugar. We’ve spent the past six months optimizing around our entire, like company brain where we are storing all the context. To a singular, singular place that is queryable, that there’s no coordination tax between teams. Our entire product development process actually is automated where we have multiple agents debating one another, PRDs to code generation, code review, uh, you know, security, qa, et cetera, et cetera. [00:26:40] Jon Yoo: And then there’s humans in the loop across the process. So I would actually think about when we, when we fit that into, into marketplaces, it’s not just thinking about who’s going to send the offers or who’s gonna do the co-sell, or who’s gonna X, Y, Z, but how do you bring all that together so that your sales reps and your partnership person and Microsoft all has to share context in a given deal and it’s done automatically without, you know, back office folks having to update what partner led or partner influence means and reporting things in a, in an old way. [00:27:11] Jon Yoo: So it’s almost re-imagining. Entire workflow, given everyone should have open context of what’s going on in a given deal. So let’s say maybe a hand wavy way of answering that question. Yeah. But it does mean that we should be re-imagining, uh, what the job to be done is, uh, very fundamentally [00:27:28] Vince Menzione: cy, how are you thinking about it since you’re building the, the, the toolkit at Microsoft? [00:27:32] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Um, yeah. Well, John says absolutely is right, particularly around marketplace and how that sort of flow and ecosystem will work. Um, in addition to that, it’s. Not only about how marketplace or about developers ’cause the developer, uh, scenario or persona was the first globally to see the value of AI and agents in the flow of their work. [00:27:55] Cyril Belikoff: It was the first to like, oh, one developer can now do much more. I can be empowered, I can build agents to work on my behalf. I can, uh, I can be an architect instead of a hands-on coder. Right. It’s changed the profile of what developers do exactly what. Uh, John mentioned what he’s doing himself. That’s just one profile of a user. [00:28:17] Cyril Belikoff: Th there are many other profiles. A sales person, a marketer, a uh, CFO team, hr. Each of these are literally going through the same transformation. They’re one beat behind developers because developers, you know, was really tech enabled and tech stack driven, and the, and the opportunity was, was obvious quite quickly. [00:28:39] Cyril Belikoff: These are coming really quickly. This is not like the internet adoption cycle that took many multiple years. This is like, we’re talking months. So, and even inside Microsoft, we have our own, what we call, uh, frontier Marketing Internal Initiative to re, um, rewire marketers and how they go about their daily job and stop doing it this way and do it this way. [00:29:04] Cyril Belikoff: Just pick up M 365 copilot with. Coworking Claude, uh, embedded and just go do the work. Why do you have to outsource this or create this? Just edit the video right there yourself. Like, why do you have to just go do the, as a marketer you want to create a beautiful piece of content, just go and create it. [00:29:21] Cyril Belikoff: ’cause it can create it for you now. [00:29:22] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:29:23] Cyril Belikoff: three months ago, literally three months ago, it couldn’t do that. And so what is it gonna be in two months for a marketer or a salesperson or finance person? I mean, just co-pilot in Excel. What that is doing to the financial business is in, like if you, any financial person will tell you they live and breathe through in Excel, like it’s just, it’s their equivalent of, it runs [00:29:44] Vince Menzione: most businesses [00:29:44] Cyril Belikoff: their dev tool, right? [00:29:45] Cyril Belikoff: It’s their thing. It’s really [00:29:46] Vince Menzione: is. [00:29:47] Cyril Belikoff: So this is happening over and over again. Again, if you can package those things up and package a package, that piece of IP on a marketplace is, is not only gonna be a big system, it could be a very, very small piece of. Functionality in a flow for a marketer or a salesperson that is so valuable that can be solved many times on a marketplace. [00:30:08] Cyril Belikoff: And in many cases, everyone’s a software company at this point. Everybody can go and package something up. And so I would be stunned if we don’t see cross pollination from system integrators to channel partners, all just publishing on marketplaces based on, oh, I’ve done this thing four times. I cannot do it 400 times. [00:30:26] Cyril Belikoff: Let me just package it up and put it on a marketplace. So. Yeah, I’m sure you know, John alluded to that. It’s, there’s a lot of exciting times. [00:30:33] Vince Menzione: No, the future [00:30:33] Jon Yoo: is [00:30:33] Vince Menzione: great. What do you [00:30:34] Jon Yoo: totally, I mean, it’s, it’s a case of like, how do, what does being marketplace native also mean? [00:30:38] Cyril Belikoff: Yes. [00:30:38] Jon Yoo: You know, and not, I feel like I’ve seen so many people just use it as a, Hey, we’re opportunistically there and if we get some leads out of it, great. [00:30:45] Jon Yoo: Or if there’s some deals, great, but they’re not really leaning in and being marketplace native the way, you know, and right now there’s, this might be uncomfortable, but there’s no excuses. You know, like creating a partner marketing content with your brand guidelines. It should not take so many time. Or it’s a 10 minute exercise. [00:31:02] Jon Yoo: Exactly. Exactly. Three [00:31:03] Cyril Belikoff: prompts. [00:31:05] Vince Menzione: It used to be that ops used to get involved because, oh, we, we know that they have a commitment. Let’s go run it through the marketplace. Right now, what you both have been suggesting here is it becomes a discoverable process. It becomes part of your normal go to market strategy, and you’re, you’re driving pr, product led growth and SEO and all the things you need to do running a a corporation and modern corporation today. [00:31:26] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, [00:31:26] Vince Menzione: exactly. So, what’s the future like? Where, where do we go in 12 months with this? What do you think? What do you predict? We, we get out a Ouija board or a crystal ball here. What, what, what do we think? [00:31:38] Cyril Belikoff: I think more broadly in the industry, you’re gonna, some of the scenarios that John alluded to, agent to agent interactions, uh, many agents acting on behalf of humans and on behalf of organizations, uh, and doing. [00:31:55] Cyril Belikoff: Simple things and quite complex things. Uh, and those need to be, uh, managed carefully, uh, with, uh, the right, uh, engagements and built carefully. And in, in many cases, customers will look to partners that are quote unquote certified on, uh, uh, HyperCloud platform. Uh, as a way to get going quickly, but also get the, the quality that they need. [00:32:21] Cyril Belikoff: Um, and I think instead of buying this monolithic, massive application, I think we will see lots more of smaller applications being built that have cleaner open, uh, you know, MC, you know, MCP type agent interfaces that can just work together, uh, without, you know. More complicated integration work, [00:32:42] Vince Menzione: cobbled together your own solutions as opposed to big [00:32:45] Cyril Belikoff: monolithic [00:32:45] Vince Menzione: applications. [00:32:46] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, there’ll be a much more agile, [00:32:48] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:32:48] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, personalization. I mean, a lot of people saying SaaS is dead. It’s not quite dead. But I think that SaaS will get significantly more agile, more custom and more personal, uh, for, uh, for customers. [00:33:03] Jon Yoo: I, I would agree with that. Um, I mean, I’m biased, but I think marketplace are gonna be even more relevant than ever. [00:33:08] Jon Yoo: I mean, it’s already highly relevant, but, uh, as you, you know, I think in the past the, the narrative was, well, there’s a new generation of buyers and they’re millennials. They, they wanted, you know, uh, I always talk about consumer experience to B2B sales, you know, and, and now it’s like agents that’s that on steroids. [00:33:24] Jon Yoo: Um, but what I, you know, beyond that, I think, uh, there, there’s a lot of talk of like SAS apocalypse or software companies getting. Destroyed by, you know, the, the, the AI labs or SaaS is dead or whatever. I think SaaS is gonna, I mean, there’s gonna be way more software companies because the cost to build is a lot easier. [00:33:46] Jon Yoo: That means that competition will be. Even more fierce than ever. And you have all these AI native companies that are coming out with a quicker time to market, quicker time to value, and they have some recursive loops that makes the product even that much better. Um, so what that means for everyone is like, one, you gotta go back to the, the core differentiations. [00:34:06] Jon Yoo: Or like in the past, maybe the, the time to build was the differentiation, but today it’s, or you know, there’s some other, obviously the core elements, but then there’s. Distribution. Yeah. So how do you partner with Microsoft, for example? How do you have your own self-improving like distribution model? That makes sense. [00:34:22] Jon Yoo: Marketplace being a huge component of that. Two is obviously there, there’s a piece of like network and data. That’s what we think about of hey, what makes our product better as more, more people use it. Um, because yeah, competition is crazy fierce and it finally goes into times deployment. That’s why you see these companies like. [00:34:41] Jon Yoo: Open AI anthropic that are competing for their enterprise, uh, pie. And instead of doing it themselves, they’re, I mean, I think OpenAI just did a joint venture of like $4.1 billion into the deployment company. Anthropics doing the same, they’re surrounding themselves with the ecosystem and channel is going to be more relevant than than ever, as long as you know how to enable AI services and know how to deliver on this technology to the, to the broader world. [00:35:07] Jon Yoo: And so. Channel awesome. Marketplace, awesome. You know, competition’s gonna be fierce. Success is not going anywhere. [00:35:16] Vince Menzione: Good conversation, gentlemen. [00:35:18] Jon Yoo: Awesome. [00:35:18] Vince Menzione: I’ve been told we’re over time. I wanted to open it up to questions. Um, but I do feel like we, yeah, I’ll get, I’ll get yelled at. But this was incredible. Um, some great, I mean, the, the pa it, it’s terrific to see. [00:35:36] Vince Menzione: How far we’ve come in, so shorter period of time, and it’s only gonna continue to get better. I think the one question I’ll have is like, what, what would hold any of these companies back at this point? It feels like it’s such a compelling reason we need to move forward. Is there, is there anything, like why would, why would we hold back? [00:35:54] Cyril Belikoff: Um, you know, some of the discussions we have, um, is about how to balance today’s world with tomorrow’s world a little bit. [00:36:01] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:36:02] Cyril Belikoff: Today’s business model with tomorrow’s business model, today’s financial results with tomorrow’s financial results. Um, and there are very different approaches to all of this. [00:36:13] Cyril Belikoff: Those AI natives, they’re like, there is no yesterday. There’s only tomorrow. Um, there those companies that realize they’re being threatened by AI natives and so they have to move quickly. Um, and, uh. Figure out a, a, a business model and then someone else who wants to do a bit of both and bridge into it. [00:36:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:36:32] Cyril Belikoff: Um, and just within that frame there are different ways to tackle it, whether it’s create two teams, one’s the future team, one’s the current team, and, you know, may the best team win, um, makes sense with the customer and that, uh, or, uh, give the, give the customer the choice and have the teams going together. [00:36:49] Cyril Belikoff: So there are lots of different approaches. [00:36:51] Vince Menzione: Right. So great to have you. Did you have some, did you have a comment to make on that? [00:36:55] Jon Yoo: Uh, no. Just, uh, unwillingness to lean in and learn something new. Yeah. [00:36:59] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:37:00] Jon Yoo: I’m, I’m, I’m much more in the burn all boats buckets. Yeah, [00:37:03] Vince Menzione: I know. Me too. [00:37:03] Jon Yoo: Of, uh, no, no old team and new team. [00:37:05] Jon Yoo: Just new team and you know, that’s just push forward. [00:37:07] Vince Menzione: Well, great to have two amazing leaders on stage with [00:37:10] Cyril Belikoff: us. Thanks [00:37:10] Vince Menzione: so [00:37:10] Cyril Belikoff: much. [00:37:10] Vince Menzione: So thank you [00:37:11] Jon Yoo: so much. Yeah, thank [00:37:11] Vince Menzione: you [00:37:15] Jon Yoo: so much. [00:37:16] Vince Menzione: Don’t forget. Ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, October 26th through October 28th in Reston, Virginia. I hope to see you there. [00:37:28] I.

The 7 Principles of Successful Partnering in the Age of AI Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this engaging session, Vince Menzione reflects on his extensive career transitioning from direct enterprise sales to building massive channel ecosystems, while unveiling the seven core operating principles essential for modern partnering. Highlighting tectonic industry shifts—from the PC and Cloud eras to the current AI revolution—Vince explains how traditional playbooks are becoming obsolete and why adopting a growth mindset, modeled by leaders like Satya Nadella, is critical for survival. He delves into the rising importance of hyperscaler marketplaces and co-selling, urging leaders to cultivate adaptability (AQ), emotional intelligence (EQ), and mutual trust to thrive in this rapidly changing tech landscape. https://youtu.be/5n8dqiamnmE Key Takeaways Traditional industry playbooks are outdated almost immediately due to the rapid acceleration of AI and market changes. Implementing a “growth mindset” is a foundational operating principle that can transform corporate culture and drive massive valuation increases. Executive commitment and clarity of vision are mandatory for aligning an entire organization around successful partnering. Building a strong brand story and maintaining a maniacal focus on OKRs turns strategic vision into executed results. The technology landscape has experienced massive tectonic shifts from the PC era to the Cloud, Mobile, and now AI, requiring high adaptability (AQ). Mutual trust remains the non-negotiable foundation for any successful professional relationship or partnership. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags Vince Menzione, growth mindset, Satya Nadella, channel building, tech ecosystem, tectonic shifts, AI revolution, co-selling strategies, hyperscaler marketplaces, organizational alignment, executive commitment, OKRs execution, AQ strategy, mutual trust, B2B technology Transcript [00:00:00] Vince Menzione: Because I think we’re all paralyzed by AI and all the changes that are going on in our world, and playbooks are no longer good because they’re outdated the week after they come out. [00:00:12] Vince Menzione: We just came back from Ultimate Partner live in Bellevue, Washington, where we hosted incredible leaders for two amazing days. Come join us for this next session where we explore the tectonic shifts we’ve all been seeing. What a list. Oh my gosh. I gotta tell you, I was just going back this morning and, and looking to see first of all the number, the sheer number is incredible. [00:00:36] Vince Menzione: But look at, look at all these top executives. These are, these are like market movers. The game changers. These are people that are doing more in our world, in our ecosystem than most others. And we are very fortunate to have the representation from these organizations. From these leaders in the room, and we try to curate an event that is more than a, a sales pitch. [00:01:00] Vince Menzione: We’re, in fact, we, we’re not a sales pitch. We’re all about, you know, helping you achieve more. And we try to frame that around operating principles. So, uh, a little bit of a roadmap lately. I mean, this started out like how did we get here in like, maybe five spots along the way. But, uh, for those of you who don’t know me and my background, and I’ve had an incredible career, I’ve been very blessed. [00:01:20] Vince Menzione: I did a startup that we grew from 6 million to 125 million. Went public on the Toronto Exchange. I’m still friends with the CEO, by the way. Helped, helped him grow and exit that company. Uh, I then followed one of the leaders there to go do a turnaround with Golden Gate Capital, and we took that and that’s where I built my first channel. [00:01:37] Vince Menzione: I went from doing enterprise sales as a direct seller, direct sales leader, VP to then going to building a channel. During nine 11, uh, this company was selling rugged notebook computers. Our biggest competitor was not a US company, and I spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill. I met with several congressmen and senators at a time when people did that, and they talked to each other. [00:01:58] Vince Menzione: And, uh, I built a channel. I got its a GSA schedule, and I understood. So I understood intuitively, even from that point in my career, how to move, how to shift from direct selling to building a channel, building a business around that. We became the growth engine of the company. One of my partners was one of the largest defense contractors, general Dynamics. [00:02:19] Vince Menzione: They had the big contract if you were selling to the US Army. And I knocked down the door basically and said, you got a partner with us. And that’s how we got the relationship established. And they wound up buying us for like 10 x what Golden Gate Capital had had spun us out for. And then Microsoft recruited me. [00:02:36] Vince Menzione: And for almost 10 years I was the GM of public sector partner strategy. And so I was, I was there and we’ll talk about Satya and other things, but I was there when we started the cloud. I was there when we pivoted the business from the old model and working with OEMs and trying to, to do things a different way to the cloud and co-selling and things like that. [00:02:56] Vince Menzione: And, uh, had a great experience. And then when I left I was like, oh, I’m just gonna go work for another big tech company. I started a podcast. I had a friend who said, you should do a podcast on partnering. You know a lot about this more than you probably think you do. And almost 10 years ago, I started a podcast in a spare bedroom. [00:03:13] Vince Menzione: And you know, it, it was, it built a following and there’s a lot of work, by the way, people, a lot of people do podcasts today. It was a lot of work for those of you. I congratulate anybody doing that. Uh, I went back inside for two years because I felt like I needed to go back into a big corporate environment. [00:03:29] Vince Menzione: And then I left during COVID and I learned a lot being at a big corporation about how hard it was to partner. Like it’s still hard. I don’t know how many people in the room feel this way. I know, I know the numbers are much better and Jay will talk through the numbers, but it’s not easy and a lot of organizations don’t understand it. [00:03:47] Vince Menzione: And that’s what we talk about here and we try to help people to achieve more and how to, how to get that mindset in the right place. But anyway, so. We started, we started doing the podcast after COVID, it took off. We did an event. Uh, there’s actually four of the five people that did partner. We called it Partner Mastermind. [00:04:06] Vince Menzione: We did an event about four years ago, uh, separately. And that led to Ultimate Partner. And it’s a long, the long history in the last four years of 10 events, like it’s been an incredible blast. And I want to thank each of you for being along this, this incredible ride with us as we continue to grow and expand. [00:04:24] Vince Menzione: We’ve been doubling every year for the last four years and um, I feel very blessed to be part of this. So I did wanna spend a minute with you on this. I don’t like the drain this slide, but I do wanna identify what I believe are seven operating principles of what makes successful partnering. And you know, you might say there’s eight, you might say there are other things I think about principles as opposed to tactics. [00:04:50] Vince Menzione: Tactics are transactional. They’re temporary and a point in time, and it’s how you respond and react to a situation. Principles are things you take with you, and that’s what we hope to do at Ultimate Partner. Take those things with you and then, then apply some of the things to the tactics that we need to have. [00:05:06] Vince Menzione: And so we talk about growth mindset. Uh, you know, depending on where you stand about Microsoft, these days, when this guy came in, stock was $36 a share. Okay. It’s in the four hundreds now. It was up to over 500 not long ago. He applied a different mindset. The first three things he did, Le got a copy of Carol Dweck’s book about mindset. [00:05:28] Vince Menzione: Growth mindset versus fixed mindset. Uh, he brought in Dr. Michael Vet, who’s a leading sports psychologist, like in, in the industry, who was the Seattle Seahawks sports psychologist. Mike’s been a podcast guest of mine. I’ve been to his studio. Um, and then he, we, he, he changed, he, he brought down, he took down the walls of the way Microsoft operated because leaders fought with each other. [00:05:51] Vince Menzione: They competed with each other for resources, for monetization, for everything. And he changed the mindset. Nobody’s a perfect CEO, but if I was to say to you who I think the best CEO of the last 10 years were, I’d give it to Saja Nadella, but it’s about mindset. It’s about changing or having the right mindset and applying that growth mindset to a successful partner. [00:06:12] Vince Menzione: Executive commitment, I talked about that. Other organizational will go nameless, but if you don’t, you can have the CEO down to the selling floor. Everyone needs to speak partnering, like in order to get it right in an organization. The whole company, the resources, the investments, the alignment, all has to align around partnering. [00:06:32] Vince Menzione: Executive commitment is incredible. Tony Saan took a small MSP to a half a billion dollar exit, took them to go, uh, Google Partner of the Year, seven straight years in a row. I think they’re eight this year. Uh, but Tony’s a good friend of mine. He is also been a guest on the podcast and, uh, somebody I’ve admired and worked with. [00:06:50] Vince Menzione: This is Dr. Michael Dravet. We talk about clarity, like once you get your mindset, once you get executive commitment, you then need to determine like how, what’s the vision? How do we drive success together? You need to turn, you need to know internally how to go do that. Then you lock arms with another organization and then you apply it to that partnership. [00:07:10] Vince Menzione: So that’s incredibly critical. Then, then you gotta do everything right? Like I always kid around about my days at Microsoft, we’d have these incredible meetings with leaders. They’d come meet with us at partner conference. I would literally go back to back for several days in the room. Slide deck after slide deck. [00:07:27] Vince Menzione: We’re high fiving at the end. [00:07:29] Vince Menzione: We’re gonna go do it [00:07:31] Vince Menzione: six months later. Crickets. Nothing happens, right? This happens a lot in partnering. Unfortunately, like we, we set up the right situation. We line everybody. We’re gonna go execute, we’re gonna drive results. You have to apply maniacal, focus, OKRs, everything to everything you do. [00:07:48] Vince Menzione: You need to apply. And by the way, you’re gonna hear from a lot of leaders here that do this type of work. So this is incredibly, uh, critical to success, brand and story. Like I wanna work with Microsoft. There’s gonna be probably 40 plus Microsoft leaders in the room, some of ’em sitting here and around the room. [00:08:06] Vince Menzione: How do you do that? Right? This is Ducks Raymond S. Good friend of mine at Point. I knew at point when they were just starting out. Scott Sackett is here. He’ll be up on stage. Uh, this man was expert on brand and story. Learn from people that are successful, how to be successful yourself, if you wanna be a top partner, if you wanna grow your business, whether you’re working with Microsoft, Google, Amazon, or any of the other partners in this room. [00:08:30] Vince Menzione: You need to be very clear about your brand, articulate it well, and drive a story against that. And that’s really super critical for success. And then once we do all those things, we start driving a flywheel of success. Aaron Feiger and some of the other people in the room, Reese Barry, are gonna be talking about how they do that. [00:08:47] Vince Menzione: They will help these organizations be successful. Pick putting that stake in the ground and driving it. And then what happens is after you drive this incredible success, what does my partner do? My tech giant, the company I’ve been working with, they go change everything. The market changes, the dynamics change. [00:09:05] Vince Menzione: This thing in November of 2022 called AI Happens, Chad, GBT hits the market. How do I respond and react to that? I need to be adaptable. I need to drive an AQ strategy on top of my EQ and iq, and we’ll talk more about that. So these are the operating principles, and we lay it out as a, as a diagram. And by the way, you see mutual trust. [00:09:26] Vince Menzione: Trust has to be in every room without trust, you have no partnerships, without trust, you have no business success. Like you can get buy in business, you can get buy in life, but trust is foundational. And I was very blessed to have that like grain ingrained in me as a young boy. Uh, so that’s our, that’s our operating principles. [00:09:48] Vince Menzione: Um, I’m working on a book right now. It’s almost done though. We’re, we’re talk, we’ll talk about that more, but that’s, that’ll be in the book. Um, and then we’ve been talking about tectonic shifts and I don’t know who said it first, Jay or, or me, but I know who you said it in the studio several years ago. [00:10:04] Vince Menzione: Jay’s been in our, our Boca studio many, many times. But we’ve been talking about tectonic shifts and Oh my gosh, right? So think about, I want everybody to think about this for a second. If you’ve been around tech for a while. We’ve gone through several, like these 10 year phases, the PC era, the cloud era, the well, the cloud. [00:10:23] Vince Menzione: We had client server, pc, client server, we had cloud, we had mobile, and now we hit ai. Those eras all took a period of time, right? They didn’t happen overnight. Like there was a trend like five, six years, seven years, maybe eight years, and then COVID happened, and I believe that COVID was the acceleration point because. [00:10:44] Vince Menzione: We were all forced to do things we didn’t do before. People went out and bought PCs that didn’t have them. Kids had to learn from home. Healthcare was administered tele telehealth, we didn’t do telehealth before. We had like 5% of the population to telehealth before that, uh, our work environment changed, right? [00:11:02] Vince Menzione: We were doing Zoom calls or teams calls back when I was at Microsoft Days, but the world started doing it. Our life started to change. That’s why being in the room places like this is so important. And so that really has accelerated everything. And this, you know, all these things have been accelerating over time and these are significant shifts. [00:11:22] Vince Menzione: We have the three leaders of the three marketplace organizations coming on stage here. Uh, the three hyperscalers, because marketplace went from, we were talking about it like, this is really cool. You need to go do it. A few years ago. So Microsoft lowering the rates on it, and then everything changed and then everybody started accelerating and it became the fungible token. [00:11:43] Vince Menzione: ’cause we used to, we used to partner, we used to take spreadsheets and put ’em up against each other and try to figure out deals and fax copies of deals that came in and say, we want credit for this one. And then Marketplace became a way to create a fun non fungible token. And really drive your success. [00:11:59] Vince Menzione: And so we have all the leaders that are running marketplaces in this room, by the way. So this is gonna be like the most incredible rich conversation. Co-selling. Co-selling is a, you know, a non-starter day. You have to co-sell it. People, we used to do vendor channel, which means I had somebody selling my stuff that’s not happening anymore. [00:12:19] Vince Menzione: And Jay, we’ll talk about the seven seats at the table. But this is all, these are all the things that have been changing. And of course, ai. I think that we are sitting here and I, I, I’ll share, and I’m stressing this, like this is, you need to be in this room because you’re gonna hear from leaders about what the next steps are. [00:12:35] Vince Menzione: ’cause I think we’re all paralyzed by AI and all the changes that are going on in our world and playbooks are no longer good because they’re outdated the week after they come out. So I need to, I need to follow this in real time. I think this is super important that you do, and it’s why we exist and it’s why this time is like no other. [00:12:53] Vince Menzione: I think, you know, we said maybe a generation, maybe it’s a lifetime in terms of the shifts that we’re seeing. So I, I kind of started here and I wanted to end here, uh, just because the light doesn’t go out. That’s what it’s all about. And this is it. This is it for me, right? This is my, my last run. I’m not gonna go work for a company after this. [00:13:16] Vince Menzione: I’m not gonna go into become a consultant. And I want this truly to be like special. And I want you to all feel like you’re part, you are part of it, and however much you wanna lean in and be part of it in the future, we want to grow this in the right way. I, I feel that we have an a unique opportunity. [00:13:34] Vince Menzione: Because we’re not a vendor, we’re not selling anything. I feel like we’re a platform. We’re that we’re that lighthouse and others can come in that are experts and I feel like more and more of ’em are showing up. And you know, the PDG guys did a great job today and others in the room and people that have been friends and supporting us for for years as on that sponsor slide. [00:13:56] Vince Menzione: And so we just want to continued this journey with each of you. Um, and so I want your feedback on what we’re doing. I want, I love your support. I love your passion. I love the fact that you’re still here in the room talking with, with or being here, listening to me today. Um, this is, that lighthouse is, you can see these pictures. [00:14:15] Vince Menzione: These are all family photos. Um, we go to that lighthouse, not because it’s a lighthouse, but uh, it happens to be like a landmark in our town. And, uh, it’s kind of cool. And actually the re Joe Namath has owns the restaurant across from the lighthouse, so we, we’ve got to see him a couple of times, which is kind of cool. [00:14:34] Vince Menzione: But I, I, I, I was posting this lighthouse when I started the podcast. And I was, yeah. ’cause that’s where I live and it’s my hometown. And I think about Dakota Rings and I think about other things. But, um, this is what matters. This is what matters is helping others. And we all are gonna need each other in this world because AI is gonna change our lives. [00:15:00] Vince Menzione: And dramatically it’s, I I think this is a once in a lifetime thing. But I think having people that you trust and being in the room with others where you can learn and grow and adapt, adaptability is so important. So, um, analog is the new digital as my, my good friend Gary V now says. And I think there’s this huge opportunity around what we do as ultimate partner to help everybody reach their pinnacle to everybody. [00:15:26] Vince Menzione: Be the ultimate partner. And I want to thank you for coming. I want your, thank you for your support, friendship, love. And, uh, you’re just an incredible group. Thank you. [00:15:41] Vince Menzione: Until next time, we’ll see you in person. Hopefully at our next event.

Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ https://youtu.be/j0TuosYDQe4?si=7mzUwBe4PrQ-eB2E In this insightful session from the Ultimate Partner Live event in Bellevue, Washington, Vince Menzione sits down with Stephen Boyle, Corporate Vice President for Enterprise Partners at Microsoft, to pull back the curtain on the tectonic shifts redefining the tech ecosystem. Boyle details Microsoft’s massive organizational pivot into enterprise and SME/channel divisions , explaining how artificial intelligence acts as the foundational thread unifying systems integrators, software vendors, and digital natives. Moving past market noise surrounding competing foundational models , he highlights Microsoft’s strategy to become the ultimate “platform of platforms” by prioritizing user choice, security, and trust. Emphasizing a shift away from infrastructure technicalities and toward practical business outcomes , Boyle delivers an urgent mandate for partners to scale technical talent, eliminate traditional operational silos, and brace for the incoming consumption-driven, agent-based future of enterprise computing. Key Takeaways Microsoft has restructured its global sales divisions into distinct Enterprise and SME/Channel organizations to better target its massive total addressable markets. Artificial intelligence is fundamentally altering the partner ecosystem by dismantling traditional software and systems integrator silos to build interconnected, multi-party solutions. Rather than forcing alignment to a singular model, Microsoft aims to be the definitive platform of platforms by offering extensive choice across over 1,100 language models. The enterprise landscape is rapidly moving past experimental AI pilot phases and entering production setups completely focused on transforming core business outcomes. Tomorrow’s service organizations are aggressively evolving into software-minded operations that deploy repeatable, highly specialized internal autonomous agents. Managing tokens and monitoring usage metrics represents the emerging operational baseline for balancing efficiency against the scaling expenses of large language models. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags AI frontier, platform of platforms, enterprise partners, global systems integrators, digital natives, language models, token consumption, agent sprawl, citizen developers, shadow IT, business outcomes, technical enablement, marketplace growth, hyper-scalers, processing fluency, sovereign AI, industry ecosystems, data governance. Transcript [00:00:00] Stephen Boyle: This is the biggest, most transformative, iterative change in technology we’ve ever seen, where, if you wanna call it a paradigm shift or whatever word comes after paradigm shift. [00:00:12] Vince Menzione: We just came back from Ultimate Partner live in Bellevue, Washington, where we hosted incredible leaders for two amazing days. Come join us for this next session where we explore the tectonic shifts we’ve all been seeing. Uh, I am thrilled to invite our next guest up on stage. I’ve known this gentleman for several years back in my days at Microsoft, and, um, we’ve been friends, actually Microsoft, and then we both went and did different things, came he’s come back to Microsoft in a big way. [00:00:46] Vince Menzione: Uh, Steven Boyle, for those of you don’t know, is recently a named the C. We will talk about it in a second, but I, I need to announce you properly. Is the corporate vice president, which by the way in Microsoft is a big deal for enterprise partners. He and Nicole De and I would say are the two Microsoft leaders in the organization. [00:01:06] Vince Menzione: Nicole is the channel chief. Steven has a, a big remit and we’ll talk about that up on stage. But I’m just so delightful for his support and for making the time in a very busy week at Microsoft ’cause this is CEO summit this week to make some time to come with us and be on stage with me. Please welcome my good friend Steven Boyle. [00:01:29] Vince Menzione: Good to see you, sir. To see. So I’m gonna put you on this side. [00:01:33] Stephen Boyle: Okay. [00:01:35] Vince Menzione: The hot seat. So I’m gonna, I, I didn’t do a justice and I, I wanted you to explain your role. I, I think I know, but I think for the, for the people in the room, uh, talk to us what Enterprise Partners means at Microsoft and what that role remit and remit looks like. [00:01:50] Stephen Boyle: Um, CVPs may or may not be important, but one thing they don’t do is get invites to the CEO summit. So I’m super pleased to be here with you guys. No, no, it’s totally cool. It’s totally cool if that phone rings. No, I’m kidding. Doesn’t. So what does it mean? So I’d like quickly, um. January last year, uh, we split the sales organization into enterprise and small to medium enterprise and channel. [00:02:15] Stephen Boyle: You guys probably familiar with that? Nicole is the, uh, chief partner officer lives in the SMA and C world and drives the channel, um, drives our marketplace business and, and a lot of other things. Um, for that 60 billion, um, you know, total addressable market that we have. Down there in SME and C. Um, at the same time, we established enterprise partner as part of Nick Parker’s overall organization. [00:02:40] Stephen Boyle: Um, but for most of 2025 we ran it as global systems integrators and advisories, ISVs and digital natives. So three separate footprints all focused entirely on, on, on enterprise. Um, in December, January, we talked about establishing an enterprise partner leader that would. You know, aggregate all of this stuff. [00:03:00] Stephen Boyle: Um, I was fortunate to come through, um, some frankly, pretty hairy, uh, experiences, I bet with some of our senior leaders. Um, I, I’ve loved to [00:03:08] Vince Menzione: been in the room for that [00:03:09] Stephen Boyle: questions like, why Steven Boyle and things like that, right? And really have to dig deep to, uh, to justify. Anyway, uh, I’m blessed and honored, uh, to run that entire portfolio of partners, uh, for the entirety of the enterprise partner world, which now from a chief revenue officer perspective, belongs to Deb. [00:03:25] Stephen Boyle: Deb Co. So Deb is the enterprise leader for all of our sales that we do into that space. Awesome. Um, I have three regional leaders, Nina Harding here in the United States, Ehab Ra in in Europe, and Heather Gordon in Asia that mirror and replicate and flow down the things that we decide to do from a strategy perspective for the, uh, for the core. [00:03:45] Vince Menzione: And we love Nina. She’s been, she was at our last event, [00:03:47] Stephen Boyle: super, super lady. And, uh, you know, the US is still 50% of our overall business. [00:03:53] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:03:53] Stephen Boyle: Too big to fabric. Every time I talk to Nina, I’m like, Nina, you’re too big to fail. We can’t cover you anywhere else. So you know, you’ve gotta be successful here in the Americas. [00:04:01] Vince Menzione: So I think just for breaking it up, I, ’cause I do want to like, it’ll lead to the next question, right? So you have the global systems integrators, all these systems integrators. Essentially you have all of the software companies we used to call ISVs, we now call SDCs or software development corporations. [00:04:17] Vince Menzione: And then you also have the AI stack, I’ll call it. Right? So under Jason Grafe. Yeah. Many, many might know. Jason’s been a guest on the podcast and was Satya’s chief of staff at one time, eight years. Eight years. Wow. I didn’t realize there was that many. [00:04:31] Stephen Boyle: Carry carried a lot of bags for Satya over the years. [00:04:34] Vince Menzione: Unbelievable. Well, let’s, I mean, so AI is an important component, right? And you saw Jay’s, Jay talking, just talking about AI and all these things. I would love to start here, right? Because, uh, you’re, you’re, I wanna get your perspective as Microsoft, your perspective as Microsoft on the biggest shifts you’re seeing in defining this we’ll call AI Frontier. [00:04:54] Vince Menzione: We’re seeing right now, how should partners translate that into how they position and go to market externally? How, how do we need to think about this time? [00:05:02] Stephen Boyle: Yeah, that is, uh, that is a huge question and I’m not sure we’ve got enough time to go into the, into all of the detail. Um, so let me sort of up level it a little bit for you. [00:05:10] Stephen Boyle: And I think, look, the move that we meet at made a couple of months ago and pulling together those three aspects. Nicole had already done it in SME and C. Right. One partner organization across the world with a very common set of goals. We were working closely together, Sandy Gupta, on ISV, Jason on ai, and myself on on si. [00:05:29] Stephen Boyle: But we were still working closely together across silos. So the opportunity for me, 60 days into this role is AI just allows you to wire the partner ecosystem together differently. Right? And even if you look at how we’re going to market an AI today, um. You know, with, with, with chat GPT, with Claude, with Anthropic, um, I think there’s something like 1100 different, you know, language models on Microsoft today. [00:05:55] Stephen Boyle: So the way I think about AI is we are absolutely gonna be the ultimate platform of platforms. Yeah, choice is incredibly important. Um. It’s, it’s, you know, turn the clock back 12 months, everybody was chat gpt five point x, you know, and then six months ago it was Gemini and now it seems to be clawed. And honestly I don’t know what it’s gonna be next quarter. [00:06:15] Stephen Boyle: So the only thing I can do is offer you choice. [00:06:18] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:18] Stephen Boyle: And from a partner perspective, I think that minimizes or reduces the risk that you have betting on the Microsoft platform because you can go in a multitude of different directions. I know we’re not in Europe, but if you were in Europe and you were worried about G-G-D-P-R and Jay mentioned sovereignty, you’d probably be like lining up really closely to Misra. [00:06:37] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. And a bunch of other Europe, European partners. So wherever you are in the globe, I wanna be that platform choice. Um, and we will lead with our own first party solutions. I hope they’re not coming for me. Um. I parked safely in the hotel. It can’t be me. Um, but you weren’t vibe coding in the room. Um, but you know, wherever you are in the world, in whichever industry you are in, um, it is our intent to, to offer that platform of platforms and to give the broadest set of partners the opportunity to engage with us. [00:07:07] Vince Menzione: I think that’s really important because I, I have found, especially in the last month or two, people are, it’s almost like a knee jerk. Don’t you feel like people don’t know what to do? There’s been so much noise in the press and the media and, and the markets around open AI and anthropic especially. Where do I go? [00:07:26] Vince Menzione: Seems to be like when I, when I sit, I watch everybody in the room here. I think they’re, they’ve all been thinking that as well. So you can, [00:07:31] Stephen Boyle: there’s a, a little bit of a deer in the headlights moment. Yes. And even I like, I get that. Yeah. Um, you know, I saw, uh, Jay slides. Jay, love the presentation. Love the slides, man. [00:07:40] Stephen Boyle: I’m gonna steal several of them. Um, we’ll talk about that later. We, we [00:07:43] Vince Menzione: have the deck, [00:07:45] Stephen Boyle: but, but in all seriousness, you know, this, this is like. It’s a new paradigm. I will date myself a little bit. Some of you might heard me say this. I sold many computers in the 1980s. Mini computers. Some of you in the room are going, what’s a mini computer? [00:07:59] Stephen Boyle: Um, I sold client server for Sun Microsystems in the nineties. I sold an awful lot of Oracle databases in the Auts, I think they’re called, and I’ve done two stints with Microsoft. This is the biggest, most transformative. Iterative change in technology we’ve ever seen. What, if you wanna call it a paradigm shift or whatever word comes after paradigm shift. [00:08:18] Stephen Boyle: Um, and we are building intelligent systems at scale faster than we’ve ever seen. Scalable, mission critical solutions being implemented today inside of Microsoft and with our most important customers. So, and we can’t do it without partners, right? There is absolutely nothing we can do in this industry. I will, I will put the, you know, the elephant in the room out there. [00:08:40] Stephen Boyle: Our ISD organization has between five and 7,000 people. Our forward deployed engineering organization is about a thousand people. [00:08:47] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:08:48] Stephen Boyle: So when you look at the scale of the total addressable market that Jay just talked about. We are gonna service directly like this much [00:08:55] Vince Menzione: used to be 5%. Was it even, is it even that high? [00:08:58] Stephen Boyle: I doubt it’s, I doubt it’s even that. And the billions of dollars that we spend every year helping our customers transform to what we’re now calling frontier firms is gonna be, have to be driven with every single person in this room in some way, shape, or form. Judson is not asking Marla to significantly increase ISD. [00:09:15] Stephen Boyle: Not asking John to significantly increase FDE, although we probably will hire in that area just because of the, the newness and the, you know, bright shiny object that everybody’s like, oh, FDE, I’ve gotta have those. We’ve got a thousand already today that have been around in John’s organization for 10 plus years doing the things that we are doing today. [00:09:32] Stephen Boyle: But we are gonna build out that muscle. But the real way we’re gonna build out that muscle is with all of you in this room. That’s like categorical. That is my like, probably number one goal for the next one to three years is make sure that, that story that Jay just told about Microsoft not being involved in AstraZeneca. [00:09:48] Stephen Boyle: I probably won’t tell Judson that Jay, but I love the story. Um, like if you could all do that for me, like win, um, that is so, you know, from our worldwide learning, through our skilling enablement through our cloud solution architects that I personally own. We are pivoting aggressively towards making sure that the partners understand our platforms better than any other job, number one for me right now, if you don’t understand what I’m selling, like I’m kind of dead in the water obviously. [00:10:15] Stephen Boyle: Well, [00:10:15] Vince Menzione: I was gonna ask you why now? Why Microsoft? Why now? Right? Because there is a lot of noise. You know, Google just announced, you all announced your results on the same day, which was astounding. That was freaky, wasn’t it? It was. It was the first time. And the, the total commitment, customer commitment is over a trillion dollars now, I think 1.2 trillion is what I counted up. [00:10:33] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. [00:10:34] Vince Menzione: But it’s saying a lot about like, what do I do now, like as these partners in the room. Um, how, I think you kind of already, and you’ve talked about this, about differentiating where Microsoft is, I think J Slide does a lot of justice there. It says how, uh, Microsoft Partners came into the room, surrounded the customer. [00:10:52] Vince Menzione: It feels like Microsoft has always leaned in big time on partners. Uh, more so I would say than any other organization out there. What would [00:10:59] Stephen Boyle: you say Joe Roses, my chief of staff, business manager and so many other things was telling me last night that, you know, we used to say 500,000 partners. [00:11:05] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:11:06] Stephen Boyle: it’s a, it’s a significantly higher number than that as well. [00:11:09] Stephen Boyle: So there’s an element of, you know, back to the deer in the headlights, which partners are, are more important. One of my other phrases that I say on a regular basis, the winners and losers are yet to be decided in this next wave. Like, I want all of us to on the right side of that argument. Right? But, but it’s gonna be a challenge and, and companies are going through shifts. [00:11:28] Stephen Boyle: You know, Accenture, maybe, possibly doesn’t need 750,000 employees in the not too distant future. Maybe TCS at 600,000 doesn’t need 600,000 human employees. So we’re going through this dramatic shift of, you know, what’s the right balance going forward. What I would say about Microsoft is notwithstanding the fact that we’ve figured this out for 51 years, which is a little bit mind blowing, um, that you know, all the way back in the seventies we’ve gone through so many iterative changes. [00:11:56] Stephen Boyle: People have questioned just like they’ve questions. A lot of other technology companies, are you gonna be around for the long haul? I think we’ve proven time and time again, and I love Jay’s story. I’ve used that myself about how many companies disappear on a, on a decade to decade, you know, business. 10 years ago I had the opportunity to listen to Craig Clayton Christensen, who’s sadly no longer with us. [00:12:15] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. But you know, the books that he wrote and the story that he told to Microsoft 2014, we were nowhere in cloud. [00:12:21] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:12:22] Stephen Boyle: AWS was so far ahead of us, it was crazy. And he came in and he’s like. You know what? You guys need to be successful. You need to figure out how to cross this chasm again, and we’ve done it time and time again. [00:12:32] Stephen Boyle: You can go back. You know, Microsoft used to be known as a fast follower in ai. I don’t think we’re a fast follower. I think we’re right up there. We’re right at the front, but that race is still being run and the winners are losers are yet to be decided. [00:12:44] Vince Menzione: I was in that room with Clayton Christensen with you, by the way. [00:12:46] Vince Menzione: I remember, I remember that. That was at a Prism conference. [00:12:49] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. Yeah. [00:12:50] Vince Menzione: You men, you touched on this with the GSIs a little bit. How do you see the roles evolving? You know, we, we, we bucketed all, we’ve always been. Fantastic about bucketing ISVs or SDCs and sis and digital natives. Yeah. How does it, how does that all come together? [00:13:06] Vince Menzione: Does it come together any differently in this new AI platform era, or is it the same? [00:13:11] Stephen Boyle: I look, I, I’ve said this for a long time, like if you go into AstraZeneca, the six plus, you know, frontline partners, there’s probably a whole board of second, third tier that, that we don’t know about doing, you know, things across the AstraZeneca group. [00:13:25] Stephen Boyle: It takes several villages and sometimes a small town, especially in my world, in the enterprise world, strategic five hundreds. Yeah. Um, you know, we, we ran some reports a few years ago and it is shocking how many global systems integrators have a footprint in Shell or Exxon or, you know, bank of America or whatever else. [00:13:44] Stephen Boyle: So I’ve always believed that partner to partner is critical. Yeah. I think it became even more critical in the, in the AI world, and I’ll take my new friends at Anthropic. So I went to the first Anthropic partner Summit. Some of you might have been down there in, in San Diego, um, just a couple of months ago. [00:13:59] Stephen Boyle: Same partners, same people from the same partners. In the room, you know, talking about what they’re gonna do together with Anthropic. Um, and I’m looking out across this audience going, okay, well I know him and I know her and I know those guys, and like, I need to figure out how I’m gonna weave this together. [00:14:14] Stephen Boyle: So it’s not just an Accenture and Anthropic or an NTT data and anthropic, but it’s an NTT data plus anthropic plus Microsoft. Story going forward. And then who’s best at delivering those services capabilities? So it’s it at every juncture that I see in the, in the partner community, and this is the, the reason why I argued vehemently with Nick, that it has to be one organization I’m gonna create maybe given a little bit away. [00:14:40] Stephen Boyle: So if you’re recording, stop now. Um, I’m gonna create an enablement organization that is partner agnostic. I don’t necessarily care. I do care about the digital natives, but I don’t care about how I train them. Right. What I’m more important of is how do I train the digital natives in what the sis are doing, and how do I train the sis and what the ISVs Plus digital Natives are doing. [00:15:01] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:15:01] Stephen Boyle: That is my, that’s my game plan. If I fail there, then I think we fail to raise the bar and be differentiated in an AI world, and I’m not set up like that today. [00:15:12] Vince Menzione: I wanna, I wanna ask you, uh, uh, because I was looking at Jay’s slide and the, the managed piece is. And we have a lot of managed service providers in this room today. [00:15:20] Vince Menzione: A lot of them, by the way, come from the old school of managed services. The managed piece seems to be like, if I’m doing something today with ai, we’re gonna talk about security next, uh, up on stage here. It seems like there’s a new set of skills or a different approach to the customer, don’t you? Don’t you agree? [00:15:37] Stephen Boyle: I I [00:15:37] Vince Menzione: think you need to keep your hands on the steering wheel at all [00:15:39] Stephen Boyle: times. I think what it boils down to is you can’t do AI unless you do certain other things. [00:15:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:15:44] Stephen Boyle: Right. You could be a modern work specialist and you could make a lot of money being a modern work specialist, or you could be a, a dynamic specialist. [00:15:52] Stephen Boyle: We just held our, uh, inner A in a circle conference last last week, which I was disappointed to miss for the first time in a few years. Those, those days are, are, are fast becoming over. [00:16:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:16:04] Stephen Boyle: Um, why? Because everything that I’ve just said is tied together by ai. Yes. And in order to do good ai, you need good data. [00:16:12] Stephen Boyle: And in order to trust everything that you’re getting, as Judson talks about trust and intelligence, you need to wrap that in a really secure [00:16:19] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:16:19] Stephen Boyle: You know, en en environment. Now we will do our best to provide levels of security into how we deliver ai. But that’s not the end of the game, right? You have to take it all, all the way to the edge. [00:16:30] Stephen Boyle: So that’s why a siloed partner or a singular commercial solution area partner in Microsoft’s terms, has got to transform its business. ’cause if you’re gonna do ai, you’ve gotta do those other things as well. [00:16:41] Vince Menzione: Agreed. I must see the model changing, and in fact, I see like bigger organizations becoming managed service providers in many respects. [00:16:48] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, there’s still, there’s still a role for all the old terminology you mentioned is SV to sdc. Yeah. I’m like, I’m been around long enough. Look, it’s ANB still anv, it’s still an isv. Thank you. Independent software vendor. Um, and it’s, you know, where, where AI is allowing software to be, you know, frankly developed in a number of different places. [00:17:07] Stephen Boyle: We are all citizen developers. Um, you know, I was on a call with our internal leadership yesterday, um, and you guys might have heard this story ’cause I think it came out at Ignite. When we turn the agent 365, around and on ourselves. We found 130,000 agents running across Microsoft that had been developed and deployed internally with, I mean, you could call it shadow it. [00:17:28] Stephen Boyle: I guess that would be one phrase that you would use for it, but the reality is if you, if you haven’t got something to do your job today, you have the tools. To build it really, really fast. Um, and that, you know, that’s, that’s a great opportunity for people to be able to do their work, you know, in a better and in a different way. [00:17:45] Stephen Boyle: But it’s also a huge opportunity to make sure that data governance and security and all the other things that we need to deliver are there out of, out of the gate and out of the platform that we deliver. So security’s absolutely critical. Not saying that managed services won’t grow, um, at, at some level as well, but only if they transform into this multifaceted way. [00:18:04] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. Thinking [00:18:05] Vince Menzione: about, well, that’s what I was, I was gonna lead to here with innovating. It’s happening across, I mean, we’re talking about chips, we’re talking about foundational models, LLMs, we’re talking about applications, we’re talking about agents. How should we think about where to play and how to differentiate as partners in this room? [00:18:22] Stephen Boyle: I think. [00:18:25] Stephen Boyle: So look, I mean, one, one of the ways that Judson talks about it is I think silicon’s gonna change over time. Yes. NVIDIA’s definitely the 800 pound gorilla, maybe the 8,000 pound gorilla. Yeah. Uh, but you know, if you read the press, there’s, there’s things happening in, in different places as first party silicon, which we clearly are, are developing, um, in a quantum direction for sure. [00:18:45] Stephen Boyle: Um, there’s lots of different language models that haven’t even been launched on, on, on the marketplace yet, so. You know, Judson’s trying to uplevel our conversations. You’ll hear us talking about conversations more and more as we go into FY 27, um, that obviate all of those layers. Just like even when I was selling Sun Microsystems, it was about the business outcome and the business solution that we were solving for not necessarily the fastest piece of hardware or the best client service solution on, on the market. [00:19:17] Stephen Boyle: So I think what’s gonna happen over the next 12 to 24 months is we’ll have so many different models to choose from. We’ll have more silicon to choose from, but those won’t be the real buying decisions. The real buying decisions of what? How am I trying to transform my finance organization, my HR organization, and my supply chain? [00:19:36] Stephen Boyle: Because the underlying technology, Judson says commodity I, I guess I can go with that. It will be commoditized and we’ll really start to focus back on what the important things are. We’re moving a lot from pilot to production. You guys have probably seen that. The numbers that Jay just showed about how many. [00:19:52] Stephen Boyle: Projects are failing, is getting less and less because we’re getting smarter and smarter about what it takes to actually drive the business outcome. And I need all of us to be talking that same language. Yeah. Having conversations with head of HR about how we’re gonna transform human capital management in the, in the age of agents, if you like, like the underlying platform. [00:20:14] Stephen Boyle: It’s not, don’t worry about it. You wanna be on a secure platform. Don’t get me wrong. But at the same time, I don’t think we, we spent too much time worrying about that. [00:20:21] Vince Menzione: Yeah. We’re not, what you’re saying is we’re not spending enough time on outcomes. On the business outcomes. Right. And that’s where we need to focus. [00:20:27] Vince Menzione: We’re, we’re focusing on, I, I feel like we’re, it’s a signal to, to noise ratio that we’re living through right now. There’s too much noise. [00:20:33] Stephen Boyle: Yeah. [00:20:34] Vince Menzione: And we’re not focusing on the signal. I think that’s what you’re saying. [00:20:36] Stephen Boyle: I, it’s got to be, I mean, to be honest with you, it’s always been, you know, even when I sold what I would perceive, you know, sun in the nineties was a rockman ship to the stars and, you know, kind of sad what happened to that company. [00:20:47] Stephen Boyle: Um, but we, we were, we were fixated on, we had the best client server. But, but nobody was buying, you know, a piece of Sun hardware as a room heater, which is all it did, you know, like for the longest. But if you had SAP, if you had Cybase, if you had Bond, remember Bond, I mean all of those applications that drove the business outcomes, we’ve gotta get back to that kind of mentality. [00:21:09] Stephen Boyle: Yes. And worrying a little bit less about the underlying architecture. Yeah. It needs to be, it needs to be part of the conversation. ’cause it needs to deliver trust and security and intelligence and everything else. Then you need to rapidly move to what are you trying to achieve and how can we ensure the, the, the success of, of your business outcome. [00:21:27] Stephen Boyle: And look, I mean, Palantir pri you know, sort of came out and said, well, the way we do that is through forward deployed engineering. Um, and they stole the show. And, and, you know, they’re, they’re doing very well as a result of doing that. Uh, but if you go and talk to, um, Tom Siebel’s organization at C3 ai. [00:21:43] Stephen Boyle: They’ve had FDS for quite a while. You know, I told you about John Chuchu 10 years ago. John Chu, Chuck’s job was to go and get all the applications that we needed on the Microsoft phone. Remember that? [00:21:54] Vince Menzione: Yes. Um, [00:21:55] Stephen Boyle: you know, so we’ve pivoted John o over the years to doing what he’s doing now, which is to go sometimes in partnership with, with partners into the customer and say, what is it you’re trying to achieve? [00:22:05] Stephen Boyle: Let me show you how I can build that for you in three weeks or three months. That might have taken you three years. We literally just did a hackathon with one partner last, last, last week with, uh, with our ISE organization, the, the, the forward deployed, uh, group that John runs. Um, and one of the big customers said, I’ve just done in three days what would’ve taken me three months. [00:22:26] Stephen Boyle: Now he hasn’t productized it and rolled it out and blah, blah, blah. But the reality is that is how fast things are changing. And this was not a small company. This was a very, very large oil company, and they were like blown away by how much we can achieve. We’ve gotta do that at scale. [00:22:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:22:42] Stephen Boyle: You know, we, we have a commitment to scale our FDE community through partnerships to touch all of the S 500 in a very personalized way. [00:22:51] Stephen Boyle: And then, you know, at a slightly, you know, lower ratios down through the, through the majors and into, into Nicole’s SME and C world as well. [00:22:59] Vince Menzione: Jay talks about the decade of the ecosystem. He coined that term back, back on a podcast way back in nine, in, uh, in 2020. Microsoft has been at the, for, we used to call partner to partner back, back in the day. [00:23:10] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Do you remember those days? How do you think about this ecosystem evolving and what steps are you taking to help bring these organizations together? Because I, I, again, we look at the seven seats or 6.3 seats at the table. The customer has the power now that they didn’t have before. ’cause they have the commitment with like with Microsoft and they can buy off of the marketplace and pull together multiple organizations to go, go do that. [00:23:34] Vince Menzione: How do you think about helping to orchestrate that as the leader of the enterprise partner business? [00:23:39] Stephen Boyle: So I’ll start with a really big example, and I’ll try and sort of scale it down a little bit. But my friends at Accenture, with the Accenture, Microsoft Business Group, we spend an awful lot of time, you know, in, in each other’s pockets, in each other’s deals. [00:23:51] Stephen Boyle: We know everything that’s going on in the Accenture, Microsoft Business Group. And a couple of weeks, or maybe a month or so ago, I was told that the Microsoft Business Group is now larger than the SAP Business group. It probably flip flops. [00:24:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:24:04] Stephen Boyle: it won’t be too long before the Anthropic Business Group is bigger than both of those. [00:24:08] Stephen Boyle: So what I need my Microsoft team to do is to not spend all of their lives in the. A MBG, the Azure, the Accenture, Microsoft Business group, but to go make friends in the Anthropic Accenture Business group and frankly still to make friends in the SAP business group and maybe in the Oracle Business Group and the list goes on. [00:24:27] Stephen Boyle: So at a macro 11, in the very largest accounts where we haven multiple practices, where we haven’t spent time before, I’m gonna. Push my people into uncomfortable zones and I’m gonna push them to go into those other areas and I’m gonna load them up with technical talent and cloud solution architects and ai, you know, forward deployed engineers. [00:24:45] Stephen Boyle: And I’m gonna force different people to talk together that haven’t talked together. So I can do that in TCS. I can do that, Capgemini, I can do that. Um, you know, in Europe with Capgemini and Misra is a classic example. Um, with the, with the Indian sis, Indian based sis, they’re all big enough where I know all the practices exist. [00:25:04] Stephen Boyle: I just need to do a better job of, of talking to them. Now, when you downsize that into, you know, into a, a company that doesn’t have all of that scale, this the same truth still holds. I need to talk to people who aren’t necessarily motivated every single day to do something with Microsoft. I need to talk to people who are motivated to do something with an AI partner or even a traditional SaaS partner. [00:25:27] Stephen Boyle: I noticed yesterday, actually no, this morning I got a notification that we just passed, um, a billion dollars in revenue on the marketplace with ServiceNow. [00:25:35] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:25:36] Stephen Boyle: Um, and I think AWS announced the same thing, by the way this month as well. Um, so thank you to the ServiceNow people. Yeah. Um, you know, that is that there’s a tremendous demonstration of how far we’ve come in marketplace. [00:25:48] Stephen Boyle: ’cause that’s another one where we trailed AWS quite significantly. But with the right partnerships. And driving the right motions, we can, you know, we can definitely catch up and we will continue to pass, uh, some of, some of the other hyperscalers in, in, in that way. So really the bottom line to your question is partner to partner is still real. [00:26:08] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:26:08] Stephen Boyle: how we do it and what we use to tie things together. And I know that compensation drives behavior and we’re not gonna get into a compensation about like how we get compensated and everything else, but the reality is I’ve gotta break down those barriers and those silos and I’ve gotta deliver real meaningful enablement and practice development so that, so that the people who sit in the Anthropic business group and the people who sit in the Microsoft Business Group are spending as much time together as they are with me. [00:26:34] Stephen Boyle: That makes sense. Simply put, that’s what I, I need to achieve at scale rapidly. [00:26:40] Vince Menzione: So to, we’re getting close to time here, but as you look forward, what would define the most successful partnerships in this ecosystem? Is it, is it what you described, the opening up the aperture or for the, for the leaders in the room here today, what should they go do better and differently? [00:26:58] Stephen Boyle: Um, so obviously we’re closing out this fiscal, we’ve got Microsoft start and Microsoft start for partners coming up in July. Um, I mentioned the fact that we’re, we’re driving. Cu customer engagement through the lens of conversations and how do we achieve business outcomes? I would encourage you to, to gravitate, if you like, above the commercial solution areas where you might have understood, this is how I interact with Microsoft today. [00:27:23] Stephen Boyle: Um, and abstract it up to that AI layer. You know, think about trust, think about intelligence, think about business outcomes, and how do I potentially weave together a story? If I’m in the dynamic space, how do I get better in data? If I’m in the data space, how do I get better in. In that modern work environment, but really use AI as the overlay to, to help tie that together. [00:27:44] Stephen Boyle: That’s one thing. The second thing is if we’re not training you in the right direction, it’s [email protected]. Let me know. Awesome. Um, we’ve got programmatic stuff, um, you know, and we’ve got high touch stuff as well. So I think this is, this is another time where Microsoft is gonna over pivot on all of the training and enablement that we need to do to make sure that you’re, you know, you’re grounded in our platform. [00:28:07] Stephen Boyle: Um, I think there’s a huge opportunity with this agenda future to become more of a software partner. You know, even the deepest services organizations are going to need agents, and the more successful ones will be the ones that can turn on those agents in a repeatable way. So. Our agents, the new SaaS. I’m not exactly saying that, but I think that the agen future is one where even the more services oriented companies will, will have teams of agents that they’re deploying. [00:28:35] Stephen Boyle: In fact, I had a very, very large systems integrator, um, in, in the EBC just about a month ago, three weeks ago. Um, and I was sat next to their head of consulting and he showed me what he called his God dashboard. Uh, and right in the middle of his God dashboard there are like 450 accounts. All of whom I recognized, ’cause they were all in the enterprise, right in the middle of his dashboard was, how many tokens am I spending? [00:29:00] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:29:01] Stephen Boyle: Like, not like what’s my daily runway? You know, not am I making a profit on that account or anything else like that is like, how many tokens have I consumed? Yeah. Because there is an awful lot of, that is the new juice, if you like. That’s, that’s driving the success. You can have the smartest people on the planet, but you’ve got to still arm them with all the best tools that are available out there. [00:29:22] Stephen Boyle: So it’s fascinating to listen to him, how he had gone through that thing of, you know, agent sprawl, how many are really working, how many are not working? How can we prove that? You can prove it through, you know, managing your tokens. There’s a new version of. Finops for tokens, for want of a better phrase, that’s gonna be critical for us all to understand. [00:29:40] Stephen Boyle: ’cause they’re not cheap, they’re not free, that’s for sure. And, and they might not be cheap if you’re not, if you’re not managing them and using them effectively. Yeah. So that’s the other thing that I would really get on top of. And, you know, we’re gonna make some announcements in the not too distant future about the consumption driven future. [00:29:56] Stephen Boyle: Um, that, that we will, that we will deliver with our first party and third party platforms going forward. So that’s another. Another critical thing [00:30:03] Vince Menzione: sounds like some exciting announcements. Pretty soon. [00:30:06] Stephen Boyle: Yeah, could look close. Quarter four, help me close. Quarter four. Yes. That’s priority number one, two, and three right now. [00:30:12] Stephen Boyle: Uh, but get ready for some, you know, for some new announcements in July. Um, look, the future is incredibly bright with Microsoft. It’s incredibly bright in the industry as a whole, right? I mean, let, let’s be honest, the, the growth targets that we will have for ne next year are astronomical, and we will not make them without the partner community that we have, without training and enabling the partner community that we need for tomorrow. [00:30:34] Stephen Boyle: So like, stay close, you know, stay engaged. Talk to your partner development managers, talk to the talk to field reps, talk to the accounts that that, that you are in, and stay as close as you possibly can to our emerging strategy. And, um, you know, look, I, I think if I had fivefold or tenfold the people I have today, I still wouldn’t be able to touch everybody that I would like to touch in the partner community. [00:30:58] Stephen Boyle: So I’ll apologize in advance. Um, but we’re gonna have some, you know, some really cool ways of learning. Um, and we’re gonna make sure that they’re available to the widest possible audience. [00:31:07] Vince Menzione: Well, we bring the practitioners and the experts in the room to help with that as well. Right? Yeah. Because you can’t always have a partner development manager tied to everybody in the room. [00:31:14] Stephen Boyle: I, I would do hackathons on AI every week with every partner and every part of the world, but I can’t. [00:31:19] Vince Menzione: Yeah, exactly. Well, so good to have you today. Thank you. So good to see you again. I don’t know what your schedule is like. I, we didn’t, we don’t have enough time for questions. [00:31:28] Stephen Boyle: That’s cool. [00:31:28] Vince Menzione: From the audience. [00:31:29] Stephen Boyle: I’m gonna stay around for a little [00:31:30] Vince Menzione: while this [00:31:30] Stephen Boyle: morning and I’m coming back [00:31:31] Vince Menzione: for cocktails. Alright, terrific. So. Stephen Boyle will be here for cocktail hour. Thank you. Four 30 and uh, I wanna thank you, sir. So good to have you. Thank you. Good to see you. Absolutely. [00:31:42] Stephen Boyle: So much. Absolutely. Hey, thanks everybody. [00:31:43] Stephen Boyle: Thanks for what you do today, and hopefully thank you for what you do tomorrow as well. [00:31:46] Vince Menzione: Thank you. An incredible leader. [00:31:49] Stephen Boyle: Don’t forget, ultimate [00:31:51] Vince Menzione: partner Alive is coming soon, June 18th at our executive breakfast in New York. I hope to see you there.Description The Future of Tech is Here. Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ I

Description The Future of Tech is Here. Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this presentation from Ultimate Partner Live, industry analyst Jay McBain breaks down the monumental macroeconomic shifts rewriting the tech sector in 2026. https://youtu.be/r0qTDyw97Gs As the industry rapidly approaches a $6.07 trillion valuation, driven by massive AI infrastructure investments from Sam Altman and the “Magnificent Seven,” traditional sales and channel models are fundamentally collapsing. McBain reveals how buyer demographics have transformed to an integration-first millennial base, why marketplace ecosystems now command over half of all partner-funded deals, and how a tiny elite of just 1,000 tech service providers control two-thirds of global tech revenue. Learn the exact mechanics behind how Microsoft out-partnered AWS to win 26 straight quarters of dominant growth and how your business can deploy an algorithmic early warning system to capture massive wallet share before competitors even step into the boardroom. Key Takeaways Over half of the Fortune 500 companies vanish every 20 years because their leadership fails to anticipate macroeconomic technological cycles. The true opportunity in the $6.5 trillion AI boom lies not in single vendor products, but in the hardware, software, services, and telecom ecosystem surrounding them. Indirect tech sales are undergoing a structural shift toward direct cloud hyperscaler models driven heavily by Nvidia’s core infrastructure client base. Modern business deals are won or lost months before the point of sale based on the average of 6.3 partners surrounding a customer’s environment. Over 51% of tech buyers are now millennials who prioritize software integration capabilities and digital marketplaces over traditional human sales interactions. Tech service economics are pivoting aggressively away from upfront margins toward point-based multi-partner funding across subscription cycles. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags Nvidia AI buildout, $7 trillion AI opportunity, cloud ecosystem decade, Microsoft vs AWS growth, multi-partner cloud deals, digital marketplace migration, millennial B2B buyers, B2B tech subscription economics, tokenized micro consumption, tech services wallet share, hybrid cloud infrastructure, 28 customer moments, IT services industry growth, telecom spend breakdown, channel chief strategy, managed service providers MSP, global systems integrators GSI, software integration first, point-based vendor incentives, automated co-selling workflows Transcript JAY McBAIN AUDIO PODCAST [00:00:00] Jay McBain: So to go back to that story about the 53% of companies who are gonna fail, one of us is gonna be asked to write the book, but chapter one is always you Blame the CEO. [00:00:13] Vince Menzione: We just came back from Ultimate Partner live in Bellevue, Washington, where we hosted incredible leaders for two amazing days. Come join us for this next session where we explore the tectonic shifts we’ve all been seeing. With that, I am incredibly blessed to invite a friend of mine to the stage. I have a quick little side note, like I found an old LinkedIn post from this gentleman from like many years ago, like 20 years ago. [00:00:39] Vince Menzione: And I wasn’t really that nice to you on that LinkedIn post. Like, oh, like this is before Jay became the Jay, that we all know Jay to be j. But he was in the space and I was at Microsoft doing something and he reached out about something. It was kind of rude, Jay. I was like, oh my gosh. I can’t believe. But Jay has been a great friend. [00:00:54] Vince Menzione: When we started the podcast back up, uh, during COVID we started doing podcasts together. When we moved to the studio, Jay was the first person in the studio. He’s always got a spot, uh, at our events. He’s s Spot Art, and, and he’s a great friend and supporter of Ultimate Partner Jay McBain. For those of you who don’t know him, Jay, welcome. [00:01:13] Vince Menzione: Thank you, sir. [00:01:22] Jay McBain: 31 days ago, we landed Artemis two. The furthest humans have ever been away from the planet Earth 57 years ago. We landed on the moon in the 56 years. Between those two moments, the tech industry has been the fastest growing industry in the world. Every single year we moved from the space race to the technology race, and we’re just getting started. [00:01:46] Jay McBain: If you’re old enough, you’ll recognize the mainframe and mini era for 20 years. You’ll recognize a young disheveled Bill Gates showing up in Boca Raton, Florida for, uh, August the 12th, 1981 launch, where Bill thought that every one of us would’ve a PC in our home, and IBM thought they were gonna sell 10,000 of them to hobbyists. [00:02:12] Jay McBain: 1999, a small startup from an executive who just left Oracle in San Francisco named Mark Benioff. A couple of years later, Jeff Bezos went into a boardroom and said, listen, we’ve spent a lot of money building infrastructure to our busiest day, Christmas, black Friday. You’re telling me this stuff sits idle 10 or 20% for the rest of the year. [00:02:35] Jay McBain: Why don’t we rent that out to others? Got laughed outta that boardroom and then got made of fun of on magazine covers. Maybe you should just tend the store, let the adults talk about technology. In March of 2023, our neighbors, our friends, our family saw DeepFakes. They saw poetry, they saw music, and they came to us as tech people and said, did we just light up Skynet? [00:03:03] Jay McBain: Now every one of these 20 year eras, this is the Taylor Swift version of our industry. Every single one of these eras triggers the fastest growing product in history. Today it’s actually Chacha bt first to a billion users. It triggers a new, richest person in the world, bill Gates, to Jeff Bezos. Now, Elon Musk is the first to sign a trillion dollar pay package, and it’s not for car. [00:03:27] Jay McBain: It’s not for cars. It also triggers a most valuable company in the world change. And today that’s nvidia. These are monumental changes in our industry and they’re monumental changes in partnering every single time. And it also links to our customers. If you take a 20 year view of business, one era, and, and think about the AI era, you know, at the start of it here, if you’re to grab the Fortune 500 magazine from 20 years ago and start to flip through it, 53% of the companies in there no longer exist. [00:04:06] Jay McBain: Every 20 year cycle, we lose over half of the biggest companies in the world. These are the companies that have very deep pockets to buy their way outta problems. If you’re not in the Fortune 571% of tech companies don’t make it 10 years. These are the changes that cost industries. There are changes that cost really big companies and the decisions we make, the trends we’re in right now, in 2026 will be written about in the future. [00:04:39] Jay McBain: This new era, a lot of big numbers being thrown around. Vince’s best friend talk about a six and a half trillion dollar AI opportunity, but it’s not Microsoft’s tam. Microsoft is chasing about a trillion dollars of this. And the ecosystem, the hardware, the software, the services, the telecom is gonna make up the rest. [00:05:04] Jay McBain: It is an ecosystem. Every time these big numbers are thrown, the word ecosystem is always thrown around it. Not to be outdone, Sam Altman’s talking about a $7 trillion build out. The world economy this year, the world GDP will be 126. These are material numbers to world GDP, but even better, they’re both larger than our entire industry is today. [00:05:27] Jay McBain: So what took 56 years of the fastest growing industry this year will be $6.07 trillion. Big numbers, but it’s easier to think about it in terms of a dollar that our customers spend in that dollar. They’re gonna spend 25 cents on hardware. They’re gonna spend 25 cents on software. So for anyone that read the memo 15 years ago, that software’s gonna eat the world, there’s still a dollar a hardware to run every dollar of that software. [00:05:57] Jay McBain: And whether you’re thinking humanoid robots or whichever future you’re envisioning, there’s going to be a dollar of hardware to run every dollar of software for the next 20 years. There’s over 25 cents now in IT services, and in many cases, these services are growing faster than the product categories and just under 25 cents in telecom, that’s how it breaks out today. [00:06:19] Jay McBain: And this industry, which took 56 years to get to this point, is gonna double in size in the next three to five years. We already have two and a half trillion of that seven raised and being spent. Part of the reason Nvidia is the most valuable company in the world. Now our industry, uh, you talk about ultimate partnerships. [00:06:40] Jay McBain: Our industry traditionally, and world trade by the way, is 75% indirect. The dealerships, the agencies, the brokers, the resellers, the retailers, the franchisees, the gas stations, the grocery stores, the pharmacies, all 27 industries sell indirect. You gotta think back the last time you bought something direct. [00:07:01] Jay McBain: Well, I bought a Dell from that dude in the nineties. Cool. Well, Dell Technologies is now 60% indirect. Well, I bought insurance. Direct is 15 minutes. Could save me 15%. Well, Geico last year sold more insurance through agencies and brokers than they did direct. This is the world now. We used to be 75% indirect four years ago. [00:07:26] Jay McBain: Then it went to 73.2, then it went to 70.1 and it then it went to 66.7. By the way, marketplace is in these numbers indirect. It’s not marketplace causing this change. It’s one company, Nvidia. Nvidia has seven customers. The magnificent seven, uh, half of them are in the room right now that every morning we wake up to a hundred billion dollars press release about this $7 trillion buildout. [00:07:56] Jay McBain: What’s interesting is indirect sales in our industry is growing by revenue. It increases every year, just not at the pace that this AI build out is happening direct with seven companies. But the reason we’re all here, and I think the core reason that Vince is building this community is this, you know, Microsoft forever has measured and been very vocal. [00:08:21] Jay McBain: About 96% of their deals have partners in them. Kind of who cares, who collects the money. We care about the moments, the 28 moments before the customer makes a purchase. We care about every 30 days forever, because two thirds of our industry, over $4 trillion now is subscription consumption based. Winning a customer today is only winning the first 30 days. [00:08:46] Jay McBain: We care about this cycle. We care about who surrounds our customer. So six years ago, I stood on a big stage and said, you know, we went through a decade of sales. You know, in 1999, you thought you were born to be a salesperson. You’re managing your territory with your gut. Well, a few years later, you were introduced to the science of selling. [00:09:07] Jay McBain: You know, 10 years later you thought as a marketer, you sit around a cocktail party joking with your friends, 50% of my marketing dollars are wasted. I just don’t know which 50%. Really funny. In 2009 until every 58-year-old CMO got replaced by a 38-year-old growth hacker. Coming in with Marketo and Eloqua and Pardot and HubSpot, and 15,505 as of yesterday, MarTech and iTech tools, ninjas in marketing, they wouldn’t let a nickel go through without measuring. [00:09:43] Jay McBain: Now we understand 96% of deals and partners that surround it. No deal is gonna be won or lost in this era without partnering effectively. So we had to have this decade of the ecosystem. One of the ways we’re tracking is by outsiders. You know, Salesforce every year publishes the state of sales and they’ve got, you know, the number one CRM in the world. [00:10:05] Jay McBain: So they get to go talk to all the CROs, all the salespeople in the world. And as of this year, a couple months ago, 94% of every salesperson in every industry in the world uses partners every single day. You wanna see what this number was six years ago. Also, 89% of salespeople around the world don’t think they’re going to club this year without partners. [00:10:29] Jay McBain: So this is a big moment for us, halfway through the decade ecosystem, but we’re only halfway through. We’re starting to understand now at a more granular level. What partnering means. It’s not theory, it’s not flywheels. It’s not really cute. McKinsey slides that we keep showing to our board saying how important partnering is. [00:10:51] Jay McBain: We’re trying to get to the very specific level of the 6.3 partners on average that surround the deal and what they’re doing. How their business model works, and that’s average if I’m working on a public sector deal. I was at a Red Hat conference yesterday talking sovereignty. If I’m in an enterprise or a large public sector deal, it’s north of 10 partners in the deal. [00:11:15] Jay McBain: So we’re starting to understand what used to be this, this, you know, you’ve been the fastest growing industry for 56 straight years. Every single professional services person in every industry has come in to join the fund. Over 90% of accountants are tech services firms. Over 90% of marketing agencies are tech services agencies. [00:11:36] Jay McBain: All of this 250,000 software companies, a million emerging comp tech companies, the half a million VAR that have been in that traditional channel. The managed service providers, all of these 20 different partner types, millions of companies, tens of millions of people competing for 6.3 spots. Around the customer. [00:11:58] Jay McBain: That’s it. Luckily, there’s 141 million global customers to compete for. There’s, there’s some open slots that you can go find, and that’s the point. Our industry never had our own Fortune 500. We always talk to, you know, these partners and GSIs are doing this and SI are doing that. And we never really had a view of capability and capacity or what our own TAM was inside of that partnering. [00:12:25] Jay McBain: And so we set out and we would’ve loved, you know, chat GPT or Gemini or Claude or any of those tools to do this. But there’s one problem in partnering with AI is that it doesn’t know one partner from the next. There’s a big digital sameness problem in our industry that every single partner, whether it’s Larry in the White van or Accenture, with 786,000 employees all say they do all things to all people all the time. [00:12:53] Jay McBain: 98% of them, 99% of them are private companies that don’t share their p and l. You can’t go into Microsoft’s LinkedIn system and find out how many employees, ’cause it’s a block system, it AI can’t see into it. So it just sees, and it’s a great pattern matching. Google, SEO can’t figure out who’s who, nor today can the large language models. [00:13:14] Jay McBain: ’cause all the things they’re trying to match, the transformers are trying to match. It all looks the same. Every tweet, every ebook, every website, every digital history looks the same. So this took us thousands of people hours across two years to do, to dig into every p and l to dig into every dollar of what they’re doing. [00:13:33] Jay McBain: But what was interesting is only a thousand partners in our industry do two thirds of all tech services. When you get into enterprise, it goes up to 80 to 90%. The partners in the middle, in Blue do more tech services. The 30 of them than the 970 partners in white on the outside, the 970 partners in White do more tech services than the next million combined. [00:14:03] Jay McBain: This is our industry in a nutshell. Every time we talk to a a vendor, every time we talk to a partner, every time we talk to a distributor, we’re now talking names, faces, and places. You you wanna talk sovereignty. Yesterday in Atlanta, 90% of sovereign conversations in public sector in the globe is handled by these companies here. [00:14:26] Jay McBain: Forget about how much you do with these partners today. You wanna chase the next column, which is the wallet share. And I was a channel chief for 17 years. I get the weekly report and I see a million dollar partner, another million dollar partner, sorted top to bottom. You don’t know which partners which, which of those million dollar partners is doing 1.2 million in your category. [00:14:46] Jay McBain: They deserve a baseball cap and a front row seat at your event as an MVP. The next partner right next to them is doing 10 million in your category. They’re only doing a million with you. ’cause customers are pulling them into it. Nine times outta 10. They’re leading with your competitor. So I don’t want that list anymore. [00:15:03] Jay McBain: I want the new list, which is showing me those $9 million opportunities. And I as a board member, as A CEO, as a CFO, as a CRO, I wanna see this list. And then I want to talk people, processes, programs, technology. What are we gonna do to go get our fair share of that 9 million? Where’s our lowest hanging fruit? [00:15:24] Jay McBain: How do we double our pipeline? How do we double the size of our company in three years? It’s all right here. Let’s have very specific conversations and move away from flywheels and move around from force multipliers and and things like that in partnering. Let’s figure out how this partner community is surrounded. [00:15:45] Jay McBain: What do 10 million people who have to be smart in front of their customers every single day, what do they read? Where do they go and who do they follow? It’s the law of a few. This is the old Malcolm Gladwell of tipping point 10 million people in the broader channel. A hundred percent of our TAM comes down to only a thousand watering holes. [00:16:08] Jay McBain: 12% of that entire audience. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s over A million. People love podcasts. Number one way they learn the Joe Rogan effect. In our industry, there’s 121 podcasts. These are all public lists. You can go get on my LinkedIn newsletter on canals, oia. But there’s 121 podcasts that drive him forward. [00:16:28] Jay McBain: Really high up on that list, actually number one on the list is ultimate partner, Vince. That’s how I met. ’cause I asked people, 10 million people, you love this. You walk your dog, you drive to work, you listen to podcasts. I’m not the biggest podcast fan. It’s not number one on my list, but it’s number one on theirs. [00:16:44] Jay McBain: They say, you know, you gotta meet this guy, Vince. It’s unbelievable how great these podcasts are. They’re ultimate. [00:16:54] Jay McBain: Then I talked to Vince and said, but Vince, you know, 35% of your community, the 10 million people love to come to events like this one. The hallway conversations, the hotel lobby bar last night. This is what we love to do, especially post pandemic. It’s the number one way we learn. We learn from our peers, we learn from those around us, and, and the learn from the conversations we have here. [00:17:17] Jay McBain: We always remember these moments, you know, years and years later. There’s 352 choices. I’m going to five of them this week in five different cities. It’s a lot of coverage, but again, it’s a tighter li list of how people work. The magazine lists 106 of them associations like Conter. Now the GTIA peer groups, there’s 15 different spheres of influence, but only a thousand places. [00:17:43] Jay McBain: I could walk you through billionaire, after billionaire, after billionaire in this industry and show you how they did this. How did Arne Bellini at ConnectWise? How did Austin McCord at Datto, how did Nerdio become a unicorn? How did threat locker and huntress move away from 6,500 cyber companies and become unicorns over and over and over again? [00:18:05] Jay McBain: It’s only one slide. Unicorns and billionaires are made here, and a lot of people don’t get it. So walking away from Bellevue, a thousand partners, top down, a thousand watering holes, bottoms up. You’ve covered a hundred percent of your tam. You do it better than 10% of your competitor, 10% better than your competitors. [00:18:27] Jay McBain: You win. You carry that on your resume into the next company. You get a bigger job at a bigger pay scale. Let’s just walk through some examples. Cyber 91.7% of it goes through the channel. Huge channel audience. You know, if you’re in MarTech, it’s only 10%, but this one happens to be all channel, but that’s not the story. [00:18:48] Jay McBain: For every dollar that the 6,500 cyber companies are trying to close, there’s $2 in services. Plot twist, the products are grown at 11, the services are grown at 12.6. Your partners are growing faster than you are, and they will continue to for the next, at least five years, probably 10. So when I’m here, five years from now, you’ll hear in me talk about a three to one split in cyber and then a four to one split in cyber. [00:19:18] Jay McBain: Now, when we’re in Miami a couple days ago is CrowdStrike, they’re talking about a $7 and 5 cent multiplier, chasing that two to one up higher. You look at managed services. Here’s a fun story. Managed services. 82% of customers who are man, uh, outsourcing more this year than last year. 650 billion in size. [00:19:38] Jay McBain: This is bigger than the entire SaaS industry. Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, Marketo, NetSuite, HubSpot, 250,000. Others. This is bigger. It’s also bigger than all the Hyperscalers combined, not just AWS, Microsoft and Google, but Alibaba and Oracle and everybody down the list. This is a massive market also growing at double digits. [00:19:59] Jay McBain: So these are some big things and obviously we’re watching, you know, week in and week out, quarter in, quarter out, the Battle of Software and Battle of the Hyperscalers and things like that, and who’s growing at what pace and, and how partnering is connecting to all of this. You know, we watched a moment really early in the pandemic where Microsoft started growing faster than AWS and they haven’t stopped since 26 straight quarters. [00:20:27] Jay McBain: And you ask customers and say, you know, does Microsoft have a better product? And in most cases they say no. You know, AWS had a five year head start. Well, did they have a better price? Well, no, actually most cases Microsoft’s more expensive. Well, did did they have better promotion? Was their Super Bowl ad better? [00:20:44] Jay McBain: No, they’re both kind of crap. So you kind of ask the questions of what’s the only difference that could create growth above the leader in the market? Well, it’s place. More of the 6.3 partners are walking into those keyboard room meetings and drawing clouds up on the wall and labeling the Microsoft than they are AWS. [00:21:03] Jay McBain: Very simple. It’s never been about product. The best product in our industry has never won. And now the best way forward is that partnering moment, and this is the moment. So to go back to that story about the 53% of companies who are gonna fail, one of us is gonna be asked to write the book. And it could be the book like Kodak, they invented the product that ended up killing them. [00:21:26] Jay McBain: And it’s a woe is me story, but chapter one is always you blame the CEO. How could they not see those trends happening in 2026? How could they, you know, were they blind? Were they stuck in their own, you know, innovation chamber? Innovator’s dilemma, were they stuck in their own boardrooms? Why couldn’t they see? [00:21:46] Jay McBain: Well, chapter two, you, you blame the board. They have fiduciary responsibility, outsider view, and how could they not see it? But really, this is the future right here. If you take this slide and apply it 10 or 20 years from now to every failure and every success, these are the chapters of the book. Your buyer is now a millennial. [00:22:05] Jay McBain: As of last year, the 51% of our market is bought by people born after 1982. Different psychology, different behavior, different journey, different criteria, their integration. First buyers. The buy a product, 80% as good as the next one. If it works better in their environment. 94% of people won’t buy a car unless it has CarPlay or Android Auto. [00:22:26] Jay McBain: New Buyer. You have to be more integrated than your competitors. That’s a partnering story. The 6.3 partners. If you heard cyber, you need some great channel partnerships, but you need the other 5.3 partners as well, the consultants, the advisors, the designers, the architects, the implementers, the integrators, the manner service, all of the other partners. [00:22:44] Jay McBain: You need to know more of them than your competitors do, and have them label clouds with your name in them. You need better alliances. Even if you compete, you only compete in the morning. You’re best friends by the afternoon. You have to be tight with the hyperscalers, tight, with the big SaaS platforms, tight with cyber, tight with distribution, there are layers, seven layers to every deal. [00:23:04] Jay McBain: You gotta be tight in and have better alliances than your competitors. And then it all comes to the 28 moments, which I’m gonna end on, but the go to market of all of this, the co-selling, co-marketing, co-innovation, co-development, co keeping. This is it. Your product has to be good enough that somebody’s gonna renew it. [00:23:21] Jay McBain: Your Super Bowl has to be, you know, ad has to be good enough that people don’t, you know, shame you on social media. Your pricing has to be somewhere in a country mile of the bell curve of what the customer wants to pay. But successor failure is just here and platforms are synonymous with partnering. [00:23:40] Jay McBain: It’s our role now in the decade of the ecosystem to drive our companies forward. Marketplace. It’s probably the most predict, you know, great prediction we ever made. You know, growing at 82% compounded, it’s hard to predict ’cause it doubles almost every year. We were almost exact to the decimal point. Five years later now till 2030, we’re watching a second story, which is more interesting. [00:24:02] Jay McBain: If 96% of all deals have partners inside of them and there’s private offers and multi-partner offers and distributor sellers record all these funding mechanisms or services as a product. As of last week, over 50% of all deals in marketplaces now have partner funding. It means that while money changes hands differently, the respect and the recognition of what partners do is in the deal. [00:24:26] Jay McBain: We think that’s going to 59, but at some point, that’s gonna have to hit 96. ’cause to run the best programs, whether it’s an indirect sale, whether it’s a direct sale, whether it’s a marketplace deal, it doesn’t matter how money changes hands. What matters is we recognize the 6.3 partners. They’re not only making the deal happen bigger and faster, but renewing and enriching that every 30 days forever. [00:24:48] Jay McBain: When we watch, you know, billion dollar clubs and when we read all the press releases and all the hubbub about how fast this is growing and who, which companies are behind all this. When I’m quoted in some of these press releases, it’s because of this. You know, CrowdStrike, you know, brags are a billion dollars in a single year, but inside of that, they’re showing that 91% growth in marketplaces, which is pretty phenomenal for any company to almost double in size every single year. [00:25:17] Jay McBain: What’s more phenomenal is they’re growing the channel piece of it, 3548%. That green part of it is growing. Companies that understand platform and have people and processes and programs and technology to do it are winning. And they’re getting recognition and partners are starting to join the Billion Dollar Club who don’t sell a product, but are also winning at Extreme Scale. [00:25:44] Jay McBain: So talk about those partner 1000 and who are leaning in to win at this level. As well as everything changes, traditional billing moved into subscription models, moved into consumption models. Now we’re being tokenized to death multi it’s, it’s in this mode of micro consumption. There’s no chance there was little chance in subscription consumption that would be resold. [00:26:09] Jay McBain: You don’t buy Netflix from the cable guy in the white van. There’s zero chance when you’re buying tokens at a buck a piece that that’s going through any indirect sale. This continues to grow. Now the tectonic shifts is what happens when money changes hands differently. These old programs that we used to all write hundreds of different boxes, we checked every day on deal reg and trainings and all the other things are changing. [00:26:35] Jay McBain: To this, you’ll get these slides, by the way, in high res, inside of this now is the customer. For the first time ever, 45 years later, we have the customer in the middle of what we do, the 28 moments in green before they buy the seven layer stack and the partners inside it. The implementation. The integration, the managed services in a cycle that never ends, and two thirds of our industry. [00:26:55] Jay McBain: With the customer in the middle, we can now move money around to the different moments. It’s not all landing in front or backend margins or market development funds or new customer bonuses or spiffs. It’s landing where it needs to land. Over 400 companies now, pretty much led by Microsoft 400 companies are in a point system right now and 400 more. [00:27:18] Jay McBain: We’re working kind of behind the scenes to get that announced in the next 12 months. This is a total changeover in terms of how economics work and partners are yelling over half of us. I don’t care. Don’t call me a VAR anymore. Don’t call me an MSP. Don’t call me a regional system integrator. I do the consulting over half the time. [00:27:36] Jay McBain: I do the design, I do the implementations, I do the managed services, and 44% of us are vibe coding. On weekends. We’re not happy. Just on the services side. We wanna join the seven layer tech stack as well. These are partners growing faster than their vendors by understanding this cycle and where to show up and where the money is in ai. [00:27:56] Jay McBain: And the number one thing they’re asking for is not more leads, which they did for 45 years. The number one thing is now recognized for what I do. I’ve never just been a cash register. We’re completely now past this idea of a channel being a channel of distribution, and now a channel being this platform for the future. [00:28:16] Jay McBain: As we lay that on top of ai, the first couple of years of AI has really been consumer driven. The 95% failure rate that MIT reported last year is now 70%. That’s the failure to get from proof of concept to production. That 70 will be 50 by the summer we’re moving now in business, the maturity rates are going up at the end customer and in 88% of cases, that’s because of the channel. [00:28:43] Jay McBain: They’re working with partners. They’re not vibe coding themselves and working in little skunkwork groups. They’re working with partners to make it happen, and it now becomes the partner’s number one growth opportunity. I can grow at 11 or 12% in cyber every year. Compounded I can grow in 10% in managed services. [00:29:03] Jay McBain: You know, those are great double digit growth ’cause my customers are growing at 2.7% and I can go four x my customer, but I can go 10 x my customer if I have the right services built around ai. And this compounded growth rate and that big number in 2 20 32, 267 is what’s got those top 1000 partners obsessed. [00:29:25] Jay McBain: And your companies are leading with ai. Now you need to connect to those AI services. You need to get partners on this scale of growth. And they will be adding your name inside every cloud. They write on every whiteboard, but 82% of partners around the world, you know, we survey 25,000 of them aren’t ready, and they’re blaming vendors for not being ready, and they’re telling them exactly the workshops and the training that they need to get ready for this cycle. [00:29:53] Jay McBain: 82% of our entire partner, tens of millions of people, aren’t ready to grow at 35% and they need our help. Last thing I’ll say about AI is it’s the first time from client server to cloud, edge to cloud that it’s been segment driven. SMB alone has one, you know, six different segments, one to nine, 10 to 24, 25 to 49, et cetera. [00:30:18] Jay McBain: Mid-market into enterprise. No one that runs a restaurant is calling Jensen to buy a GPU to put next to the stove. No one’s calling Sam or Dario or anyone at Anthropic or OpenAI directly. They’re waiting. If you run a restaurant with all the people running around with tablets, you’ve invested in toast or square or clover or one of the platforms to run your business. [00:30:41] Jay McBain: A hundred different things. And you’re gonna wait for toast to work with a hyperscaler and build out the capabilities genetically. So when they see a spike in Uber Eats orders, they automatically place a food order and automatically change the staffing to deliver on it. That’s what the restaurant’s waiting for, and there’s no one calling and having a big a agent conversation. [00:31:03] Jay McBain: But even if you go into hundreds of people in medium sized business, every one of the vice presidents have their tech stack already built. I talked about the marketing person already, but the HR leader has one, and everybody’s got their seven layer stack. They’re not calling to buy a GPU and they’re not calling to, you know, bring in open AI directly or, or anthropic. [00:31:22] Jay McBain: They’re waiting for the platform they built to integrate together ag agenta capabilities. Everybody’s in wait mode up until enterprise and public, large public sector. So we are looking at this market and at 90% of that AI market is run by those thousand companies, and the rest of the millions of partners are helping in terms of how these businesses are gonna change at that level. [00:31:46] Jay McBain: Here’s where I end. You know, the 28 moments used to be a theory. It used to be a flywheel. How do we buy a car? [00:31:55] Vince Menzione: Well, we Google it, [00:31:57] Jay McBain: 81% of us now, 94% of us use large language models. We find out that there’s 365 brands of car. I’d have to test drive one every day of the year to get through them all. So we start narrowing these things down. [00:32:09] Jay McBain: We configure it. We put our rims on it, we color it. We download the invoice price. We download the backend rebates this month, whether I buy it in May or June, we find out what 5,000 people paid for our exact car within 50 miles of us. And then we don’t wanna go to the dealer because we know more than the salesperson, the manager ever will. [00:32:26] Jay McBain: We know what we’re gonna pay within, you know, dollars or cents. Just carvana the car. Hand me the keys. Let’s just forget the whole eight hour back and forth. I’ll get you a deal thing. I’m smarter than you in technology. Our customers are smarter than us, smarter than salespeople. That’s why 75% of millennials don’t wanna talk to a salesperson. [00:32:48] Jay McBain: They want to end digitally, and by the way, they’re not gonna send a fax after 28 digital moments. They’re gonna end on a digital marketplace. This is all demographics. It’s not hard to see where it’s going, but we’re getting into names, faces, places again. What if every dollar of your tam, the board, the CEO, runs around with their big multi-billion dollar number, they’re chasing? [00:33:09] Jay McBain: What if every single deal looks the exact same? This is a deal with AstraZeneca, A real deal, real customer spending millions of dollars. We know it starts in October, it ends in April. It’s a six month cycle. We see what they read, the MQ ls at the beginning. We see the sales demo moments. We see ISV, but we’ve never had the light blue boxes. [00:33:30] Jay McBain: What if we as a team could overlay the 6.3 partners in this deal? And when you find out a couple things. Here’s where I end. In December, five deals were one, three of them by NTT. The person at NTT probably coaches AstraZeneca’s, you know, kids’ soccer team. They probably have a cottage together at the lake. [00:33:50] Jay McBain: For the last 20 years, if the person at NTT worked at Deloitte, Deloitte would’ve run this deal. But Software One and Yash are both there, so we understand that when they were drawing clouds up on the wall in the boardroom in December, this deal was won and lost there. It was not won and lost at the point of sale. [00:34:09] Jay McBain: So what if you knew more about this and could see every dollar in your tam? You had an early warning system that this was happening. Two things jump out at this now that we’re in Bellevue. AWS was touched twice in this deal, directly in the marketing cycle and the sales cycle. AWS lost this deal. Here’s an example of Microsoft winning a deal with Microsoft never being touched. [00:34:34] Jay McBain: For some reason, NTT who won, who won AWS’s partner of the year a couple years ago led with Microsoft, so did Software one, Microsoft’s biggest reseller in Europe, and as did Yash, they all led with Microsoft and without Microsoft, knowing Microsoft took a multimillion dollar deal away from their competitors by winning in December. [00:34:53] Jay McBain: That’s one. Second. These partners didn’t just show up other than soccer and cottages. They didn’t show up in December. It went closed one in their CRM system. Back in the summer, August, September, we already knew AstraZeneca was in market, spending millions of dollars. We didn’t need them to read an ebook or go to an event to find that out. [00:35:17] Jay McBain: We knew it because it was closed one. They’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars times five in December to know what to do at the end. This is an early warning system that’s better than any MQL, better than any SQL. And if you could give your company these level of view into their pipeline with an early warning system that I can work with those partners for months before they ever show up at the customer’s boardroom. [00:35:44] Jay McBain: This is it. Talk about 47% winners. This takes you from not only surviving the AI era to being a top five platform winner. Thank you very much. [00:36:01] Vince Menzione: Until next time, we’ll see you in person. Hopefully at our next event.

Master the Microsoft co-sell evolution today. Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this deep-dive panel discussion, industry experts Erin Figer, Erika Irby, and Reis Barrie celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Microsoft Co-Sell program by dissecting its evolution from its 2016 inception to today’s data-driven, outcome-focused landscape. The group explores the critical shift from transactional sales to modern, frictionless co-sell motions, emphasizing the importance of signals, intentionality, and building credibility with Microsoft field teams. Whether you are navigating the complexities of the marketplace, struggling with reseller enablement, or looking to integrate AI into your sales process, this conversation offers actionable insights to align your organization’s go-to-market strategy with Microsoft’s evolving priorities and achieve results. https://youtu.be/KV1MGSoyWbQ Key Takeaways Effective co-selling has shifted from autonomous, fragmented motions to a highly collaborative, data-driven approach essential for modern cloud GTM strategies. Credibility is the currency of partnership; without trust from vendors and customers, technical go-to-market motions will fail to produce long-term outcomes. The “REO” (Reseller Enablement Offering) model is an operational unlock for ISVs to go global and sell local without the friction of multi-party private offers. Integrating AI into CRM systems is vital for identifying total addressable market (TAM) signals and maintaining sales velocity. “Don’t automate a bad process” remains the cardinal rule; technology should be used to refine existing, successful motions, not to propagate inefficient ones. The human element—community, in-person events, and empathy—is a necessary differentiator in an increasingly digital, automated B2B landscape. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags Microsoft Azure, Co-sell evolution, Hyperscaler strategy, SMB partner investment, Cloud Marketplace, Veeam GTM, Partner Center alignment, Channel enablement, REO, Cloud consumption, ISV scaling, Go-to-market optimization, Partner-led growth, Azure consumption, Channel friction reduction, Outcome-driven sales, Microsoft ecosystem, Revenue acceleration, Partner alignment. Transcript Erin Figer Panel For Cut Out [00:00:00] Vince Menzione: So when we, so, uh, this all started ’cause I was trying to figure out what was next when I left Microsoft and I had this woman who was doing work, actually starting the co-selling process when we first started doing co-selling. And she was working with one of our partners and she was working with my team when I was at Microsoft. [00:00:17] And then I said, this lady knows a lot about this stuff. So I reached out, I left Microsoft, I said, I think we can help each other. Like, I think we’re gonna, I got these companies that I spoke at Microsoft’s conference. They’re like, can you come help us out? And we teamed up. And, uh, we’ve been friends and doing fun stuff ever since. [00:00:34] And she’s spoken at just about every event in some capacity or another, whether it was on stage or a workshop. Aaron Feiger. And then, uh, I, I found, I also, through Aaron, I met this other gentleman who had another company and he was doing amazing work with ISVs or SDCs, uh, Reese Barry from Carve. And then, uh, when I think we started up the event, I mean, Erica Irby came to one of our first events and spoke on stage. [00:00:58] I was like, yeah, this. The person knows what she’s doing. So I’ve asked the three of them to come up and kind of round out and end the day, but all three of ’em have a tremendous, uh, background in this whole process of co-selling go to market strategies. And I thought you, you can, I’m just giving it over to the three of you. [00:01:17] Erin Figer: I we don’t need [00:01:18] Vince Menzione: a, you don’t needer you don’t need a clicker and you, you know what you’re all gonna be talking about. But these are some really smart people about how to partner with Microsoft. So, yeah. No, thank you for having us. [00:01:27] Erin Figer: Um, hello. Hello. I think this is on. All right. So actually we’re gonna do an exercise. [00:01:32] Um, I want everyone to close their eyes. Close your eyes. Close your eyes. All right. I want you to think back to January of 2016. What were you doing? Where were you in your career? What company were you working for? What was going on in your Microsoft partnership in January of 2016? Okay, Erica, what was happening for you? [00:01:59] Erika Irby: So, uh, is this on? Sorry, I cannot tell. Um, I was at Veeam for the first time. We had just launched our first, uh, endpoint backup, uh, product in April of the previous year because nobody knew what cloud was yet, and people were scared. So we had to launch that product. And we had a relationship with Microsoft in a sense that about 20% of our business sat on Hyper V. [00:02:25] That equated to about, I think like around 90 ish million dollars, which at the time was incredible for us. But to Microsoft was, you know, like, who are you guys again? And, um, we begged and begged to have any type of communication with them. Events. Funding nothing. We did not know what Azure consumption was. [00:02:43] We didn’t have any of that information. And if somebody would’ve told me at that time that nine years later we would sign a five year contract with them and have multiple products dedicated to Microsoft, I would’ve been like, y’all are bananas. [00:02:58] Erin Figer: Reese, what were you doing in January of 2016? [00:03:00] Reis Barrie: Uh, let’s see, Jan, 2016, I was moving from Orlando, Florida to Seattle, Washington, uh, sight unseen with no place to stay. [00:03:10] Uh, to take a job at a place called Microsoft or Consulting Gig, a place called Microsoft. Um, kicking off some of the cool motions that we’re, uh, we’re gonna talk about today, I think. [00:03:20] Erin Figer: Does anybody know the significance of January, 2016 in the audience? Any takers? It was the launch of Cosell officially for Microsoft. [00:03:31] Congratulations. We’re celebrating 10 years of officially. Problematizing how you connect with the Microsoft sales organization in a programmatic at scale way. And try to build meaningful relationships. And I have been helping partners since the inception of Microsoft’s Cosell program. Um, I was on the partner side, Reese was on the inside. [00:03:59] You were at a partner. So we have all seen the evolution of Cosell across all three hyperscalers launching, you know, their co-sell initiatives. So I just wanted to take a moment to recognize. I didn’t know how many people realized that it’s been 10 years, it’s 10 year anniversary. I think it’s a big milestone. [00:04:15] Huge. So. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we, you know, when they launched it, I went, I was consulting for a startup outta Boston and we were trying to get Microsoft’s attention, competitor to fame, and I went to the business development guy and said, uh, do you, did you just see this program that Microsoft launched? I think we should include this in our branding strategy and we should use co-sell as a way to get our brand out to Microsoft and be able to tell our story of who we are and what we’re doing and that we’re in their accounts and they don’t even know it. [00:04:55] ’cause we’re the startup out of Boston who switched over from AWS to Microsoft. And we did, and I put every single opportunity in the system I could for the first six months, which was the last six months of their fiscal year. We go to partner of the, we go to, what was it called? Them WPCI think at the time. [00:05:13] Mm-hmm. Uh, in Vegas. And Nasuni won wins like all four wards worldwide. US Education, healthcare Partner of the year because I put 117 deals in the system and then it seeded Na Sunni’s Marketing for the next two years. ’cause Microsoft gave them tons of money and attention and we were off to the races. [00:05:35] Right. And then it was, can you repeat that? And we went and repeated it with Red Hat and Rubrik and Nintex and Quest and. I don’t know, lots more. But it was, it’s been fun journey co-selling. And it’s interesting to see now, um, how we continue 10 years later to evolve co-sell. And so Erica, what were some of the takeaways you had today listening to the conversation about how co-sell, how you’re modernizing and co-sell is changing inside your organization, especially now being a boomerang. [00:06:08] Erika Irby: Yeah, well we call it a Veeam ring ’cause everything a veer ring, everything has to start with with Veeam. Well, one thing I was gonna comment on, I think I’m sitting here thinking how wild is it that back in the day we actually had to define that co-sell was an action that, that, you know, partners and vendors needed to take or, and different vendors and alliances. [00:06:25] I mean, now we can’t even imagine going to market without, you know, that, that attach. But at the time, we were just very autonomous and everybody sold their own product and it, it took like this actual motion, um, to get us working together. But now look at us. I mean, this community is incredible. And we can also see this by, and even when AGU was mentioning earlier, all the bosses he had in his room, I mean. [00:06:47] How many people like know each other. I mean, this is like part of that, that ecosystem. But today, um, a couple of things I took away, and by the way, we want a lot of interactions, so we’re going to kind of throw it back out at you guys. But for me, um, outcomes came up repeatedly that was mentioned multiple times about outcomes. [00:07:04] Um, speed with intentionality. I think that was super critical. We have to go to market. There has to be a sense of urgency, but if we’re not intentional, it’s like, what are we doing? It’s just like a big mess. Um, and then credibility. And this is something I think is super important, regardless of, um, all of our emotions, all of our go to market, all of the, the things that we do, if we are not credible or not building trust with our vendors, our, our co-partners, our customers, we will never be successful. [00:07:35] Um, so those are the three main things that I took away from, from everybody talking today. And I, I thought, I mean, to me personally, I thought those were pretty powerful. [00:07:42] Yeah. [00:07:42] Erika Irby: So we’d love to hear. [00:07:43] Erin Figer: Yeah. And I know Reese, you have been doing a lot around outcomes and changing kind of the cosal, um, intention. [00:07:54] Reis Barrie: Yeah. The, uh, the, just thinking back to today, like that was like such a, it was really a, a big key theme of today. Like everyone talked about, whether it’s pivot of, of sales, partnership, um, even when you’re talking about AI and some of the, the, uh. POC discussions. So the live like type of stuff, everything was centered around that narrative. [00:08:17] And so, um, and it’s the same with, it’s the same with partnerships. It’s the same with your co-sell motion, same with your benefits utilization, um, and the way you’re utilizing partnerships. And so that’s, that’s a huge, huge component of, um, what I also took away from today. Um, and then somebody, I think it was Mark who said it that I’m gonna, I’m gonna steal this because the, the whole, um. [00:08:40] Near and dear to my heart of like, don’t, don’t scale automate ai, A-I-F-I-A bad process. Like as someone who deals with like, for the most part, bad processes, like day in and day out, um, and trying to refine them and improve them. Like, that’s one of the first things that we, uh, that we talk to partners about when it comes to their partnership and, and the processes they have in place. [00:09:03] So those are like two really big, just takeaways from [00:09:06] Erin Figer: Yeah. Nice. So we’re here to learn from each other, right? Like this is an ultimate partner community of learning from each other. So I’d really love to hear from the audience, like what are some of the things you’re doing in your cloud? Go to market approach and co-selling that you’re trying out. [00:09:23] Either you tried it, you failed fast, you learned from that, that you can share those lessons learned or like what’s working and how are you changing to be more outcome driven in your cloud go to market, uh, approach. Any takers in wanting to experience share? Great. Give that man a mic. [00:09:50] Audience Member: The SMB investments. Um, these, these new, I don’t know what they are. I partner accelerators, PBAs, uh, there’s kind of something going on in the SMB space where it just seems like they’re coming outta the woodwork to come help. On deals. I’ve never seen Microsoft really embrace the customer that they, the way they have in SMB in the cos sells. [00:10:10] I’m not sure if anybody else is seen that, but seems to be working. It’s two things. One, you at Data 60 [00:10:22] America. [00:10:54] I think, I think part of the rarity there is that. Typically you wouldn’t get a seller attached, right? They’re unmanaged that they’re kind of in the nobody cares category, but, [00:11:06] um. So Microsoft made a huge investment in the distribution space saying we’re gonna lean on distribution to help enable our 165,000 indirect resellers that we have as a business. And part of that enablement goes back to field sales alignment. So there’s these roles, ca roles called um, partner Solutions Sellers, PS. [00:11:30] And so they’re aligned by, um, solutions architecture, if you will, for Microsoft. So, or cloud solution area, whatever the new term, modern work, uh, or, uh, AI work, AI workforce, um, data and ai. And so they are there to help support your deal. So it’s, it’s a huge investment and one that I would just can say continue to advocate for it if you’re seeing success with it, because I mean, we’re heading into FY 27 planning for Microsoft. [00:11:58] So. Like there, there could be role changes. So I would say if it, if it’s helpful, like make sure you’re talking positively about it. [00:12:05] Reis Barrie: Yeah, yeah. Just to, to your point, like I, I’d say like, um, in the last six to 12 months, like that’s been a, a thing that’s like we’ve to go back and like, I mean we manage a portfolio of a couple dozen, dozen partners at this point, and so we’ve had to go back and rewrite some of our playbooks, reeducate some of. [00:12:26] Uh, some of the partnership folks that we use because, um, historically you kind of get into this like void of, you’re in partner center, you’re picking, you know, account alignment and it’s not managed. And so it’s like, okay, I expect to do nothing with this deal on the Microsoft side from a co-sell standpoint. [00:12:42] Um, but that’s kind of, that’s changed quite a bit, um, in the last six months where, um, it’s not like a, it’s hard to create, it’s hard to create processes and dependence around it ’cause it’s not like a guarantee that you’ll get, you get engagement, but. Uh, you see more eng engagement, more on more and more deals. [00:12:58] Um, and so we’ve had to go back and work with some of our partners to rewrite some of our, uh, deal sharing playbooks to account for, uh, things like that, which is, it’s super cool to see, frankly, um, to see engagement on these, like predominantly. [00:13:12] Erin Figer: So in that motion. So first off, for the folks that are on the other side of this black curtain by the food station, if you guys could please stop the conversation. [00:13:19] It’s really hard to pay attention to what’s going on in this room. Um. Thank you. Thank [00:13:25] Erika Irby: you for saying that. [00:13:26] Erin Figer: That was a great, that was a great, that’s a great point. And what I wanna talk about next is like in order to kind of continue to evolve the playbooks and they’re changing and people are changing, and priorities are changing, what are some of the signals that you guys are using internally in your organization, whether you’re building or buying, um, but would love to learn from all of you. [00:13:46] What kind of signals are you looking at to help you continue to like co-innovate, co-sell, co-market? Um, in your go-to market strategies? [00:13:58] Audience Member: Yeah, [00:13:58] Erin Figer: please. Um, [00:14:00] Audience Member: well, I’m, I’m, we’re building everything from scratch right now because we’re brand is integration. [00:14:39] Like having our, our engineer be able to interact with product [00:14:43] Erin Figer: engineer. [00:14:50] I’m gonna pick on trend ’cause I had just spent last week with them and Sanjay, I think like what you guys are building internally, um, using signals, building it into an AI agent. To help you understand your tam, you wanna share a little bit. [00:15:06] Audience Member: Happy to, and I’ll disclose. The first thing I did was hire Aaron Feiger to run my co-sell operations, uh, for the, for the second time. [00:15:12] It’s [00:15:13] Erin Figer: nice to be a GDI again [00:15:14] Audience Member: for the second, so well planted. Um, but honestly, like I can’t have an environment where I fail my sellers, like this process has to be frictionless in co-sell and marketplace operations. Or I lose trust in my own house, let alone in my channel and in my customer base. So. Uh, building that strong foundation is like job number one. [00:15:34] I’ve been, I spent a decade at Trend. I’m back, uh, five weeks on the job now. Um, but I’d say we’ve built a multi hundred million dollar cloud marketplace business thinking highly transactional. And what we’re trying to pivot to is a highly dated driven approach where we can look at any cloud in any region around the world, figure out roughly how many accounts they have. [00:15:57] Figure out what those customers are spending and things that we can protect from a cybersecurity standpoint, knowing that four or 5% of that total spend will be spent on cybersecurity, doing an overlap of where I have existing customers in that drawing a tam, overlapping that with my incumbent partners to get the Venn diagram of like, where’s my sweet spot to move this forward? [00:16:18] And then where’s my blast radius? So when I sit down with a guy leading France, or a person leading healthcare. I can have a really specific opportunity about how to leverage my cloud partnerships to accelerate deals and expand growth in a very surgical, data-driven, propensity driven way. And it like totally changes the conversation. [00:16:40] And the other thing we’ve done because you get a lot of pushback and when you’re working with Microsoft, uh, I was chatting with a few folks today, like if you’re in cybersecurity, it’s not easy. They got a 25 billion ish dollars cybersecurity business. So you gotta find your swim lanes. And the dialogue I have now internally with my sellers is a major League baseball analogy, which is, if you play major league baseball and if you hit the ball 30% of the time, you’re gonna go to this little thing called the Hall of Fame, right? [00:17:07] If you bat 300, if you’re in sales and Microsoft, or Amazon or whoever helps you, 30% of the time, you’re gonna go to this thing called President’s Club. That’s the difference between sitting at home in Ohio and sitting with your beach. You know, your, your toes in the sand. So it’s, we’re really trying to change. [00:17:25] Uh, one of the first things I ask my team is, what’s our brand promise to our sales leaders and our sales team? And if you don’t know that answer, you got a fricking problem. So you gotta get that. What’s your Brene Brown would call it? What’s your North Star? What are your values? Whatcha are you gonna deliver? [00:17:38] Right? So you gotta get that right and then you gotta be relentless in making it frictionless. And then you gotta hire Aaron Fier to run your co-sell. [00:17:46] Erin Figer: Okay? Okay. And so, I mean, I think like that’s a trend that I’m seeing across the partners that I’ve been working with is how they’re using data and doing more data driven, um, decision making and getting to their TAM faster so that as they start to then look at this pathway of, okay, now I’m trying to go to market, what. [00:18:11] Programs does Microsoft have or my other partners have that I can use to move me down that path faster. But getting that tam and feeling more confident about it, like, this is the group, this is the subgroup that I’m gonna start with until I see something that says, oh, I need to deviate and do something different. [00:18:30] Um, so I’m definitely seeing that trend. Like what are you seeing, uh, what are you guys doing at Vem? [00:18:35] Erika Irby: Um, so a couple different things. So like you were saying, we, we do leverage, um, AI more, uh, recently for New Deal Reg, um, automation. And we lit, literally just launched it this week. So this is the week that it’s exciting until the, someone tries to use it for the first time and then for. [00:18:52] Um, so I can’t wait to see my emails later, but, um, it, it’s, we’re seeing like that, that that movement, which is, uh, definitely good for that. We have a task force internally for marketing, so trying to figure out how we’re gonna, um, you know, leverage that, uh, um, internally. And I think that Veeam, you know, they, they have been on the forefront of technology for, for a while. [00:19:12] You know, they were the first with the. Virtual backup and, you know, all these things, you know, really trying to be ahead of the thing, ahead of the game. But, um, one thing I, I, I love how many people brought up the intentionality and the mindfulness because I think sometimes we can easily. Put out a whole bunch of tools. [00:19:28] I love that you called out the point about the bad processes, um, because it actually, I think, can just create more confusion, more of a mess, and that, um, really mindfulness will be so much more beneficial, you know, down the road for your partners, for your customers, for everybody that has to, you know, do that interaction business with you. [00:19:47] I did wanna call out that I thought it was lovely that you had a positive comment about Microsoft. I dunno if I, [00:19:53] Audience Member: yeah, [00:19:53] Erika Irby: I like rarely hear that. So like, awesome. I hope that does get back to Microsoft. I hope that they do, um, continue that. I’m sure their SMB is quite a bit bigger than maybe others, but that is a massive install base for, for Veeam as well. [00:20:07] And even though we’re driving and trying to push into the enterprise, protecting that install base is just absolutely critical for success. [00:20:15] Erin Figer: What about you race? [00:20:17] Reis Barrie: So if I’m looking at like signals, I, I think. Uh, I’ll focus on too, I think you mentioned, uh, the, the cycles of change at Microsoft. Like it used to be an annual thing and now it’s like a, then it was a half base thing, and then it was a, now it’s a quarterly thing basically. [00:20:30] Um, but there’s also like, there’s, there’s big signals and small signals, and so annually we still get like that, like the, the, the guiding direction so that we can align. How we talk about ourselves, how we talk about our partnership, how, how we enable our sellers and whatnot. And then we got a lot of programmatic shifts from a, from a quarter to quarter standpoint. [00:20:50] Um, and so focusing on the, like these, um, these signals so we can align our, our messaging and our frameworks to align with, with, with our partnership, um, is, is one thing that’s, you know, super, super important to keep, keep tabs on. Um, and the second one, I’ll, I’ll give, you’ll. Mention is more on the cus sorry, uh, customer side, but like the seller enablement. [00:21:15] And so how is your, on the marketplace side, how, how are your sellers talking to your customers about marketplace? Um, are they, are they bringing up earlier in the, in the qualifying discussions of how does the customer prefer to buy? Um, are there fire drills with two weeks to go, um, till the, till the deal closes and now the customer wants to go marketplace and, and no one knows how to do it? [00:21:37] Um, seen that way too many times. Um, and so, but how, how, like studying kind of the, uh, maturity of our sales org to see well, like where, where, where is our, our, where are our sellers competent to have this marketplace discussion? Um, because I often relate, like, this is kinda a silly analogy, but I, I, simple stuff works really, really well with me. [00:22:00] But I like, have you ever been to a farmer’s market and you’re like nervous to buy something? ’cause you don’t know if they take credit card. [00:22:07] Audience Member: Yeah. [00:22:07] Reis Barrie: And so like to me, I’m like, okay, well, like it’s the same thing with Marketplace to me. And so like, it’s, it’s the same concept of you want your customer to be able to buy, they want the way that they would like to buy. [00:22:19] Um, and you want the person that they’re interacting with to be able to, um, facilitate that, that transaction in, in a way that feels frictionless. Yeah. Right. Uh, and so that’s a lot. Like, those are the kind of, the really two deep signals, um, that we, we look at a lot. [00:22:37] Erika Irby: I wanna make a comment on the marketplace. [00:22:38] So I don’t know if anybody else is experiencing this, you know, Veeam being an ISV, we have a really strong traditional, traditional channel motion. So, to your point about how sellers are, are managing the marketplace, to be totally honest, we struggle on, um, that, because right now it feels like a deal that goes to the marketplace is taken away from a reseller, and that reseller loses out then on that upfront margin and. [00:23:06] Um, there’s not a clean path necessarily for, you know, just because the, the deal happened there. They really, they still need to maintain that because they’re the one pri providing the services. And somebody had brought up earlier that, um, A SMB customer will never be successful without a partner. And I, I totally agree with that, but it’s like that part is missing. [00:23:26] So we almost need like a mindset change. In the channel where the marketplace is just a route to market and how the customer receives the product. It shouldn’t totally matter because at the end of the day, the, they still have to provide the services. It’s like, I could go to Home Depot and purchase a bunch of pipe for my house, but can I install it a thousand percent? [00:23:49] No. I would destroy my house. I used to have to have a plumber. So I think there’s, we could help our channel by changing that mindset, and at the same time, we, we need the marketplace owners to, to provide the benefits so that it is still very attractive for those traditional. Partners to, to push their customers there or else I, I think we’re just gonna constantly have that strife. [00:24:11] Erin Figer: Yeah. Does anyone in the audience, has anyone in the audience activated REO with Microsoft? You have? Yeah. So how’s it, like, how’s it going? Yeah, there’s Bump. Yeah. [00:24:32] Audience Member: How that shifts making people more effective in their roles individually. So we’re early stage of it, but it’s, it’s been a good experience. [00:24:42] Erin Figer: Has it helped to kind of unlock some of that friction with the resellers and continuing to include them to get to the s and b customers? [00:24:49] Audience Member: Yeah, I think the, the challenge that we’re working through right now is, you know, Erica may have said it, but it’s. [00:24:56] It’s not just the, the view of the marketplace taking people out of the equation, it’s how do we use the marketplace for, for co-innovation to keep people in it. So if, if, if it’s gonna take three to five of, of us in this room to deliver that spectrum to innovation for the customer. Um, how do we use the marketplace as a force multiplier of bringing that together and making that transaction easy? [00:25:21] Yeah. If, if our consumers are more and more influenced by Instagram and TikTok Shop Now buttons, like my husband’s texting me about my stuff that showed up today, [00:25:31] Erika Irby: which is none of his business. [00:25:32] Audience Member: None of your business. That’s right. Just put it [00:25:36] Erika Irby: in my room. Thank you. [00:25:37] Audience Member: If people are, people as consumers in the, in the u, us consumer based economy is driving more and more people through like that social experience of purchasing, that is an area where I do think Microsoft could help us and we could help ourselves in marketing how that, how we leverage it to be a force multiplier versus another omnichannel. [00:25:58] Well, [00:25:58] Erin Figer: so on that note, how many of you have put a button on your website? Click to buy? Yeah, [00:26:02] Audience Member: that’s, that’s where I’m at with our marketing team. [00:26:04] Erin Figer: Right? [00:26:04] Audience Member: Yeah. That’s, I think, the next evolution for us in the, in the REO piece. [00:26:08] Erin Figer: Yeah. Yeah. [00:26:10] Audience Member: I, I don’t want it on our website. I want to, I want it on my Instagram, my LinkedIn, my TikTok reels. [00:26:15] That’s, we’re going to, sir, it’s coming next week at our sales kickoff. Yeah. [00:26:21] Erin Figer: Nice, nice. Anybody else? Uh, activated. REO [00:26:28] besides the, you know, RE speed wagon? Uh, it’s the Microsoft Reseller Enablement. Um, offering, so like you activate your resellers to just take your listing and be able to do a private offer so that you don’t have to do multi-party private offers anymore. Your resellers can just take the listing and sell it directly, and they don’t have to wait for you to send them the offer. [00:26:52] Then they have to go do, so it takes out some of the steps and that friction in the process streamlines it and it allows them to like. Add on and do their own pricing. And then the reseller, however you have your arrangement with that reseller, continues to pay you in the back end for, um, selling that through the marketplace. [00:27:11] Erika Irby: I think I’m going to have you come and do a webinar for our Veeam partners to, to help them with that, because to your point, I don’t, I don’t think it’s as prevalent yet. It’s, it hasn’t really caught on. [00:27:21] Erin Figer: Yeah. It’s been really an unlock of, I had a large, um, ISV that I helped. We implemented REO internally, so they have 34 marketplace offerings and they have this initiative. [00:27:36] They wanted to go global, sell local, and so they launched five more publishing accounts and they came to me and said, we need to replicate our catalog five times 34. And I was like, oh God, please, no. And luckily like two months later, Microsoft, like GAed, uh, REO, and I was like, here’s your answer. We’re not going to do that. [00:27:58] We’re going to enable each of your publishing accounts to be resellers of your quote unquote gold standard publishing account, and that we actually implemented REO as an internal mechanism for them to issue their own publishing accounts, to resell private offers in local currencies. Um, and that was really an operational unlock for them. [00:28:25] All right. Anybody you wanna ask a question to the audience? [00:28:29] Audience Member: Okay. I’ll just keep going. [00:28:32] Erin Figer: Um, all right. So what are some other, um, signals or ways that you guys are evolving the way you’re co-selling? Um, does anybody else have some experience shares that they want to, to share with the audience? We’ve got, we’re using data, uh, we’re using some ai, we’re helping us get to our audience faster. [00:28:51] I really loved work span, um, building in an AI tool inside your CRM system, um, so that you can get some of those signals. Any other signals that you guys are using, uh, to change the way you’re co-selling? [00:29:07] It’s quiet on [00:29:07] Reis Barrie: Maybe, maybe I’ll share one, but Yeah. Yeah. So, um, just when it comes to, like, for us, account alignment to me is like one of the most important things and consistently doing, uh, you know, account planning and account alignment against Microsoft their accounts. Um, now it’s a bit interesting ’cause you can include some s and b stuff in there. [00:29:27] Um, but also, uh, Jason you mentioned up there, the. Uh, marketplace rewards, having the propensity mapping. And so looking at not only from an account alignment, um, what Microsoft accounts are, we, um, you know, areas are we most penetrated in, but also of those accounts, which ones are already buying on marketplace. [00:29:47] Uh, maybe have a commitment to Microsoft in, in some way to help us just further, uh, further target and focus on, you know, if we have 500 opportunities that we’re trying to, um. I’m trying to work through, um, to Sanjay’s point, like what’s, what’s the 30% that I’m gonna get my batting average on? Um, and so that constant account alignment to us is like a, is a huge, huge signal, um, for us to focus on. [00:30:14] Um, and then you can even take it a layer deeper to identify, okay, well if I’m looking like, do I have density within Nina had the, the ou up here on the screen. So do I have densities with density within like specific. Uh, verticals or regions, um, or segments that I should maybe if I just focused on that one segment or one vertical, um, you know, then all of a sudden I, I’m super successful having an executive sponsorship in that, uh, in that ou, something like that. [00:30:44] Um, and, but that, that’s all starting with, um, the foundations of that being that consistent account alignment and leveraging some of the, some of the propensity stuff that Microsoft is, is providing. [00:30:56] Erin Figer: And then making sure you’re like bringing it back into your CRM and storing it so that you can continue to use that information ongoing. [00:31:03] And we’re trying to figure out how to embed more and more. [00:31:37] And are you integrating like. Microsoft and other partners into that data as well. It’s like, this is a great partner. Incorporate them at this point in the journey. Yeah, we um. [00:31:50] When [00:31:50] Audience Member: you’re in the process with, with Microsoft, we haven’t opened it up externally, so that’s our crawl, walk, run is we’re, we’re trying this out internally. Let’s see if we can work the bugs out, get the agents working, and then how do we now go to our MSP community and offer this up as an agent they can use within their sales team. [00:32:08] And on the end of. We’re still working in the middle, but front end profiling, it’s helping a ton, um, and giving us a lot of good intel that the sellers are driving through the agent on the back end. It’s, it’s giving us not, um, just propensity data, but what’s resonating. So if we launched 12 products this year and we trained sellers on. [00:32:28] What’s hitting, where’s my pipeline velocity coming from? Where’s my close rate coming from? So that every month when we have our sales town hall, it’s like, here’s the top three sales motions that are actually driving pipeline and fast to cash close rates. [00:32:42] Erin Figer: And I gotta imagine that helps you get to your differentiators. [00:32:45] Audience Member: Oh [00:32:45] Erin Figer: yeah. And refining your superpower story. [00:32:48] Audience Member: That’s right. That’s. Yeah, because it’s for, for our sales team. I mean, we were talking about it earlier, it’s all about simplification. There’s so many options, so much noise. It’s like, just go focus on these three things and this is where you’re gonna deliver impact and outcomes to your customer. [00:33:01] And if we’re doing that, we’re all winning. [00:33:03] Erika Irby: Yeah. I, I, um, just recently, this is why one of the coolest things that Veeam has done, we just launched this tool called, um, expansion iq, and it’s part of our command, the expand motion this year where we’re really. Upselling and cross-selling our, um, install base. [00:33:17] This tool takes all the partners individual propensity data, puts it against four solution plays that we think are the main plays, and then provides them, this is what you could be earning if you took this motion. And then from a marketing perspective, we provide them. And to do this, here’s your campaign. [00:33:37] Here’s your this, here’s your that. Step one, send this email. Like very, very, you know, just, uh, planned out. And I loved what Nina said earlier today when she shared that, um, org chart. Essentially with all the different, um, industry focuses we are driving. One of our go to market actions is a Microsoft healthcare campaign. [00:33:56] That is like very, very specific, but it’s helping our partners in that manner. Could they go to their own database and pull their own and do all this stuff? Of course. But for our sellers to go blink and then give them a report and be like, here it is. It makes it so much more relevant. And then the steps just, they just hand that to their marketing org and then they’re just off and running. [00:34:18] Going back into your team to say, Hey, we rolled out these 12 things, only three landing. You gotta go back to the drawing on the other side. Or We need more money for these three. Yeah, but let’s figure what’s not with customer [00:34:38] to record the. [00:34:47] Audience Member: A better, faster, uh, listening post for, uh, can I talk really loud? Um, it’s, it’s, it’s helped turning on a listening post for our engineering, our marketing, our service delivery organization that would’ve taken months or quarters to get spun up in an executive board meeting or something. Right now they get it real time every week. [00:35:09] Okay. [00:35:09] Erin Figer: So what I’m hearing, like the theme here is to really like. Understand your sales process. Also, your co-sell sales process that runs in parallel with that. And how do you continue to serve up the right data at the right time to help your people take the right next action to continue to drive those outcomes that you’re looking for, but then also using data to circle it back, to say what’s working, what’s not working, to continue to refine that whole motion. [00:35:43] Um, so if you’re not doing that, I think that’s a big aha moment and takeaway, uh, from today’s session or from here today is like, okay, am I really identifying all the opportunities in my process to involve data to help my people continue to drive outcomes? [00:36:04] Audience Member: You [00:36:04] Erin Figer: have a, [00:36:05] Audience Member: you have your head in up back there, Gary. [00:36:06] Yeah. I, I couldn’t tell if, uh, you were prompting me when you asked that question and I, I didn’t want to, you know, do a shameless plug for cloud, but I think everybody [00:36:15] Erin Figer: should shamelessly plug, plug away. [00:36:16] Audience Member: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, you brought up a mitt and, uh, the co-sell thing, but it, it does relate to what Reese had said about, um, you know, the being at the farmer’s market and. [00:36:26] Not sure what, you know, can I use a credit card or not? And I think that, um, or [00:36:30] Erin Figer: can I use Apple Pay? I still ask. I’m like, do you, do you accept Apple Pay? [00:36:32] Audience Member: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it’s like, I think, uh, a lot of times you don’t understand the seller in that situation is not sure how to handle that conversation. So, and there’s not a lot of information about their, about that. [00:36:44] Like how to, when it comes to a seller talking about marketplace and asking about the commit. Because the commit obviously is one of the main drivers, right? 900 billion out there. And committed spend across all the hyperscalers. So how to actually bring that up with a customer and what if they don’t know, right? [00:37:05] So there’s a whole process that, you know, they, they need to be taught this. But the first thing that’s also come up multiple times is activating them also means how to engage them. So an approach there of how to engage your salespeople is critical because if salespeople aren’t in it, they’re nothing’s happening. [00:37:23] You’re not gonna do well with marketplace. And on the co-sell part, it’s kinda the same thing. The typical thing, and I remember talking to Aldo Desal about this at another Ultimate Partner event, but uh, you bring your salespeople into a call, like you set up a call with, with Microsoft and the seller comes in unprepared. [00:37:42] Typically they’re not sure what to say and it’s a little bit intimidating. How, how, how do I, you know, what do you do in this situation? Like, so you start talking about product ’cause that’s what you know, and it’s the last thing you want to do. You, you want to understand what they care about, like em stage and, and, uh, what’s your consumption story and what kind of MRR impact you’re gonna have. [00:38:03] So it’s, these things are just unusual topics for the salespeople to be prepared, uh, to talk about. But it’s critical if your salespeople are gonna be enabled that they can do that. So I think from a co-selling standpoint, that’s just what I want to mention. And by the way, we offered a tool that does that. [00:38:20] Erin Figer: Nice. Awesome. Thank you. Uh, I mean, I don’t know about you. Reese Cloud Atlas. Every time we helped an ISV with their cosell motion, we would say, okay, we’re ready to go share cos sells and drive introductions. Have you done your sales enablement? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve enabled the sellers we have, and then we launch like the first batch of cos sells and then they immediately come back. [00:38:43] Stop, stop, stop. Don’t share any more deals, like we’re causing too much confusion. Uh, we didn’t do our sales enablement. Wow. Grace, [00:38:52] Reis Barrie: I mean, sound [00:38:53] Erin Figer: familiar? [00:38:53] Reis Barrie: It sounds very familiar. It sounds too familiar. Uh, P-T-S-D-A little bit there, but the, uh, sorry, [00:38:58] Erika Irby: but that’s why you guys have jobs. [00:39:00] Reis Barrie: Yes. Go on. It’s, it’s, um, but this, you know, I, I always come back to the, the concept of like, if we showed up to a Microsoft co-sell call the way we do to a customer call, like, oh. [00:39:14] Erin Figer: It, [00:39:14] Reis Barrie: it would, it would be night and day difference of the value you’d get outta your Microsoft partnership and co-sell. That’s all. It’s [00:39:20] Erin Figer: Well, [00:39:20] Reis Barrie: but I think people [00:39:21] Erin Figer: forget Microsoft is your customer too. [00:39:23] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:39:23] Erin Figer: They’re your partner, but you have to sell to before you can sell with and through. So you first gotta like master the sell to. [00:39:30] Reis Barrie: Yeah, a hundred percent. So there, there’s there like, and then to your point, [00:39:34] Erin Figer: it’s still true. 10 years later, people, it’s still true. Back to the fundamentals, right? [00:39:39] Reis Barrie: Yeah. It’s, [00:39:40] Erin Figer: yes. Go for it. [00:39:44] Audience Member: The, um, Microsoft being customer, right? So, and I love what you said about sem uh, alignment. So we actually made it a point, um, in our co-sell process, we have a validation checkpoint with Microsoft. If we build a co-sell packages, um, we are an si We’re not primarily ISV, but I think that’s shifting as well gradually. [00:40:10] And ESI kind of becoming a little bit of ISV. Um, so why it’s important, I think like Ree said, like you come up, you show up to co-sell call and you just pitch your services or say, well, let’s do account planning with this and that. Right? But what if it doesn’t work in the field? So that validation became critical for us, and I can tell you that now we have success stories that are actually proven based on that multifaceted feedback, uh, as to it’s one thing to build it. [00:40:46] Yeah. But is it useful for seller, for Microsoft sellers actually in the field? Can they actually position it and help clients to be more successful? Because that’s the ultimate goal. So that validation became, uh, an important checkpoint for us, uh, to make those packages repeatable and successful for customers at the end of the day. [00:41:06] So when we talk about signals, you absolutely right. It’s not just customer signals like we use ZoomInfo, we use all this data points, et cetera, but it’s also signals from the field because while Microsoft is a huge organization, they’re also very dynamic. On very regular basis, a lot of things changed. So taking those signals into account, uh, has created that, what we call like, more of a holistic approach for us, uh, to make it more meaningful. [00:41:33] So [00:41:34] Erin Figer: I like it. And you made it sticky by making it like a required point in the sales process? Absolutely. That everyone stops. Take a moment. [00:41:41] Audience Member: Yeah. [00:41:41] Erin Figer: And make sure that we’re all on the same page. [00:41:43] Audience Member: Yeah. And I think for us as si it’s even more critical. Like I, I, I think there is a lot more to happen in marketplace as, as, as much as we talk about it, but being in si I, we still kind of figure it out, like how Mark marketplace actually becomes a place of transaction for a size. [00:42:01] Yeah. So that’s why, you know, we’re passionate about packages and it’s not just a matter of publishing it and say, oh, it’s co-sell ready? Then what? Yeah. Right. So yeah, so, so that’s why that, that checkpoint is very important for us. So [00:42:16] Erin Figer: definitely, definitely. I think you ladies over here in the corner had some, some hands up, Michelle and, and the other Michelle, Michelle Squared. [00:42:26] Audience Member: Thank you. Michelle Squared. I like it. Um, so. I’ve been a little quiet because I wanna just give my background. So I’m a global VP of channels and alliances and, um, I think it’s a bit of this, uh, the movement, right? So I love your farmer’s market analogy so much. I’m gonna steal that. Thank you. But the reason is because you don’t know unless you’re gonna meet your partners where you are or meet your customers where they are in that journey. [00:42:53] So the first time that they’re selling whatever their goods or wares are, and somebody says, do you take Apple Pay? That’s a clue. And then when you hear it over and over again, you realize there’s a correlation that there’s a need in the market. So in In my life, all roads read to Romes, right? Reseller and VARs, OEM, alliances, MSPs, MSPs, ISVs System integrators. [00:43:17] And as a partner leader, you wouldn’t necessarily think marketplace is first because you feel like you’re going around your partners. But am I meeting my partners where they are in their journey and choosing to procure the way they want to procure? And I think that’s the notion that I have a lot of learning from this team and everyone in this room to understand how do we in a company. [00:43:38] Prescribe the right solution to, to meet our partners in that journey. And I’ll use, kind of circling back to the MSP space, PAX eight, one of Microsoft’s largest partners created a marketplace dedicated to MSPs. And while I was the global Channel chief of SonicWall, a lot of partners said to me, I like you. [00:43:56] I like your products, I like your firewall, but unless you’re on the park, PAX eight Marketplace, I’m not gonna buy from you because they make my life frictionless. And easier to do business with. And I think that’s the motion that every vendor in this room needs to understand is, are we truly meeting our partners where they are? [00:44:14] PS I work for Carrero DDoS Solutions and come to talk to me about that. Thank you. [00:44:18] Erika Irby: Well, and a Guo owes you some money for that commercial right there. [00:44:30] Audience Member: From, we’re actually community first. Um, as an MSP, even though we’re national, like we really focus in on community local touch. Um. Like you said, um, um, Southern seldom me in a southern way. Like that’s what we focus on. I’m your [00:44:45] Erin Figer: huckleberry. [00:44:46] Audience Member: I love that. Exactly. Um, and we’re seeing a ton of success with actual in-person events now. [00:44:53] Like the majority of our business is come in, leads are coming from that right now. And even though, like I, I truly believe in digital first motions, we need to be on Instagram and have that self-serve motion as the next generation comes up in our. Buying and transitioning to their kids or whatever that looks like. [00:45:14] Like we have to remember that there’s also a trend of tactile in person people first coming with it. And so like we, I, I feel like there, there has to be that motion engaged and I would love to hear your thoughts around how are vendors thinking about engaging in that community driven approach, not just the platform itself. [00:45:37] Erika Irby: Yeah, I, I personally also, this is hilarious ’cause we’re like best friends, so we can talk about this later, but, um, from a Veeam perspective, Michelle, um, we are seeing a resurgence in like these thought leadership type of events. And I think there’s, this is, this is sort of related, but just to, this is kind of how I think about this. [00:45:57] Um, Barnes and Noble’s business has like gone through the roof lately, and they are, they’re actually like opening more stores, which is bananas because at one point they were like going outta business because nobody wanted to go and like, touch a book or talk to somebody. But that is changing, thank God. [00:46:11] Right? That is like changing and people are actually like becoming more social because they’re missing this. Um, my kids’ generation refers to places like Barnes and Nobles as the third place. Like this magical place that exists where you can talk to a real human that’s not on your phone. Like it’s, it’s amazing. [00:46:28] But anyways, we’re, I think we’re starting to see this in marketing. We used to like pump everything out digitally, but after a while people get that form and they’re like, I am not putting my dang information in this form. And then your ability to capture that lead completely dissipates. All it is, is, is now an impression, which is. [00:46:47] Fairly worthless. You can have millions of them and nothing happens. So we are definitely investing more into, um, uh, live events, but also with the live streaming because then people can, they’re still watching it live. They still have to register for it. They knew they couldn’t make it. So I think that there’s definitely that digital aspect that’s super helpful. [00:47:05] But a purely digital, you will never make that connection. [00:47:10] Erin Figer: Yeah, I mean, I think. Unfortunately, COVID made us, you know, all do things digitally. But now that we’re past that, getting back to that multifaceted approach, I think if we think about what’s going on in the B2C world, lots of communities within communities, there’s whole company’s getting created, like women are bringing women together to do craft circles. [00:47:37] And literally. Okay. But like I did that digitally. That was pretty awesome. I was like three years. That shameless plug. No, I, no. But like then now there’s like companies that are actually like renting space, bringing people together, like crafting and while they’re doing the activity, um, if anyone’s ever done therapy, a therapist will say. [00:48:01] You know, if you wanna get your kids talking, get them coloring, like distract them and they will start to open up. And so you distract people with an activity and they start to open up. And what they really are, thrive, like what they really need is in this digital world where we’re getting so much information, we still need. [00:48:22] The next layer of filter to help us vet out and validate and confirm like our thinking or like our suspicions on things like, am I in the right going down the right path? Is this the right direction? So there’s still a human element that needs to be involved in that buyer journey, and you’re seeing that with these little micro communities inside communities. [00:48:45] Um, and so I’ve. I mean, I love micro communities inside of bigger communities. I’ve started two of them, three of them. So I, it definitely, like, we need still that in person, uh, interaction and I love seeing it coming back in our space. [00:49:04] Erika Irby: I, I was just thinking about ear, the, the previous panel and the, the topic came up about who can assist partners as they transition from that direct to CSP motion. [00:49:15] And I mean, yes, it, I think Microsoft plays a role there, but I think it would behoove Microsoft to invest in these communities and they would enable that change. Yeah, [00:49:26] Erin Figer: yeah, yeah. There is a person inside of Microsoft who has that remit, but she’s like one person, one person trying to do that. I was like, wow. [00:49:36] Okay. Grace, what are you seeing amongst your partners and also your perspective with working with Microsoft? [00:49:42] Reis Barrie: Yeah, yeah. Um. There’s a really good, uh, the frontier study, the work like door work study that they did, um, which talks really heavily about just like in this, you know, post 20, you know, 2020 culture, how like the amount of busyness has just increased in an insane amount and how a, a really strong use case for AI is to buybacks from that time essentially, um, for us to, you know, return back to a, a normal state and I think social creatures, right? [00:50:10] And so, um, in this. I run a fully remote company, which is like a blessing and also like really interesting to try to create a really strong culture within people that are, you know, 13 times zones apart times. Um, and so it’s uh, it’s a really interesting thing and coming together and, um, into an in-person space or a place here or a place where you can actually talk to your customers, talk to, um. [00:50:39] Step away from that, like that busy day to day where like, I, I can’t even fit a 15 minute break in to grab lunch. You know, days like how much, supposed to find 15 minutes to just have a, a casual conversation and these types of events, which I’m sure Vince is cheering back there that we’re talking about this right now. [00:50:57] But the, uh, but these type of events, they let you decompress from that day and they let you kind of just have these really important conversations that, you know, bring us back to just being humans To me. [00:51:10] Erin Figer: And being human and co-selling with each other. And on that note, we’re 44 seconds over. Yeah, we’ll give it back to Vince, [00:51:18] Reis Barrie: but we were plugging Vince’s events, so I think we’re okay. [00:51:21] Vince Menzione: We One more question. We have one more question from, sorry. Oh yeah. [00:51:23] Reis Barrie: It’s [00:51:23] Audience Member: maybe more a, a shared just as we’re talking [00:51:25] Vince Menzione: by the clip, right. [00:51:27] Audience Member: And to compliment everything that you guys have been talking about around co-sell and. Getting ready in line with Microsoft to speak to the customer and speaking. So the signals that we’re going after are on the actual conversations that are happening in the conversation. [00:51:41] So aside from all the planning, which I agree on, we’re building agents to hear what’s going on on the calls with Microsoft, on the calls with customer, and grab those actual signals. Are we answering the questions in the right way? What types of questions are coming back to us that we weren’t able to answer. [00:51:58] Maybe we forgot some information that we planned on and thought about can we signal and provide that feedback to the user, the seller, or whatnot on the call. And so as we’re doing this, ’cause we’re in the communication space, so we have some self-interest here ’cause that’s sort of the future of our business. [00:52:12] But it’s a really interesting opportunity for us to grab these signals to improve how we’re selling with our customers, how our partners are selling with our customers, with Microsoft. It’s just an interesting way with everything that’s going on full circle, we’re trying to complete that sort of sales journey with AI and, and grab those signals and keep getting better all the time. [00:52:32] Erin Figer: Yeah, I love that. And I think it’s like the ongoing balance of people, process and technology and how do you continue to keep the human in the loop? It, as we continue to introduce and evolve AI and use of data in our companies is like continuing to be mindful about the human in the loop. Um, part of that journey. [00:52:54] So thank you all. [00:52:55] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Great conversation. [00:52:56] Erin Figer: Thanks for all the audience engagement. We appreciate it. [00:52:59] Vince Menzione: Co-selling the house, co-selling the house. [00:53:02] Audience Member: Thank you, Vince. [00:53:02] Vince Menzione: Thank you. And I remember that January, 2016. Yes.

Mastering the shift from MSP to MIP. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this insightful episode, Oguo Atuanya, CVP of Vendor Experience at Pax8, joins us to discuss the pivotal evolution in the IT channel: the transition from Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to Managed Intelligence Providers (MIPs). We explore how the marketplace is moving beyond traditional infrastructure support toward a future defined by AI-driven orchestration, business consultancy, and scalable agent-tech organizations. Oguo details how Pax8 is leading this transformation by curating solutions that allow partners to move from transactional service models to life-cycle management that prioritizes measurable ROI for the Small and Medium Business (SMB) market. Key Takeaways Pax8 is redefining the role of the distributor by acting as an AI commerce platform for the SMB market. The shift from Managed Service Provider (MSP) to Managed Intelligence Provider (MIP) is critical for scaling in the modern tech era. Successful MSPs must evolve into business consultants who integrate AI-driven workflows rather than just selling infrastructure. Security and automation are foundational elements that every modern MIP must prioritize to ensure scalability for customers. The “MIP Playbook” provides the curriculum-driven enablement partners need to successfully pivot their business models. Building strong, end-to-end customer lifecycle management is the key to minimizing churn and maximizing long-term value. https://youtu.be/c8uCnMJd9bg If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags Pax8, Managed Intelligence Providers, MIP, AI commerce platform, SMB technology, MSP evolution, AI-driven workflows, agent-first strategy, digital transformation, channel partner strategy, cloud solutions, customer lifecycle management, IT channel innovation, scalable automation, business consultancy, technology architecture, agent store, managed service providers. Transcript Oguo Atuanya Audio Episode [00:00:00] Oguo Atuanya: I, I mean, the ultimate goal is to get that MIP channel as intelligent or even more intelligent and agile than any enterprise IT department. [00:00:13] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Today I’m joined by Dexter Hardy, the founder of Integral for a compelling discussion, a guo. Welcome back, [00:00:29] Oguo Atuanya: Vince [00:00:29] Vince Menzione: to the welcome back to the podcast, my friend. So good to see you. [00:00:33] Oguo Atuanya: Good to see you, my friend. It’s been about, what, two years? [00:00:35] Vince Menzione: It has been two years, almost two years. Almost two years ago now. And uh, man, this [00:00:40] Oguo Atuanya: thing is just picking up steam. [00:00:41] Vince Menzione: It is. We’re having a blast. We were having so much fun. It was [00:00:44] Oguo Atuanya: awesome. [00:00:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:00:44] Oguo Atuanya: Really awesome. [00:00:45] Vince Menzione: And you were for context, for people watching and, and listening. Uh, we were here in Boca yesterday for the Ultimate Partner Executive Retreat. [00:00:52] Yep. It was this awesome event and great to have you involved in it. Uh, pat, thank you so much. So, uh, last time you were here [00:01:00] Oguo Atuanya: Yes. [00:01:01] Vince Menzione: Uh, you were representing Microsoft where you spent 22 years. [00:01:05] Oguo Atuanya: 22 [00:01:06] Vince Menzione: years. [00:01:06] Oguo Atuanya: Two years, right. Outta outta Junior Heart. [00:01:07] Vince Menzione: Amazing. And, uh, tell us, tell us about your journey so far. Uh, almost two years, a year and a half at Pax. [00:01:14] Eight. About a [00:01:15] Oguo Atuanya: year and a half. [00:01:15] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:01:16] Oguo Atuanya: a year and a half. [00:01:17] Vince Menzione: And tell, tell for our viewers and listeners, uh, your role at Pax eight. [00:01:21] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:01:22] Vince Menzione: Which is a preeminent company in this space. We used to use the term disty. I’ll let you describe them. Uh, officially [00:01:29] Oguo Atuanya: No, [00:01:30] Vince Menzione: because they don’t, you don’t use that term. [00:01:31] Oguo Atuanya: We’re not, we’re not a distributor. [00:01:33] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:01:33] Oguo Atuanya: Scott Cha would kill me. [00:01:35] Vince Menzione: That’s right. No, I know, I know. I remember the, uh, [00:01:38] Oguo Atuanya: the New [00:01:38] Vince Menzione: York, was it the New York Times article? Yes. Yes. [00:01:41] Oguo Atuanya: Was kind of a, [00:01:42] Vince Menzione: that was a launching point coming out. Yeah, yeah. [00:01:44] Oguo Atuanya: No, we, we, we see ourselves as, um, um, the pre, uh, permanent marketplace. For SMB. [00:01:52] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:01:53] Oguo Atuanya: Right. So you think about the SaaS and the cloud. [00:01:55] Yeah. You know, solutions that you need. In SMB, we work with vendors to bring it, um, you know, to the SMB market through, uh, MSPs. And we also, uh, see ourselves as the premier [00:02:08] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:02:08] Oguo Atuanya: Um, AI commerce platform for SMB. [00:02:13] Vince Menzione: Very interesting. [00:02:14] Oguo Atuanya: Right. And as we go through the discussion, uh, this afternoon, you’ll see why. [00:02:20] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:02:21] Oguo Atuanya: That differentiation is [00:02:23] Vince Menzione: key. I, I love, I love to dive in. I love to dive in. I will say this, I, I think you’ve gotten a lot of people very interested in the community. I mean, certainly your events are becoming bigger and bigger. You’re beyond conference. [00:02:36] Oguo Atuanya: Next one’s coming up in Salt Lake City [00:02:38] in [00:02:38] Vince Menzione: June. [00:02:38] I plan on being there, salt Lake City in June. [00:02:41] Oguo Atuanya: I must have you there. [00:02:42] Vince Menzione: I will be there and you will, and you will be at our event in May. [00:02:45] Oguo Atuanya: Absolutely. [00:02:46] Vince Menzione: Talking about beyond, but also talking about this community. Uh, I’ve also woken up over the last year or so as well and learned a lot about this SMB community and ms, what we call MSBs. [00:02:58] You’ve re you’ve re-categorized them, uh, but this community is palpable. The opportunity is huge. [00:03:04] Oguo Atuanya: It’s huge. [00:03:05] Vince Menzione: And, um, I would say that, uh, yeah, we can talk, we’ll talk, we’ll just talk through it. ’cause it is huge. Yeah. There’s a lot of things that need to be done. [00:03:12] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:03:13] Vince Menzione: And I think, I think PAX eight is, uh, at the forefront in driving a lot of this. [00:03:17] The hyperscalers, like Microsoft are, are paying attention now more in a big, in a bigger way than before [00:03:23] Oguo Atuanya: being great partners. [00:03:24] Vince Menzione: Been great, great partners. Yeah. We’ll talk about your role with Microsoft in that regard. [00:03:28] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:03:28] Vince Menzione: But talk, let’s talk about this evolution too. Let’s, uh, so for those who are listening, who are used to maybe us talking about a SaaS software company Yep. [00:03:36] Or an ISV or an SDC, uh, we’re talking about MSPs, managed service providers, which is the common term that people use. These are, these have been traditionally the companies, the smaller companies, they used to call em mom and pop shops back. The old VARs that became managed service, the past [00:03:53] Oguo Atuanya: provider in, in the past, they’re getting bigger. [00:03:54] Vince Menzione: And then Yes. One of the big [00:03:55] Oguo Atuanya: ones, y say [00:03:56] Vince Menzione: Nexus Tech. We had Yes. [00:03:57] Oguo Atuanya: Partners of ours. [00:03:58] Vince Menzione: Nexus Techs, new Charter. [00:04:01] Oguo Atuanya: Charter, Michelle [00:04:02] Vince Menzione: Evergreen, I could Ira Lyra. Yeah. They’re, they’re becoming bigger and bigger. Private equity is getting involved. What’s important, what’s important to note too is that the customer is driving this because customers are requiring more and it’s no longer about, and my my point of view is it’s no longer about loading up software and just letting it go. [00:04:22] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:04:23] Vince Menzione: You need to be hands-on all the time. [00:04:24] Oguo Atuanya: Abs. Absolutely. And, and [00:04:26] Vince Menzione: yeah, [00:04:26] Oguo Atuanya: kind of skating towards that park of, um. MIP? [00:04:31] Vince Menzione: Yes. Let’s talk about MIP [00:04:33] Oguo Atuanya: managed intelligence providers. [00:04:35] Vince Menzione: So last year, year Beyond conference, I believe you launched this like new in I, we’ll call the new nomenclature or the new name, or this new thing. [00:04:46] And evolved. And evolved, yeah. [00:04:48] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:04:49] Vince Menzione: So talk about the managed intelligence provider for us. [00:04:52] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Wow. When it happened In Beyond Or at? Beyond, I should say. Um. We thought it’d catch on because it’s apt. I mean, it’s, it’s sort of indicative of what’s happening now and what will happen over the next 24 months, but, uh, the sort of migration towards this and the marketplace has been immense. [00:05:17] I mean, you, and you, you know, hit on what the difference is. Yes. Earlier on, um, today. What’s driving this shift is that most MSPs have been really good at being tools and technology infrastructure providers. [00:05:36] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:05:36] Oguo Atuanya: Right. [00:05:37] Vince Menzione: They would hook up your network and your printer. In the old days, they fix your, fix your computers. [00:05:42] Yes. Or replace re-image, all those things. Right? Yes. That was the old days. And, [00:05:46] Oguo Atuanya: and, and also provide some very manual services delivery, which will now play. In this new era that we are actually, I shouldn’t say going into, it’s taking all, [00:06:00] Vince Menzione: we’re, we’re there, [00:06:00] Oguo Atuanya: we’re there right now. So, um, you know, they, they, I guess the transformation from MSP to MIP others partners that would actually become managed intelligence providers. [00:06:14] That means really, you know, integrating intelligence into workflow that matters for the SMBs. Right. So you [00:06:23] Vince Menzione: so double click on that for, [00:06:25] Oguo Atuanya: for [00:06:25] Vince Menzione: our [00:06:26] Oguo Atuanya: viewers. Yeah. So all really means is that you’re moving from being that, you know [00:06:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:30] Oguo Atuanya: Technology, infrastructure, tools, provider to, you know, becoming an, an orchestrator and a and a and a business consultant. [00:06:38] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:38] Oguo Atuanya: Right. For you. SMB. Right. So important. ’cause you have to now get into, uh, very secure, streamlined automated AI driven workflows to help them. [00:06:52] Vince Menzione: All driven in the cloud. Everything’s in the cloud now, as opposed to the old days. Right. On premise. [00:06:58] Oguo Atuanya: All gone. None. That’s happening. It’s all gone. All gone. Yeah. [00:07:00] So you, you’ve got this automated platform right now. You should as, um, an MIP, um, we actually gonna be in a position to design, um, agent tech organizations for your, uh, SMBs who wanna scale. ’cause as we talked about yesterday, yeah. SMBs have opportunities they wanna grow, but not have the wherewithal to go hire a hundred people. [00:07:27] Instead of doing that, you go hire a hundred agents. Yeah, but you’re gonna need that MIP to architect, the organization, launch it for you, manage it, get you, you know, automated, you know, workflows that you’d leverage to run your company, and then they have to manage and optimize the technology. Um, as necessary. [00:07:49] So, so, huge shift. [00:07:50] Vince Menzione: Huge shift. [00:07:51] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:07:52] Vince Menzione: And it was interesting for me being at the, where you talked about the write of Boom conference that you, were you, your organization was there? Yeah, I was there as well and I was in the room with some of the Microsoft folks and we had some of those larger partners we talked about [00:08:07] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:08:08] Vince Menzione: That were in the room as well. And just, uh, different perspectives too. Like I hadn’t heard it firsthand. It was interesting for Microsoft too, to get that feedback from. From some of them as well. Um, I think, I think the ones that are progressive are already on board with you. I’ve, I’ve already talked to some of those organizations, like, oh, we’re a hundred percent Pax eight, that’s it. [00:08:29] But then some of the others I think are still, there are still people out there that are stuck in the past. Would you agree? Like this community is in the, is in a transition right now to this new model? [00:08:38] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:08:39] Vince Menzione: Tell [00:08:39] Oguo Atuanya: us [00:08:39] Vince Menzione: about that. [00:08:40] Oguo Atuanya: There are, I mean, listen, I, I don’t, you know, wanna put a number. You know what we’re seeing. [00:08:48] But I’d say that about eventually, let’s say we’re gonna have about 30% of folks that really get it and move. [00:08:56] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:08:56] Oguo Atuanya: Right. The others we’re gonna have to, [00:08:59] Vince Menzione: there’ll be the laggards that’ll [00:09:00] Oguo Atuanya: take longer and let me just, you know, sort of rephrase that state. Most of them understand, you know, what the opportunity is with this whole Yeah. [00:09:14] Vince Menzione: You [00:09:15] Oguo Atuanya: know. They’re still struggling with being able to, you know, articulate this story, um, from a value prop perspective, right? You know, go in, talk to the SMBs, help the SMBs understand how, you know, they can be more productive, more efficient, and um, ultimately more profitable and scale, um, with an agent, you know, framework. [00:09:44] They still struggle. Yeah. And, and that’s kind of where we come in, where we helping these SMB or sorry, MSPs and to be ips. [00:09:54] Vince Menzione: So tell us, understand that. Tell us what you’re doing. I believe you, you stood up like academies and things like that, right? You’re doing some outreach, some enablement for the community? [00:10:02] Is that what it is? [00:10:03] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah, we we’re heavy, we’re heavy in, um, enablement. Um, because, you know, everyone realizes that. To be successful with this whole campaign. It’s not just about putting agents up in an agent store, real, SMB, you know, native, um, vertical aware agents that actually, you know, when you deploy it in an SMB business, right, they drive value right away, [00:10:37] Vince Menzione: right? [00:10:38] Oguo Atuanya: Right. So, but we also realize that it’s not just about, you know, landing the agents in the marketplace, but enablement is a huge factor. That’s why when you go back to things, you know, like academy, uh, the MIP playbook, uh, some of the, uh, inculcation integrations we we’re doing with, um, partners, really critical to have that enablement layer. [00:11:04] Vince Menzione: Interesting. [00:11:04] Oguo Atuanya: Along with providing the agents and the, in the agents store. [00:11:07] Vince Menzione: Who’s developing these agents in the agent store? Are they providers for the MSP community? Are they organizations like Take, take us through that model. [00:11:17] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So they, they, they, because [00:11:18] Vince Menzione: you, you manage all the vendors. [00:11:20] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah, I do. Right? [00:11:21] Vince Menzione: I do. So tell us more about that. [00:11:22] Oguo Atuanya: I do. So it’s, it’s multifold, right? Um, one fold is you have prebuilt solutions that you know vendors. [00:11:30] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:11:30] Oguo Atuanya: Built for, you know, SMBs and they’re directed towards SMBs. Then you also have a second category, uh, sorry, category of solutions that are more tools that MSBs use. [00:11:42] Right? But there’s also a third, um, prompt to this where we are orchestrating an integration of, um, um, IP between [00:11:54] Vince Menzione: interesting the [00:11:55] Oguo Atuanya: vendor department, uh, into providing, you know, solutions. That we can land in the, in the agent store. [00:12:03] Vince Menzione: That’s fascinating. So, yeah. So you have, so you have a standalone product or a standalone solution or agent. [00:12:10] You have the orchestration and then you have the customer tools and the tool. And the tools. [00:12:14] Oguo Atuanya: Yes. [00:12:15] Vince Menzione: Yes. That’s fascinating. [00:12:17] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. It’s um, it’s sort of a three flying approach that, um, the market needs, right? Yeah. And that, that’s key. By the way, Vince, when you know, um. You’re developing these agents and these solutions. [00:12:30] Yeah. Because they’re not, they’re not just tools anymore, right. Essentially it could be somebody’s, uh, FTE. [00:12:38] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:12:38] Oguo Atuanya: Right. So they have to address a specific outcome. They have to be, you know, uh, valuable. You have to show the ROI and for these SMBs. Don’t have a lot of wiggle room. [00:12:53] Vince Menzione: So you, that they’re smaller companies, right? [00:12:55] Yeah. So anything you do is gonna be super impactful. Yeah. It’s not something they can absorb necessarily, or, you know, lose time and money. [00:13:03] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:13:03] Vince Menzione: Uh, you’ve gotta be very sensitive to that in this, in this market, this size market. And even the MSPs are, even though there are some that are much larger, there’s still a lot of smaller MSPs out there. [00:13:14] Oguo Atuanya: And, and coming to the MIP playbook, um, what partners don’t need anymore. Um, it’s hype. [00:13:23] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:13:24] Oguo Atuanya: They need an almost curriculum driven approach, right. To landing this initiative and infrastructure and also managing it long term. Yeah. So that’s what the MIP playbook does. [00:13:39] Vince Menzione: So you were an executive at Microsoft. [00:13:41] You managed the channel partner. I, I would call the resellers and the disti. In fact, for the America’s business, I believe was your role. [00:13:49] Oguo Atuanya: I I did manage the large resellers. At [00:13:51] Vince Menzione: large resellers. So at one point, and you also had the Disti at one time? [00:13:54] Oguo Atuanya: At one point I had the Disti, the telco, the domain providers. [00:13:58] Vince Menzione: Yes. The large resellers. I remember when we first met, yes. I think that was when, [00:14:00] Oguo Atuanya: yes. [00:14:00] Vince Menzione: Yes. And so when you came, PAX eight is a very strong Microsoft partner. You were, again, I mentioned you were the launch partner or one of the launch partners for the marketplace. [00:14:09] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:14:09] Vince Menzione: But talk about the role and the relationship with Microsoft and the value that PAX eight provides for this market, uh, kind of layering between, uh, the Microsoft components and, and the SMB market. [00:14:24] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Does that [00:14:24] Vince Menzione: make sense? [00:14:25] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So, so Microsoft has always been. Um, keen on the SMB segment, um, you know, Jose Gomez and Company in the Americas, and folks like, um, Alison West Hughes from a core perspective that, yeah, they’re very serious about this SMB segment. And, um, I’d say the key difference with Microsoft is Microsoft realized early. [00:14:56] Probably based on the fact that Microsoft’s always been a very strong channel friendly, [00:15:01] Vince Menzione: yes. [00:15:01] Oguo Atuanya: Oriented company. I realized earlier that you really can’t scale cost efficiently by having a direct SMB business, right? Right. You have to go through the channel. [00:15:14] Vince Menzione: They’re what, 160,000 MSPs or ips? [00:15:19] Oguo Atuanya: Um, for us at pax, [00:15:21] Vince Menzione: I think for the world. [00:15:22] Oguo Atuanya: Uh, yes. [00:15:22] Vince Menzione: Somewhere the world around there. The world, yeah. You would have to reach all those companies individually, which Yeah, you’d [00:15:27] Oguo Atuanya: have to, well, I mean, even then the, there’s the Ians of SMBs [00:15:31] Vince Menzione: Yes. In worldwide. Yes. That’s right. Right. At at the customer level. The pyramid is huge. You can’t, [00:15:35] Oguo Atuanya: you can’t really scale. [00:15:36] No, you can’t. You can only do that through the channel. [00:15:38] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:15:39] Oguo Atuanya: And, um, I think, I think the relationship between Microsoft and PAX has just. Strengthened over time because Microsoft sees, if we go back to that definition of a, you know, distributor versus a marketplace and a platform provider stuff. So we’re seeing the difference. [00:15:56] Yes. And the value add and, you know, the services led approach that packs it, you know, brings to, um, um, driving the SMB business. Yes. Um, you know, just that we have, we think PAX eight, we have a very strong relationship. And a very strong MSP ecosystem, which is critical when you sort of, you know, uh, look at that difference between just a regular reseller and an MSP. [00:16:26] Vince Menzione: Absolutely. [00:16:26] Oguo Atuanya: Right. Um, you just can’t, what we talked about earlier, just transact a solution and then walk away. It’s, it’s, uh, it’s, um, it, it’s, it’s really a sustainable end-to-end, you know, customer life cycle management approach. When you’re dealing with them. [00:16:44] Vince Menzione: I think it’s important here too, and, and again for the maturity model of our listeners and viewers, it might be at different levels of understanding about the, about the model. [00:16:53] But if you think about the model and the evolution, right, being the, from the old model of being, uh, hardware centric and maybe software centric, uh, the old days of what was a disti, which are not at disti anymore, but, um, the distis were there to provide credit. Availability of product. [00:17:12] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:17:12] Vince Menzione: And And delivery, basically. [00:17:14] Right? Yeah. That was it. [00:17:15] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:17:16] Vince Menzione: And that’s how that they were intermediaries on some of that. [00:17:19] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:17:20] Vince Menzione: But PAX eight evolved at a later time. [00:17:22] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:17:23] Vince Menzione: More modern time, I would say in the cloud. Yeah. [00:17:25] Oguo Atuanya: PAX eight. So one in the cloud, if you will. [00:17:28] Vince Menzione: And I think that’s maybe a differentiation and this new model that it also feels to like this MSP community has been coming along. [00:17:36] And I, I, I believe a lot of thought leadership from the PAX eight side. I’m speak, I’m speaking for you here, but in terms of some bold moves that the organization is doing. [00:17:46] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Listen. Um, as you know, I dealt or engaged with PAX eight for a while before joining PAX eight. [00:17:54] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:17:55] Oguo Atuanya: I’d engaged with p fact fact pxi, funnily enough was the first meeting I had, um, when I came back from the uk. [00:18:02] Vince Menzione: Is that [00:18:02] Oguo Atuanya: right? Yeah. During my stint running, um. Um, devices, uh, sales organization for Microsoft. The first meeting I had coming back into the Americas was so P Aid and Nick Hedy and, uh, Ryan Walsh and, oh, that’s so funny. Joke about it. By the way, Ryan Walsh all has a prep, uh, notes study, you know, he got ready for the media. [00:18:26] Vince Menzione: Oh, that is hilarious. I met Ryan. Uh, we were on stage together at a channel partners a couple years ago. [00:18:32] Can’t [00:18:32] Oguo Atuanya: miss his energy. [00:18:33] Vince Menzione: He can’t [00:18:33] Oguo Atuanya: miss his energy. [00:18:34] Vince Menzione: Such great energy. [00:18:35] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. But, but listen, I think if I could just sum it in a, you know, in a, um, a framework or a box. The key difference between PAC sales is we look at engaging with MSPs in SMB, um, from a customer lifecycle management. [00:18:57] So we start from, Hey, how do we help you with customer acquisition? When you do acquire the customers and you make that first licensing transaction, it doesn’t go away. That’s when we actually start, you know, thinking about how do we help, um, you ensure that your SMBs realize, um, value from what you sold them. [00:19:18] You know, if you need to expand, but, um, beyond one, you know, skew in the stack, that’s what you do because you understand the needs of USMB that helps drive consumption, you know? Nurture that through all, we start, you know, looking at, is it time for re sorry, renewal. There’s a team minus approach to renewal. [00:19:37] ’cause we also keep our eyes on churn. You can, you know, gain as much business as you can, but if you churn, it does nobody any good. Yeah. So we look at things end to end from our position to churn. And that really is embedded in the platform that sits underneath the marketplace. [00:19:53] Vince Menzione: And you act as the, well see, we’re gonna use technical terms here. [00:19:57] CSP. You’re the first layer of CSP and then they, they also, in many cases, sometimes they’re not, but in many cases they are the CSP to the customer. They’re providing the, the licenses to the customer. [00:20:10] Oguo Atuanya: Well, we, so we, we are the first tier of that, you know, two tier [00:20:14] Vince Menzione: Exactly. [00:20:15] Oguo Atuanya: Model. So we, we, [00:20:16] Vince Menzione: you’re tier one [00:20:17] Oguo Atuanya: Microsoft. [00:20:18] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:20:19] Oguo Atuanya: Right. We, you know, as an existing might press on an example, it could be one of our other vendors, like, you know, um, any of the 150 vendors we have. We engage with them, we enable the um, MSP, who’s the resell, who’s really in the traditional sense, the reseller layer, much more valuable in terms of what they do. [00:20:41] Vince Menzione: That’s right. [00:20:41] Oguo Atuanya: And then. The MSP engages with, uh, the end customer. So that’s kind of what the flow is. [00:20:47] Vince Menzione: Yep. Yeah. And that’s one component of what they do for the customer. The transaction is a one one and done sort of. [00:20:53] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:20:53] Vince Menzione: But then it’s all the managed services and layering Oh, provide on top of it. And then all the other solutions say 150 platforms. [00:21:00] Oguo Atuanya: Uh, 150 vendors. [00:21:01] Vince Menzione: Vendors, yeah. So hundreds of platforms that are available to the customer for [00:21:07] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:21:07] Vince Menzione: Through taxane. [00:21:08] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. But, but lemme just emphasize that especially. We are going actually where we are. Right. Um, again, it starts, it starts way to the left of the continuum than just driving the transaction. [00:21:23] Vince Menzione: So take us through the continuum then. [00:21:25] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah, that’s what I said earlier, the continuum is, you know, helping this, helping with [00:21:28] Vince Menzione: acquisition, customer acquisition, [00:21:30] Oguo Atuanya: even, you know, prior to that it’s, it’s helped. We’re getting to a point now where we’re helping these MSPs and they should all be able to do that during the MIP era. [00:21:38] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:21:39] Oguo Atuanya: Understand the market they’re playing it. Yeah. Understand, you know, the market, their SMBs are in, understand their verticals or their scenarios so that you can actually build, you know, this precision, outcome driven, you know, solutions. [00:21:52] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:21:52] Oguo Atuanya: Right. That, that’s the beginning and then you sell and acquire. [00:21:58] Right. And then once you acquire that business, uh, it’s always on, you know, situation. You’re helping realize value. ’cause if you don’t. You’re not expanding beyond the stock. Yes. And um, you’re not driving consumption. And if you don’t drive consumption, [00:22:14] Vince Menzione: you’re not making any money. You’re really not making, [00:22:16] Oguo Atuanya: it’s not churn. [00:22:16] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:22:17] Oguo Atuanya: Right. And then they have to keep an eye on, when renewals come about, there has to be a healthy T minus period. Right. Um, so ensure that you renew during renewals. Um, that’s actually when we then look at, Hey, what’s your stack look like? Right. Especially with the agent era, right? Do you have everything you need? [00:22:37] Do you have the processes? Is there governance? Is there enough security for your, um, SMB, right? So that’s kind of the tune up time before we renew, and then we help you renew and then retain so that it’s, it’s a, it’s a sort of lifecycle approach, not just transactional. [00:22:55] Vince Menzione: Oh, I, I hear. Talk and, you know, I talk to different people in the industry about the SMBs, the MSPs in the SM B market, uh, that some of these organizations are very much, they’re very technical. [00:23:07] Yeah. Like they’re technical folks. Sometimes they’re not sales folks or they’re not consulting type folks. Yes. So how do you help them overcome some of those challenges or those gaps? I mean, I know some of it’s through the academy. [00:23:19] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:23:19] Vince Menzione: Do you help them also with selecting like, how do they think about their organizational structure to have the right people in the right seats and those types of [00:23:26] Oguo Atuanya: things and that, that’s, that’s, [00:23:27] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:23:27] Oguo Atuanya: All what the MIP playbook, that’s, and the process is all about Nice. It’s, it’s, Hey, how do we expand your horizon, you know, beyond just providing the technical aspect things, how do you understand the business? How do you go about conversations to discover, right, your, uh, SMB, right? And once you discover, how do you go about architecting, you know, a value framework that includes, you know, maybe looking at the organization and suggesting agents and then, you know, when you land them, right? [00:23:59] What’s the, um, optimization, you know, process beyond just landing them. So it’s, it’s helping them. [00:24:08] Vince Menzione: Make transit, become business [00:24:09] Oguo Atuanya: consultants. [00:24:09] Vince Menzione: Right, exactly. Which is what they need to do. [00:24:11] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. The, in this era, you really need to understand what your SMB is doing because, you know, think about it for the longest, this sort sub, you know, consultative approaches were only sort of reserved for enterprise. [00:24:26] Vince Menzione: Yeah, that’s right. [00:24:27] Oguo Atuanya: But when you look at how, you know, the solutions that we sell, I change, they’re really enterprise solutions now that are in SMB. Right. You have to sell that way. You have to engage that way. Right? So that, that’s, that’s a key differentiator between being an MSP and an MIP, bringing that intelligence into you applying, you know, an intelligent workflow to the way your SMB conduct that, sorry, conducts their business. [00:24:56] Vince Menzione: So tell, take me through, uh, what the ideal MMSP or MIP looks like to you. Like what is the. The, the top of the top and to the right. And then where do you see the challenges? Why do some organizations or, or, ’cause I’m sure there are some that struggle, whether it’s 10%, 20%. [00:25:14] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Yeah. [00:25:15] Vince Menzione: Because it’s, it’s, it’s a continuum. [00:25:16] It’s a, it’s a cycle to get from, from point A to point B for a lot of these organizations. Right? [00:25:21] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So [00:25:21] Vince Menzione: what do you see from the challenges they need to overcome and, yeah, so, so the, [00:25:25] Oguo Atuanya: the, the optimal MSP looks like what we just described, right? Yeah. Right. You have an organization that thinks through the process that way, set up. [00:25:33] Right. [00:25:34] Vince Menzione: And they become an ongoing consultant. They help them through the process. They understand ai. Right. This is another thing too, right? Organizations, I mean, are struggling right now with their [00:25:43] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah, absolutely. [00:25:44] Vince Menzione: Their people. [00:25:45] Oguo Atuanya: It’s gotta be the baseline. [00:25:47] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:25:47] Oguo Atuanya: You know, these days, understanding ai, understanding the agent, you know, journey. [00:25:53] Uh, what works well is, um, you know, you, um, you know, you, you. You have to be able to design, um, land a scalable, secure, uh, environment, um, [00:26:13] Vince Menzione: secure. [00:26:16] Oguo Atuanya: So, so security is key here, [00:26:20] Vince Menzione: right? I keep thinking about Claude, what’s happened just in the last several weeks. Yeah. In our industry with people putting things up on, through, through open browsers. [00:26:28] Yeah. [00:26:29] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:26:29] Vince Menzione: To Claude and to. Different tools. [00:26:31] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Yeah. [00:26:32] Vince Menzione: And if you’re an SM B and you’re trying to lock down your environment’s, don’t want, that’s, you don’t want your data exposed. [00:26:37] Oguo Atuanya: That’s why security is [00:26:38] Vince Menzione: huge, [00:26:39] Oguo Atuanya: is key. But, you know, one of the things we recommend is start very specific. Uh, it could be a bundle that includes, you know, could be co-pilot, could be some other AI pillar. [00:26:52] Uh, and then it has to be, you know, a security layer. [00:26:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:26:58] Oguo Atuanya: Uh, to that. Then there has to be an enablement, you know, services layer to that as well, right? So, um, you build secure, um, you land, uh, and then skills develop key, right? And then monetization. You have to be able to hit those levels, uh, to be able to survive in this world. [00:27:22] You’re no longer just selling. Tools. [00:27:27] Vince Menzione: Yes. At margins, [00:27:30] Oguo Atuanya: flat margins. So the tool, the tool sprawl, um, is what takes a lot of margins away. [00:27:37] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:27:37] Oguo Atuanya: From the equation. [00:27:38] Vince Menzione: Right? Tell, tell us about that. ’cause I, I, I remember even back in my Microsoft days, yeah, we would go in and, and have partners that were successful that would say. [00:27:47] In fact, the ones that are most successful would basically tell the customer, you already own it. Like you have a, you have an enterprise agreement and it has all the capabilities you need to run your enterprise, and you’re buying all these other one-off solutions and trying to patch them into your, into your portfolio of your, your solution set. [00:28:04] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Nobody, nobody, especially in SB, nobody wants any more tools. [00:28:08] Vince Menzione: No, I can [00:28:09] Oguo Atuanya: imagine. Um, you, you’ve gotta sort of assemble this thing into a platform that works. [00:28:14] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:28:15] Oguo Atuanya: Right. And it’s gotta be repeatable. If it’s not repeatable, then you’re not driving the frequency. Right. It’s gotta be scalable. Um, ’cause if it’s scalable, then you’re going into, um, that kind of sprawl where people start thinking they need to replace gaps with more tools. [00:28:32] Yeah. Nobody needs. Right. [00:28:34] Vince Menzione: And that creates more vulnerability by putting [00:28:36] Oguo Atuanya: Absolutely. [00:28:37] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:28:37] Oguo Atuanya: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s [00:28:39] Vince Menzione: fascinating. So [00:28:40] Oguo Atuanya: it’s, it’s a different, um. Sort of engagement and I, I’m refraining from saying it to different kind of sell because the connotation of sell is you transact and you’re gone. It’s a full lifecycle engagement model. [00:28:56] Yeah. [00:28:56] Vince Menzione: I think what you’re doing is you’re enabling the evolution of this market. [00:29:01] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah, [00:29:01] Vince Menzione: that’s the way I would say it. [00:29:02] Oguo Atuanya: Well, that, that’s exactly what we’re trying to do with, um, the shift from MSP to MIP is. Um, we’re driving the transformation in SMB. [00:29:12] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:29:13] Oguo Atuanya: I, I mean, the ultimate goal is to get that MIP channel as intelligent or even more intelligent and agile than any enterprise IT department. [00:29:23] Yes. ’cause they are the, [00:29:24] Vince Menzione: they are ones, the enterprise IT department [00:29:26] Oguo Atuanya: for that customer. Yeah. The, the word trusted advisor is gonna take a very, you know, it’s [00:29:31] Vince Menzione: fascinating, [00:29:31] Oguo Atuanya: more serious connotation in this space. Because the SMBs are dependent on you as the MMIP for that. [00:29:39] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Let’s talk, we, we had a session on marketplace yesterday. [00:29:42] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:29:43] Vince Menzione: Um, you have been a great driver now through, especially through this new program, the new unified marketplace. [00:29:50] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:29:50] Vince Menzione: Uh, PAX eight is stood, stood above and beyond and doubled sales, I think is what I thought I heard. Take, take us through some of the, [00:29:58] Oguo Atuanya: well, I mean, uh, uh, a marketplace. Uh, marketplace sales has grown exponentially, [00:30:04] Vince Menzione: exponentially, [00:30:04] Oguo Atuanya: right? [00:30:05] Um, um, this partnership with Microsoft is really all about for the first time, um, integrating, you know, both the, uh, Microsoft, uh, marketplace and the P State marketplace into the MSP delivery, you know, system. Right? What does that mean for the MSP? It means that for the first time, the MSP is gonna have an ability to, um, you know, uh, bundle seamlessly or package seamlessly. [00:30:36] I know from a Microsoft Yeah. Package seamlessly. Um, you know, so Microsoft, uh, solutions and third party solutions that are complimentary again, to driving the outcomes that, you know, uh, the SMB needs. It’s really all about provisioning. Um, and, um, you know, building those solutions intelligently and, and dynamically, right? [00:31:05] Where it’s very scalable, right? So that, that’s sort of what the intelligence and the, the dexterity of our marketplace, uh, does. Right? So, so it’s, it’s, it’s creating, you know, um, provisioning, building, uh, transacting. Then really managing in a very automated fashion. Right. So that’s what the MSP gets. Yes. [00:31:32] The vendor, like Microsoft and other vendors remove the guesswork from, is this actually gonna hit the mark for, uh, SMBs? ’cause we do that curation through the discovery when we, you know, integrate marketplaces. Make sure that those solutions, those agents that land in the marketplace are SMB applicable. [00:31:57] ’cause the other thing we, we, we see in the marketplace, and I’m using the general marketplace is, um, a lot of companies will tell you that they have SMB solutions or agents. Yes, in the marketplace. And then you go into the marketplace and these are really enterprise, enterprise [00:32:14] Vince Menzione: solutions. Solutions that are [00:32:15] Oguo Atuanya: being forced down into SMB. [00:32:18] Well, you can’t do that these days ’cause you have to hit that, you know, customer, um, precision when you’re driving, you know, outcome based solutions. You have to be precise. [00:32:29] Vince Menzione: What is, what is the curation process for? Um, I’m an SMB customer. I come to the MSP. And you help at your marketplace level, it sounds like you help design what the right solution is. [00:32:42] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Yeah. [00:32:42] Vince Menzione: So what, tell, take us through that process real quick. [00:32:45] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So, um, you know, we have a set of folks internally. Along with our PXI labs people. [00:32:52] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:32:53] Oguo Atuanya: When we’re actually intaking, you know? So [00:32:56] Vince Menzione: you’re using AI as well on that side of Yeah. We use AI Doing your discovery process for the customers. Yes. [00:33:02] Using [00:33:02] Oguo Atuanya: AI as well. It, it uses ai, the rules that are being written into it, you know, [00:33:06] Vince Menzione: it [00:33:06] Oguo Atuanya: processes, Hey, it’s gotta be applicable from an SMB perspective. Right. This [00:33:10] Vince Menzione: is very cool. [00:33:11] Oguo Atuanya: Right. So, um, you know, we, we do that, we ensure that it’s, um. It’s applicable. There’s no guesswork. Right. Then we put it on the, um, on the agent store. [00:33:22] Right. And then, um, you know, we help the, uh, uh, MSPs, um, architect and fit solutions around the agents, you know, for very specific outcomes. That’s, uh, so it’s, [00:33:36] Vince Menzione: this is fascinating. [00:33:37] Oguo Atuanya: It’s a very curated process. [00:33:39] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So for, um, the market, the MSP market or MIP market that are watching and listening today, and maybe they’re not with PAX eight yet. [00:33:49] Like what would, what would be the, the, I mean you’ve already described what the differentiation Yeah. Just, I’m just thinking out loud here. Like what would you say to them today, especially as this market is changing, not your market, but the, just the technology sector, the, the shifts are happening so fast right now. [00:34:07] What would be the. I guess the one piece of advice you would give to this community of technology companies out there that they should think about for 10 26. [00:34:18] Oguo Atuanya: It’s, it’s really refrain from Yeah. Selling just tools and infrastructure. Yeah. [00:34:30] Vince Menzione: Which is the way a lot of them have been structured. That’s right. [00:34:32] They’ve done right. [00:34:33] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Think about [00:34:34] Vince Menzione: they’ve gone down a road with a vendor because they got great margins for some reason. [00:34:37] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So understand your customer, the space they’re playing and how you can build, you know, solutions, uh, for them. Be specific vis-a-vis the solutions that you’re building. Right. [00:34:50] Again, um. I was having a conversation yesterday with Nina Hard, and we’re talking about the high heat of, uh, traffic verticals, right? Yeah. Uh, you know, things like healthcare, uh, things like financial services, right? Be very specific in the solutions that you’re building, right? Don’t experiment too much land on what an applicable solution is. [00:35:18] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Predictable [00:35:18] Oguo Atuanya: solution. Make it repeatable, make it. Scalable. Emphasize on the upscale and enablement right, and focus on the monetization. Understand exactly how you’re gonna articulate the value add and the ROI. To [00:35:40] Vince Menzione: To the customer. [00:35:41] Oguo Atuanya: The SMB. [00:35:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:35:42] Oguo Atuanya: Because that’s where a lot of folks struggle, right. They still cannot do all that, [00:35:47] Vince Menzione: and they get stuck on the cost to the customer. [00:35:50] They get hung up, I guess, is what I would say. Right. They don’t, they don’t articulate the value enough. [00:35:55] Oguo Atuanya: Well, they’re not selling outcomes. [00:35:57] Vince Menzione: They’re not selling outcomes. They’re selling, [00:35:58] Oguo Atuanya: they’re trying to piece together tools. [00:36:00] Vince Menzione: Hot [00:36:00] Oguo Atuanya: and hot [00:36:01] Vince Menzione: tools, [00:36:01] Oguo Atuanya: spot applications. [00:36:02] Vince Menzione: Tools, tools is the best way to [00:36:03] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:36:04] Vince Menzione: To describe it [00:36:04] Oguo Atuanya: to [00:36:05] Vince Menzione: the [00:36:05] Oguo Atuanya: company and all else spills come to Pax it. [00:36:07] Yes. Teach you how to do it. [00:36:09] Vince Menzione: Well, I, I’m fascinated to join you in June at Beyond. [00:36:13] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:36:13] Vince Menzione: Um, same [00:36:15] Oguo Atuanya: here. [00:36:15] Vince Menzione: So dates again. [00:36:18] Oguo Atuanya: Vincent, you put me, I think it’s, uh, June 7th to the ninth. [00:36:21] Vince Menzione: June 7th to the ninth. [00:36:22] Oguo Atuanya: And this is, uh, in Salt Lake City. In Salt Lake City [00:36:25] Vince Menzione: this [00:36:25] Oguo Atuanya: year. [00:36:25] Vince Menzione: Salt [00:36:25] Oguo Atuanya: Lake [00:36:26] Vince Menzione: year. Yeah. You had it, you had it in a different in Colorado last year [00:36:28] Oguo Atuanya: we had it in Denver. [00:36:29] So this is actually, this is actually, um, this is [00:36:32] Vince Menzione: your hometown, [00:36:33] Oguo Atuanya: the company. Yeah. This is, this is the mainstream. Beyond. So [00:36:36] Vince Menzione: I love [00:36:37] Oguo Atuanya: it. This is a big event. [00:36:38] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:36:38] Oguo Atuanya: Right. ’cause we also have regional events. [00:36:40] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Like four or 5,000 people. I think last year [00:36:43] Oguo Atuanya: it was right around three to 4,000. Three to 4,000 last year. [00:36:45] I think we’re gonna get, you know, more than that. Yeah. In, in, uh, salt Lake City. Then of course we have, um, a regional beyond. We just had the Em me version in, um, Berlin. Um. Netherlands, [00:36:56] Vince Menzione: Netherlands [00:36:57] Oguo Atuanya: after that. [00:36:57] Vince Menzione: But you did Berlin last year? We [00:36:59] Oguo Atuanya: did Berlin. Berlin last I knew years ago. Next year we’ll be in, uh, uh, Copenhagen. [00:37:03] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:37:03] Oguo Atuanya: And then we’ll also have, um, uh, Asia version. Nice. Uh, in 27 [00:37:08] Vince Menzione: Milano. Maybe the year after would be good. [00:37:11] Oguo Atuanya: We, we, we need to arrange, I’ll work with, um, uh, you know, uh, MCEO. Harold. [00:37:16] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it. [00:37:17] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. [00:37:17] Vince Menzione: Um. I would, uh, so I have one question. I might’ve asked you this question before, but I would love to just ask you now. [00:37:24] ’cause times have changed. Our lives change, but this is my favorite question. I ask all my guests, especially all my good friends like you, you’re hosting a dinner party and you can host a dinner party anywhere in the world. It might be here, it might be in Houston, it might be in Kenya, it might be anywhere. [00:37:41] We maybe, maybe it’s in EMEA or AsiaPac. Um. You can invite any three guests from the present or the past to this amazing dinner, whom would you invite? A guo and why? [00:37:55] Oguo Atuanya: So this one always gets me because [00:37:58] Vince Menzione: I love that. [00:37:59] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So, you know, you and I have talked before, right? So there’s a standing, uh, invitation for my mom, you know, who know? [00:38:05] Love that. Yes. Swear a while ago. [00:38:07] Vince Menzione: Yes. Yes. [00:38:07] Oguo Atuanya: And then, you know, my sister also who [00:38:09] Vince Menzione: passed [00:38:10] Oguo Atuanya: away, passed away in May [00:38:10] Vince Menzione: last year. [00:38:11] Oguo Atuanya: So I’d love to have this tea because, you know. [00:38:14] Vince Menzione: Some great conversations. We’ll see how [00:38:15] Oguo Atuanya: he’s doing and, you know, and check [00:38:17] Vince Menzione: in with [00:38:17] Oguo Atuanya: how, how, how things, um, are going and now Wow. This third one, [00:38:24] Vince Menzione: who’s the third one? [00:38:26] Oguo Atuanya: This third [00:38:26] Vince Menzione: one is, he talked about your son a little bit the last couple of days. Yeah. Days. But I don’t think, [00:38:30] Oguo Atuanya: I don’t think he’s, he wants to be bored. [00:38:33] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:38:33] Oguo Atuanya: Having, having, um, a dinner with you [00:38:35] Vince Menzione: and you’ll be there. So now we need to ask add one more [00:38:38] Oguo Atuanya: person. Yeah. We need to add one more person. I’m thinking about that. [00:38:42] MSB. Who’s become an MIPI [00:38:46] Vince Menzione: love it. [00:38:47] Oguo Atuanya: I [00:38:47] Vince Menzione: would [00:38:47] Oguo Atuanya: love to have him at the, or her at the table. [00:38:50] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:38:51] Oguo Atuanya: And, and talk about what that journey was like. [00:38:53] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it. Well, that’ll be a fun dinner and I might come by and bring dessert or something. [00:38:58] Oguo Atuanya: You, [00:38:58] Vince Menzione: you, you, [00:38:59] Oguo Atuanya: you’re [00:38:59] Vince Menzione: always maybe just stop by and say, [00:39:00] Oguo Atuanya: you’re always welcome. [00:39:01] Vince Menzione: I’d love to meet your mom and your sister. So [00:39:03] Oguo Atuanya: thank you Vince. [00:39:04] Vince Menzione: Um, you are a great friend. I’m so excited to have you here in the room. Your organization is doing incredible things and we love having you as part of ultimate partner in our community. So, so great to see you again, my friend. [00:39:18] Oguo Atuanya: Appreciate it, Vince. [00:39:19] It’s always a, a pleasure being here with you and seeing you and, uh, I can’t wait to see you beyond. [00:39:24] Vince Menzione: I love [00:39:24] Oguo Atuanya: it folks out there. It’s selling out. So [00:39:26] Vince Menzione: babe, [00:39:27] Oguo Atuanya: get our, [00:39:27] Vince Menzione: get your tickets [00:39:28] Oguo Atuanya: soon. June 7th to ninth. It’s, uh, the biggest show in the MSU [00:39:31] Vince Menzione: world. It’s the biggest show. And then we, uh, is also gonna participate, I believe, at our, at our Bellevue event, Bellview Forum, which will be an incredible event. [00:39:39] Yeah. And May 13th, May 11th, through the 13th. I want to thank you for watching. I wanna thank you for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Eye, to partnering and following our YouTube channel, ultimate Partner, and for being part of our community at Ultimate Partner. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. [00:39:55] Thank you. Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, may 11 through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.

Unlocking the Power of Frontier Partnerships Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this compelling discussion from the Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat, Microsoft GM Katharine Kennedy joins Vince Menzione to break down the operating models of “Frontier Firms.” Katharine shares her incredible journey of scaling the ServiceNow partnership from zero to $1 billion in TCV and reveals her current mission: building Adobe into the next great frontier firm for Microsoft. The conversation dives deep into the necessity of AI-led innovation, the critical importance of placing trust at the center of every technological stack, and why traditional quarterly business reviews are being replaced by real-time, constant connectivity. Whether you are an ISV, SDC, or channel partner, this session provides a roadmap for navigating the tectonic shifts in the AI ecosystem through organizational alignment and shared vision. Key Takeaways Frontier firms integrate AI up and down the UI, agent, and data layers while evolving their internal operating systems. Successful partnerships require a shared vision at the highest level that melds two mission statements into a single belief system. The traditional QBR is becoming outdated, replaced by real-time, constant communication across engineering and product teams. Trust must be the primary pillar of AI development, supported by core principles like fairness, reliability, and accountability. Leading with co-innovation and customer-centric data solutions is more effective than leading strictly with revenue goals. Strategic use of the Microsoft Marketplace remains a “hidden gem” for achieving scale and high-velocity growth. https://youtu.be/OU22MIfs-1A If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Frontier Firms, SDC, Microsoft GM, Adobe Partnership, ServiceNow, AI Operating Model, Responsible AI, Co-innovation, Partner Value Chain, Organizational Alignment, Microsoft Marketplace, TCV, Data Sovereignty, AI Agents, Adobe Firefly, Azure, Ecosystem Growth, Digital Transformation, AI Governance, Strategic Partnerships, Tech Leadership. Transcript: Katharine Kennedy Vince Menzione: [00:00:00] Honestly, it’s people. Yes, with agents. Um, and I know we hear that and it’s very like, oh, what does it mean? Are we really using it? I cannot tell you how many agents I use in a day. We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Come join me now for a compelling discussion on the impacts of the tectonic shifts we’re all seeing. We, we’ve talked about MSP, we’ve talked about channel. We’ve talked about marketplace. We haven’t really dug deep into the SDC conversation, and I still, that doesn’t roll off my tongue. I still say ISV in my own mind, but the software development corporations, um, we’ve had several executives from that, from that world. Sandy Gupta has been. Um, many time guests, uh, at, at, at our events and we really wanted to double click. And I was so fortunate to meet Katherine Kennedy several months ago and learned about what [00:01:00] she’s doing and what the work that she’s driving. So I wanna invite her on stage ’cause we’re gonna have a very intimate conversation by Yeah, we call these so great to have you here. And, uh, you’re a GM at Microsoft, which is a big deal, by the way. A lot of people don’t know that. Thank you. And you’re running, uh, two of, I’d say two of the most significant partners within the Microsoft ecosystem. I would say obviously two. Now. Just one. Okay. We’re doubling down on focus. So nice to meet everybody. I, I wish there was a fire ’cause it did. What you Well come on. This goes off heat by the way. We get back off a little bit. This goes off our, so all good. So tell us, give us your, yeah. Give us your background and your role. Katharine Kennedy: Sure. So Catherine Kennedy. Nice to meet you all. Um, I’m a GM at Microsoft previously overseeing both the ServiceNow and the Adobe practice. Um, spent the last four years building ServiceNow too. What now our previous guests got to refer to as our REO, you know, exciting, uh, big growth [00:02:00] partnership. Um, so we took that from, for them from $0 in terms of shared revenue to a billion dollars in TCV. Um, and they have one of the largest Macs now with Microsoft. And we did that over the course of three years. So we’ll talk a little bit about. Um, the mindset, uh, and the operating models and things that we implemented with ServiceNow. Um, and then at the time, um, they asked me to take on Adobe as well. And when we saw the opportunity at Adobe, we said, wow, we really need to focus here. And so I have the privilege of being able to focus on Adobe this year. And, um. What I’m most excited about is the ecosystem and the ecosystem opportunity with Adobe as we build them into the next frontier firm or Microsoft. Vince Menzione: And of course we use the term spark, the ecosystem, so yes. Um, so let’s, let’s dive in [00:03:00] here. Use the term mindset. I was thinking about mindset. Market shift, frontier Firm, how do those things align together? Microsoft has been talking, I mean, Judson up on stage and Ignite talking about frontier firms. Nina’s talked about frontier firms. This is a shift in how organizations operate. Yes. In for some, yes. Uh, for others. I was thinking, what are you seeing across the SDC community specifically where you’ve managed before, where you’re managing now, but with ServiceNow and Adobe as an examples? What defines a company that’s truly making this leap? Katharine Kennedy: So as we’re looking at these frontier firms, uh, especially in the S-D-C-I-C spaces, we’re looking at, um, how do they implement AI up and down their stack, but then across the operating system, um, and. I refer to it in our business as the partnership value chain. ’cause we look at our SDCs and ISVs as partners. Um, and so the partner operating model between Microsoft and in this [00:04:00] case, Adobe or ServiceNow, has to be solely in lockstep and moving at warp speed. It’s as, as we’ve been talking about all day, it’s just moving so fast and so the tighter. We’re connected. The Cohesity across the company, um, is absolutely critical, but it’s AI up and down, AI across, um, and what I mean by that is, uh. That’s from the UI layer to the agent layer down to the data layer. So unlocking all of the layers of the stack. And then across the operating model, how are we empowering each executive to buy in on that North star or that strategy that we have jointly? And then how do we drive that operationally to execute at the field level? And that’s. Probably the biggest undertaking, um, I’ve ever done because it’s really you, your team becomes, uh, [00:05:00] these we’re like ants running between two giant companies. I mean, it’s just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And um, that’s really the art and the science of it is that honestly it’s people. Yes. Um, and I know we hear that and it’s very like, oh, what does it mean? Are we really using it? I cannot tell you how many agents I use in a day. It’s truly remarkable. Vince Menzione: You mentioned North Star, so I wanted to Yeah. Can I double click on it? Katharine Kennedy: Please do. Yes. Happy to. Vince Menzione: Yeah. I think about mission and purpose and all that tying into North Star. Are, are you implying that an organization needs to get its North Star, right? First and then how, how, and what, what are most of these organizations you’re seeing today, not the ones you manage, but other organizations in the SDC portfolio? Like where are they in terms of the continuum? How are, how are they moving along and what’s your guidance to them? Katharine Kennedy: It’s a good question. So I’ll start by saying my observation, my opinion is [00:06:00] as I’m looking across the companies that are successful and the ones who are yet to be successful, um, the key differentiator is that there is a shared vision at the highest level of the company that drives all the way down to the field. And what I mean by that is we’re taking two mission statements and we’re melding them together. Then we’re creating a belief system and it becomes a cultural shift across two companies versus, Hey, we’re gonna have all of these siloed, tactical, yeah. Operating units and they’re gonna do their own thing and maybe they’ll be successful over here. Maybe they’re doing something different over here, but we’re really. I think I heard Nina say this also, we’re pulling that red thread through the company. Yes. Um, which is critical. And I’ve seen so many companies just show up for the revenue. And yes, that’s an absolute outcome and it’s a [00:07:00] tremendous outcome if you do it right, but you have to do it right. You have to pull that red thread and you have to have every single part of the. Partner value chain buying into this strategy and this North Star, and if they don’t, if one piece of that chain is not bought in, you fail. Yeah. Vince Menzione: Organizational alignment is what you’re saying and what, what I’m hearing is in order, in terms of getting the AI Strat, the North Star aligned. Yes. You’ve gotta get the, I call the C-Suite aligned. Yes. You need to get all the functions of the organization aligned to the thread that you talked about. Yes. And then what does that look like? What does that North Star look like? What is it, what is the ideal example of what the North Star would look like? I’m, I’m a frontier firm. I brought in on ai, music agent ai. I’m doing all the things that we’ve talked about earlier. Katharine Kennedy: Yes. Um, so I think it, so operationally, um, it’s moving the operational rhythm from what used to be [00:08:00] qbr. Frankly, I think that’s outdated. Yes, it is. It is real time, constant communication. And yes, there will be checkpoints and they could be weekly, they could be monthly, they could be quarterly, but this is just real time constant communication because the pace of business, the pace of innovation is going so fast. We have to have that direct line of communication product to product team. We have to have that direct line of communication, engineering to engineering, because with everything going in on. Everything going on in the macroeconomic climate today, especially given concerns around sovereignty. Um, I run a global business, so we have customers saying, Hey, I don’t wanna host my data in a place where I don’t align with the values. That’s a real situation. That was actually a topic at Davos, as you mentioned, um, Nina. And so, um, we’re rapidly addressing these concerns with our customers and meeting our customers where they are. [00:09:00] Um, but it’s that real time constant connectivity. Um, and we’re frankly. We’re seeing it across the board. Um, but the operating model has to change. We have to look at more advanced, modern models, uh, for these partnership businesses to sustain in this next wave of transformation. Frankly, Vince Menzione: you know, it’s, so, you talked about values? Yes. This is, this leads into another conversation, right? When we talk about ai, we talk about, we talk about AI and the use, use cases. We skip over things like values and trust and governance. Katharine Kennedy: Oh, good segue. This is, this is my passion, please. Oh, I get so worked up about this. Good. So I, I had the privilege of, um, sitting, uh, with our SLC community a couple weeks ago, and, uh, they introduced, oh, here’s our amazing new, uh, pitch. We were just [00:10:00] speaking about it in the back actually. And, and it is, it’s amazing. And, uh, they said, do you have any feedback? And I was like, oh. And I waited and I saw everybody, every, you know, oh, we need to change this or tweak that. And I, and I waited. And then at the last moment I stood up. I was like, okay, I gotta say it. I was like, you say intelligence and trust. I, this is a small tweak, but trust has to be first, foremost, first, last, center, everything. Trust has to be everything. And, um, and I truly mean that. And I think, you know. Of all the companies I’ve worked for and I’ve worked for quite a few, um, Microsoft is the company that I believe in the most that can do the most good in society and in the global. Macroeconomic economy, a anything right in the world, in your communities. Um, and so one of the things that really struck me, and I keep coming back to with Microsoft and the, the topic of trust is how Microsoft, [00:11:00] um, was first to the table in this, in this, um, moment of ai. You know, introduction a few years ago to say, Hey, we need a set of core values and ethics and principles that we’re all gonna, we’re all gonna marshal around and I haven’t heard it as much recently, and now it’s coming back. And, uh, you know, the, the six core principles that Microsoft used is, I’m just gonna tell you right now, our fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusivity, um, transparency and accountability. And it’s not. Just six principles that you see on a poster in the offices. These are embedded, again, back to the operating model across every single aspect of our business. So within our product, within our engineering, even just in our collaboration tools, you could be sending a teams message and you’ll get a notification, Hey, this is not aligned to the Microsoft. Core [00:12:00] values of ai. And so there are gates and governance and guardrails built into every layer of our technology stack and then across the company in our operating rhythms. And that is what gets me so excited and gets me up at, at out of bed in the morning. Um. I actually got a call from Sila. No one wants a call from Sila. Does anybody know Sila? Uh, yeah. Yes. Okay. That’s our legal, that’s our legal team. Legal affairs. Sila. Yeah. No one wants that call. Uh, I actually, I got so excited. I was like, are you calling about responsible ai? ’cause I was one of the first, um, I was one of the first to raise my hand to say. We will sign up. Was it Brad Smith calling you? Oh gosh. Oh, that would be a dream. I think he’s so, I’m, I love him. I think he’s so cool. Um, I love that you actually, sorry, side, I’m gonna take you on a side tour. Next slide. Um, my favorite thing to do is pull up the news and you’re seeing something from the Prime Minister in, you know, Germany and Brad [00:13:00] Smith’s in the foreground Yes. Of every photo. You’re just like, wow, we’re influencing at such a global. Um, base that I could just, it’s hard to wrap your head around sometimes, but, so anyways, going back, I’m gonna take us back to trust. Um, please. Vince Menzione: Well, I just think we need to apply it back to ai, right? Because it is so important. It is. It is. These agents are out there and if they’re not governed and if you don’t Yeah, yeah. Katharine Kennedy: I’m so, so, yeah, thank you. Keeping me on track. So, so why I am excited about it is, is because, um. As we’re going out into our communities, um, we’re here in the southeast and one of the biggest issues that comes up over and over again is, how do I trust that AI is not gonna learn off my data? How am I gonna trust that it’s telling me the right information? And so on and so forth. And that’s when I get to this great conversation about trust and our responsible AI pact and, um. This is, this is truly what I mean, that it can be a force [00:14:00] multiplier, but it can be a force for good. And if you don’t have those guardrails and that governance and those principles aligned across the companies. You fall down, right? You fall down with the customers, you fall down with the organizations you’re serving. And so going back to our North Star two, we align there, we align with the values and the ethics, and then we can start to really build a business together. And that’s how we were able to do it so fast. And so, um, at such scale, at such global scale, um, with. ServiceNow, but now we’re going to take a mature partner in Adobe and we’re gonna take them to the frontier in a way you haven’t seen before. So. Just a little commercial. Adobe is gonna be announcing their Adobe marketing agent. I love it as GA next month. So they are a frontier firm for us. Yes, very exciting round of applause for Adobe there. For Adobe. Yeah. And more to come. So we’ll be [00:15:00] having, uh, their firefly, uh, video models coming out on Azure and available through Marketplace as well, um, coming soon. So lots of exciting things happening. Vince Menzione: Sounds exciting. So let’s talk about those partner big wins that you’re saying. Give us some examples of those. Katharine Kennedy: Now are you talking about from a Microsoft and Adobe co-innovation perspective? Yes, from the co-innovation perspective. Okay. Yeah. Um, so from a co-innovation perspective, this is. This is a labor of love. Um, I approach it in a very disciplined manner. The way that we look at, um, these frontier firms is we’re leading with co-innovation versus leading with revenue. And it’s a, it’s, it’s a paradigm shift that takes everyone to buy in back to my earlier point, but also, um, the hardest part is. Teaching companies, um, to do things differently. Uh, so we start with [00:16:00] engineering and product. And actually before we get there, we start with customer and we sit with our customers. We understand what our customers are asking for. We’re understanding the value that they need unlocked, and typically it’s at the data data layer. And so what we’re doing is we’re seeing, okay, what are the data things? What are the data silos that need to be unlocked? And so we start to kind of build up from there, taking the customer perspective. Then we sit with engineering and product and we say, okay, what do we have on the truck today? How can we elevate this to an AI led AI first motion that meets our customers where they are in their AI journey? And delivers value and business outcomes day one versus, hey, we have to go through this laborous process. One of the other things we’re seeing is forward deployed engineers. Um, so thinking about, Hey, how do we sit with our customers and start architecting. What they need to address their business challenges today, um, because AI [00:17:00] can solve a lot of this, right? And so it’s a really interesting model shift that we’re seeing across the board within Microsoft, within our largest ISVs, and within our customer and our, um, ecosystem community with our GSIs, our sis, as well as our channel. Vince Menzione: So I know we were. You’ve had a lot. We, we had Jason up here talking about marketplace. Yes. And Jason Grey, Ja. Oh no, Jason. R Jason. R Jason. Yeah. We’ve had Jason Grey. He’s had Jason Grey. Yes. Well, we, um, you’re, you ServiceNow got called out in that last set session. I know. I was thinking about marketplace and co-selling. Yes. And then ecosystem. So I wanna like tie those three things together if that’s possible with you. Like what are you seeing from a best practice perspective. Obviously ServiceNow has been a top a top partner. We’re starting to see a lot of, well, channel D, channel [00:18:00] resellers, and the like. What are you seeing from a best practice perspective and is there yes. Central opportunities there? Katharine Kennedy: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay. Three things. Um, one is AI led innovation. First and foremost, you gotta have the solution. You gotta have it. If you don’t have the solution, you don’t have something to sell. Second is a, um, AI led go to market hero motion. And what I mean by that, so in the, I’ll use ServiceNow as a, as a. Example ServiceNow. We created a, the first, uh, copilot plus, um, ServiceNow assist agent to agent go to market hero story. It landed really well with our customers and so we started to build off of that and we integrated across, um, up and down the stack. Like I mentioned, the data layer, the agent layer, and the ui. Um, and our customers were thrilled. They were like, wow. What else can we do with this? Can we unlock HR with this? Can we unlock. [00:19:00] What else can we do? Finance? Can we do finance? And so we started to see these, these moments in time where our customers were taking the technology and taking it to places we just hadn’t even thought about yet. Um, so I would say those two. And then the third would be, uh, making sure that we’re enabling the field. In a way that they know that story, they can tell that story, and then they have access to people to support that story. Um, and then wrap that in marketplace leverage micro, uh, marketplace as a scale motion. And now I know we still have opportunities to continue to improve around marketplace. Um, but we’ve come a long way and we’re seeing tremendous growth and scale out of this engine. So it’s, it’s definitely a hidden, um. I would say honestly, it’s still a hidden gem in the Microsoft. Uh. Bag, if you will. Vince Menzione: $300 billion in total.[00:20:00] Katharine Kennedy: Yeah, I seriously, yeah, but not anymore, I should say. Yes, I’ve been to Singing from the Rooftop. Yes. Vince Menzione: And you’re gonna be back this afternoon, right? Yes. A session with Ashley, so, oh, okay. I think, was it with Ash? Maybe? Oh know, maybe. I don’t know. Maybe. I’d be delighted it’ll be back the same. I’m happy to be back. I wanna make sure, I do wanna make sure, we’ll, we’ll cover some more of this there. Katharine Kennedy: And then the last thing, yeah. Shared KPIs. Yes. Shared KPIs. We gotta track it. We gotta be accountable. So get your vision aligned. Get your vision, get your organizations across all of the disciplines aligned. Yes. And then have a set of shared KPIs and owners for each of those KPIs. Yes. Right. And govern it. And govern it. Govern it, yeah. Report up to the CEO on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis. I started reporting up to our CEO and he was like. What is she doing? He’s like, this business is going really, it’s growing fast. What is she doing? Can we do this somewhere else though? Um, it’s, you know, making sure people know the story, um, [00:21:00] and everyone’s buying in and they’re accountable. It’s, um, it’s a simple thing, but it’s powerful. Thank you for having me. Vince Menzione: Thank you so much. I really, yeah. Appreciate it. Thank you everyone. Alright, thanks. You don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.

Find the room that changes everything. Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ I’ve been thinking about purpose a lot lately. Not your job title. Not your company’s mission statement. Not your OKRs. Your reason for being. In this solo episode, I challenge the traditional concept of Ikigai — the Japanese framework for finding meaning — and reveal the critical piece that’s been missing from the standard four-circle model all along. I draw from 40 years in this industry, from carrying a bag in the field to leading a $4.6 billion partner business at Microsoft, to a serious accident that stopped me cold and forced me to ask the hardest questions of my life. What came out of that experience changed how I see purpose entirely. My conclusion: purpose is not a solo exercise. You don’t find it in a diagram. You find it in the room — the right room, with the right people, at the right moment. In this episode, I introduce the Fifth Circle — the question every partner leader and ecosystem builder needs to add to their Ikigai: Who am I finding it with? https://youtu.be/_z_QRObCXSc Key Takeaways Ikigai represents your “reason for being” across four circles: what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for — but that’s not the whole picture. The traditional model is almost always framed as a solo exercise. For those of us building partnerships for a living, that framing is incomplete. Proximity is a strategic asset — especially now, in the Decade of the Ecosystem. My accident was the catalyst that clarified everything: my purpose wasn’t in the content I created. It was in the community I served. The best partner leaders don’t treat hyperscalers as vendors or partners as channels — they treat them as co-creators and extensions of their own mission. Nobody does the extraordinary alone. The Fifth Circle asks: Who are you finding it with? If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Ikigai, reason for being, ecosystem builder, partner leader, hyperscaler executive, Microsoft partner business, proximity strategy, decade of the ecosystem, Ultimate Partner, relational leadership, AI marketplace, co-sell, community building, professional breakthrough, career reinvention, mission statement, vision statement, Okinawa centenarians, purpose-driven leadership, networking vs. relationship, boot cast, Bellevue Washington, Ultimate Partner Live, strategic assets, co-creator mindset. Transcript: UP Solocast March 27 [00:00:00] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Manzione, your host, and today we have a special treat. I’m going to spend some time with you just one-on-one having a conversation that really I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately. What is your reason for being not your job title, not your company’s mission statement, not your OKRs? [00:00:30] Vince Menzione: Your reason for being, you see, there’s a Japanese concept that many of us follow or talk about. In fact, I have posted about this before. Ikigai. It means roughly reason for being or reason to wake up in the morning, and it’s represented over four overlapping circles. And I’ve talked about my icky guy extensively because I feel like I just found it over the last few years. [00:00:56] Vince Menzione: An Iki guy is what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. We’re all four of these. Me? That’s your purpose. That’s your icky guy. So I first encountered this years ago. In fact, I was in search for my mission for so long. I spent time with Dr. Michael Vet. In the room trying to understand like where I took my career, where I took all the things that I was good at doing, leading partnerships and the things that I enjoyed doing and all the things that I could help the world doing. [00:01:33] Vince Menzione: But something always felt incomplete about that. In all those conversations and building out my mission statement and my vision statement and some, some other capacities, and it took me, you know, 40 years in this industry, 290 podcast conversations. Dozens of events that I’ve either been on stage or the 10 and 11 that we’ve hosted ourselves and a career that took me from selling in the field, carrying a bag to leading a $4.6 billion partner business at Microsoft. [00:02:06] Vince Menzione: It took me all of that to understand what was missing, and that’s what today’s episode is all about. Let me give you the full, icky guy picture before I tell you what I think is missing. The concept comes from the Okinawa Japan region. Famous for having one of the highest concentrations of centenarians in the world. [00:02:26] Vince Menzione: Researchers have studied these people for a long time to understand why they’ve lived so long, and it comes down to purpose. What was their icky guy? The framework became popular in the west, largely because it gave people a practical tool. Four questions, four circles. Find the overlap. And it works as far as it goes, but I’ve seen executives use it in offsites. [00:02:51] Vince Menzione: Coaches use it for clients. Leaders use it to navigate career transitions, and people talk about it on LinkedIn and on social all the time. The challenge is how it’s framed. It’s almost always framed in a solo exercise. You alone answering these four questions isolated from the people around you, you alone finding that intersection. [00:03:14] Vince Menzione: You alone discovering your purpose. And for many things in life, that’s the right frame. Introspection matters. Self-knowledge matters. But for those of us who are building partnerships for a living, for partner leaders, ecosystem builders, hyperscaler, executives, ISV, founders, MSP operators, and people that build communities like Ultimate Partner, I wanna offer you a different frame. [00:03:41] Vince Menzione: Here’s what I’ve learned, and I don’t say this lightly because it took a long time to articulate it clearly to me, and maybe it was my accident that made this really resonate. You don’t find your purpose alone. You find it in the room, the right room with the right people at the right moment. I can trace almost every significant turn in my career, every breakthrough, every reinvention. [00:04:10] Vince Menzione: Every moment of clarity back to a room, a conversation at a partner conference, a dinner where someone said something that shifted my perspective, a coach that led me to the right conclusions. An event where I met someone who saw what I was building before I fully saw it myself. This isn’t luck, this is proximity. [00:04:35] Vince Menzione: And in the decade of the ecosystem. And during these times of tectonic shifts, which is what I believe we’re living through right now, proximity is a strategic asset. Think about the best results you’ve driven in partnerships. Were they the result of a product strategy as a solo strategy exercise, or were they the product of being in the right relationship at the right time with the right, trusted? [00:05:02] Vince Menzione: I know what your answer is because I’ve heard it 290 plus times. The guests on this podcast, the Tony Voyance, the Greg Serafin, the Jay McBain, the Dr. Michael DVAs, the Nina Hardings in the room, every one of them, when I ask about their greatest moments, they talk about people, they talk about the team, the partnership, the relationships that made it possible. [00:05:28] Vince Menzione: That is the fifth circle, not just what you love. What you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for, but who you find it with. I wanna get personal for a second. Just over a year ago, on March 31st of last year, as you all know, I was in a very serious accident. I won’t go into great details about this, but it was the kind of moment that stopped me. [00:05:55] Vince Menzione: It forced me to look up from the world and ask the hard questions. What am I doing? Why does this matter? Who am I doing it for? I spent a month basically in bed trying to work through getting ready for our event that year in Redmond. And during that time, I had nothing to do but think. And what I kept coming back to again and again, wasn’t the content I’ve created on the podcast. [00:06:24] Vince Menzione: It wasn’t the leaders coming on stage. Oh, of course those were important components of it. It was the people, the community in the room, and when I had to get up on stage again, when I needed to go out to Redmond, it was those people that were calling me back. The leaders I’d sat across from for these five plus years. [00:06:45] Vince Menzione: The conversations that have changed my thinking, the relationships that have made ultimate partners, something real, that was my icky guy. And I hadn’t built it alone. I had built it in the room with the most remarkable collection of partner leaders I could ever imagined when I came back, blue Cast and all, I knew more clearly than ever why I do this, and the answer wasn’t in a four circle diagram. [00:07:14] Vince Menzione: It was in the face of the people that showed up in that room, and I could see them now in front of me to this day. So what does this mean for you as a partner leader, as an ecosystem builder? Someone navigating the tectonic shifts of AI marketplace co-sell and more. It means your Ikigai exercise needs a fifth question, not just what do I love? [00:07:39] Vince Menzione: What am I good at? What does the world need? What can I be paid for, but also who am I finding it with? Let me make this concrete. The best partner leaders I know don’t just have strong strategies. They have strong ecosystems of people, mentors, collaborators, cos sellers, hyperscalers champions, and community members who amplify what they’re building. [00:08:09] Vince Menzione: I see it in my friends that are building their communities like Christine Bonard at the Witt Network. I see it in those rooms. It’s not transactional. They’re relational. They don’t treat the hyperscaler as a vendor. They treat them as a co-creator. They don’t treat their partners as a channel. They treat them as an extension of their own mission. [00:08:32] Vince Menzione: They don’t show up at events to collect business cards. They show up to find their people. That last one. Finding your people is where Ikigai gets activated in the ecosystem world. Proximity to the right people, ideas, opportunities, changes, everything. That’s not a tagline. That’s the operating principle behind everything. [00:08:57] Vince Menzione: Ultimate Partner has built the podcast, the events up live in Bellevue, this May and our community. All of it is about creating the room. Because when you find the right room, when you’re in it, contributing to it, building in it, your purpose doesn’t stay abstract, it becomes real. It becomes results. It becomes the extraordinary. [00:09:28] Vince Menzione: I wanna leave you with this somewhere in your career, maybe it’s already happened, maybe it’s ahead of you. There will be a room where something shifts, a conversation that reframes how you see your work, a relationship that accelerates everything. A community that makes you more than you would’ve been without it. [00:09:51] Vince Menzione: That room doesn’t happen by accident. You have to pursue it. You have to invest in it. You have to show up even when it’s hard, even when you’re wearing a boot cast. Even when the timing isn’t perfect because nobody does the extraordinary alone, that’s what the Ultimate Partner framework is built on. [00:10:15] Vince Menzione: That’s what the book that I’m writing is built on, and that’s what I believe with every conversation I’ve been privileged to have on this podcast and in the rooms at Ultimate Partner events. Find your room, build on it. And be the kind of partner, someone else’s breakthrough. Depends on. Thanks for being here. [00:10:39] Vince Menzione: Thanks for being part of the Ultimate Partner podcast about being part of our mission, being part of our community, showing up in our room. Until next time, we’ll see you in person, hopefully at our next event. Ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. [00:11:02] Vince Menzione: I hope to see you there. [

Master the $500B Cloud Marketplace Engine Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this compelling discussion, Vince Menzione sits down with Dexter Hardy, founder of Ntegral and the visionary behind Spark, to deconstruct the massive transformation happening within the cloud ecosystem. Dexter shares his journey of evolving from a traditional systems integrator to a marketplace powerhouse with over 300 solutions and customers in 100 countries, revealing the “Marketplace Operating System” that drives global sales without a massive headcount. They dive deep into the Spark GTM methodology, discussing how companies can bridge the gap between building a solution and actually driving “Get It Now” transactions while navigating the $500 billion committed cloud-spend landscape. From the nuances of multi-party private offers to the critical role of AI in becoming a “frontier firm,” this episode provides a high-level masterclass for any partner looking to turn the marketplace into their most effective revenue stream. https://youtu.be/VLkkuHPpYuk?si=x03Odt2UsCjhtVf4 Key Takeaways The cloud marketplace represents a potential $500 billion in committed spend that partners cannot access without MAC-eligible, transactable solutions. Marketplace as a Service (MaaS) helps traditional SIs pivot to becoming SDCs or ISVs by providing a strategic roadmap for IP conversion. Successful marketplace strategy requires a “Marketplace Operating System” that aligns digital sales with your internal operations and business goals. The “Get It Now” economy allows for 24-hour global sales and lead generation without the need for traditional manual email or phone chains. Becoming a “Frontier Firm” means combining human experience with AI to do things faster, better, and more efficiently than the competition. Co-selling is evolving beyond just the hyperscalers to include rich, multi-party private offers involving resellers and distributors. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Integral, Spark, Marketplace as a Service, MaaS, Marketplace Operating System, Marketplace Strategy, Transactable Offers, Get It Now button, SI to ISV pivot, SDC, Microsoft Marketplace, AWS Marketplace, Google Cloud Marketplace, IP Co-sell, MAC eligible, Multi-party private offers, REO, Reseller enabled offers, Cloud Committed Spend, Frontier Firm, AI agents, Spark GTM methodology, Marketplace Optimization, Digital Sales Flywheel.  Transcript: Dexter Hardy Audio Episode [00:00:00] Dexter Hardy: AI in the hands of someone who has no idea what they’re doing is just a, it’s a faster way to failure, right? Yeah. ’cause they have, they [00:00:06] Vince Menzione: still don’t understand the concepts. [00:00:11] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Today I’m joined by Dexter Hardy, the founder of Integral for a compelling discussion. Dexter, welcome back to the podcast. Great to be here, Vince. It’s [00:00:29] Dexter Hardy: always a pleasure. [00:00:30] Vince Menzione: It is so good to have you back in Boca. [00:00:33] Vince Menzione: Uh, we just wrapped up our ultimate partner executive winter retreat. We call it the Winter Retreat now. [00:00:39] Dexter Hardy: Yep. [00:00:39] Vince Menzione: It’s still February when this airs. It’ll probably be March or April. [00:00:43] Dexter Hardy: Okay. [00:00:43] Vince Menzione: But, um, yeah, the weather in the north has been, they’ve had a tough winter. [00:00:49] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. It’s been brutal [00:00:50] Vince Menzione: for, it’s been brutal. Even, even Atlanta where you are. [00:00:53] Vince Menzione: Had a little bit of winter this year as well. [00:00:54] Dexter Hardy: I was happy to get on the flight. Yeah. It was like 29 degrees the day out, so, [00:00:59] Vince Menzione: so, um, this is your second time Yeah. On Ultimate Partner. And we’ve been friends for, we’re just talking about this. You’ve been to every single one of our Ultimate Partner events. [00:01:10] Vince Menzione: Nine events, [00:01:12] Dexter Hardy: yep. [00:01:12] Vince Menzione: Three times here in Boca and then in other cities like Dallas and Las Colinas. Seattle, Seattle and Reston. Oh my goodness. And we’re back in Seattle again in May. So, uh, we’ve been, we’ve been busy. We’ve been busy. Both of us have [00:01:27] Dexter Hardy: Scott Myer [00:01:28] Vince Menzione: up and we’ve been, and we were introduced. We’ve been friends and worked together. [00:01:31] Vince Menzione: And so I would love to get caught up on you and Integral. [00:01:35] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:01:36] Vince Menzione: Um, the first time we sat down, we talked about Integral as a marketplace. Uh, customer base or, or, or vendor supporting the marketplace. [00:01:45] Dexter Hardy: Yep. [00:01:46] Vince Menzione: And you were, you’ve been, uh, showcased at Microsoft with the Marketplace organization. You’ve done some astounding things in terms of driving business without like a big sales force, you know, and driving marketplace sales, uh, to very high levels. [00:02:02] Dexter Hardy: Yep. [00:02:03] Vince Menzione: And, uh, and now you, I’ll call it a little bit of a twist and turn, but now. You’ve taken all the great learnings, and I’m probably sharing some of your thunder here, but you’ve taken all the great learnings that you’ve had in marketplace and your business [00:02:16] Dexter Hardy: mm-hmm. [00:02:16] Vince Menzione: And now you’re like looking at all these other companies, they’re probably trying to do the same thing and finding ways to help them. [00:02:21] Vince Menzione: So let’s, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about where you’re going. [00:02:25] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. So, so thanks for that. And it’s always a pleasure to be, you know, in the room with you, especially on the podcast, uh, seeing it grow over the years. And, um, to kind of double click on. How did we get to where we are with, uh, spark Bi Integral? [00:02:40] Dexter Hardy: Um, it’s our marketplace as a service offering. Um, we [00:02:46] Vince Menzione: marketplace as a service. You get that? I just wanna make sure people are listening and watching. Get that. That’s a, that’s a new acronym for me. [00:02:53] Dexter Hardy: That’s a new one. But, but what we, how do we get there? So to your point, yes, we. We’re a, um, marketplace first organization looking at the digital sales leaned in heavily on marketplace. [00:03:08] Dexter Hardy: Um, and what we were doing internally was we created our marketplace operating system. Like literally, how do we run our business? How do we digitize, how do we get those, uh, how do we turn the marketplace into our 24 hour sales guy? Yeah. Taking all those lessons learned how you deal with the hyperscale or how do you understand, you know, the, the signals that’s happening in the market. [00:03:33] Dexter Hardy: Uh, coupling that with, because we’ve been a member of this wonderful organization and getting into the partner community ecosystem, we get asked a million times, I bet. What do you do? How do you do it? That’s help us understand marketplace and so what we. What we saw there was an opportunity to both lean into the challenges that other partners are facing. [00:04:00] Dexter Hardy: If you’re an SI that’s trying to pivot [00:04:02] Vince Menzione: yep, [00:04:03] Dexter Hardy: and be in the marketplace, you’re already established company, how do you create Transactable offers? How do we take the the marketplace opportunity and leverage AI and put our agents in the marketplace? Our aha moment was this is, this is an en enablement opportunity that we can get into and basically be the first ones in because we leaned into it, we understand it. [00:04:35] Dexter Hardy: What makes us different from the other companies is we actually use that methodology every day. [00:04:43] Vince Menzione: For those who maybe didn’t listen to the last podcast we did together, I know this story, but I want others to know the context of it. Tell us about your transformation to a marketplace firm. [00:04:54] Dexter Hardy: Okay, for sure. [00:04:56] Vince Menzione: Maybe the shorter version. [00:04:57] Dexter Hardy: The shorter version, [00:04:57] Vince Menzione: but I, I do know that there was some, you were in business for a long time before this became the business strategy. [00:05:03] Dexter Hardy: Yeah, so the shortened version business founded 2002, Microsoft partner for many years. Yep. 2020. Si. Si as an si. 2020 COVID. [00:05:16] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:05:16] Dexter Hardy: Consulting 2.0. [00:05:17] Dexter Hardy: How do you do what you do at scale for others? Taking your ip, converting it. We did that at 2020. Embraced the marketplace. We created our solutions, deploy them to the marketplace. The rest is history. We leaned in how [00:05:32] Vince Menzione: many solutions in the [00:05:33] Dexter Hardy: marketplace, over 300 solutions. I wanna [00:05:35] Vince Menzione: make sure people [00:05:35] Dexter Hardy: got that. [00:05:35] Dexter Hardy: Over a hundred, 300 [00:05:36] Vince Menzione: solutions. [00:05:37] Dexter Hardy: Over 300 solutions. Yeah. Uh, we have. Customers in over a hundred countries. I mean, and [00:05:42] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:05:43] Dexter Hardy: You know, continuing to build and expand our customer base on a daily basis. And so, [00:05:48] Vince Menzione: and they’re, and they’re buying when you, while you sleep. I mean, we, we’ve known each other pretty well for a number of years. [00:05:54] Vince Menzione: And [00:05:54] Dexter Hardy: yeah, [00:05:54] Vince Menzione: you have customers like, um, I’ll throw out a number, like 25,000 customers, probably, maybe beyond that. And these customers are buying your solutions. All hours of the day and night, [00:06:06] Dexter Hardy: right? Yeah. I I love the get it now button in the marketplace. Literally all they have to do to work with us or transact with us is click on, get It Now, and that’s the transactable offer that everyone, there’s this mystique around. [00:06:19] Dexter Hardy: People are like, well, we don’t have any leads. We can, you know, our, we have an offer in the marketplace and nobody’s clicking on it. And I’m like, Hmm, [00:06:27] Vince Menzione: yeah, [00:06:27] Dexter Hardy: we can help you with that. Right? And so, um, you know, that’s how we. Our, our story with that, our background with that was it’s our 24 hour sales guy. We drive our campaigns, we align with the solution plays. [00:06:41] Dexter Hardy: We’re getting those clicks with, to your point, without this huge army of people. Yeah. And so now we’re saying from a marketplace strategic advisory, a lot of people were saying it earlier, like, you know, marketplace isn’t this adjacent thing to business. How do you strategically think about it as. Um, part of your business all up. [00:07:03] Dexter Hardy: How do you add that as a revenue stream, uh, for your organization? And yeah, there may be some changes that you need to make, you know, how do you incorporate the channel? How do you add in all of the things that you’re currently doing, but create that as a flywheel for this. Get it now economy. [00:07:22] Vince Menzione: So all the, I’m, I’m thinking out loud, like there’s probably a lot of people watching you up on stage at these events talking about how you evolved your company and grew it. [00:07:31] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:07:32] Vince Menzione: Going, that’s me. [00:07:33] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:07:33] Vince Menzione: That’s me. The old, the old version of you absolutely is them. [00:07:37] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:07:38] Vince Menzione: And they all, they all want help. [00:07:39] Dexter Hardy: They all, [00:07:40] Vince Menzione: everybody wants help in marketplace. [00:07:41] Dexter Hardy: Right. And [00:07:43] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:07:43] Dexter Hardy: And, and to that end. Because I was them. I understand how their mind, it’s a mindset shift, right? You’re saying, okay, we have these traditional sales, we’re a systems integrator, we have all this ip, these, there are all these things that we can do. [00:07:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:07:58] Dexter Hardy: I don’t, how do we convert this to transact ability? How do we get our sales teams enabled to sell it? And I was, and my, my feedback and my response to that is, well, one, we have a service for that. It’s our marketplace advisor services. I’m sorry for the plug, but not sorry. [00:08:16] Vince Menzione: No, we’re, no, we’re gonna plug today as well. [00:08:18] Vince Menzione: Much as you want. [00:08:19] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:08:20] Vince Menzione: And then I think about this too, because a lot of these sis are developing, we’re just, uh, talking with Agua about MSPs, developing agents for their customers and then making ’em repeatable. [00:08:30] Dexter Hardy: Yep. [00:08:31] Vince Menzione: And so you have other sis that are creating AI tools and agents. Microsoft is created and the, and so has AWS and Google, they’ve created space in their marketplaces for agent AI tools. [00:08:44] Dexter Hardy: Yep. [00:08:45] Vince Menzione: And so now you’ve got all these companies that were traditional sis that are now becoming what we would call ISVs or, or SDCs. And they need help in getting these solutions to the marketplace. [00:08:57] Dexter Hardy: Absolutely. [00:08:58] Vince Menzione: So, so talk about what you’re doing with Spark. [00:09:00] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. So our concept with Spark is. When you look at enablement, so you’ll have platforms that are enablers and a lot of people will say, well, what makes Spark different? [00:09:12] Dexter Hardy: Why? Why you versus Tackle Or Sugar? [00:09:15] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:09:15] Dexter Hardy: Any of the other work span. Work span or any, they’re all friendlys to us because we’re meeting you where you are. Right. In order for you to use their platform, you gotta already have the solution together. [00:09:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:09:30] Dexter Hardy: Right. They can help you deploy. There’s Deploy. They are a deployment firm or [00:09:35] Vince Menzione: Right. [00:09:36] Dexter Hardy: Um, platforms We’re saying [00:09:38] Vince Menzione: they’re middleware in many respects. Correct. Between the, they’re, [00:09:41] Dexter Hardy: they’re integrated into the marketplace. They’re highly embedded into the systems behind it, and we’re saying what happens before that? I have no idea what solution to build. I have no idea how we’re gonna take advantage of Marketplace. [00:09:58] Dexter Hardy: How is Marketplace gonna change? Again, we had these conversations at dinner. Um, [00:10:04] Vince Menzione: yeah, [00:10:04] Dexter Hardy: all of the big players are saying, we have channel, we have our sales teams, we have all these things already. How does marketplace play into that for us? And so that Marketplace strategic advisory goes into it and says, here’s how. [00:10:19] Dexter Hardy: Right. We have a. Our Spark GTM methodology goes into how do those things play together? What are your KPIs or what are your business goals as an organization all up? And then we marry this, basically a Venn diagram of how we marry marketplace with your current objectives. Okay. To not just be this, uh, ubiquitous thing that’s kind of sitting over on the side, like, let’s just put it in marketplace because we need to, and nobody knows it’s there and nobody knows it’s there. [00:10:49] Dexter Hardy: It’s part of. Everything all up. Your messaging, your sales organization, your, um, documentation that you have for your organization. So now everyone understands, not just you as the, let’s say you’re an SI that you were, but you, the si with your agents and how that plays into your bigger value proposition. [00:11:10] Dexter Hardy: So take [00:11:10] Vince Menzione: us through the, go to the methodology you described the Spark methodology. [00:11:15] Dexter Hardy: Yep. So, um, a lot of people, when they think about. The methodology, you’ll say we’re a, we’re an si. I’m just going to use an example. You’re an si. How, how do I get somebody to click on my, my opportunity? How do I get somebody to understand what we have as a value proposition? [00:11:39] Dexter Hardy: And I’d say to people, well, there’s this, it’s part of the methodology. There’s product viability. Can you build something? Versus should you build something. Right. [00:11:50] Vince Menzione: Interesting. [00:11:51] Dexter Hardy: If you are, if you are out there today and you’re saying, I mean, everybody’s seeing Claude, the agents, you can, you can ask AI to build you pretty much anything. [00:12:00] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:12:00] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:12:01] Dexter Hardy: Now the question scary and that, that’s a, that, that introduces a new problem. But it’s, can you do it or should you do it? [00:12:08] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:12:09] Dexter Hardy: And and what I’ll tell people is part of our advisory, so the steps are. What is your North Star right now and what is the software that would enable you to get on that AI rocket ship to propel you even further with where you are? [00:12:27] Dexter Hardy: Those are the solutions that we would try to [00:12:29] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:12:30] Dexter Hardy: That out, pull out of, uh, as part of that marketplace. Um, advisory Second, what partner or partner organizations are you a member of? Is it Microsoft? Is it the AWS? Is it, you know, Google Cloud? Google Cloud, what have you, and let’s say Microsoft. What are solution plays? [00:12:51] Dexter Hardy: What is Microsoft focused on? How does what you’re doing as an organization align with that go to market? Mm-hmm. Because now you have that jet power of what they’re, um, promoting along with your organization. [00:13:06] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:13:07] Dexter Hardy: And then the final piece is, well, now that you’ve done that, how do I get it into market? [00:13:12] Dexter Hardy: How do I, uh, get people to click on it? And that’s where some of the secret sauce that I won’t divulge on this, [00:13:19] Vince Menzione: uh, [00:13:20] Dexter Hardy: but there is some secret sauce to getting the ICPs to lean in, getting the [00:13:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:13:25] Dexter Hardy: You know, you’re listing to light up inside of that. And so that’s. You know, that’s at a high level. That’s kind of how the marketplace, [00:13:32] Vince Menzione: I think what you’re alluding to, and I, I don’t wanna put words in your mouth, but I do think you’ve done a very good job on what I would call maybe digital marketing, maybe. [00:13:41] Vince Menzione: Would that be the right terminology? Yeah. To make your solutions discoverable, to make people understand that they’re out there and to lean in and be able to purchase them. [00:13:51] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:13:52] Vince Menzione: Which I think I would say that’s probably part of the secret sauce, probably of Spark. That is what you’re saying because a lot of organizations struggle here. [00:13:59] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:14:00] Vince Menzione: They put something in the marketplace and nothing ever happens with it. Even even big companies do that. They don’t know how to do it. [00:14:06] Dexter Hardy: So, so yeah. Without divulging the secret sauce, I had a gentleman ask me yesterday, um, during the conference, so how is this different from SEO? I said, good question. [00:14:20] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. Is is SEOS? Is, is SEO involved? Sure, but that’s not the final answer. Because you could do SEO, that doesn’t mean anybody. That just gets you, doesn’t mean anything. Doesn’t mean anything. And so. That’s why I keep going back to this methodology of really aligning it with, uh, what it is you’re trying to accomplish, who it is you’re trying to get to lean in, and then what is the value proposition? [00:14:42] Dexter Hardy: Because at the end of the day, Vince, I think even with any service, like I said, we did our first offerings with our R zero offerings and now we’re doing this. It’s what is the value, right? Um, it’s a hard. Thing to do to really wrap your brain around how your, how your business is going to change from, if you’re doing direct sales and you got your bag and you’re out there selling to now, you mean I don’t have to pick up the phone and call you? [00:15:15] Dexter Hardy: There’s not an email chain that goes out. It’s literally people are just clicking on Get it now to get it [00:15:21] Vince Menzione: and getting it. [00:15:22] Dexter Hardy: That’s a, that’s a mind shift change and that’s. To your point, there is some market, there is some marketing expertise that is required. [00:15:29] Vince Menzione: And we’ve also talked about, I know you and I went down a journey on the co-sell business [00:15:34] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:15:34] Vince Menzione: And how difficult it can be to get a, a seller from a Microsoft or a Google and Amazon involved, unless it’s, you know, a $10 million transaction, they don’t want to get involved. [00:15:45] Dexter Hardy: Right. [00:15:46] Vince Menzione: Uh, you really wanna reach the customer. Because you know, the hyperscalers is great. If you’re driving a ServiceNow or an ADO a big solution, it’s gonna be tens of millions of dollars. [00:15:56] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:15:57] Vince Menzione: But if you are an SI and you’re selling this as part of maybe a services offering, or you’re selling it as, you know, you’re just selling as a standalone. [00:16:04] Dexter Hardy: Right? [00:16:05] Vince Menzione: Um, you want as much eyeballs and transactions as possible and you’re not gonna get that just going co-selling. [00:16:12] Dexter Hardy: Right. And, and the other part of that I will say about co-sell. [00:16:17] Dexter Hardy: I think co-sell has gotten like a dirty rap or bad rap around it. Co-sell is with the hyperscaler, but it’s with other partners too. [00:16:28] Vince Menzione: Sure, [00:16:28] Dexter Hardy: right? Oh yeah, absolutely. So, um, being in the marketplace gives you the option of co-selling would, not just the hyperscaler, but co-selling with other orgs. And so now anytime that you’ve give, you’ve given yourself that X factor on top of your existing ability to deliver. [00:16:44] Dexter Hardy: That’s where you’re seeing the true power of marketplace. [00:16:47] Vince Menzione: And yesterday you were on stage with Jason Rook. [00:16:50] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:16:51] Vince Menzione: And this was part of the conversation. It was you, Jason Rook and Amit Sinha at, at uh, work Span. [00:16:58] Dexter Hardy: Mm-hmm. [00:16:58] Vince Menzione: And part of the conversation was around the, uh, reseller enabled offers. And I think what that’s somewhat of what you’re alluding to is that you have other wait routes to market channels to market. [00:17:10] Dexter Hardy: Right [00:17:11] Vince Menzione: through building other partnerships for co-selling. Yeah. That what you, you were alluding to. Yeah. [00:17:15] Dexter Hardy: So, so yeah, there, there are a million ways to, once you’re in, once you have a transactable offer, that’s when you get the magic unlocks. Right. You, the barrier to entry is being in marketplace with a transactable offer. [00:17:31] Dexter Hardy: And if you’re outside of that loop, again, the REO. You’re not available. Guess who? Guess who can’t do that? [00:17:39] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:17:40] Dexter Hardy: If you’re not in the marketplace, you can’t do that. [00:17:41] Vince Menzione: Can’t do that. [00:17:43] Dexter Hardy: Multi-party private offers can’t do that. ’cause you’re not in the marketplace. [00:17:47] Vince Menzione: No. [00:17:48] Dexter Hardy: Right. And so what we’re saying is think about all up, how you’re missing out on. [00:17:56] Dexter Hardy: All of these wonderful opportunities to, I think, I think the number got thrown out a couple of times. Jason ran away from it when you said it’s like a $300 billion number on, he [00:18:07] Vince Menzione: didn’t want, he didn’t, he didn’t want me sharing or he wasn’t, he, he didn’t want to, uh, what, what did he say? Validate that that was the right number, but $300 billion in potential cloud budgets. [00:18:21] Vince Menzione: That you could have access to. We know the number across the three hyperscalers is north of 500 billion. [00:18:27] Dexter Hardy: Yep. [00:18:27] Vince Menzione: It’s just that Microsoft doesn’t break out their numbers and make them public, and so we, you know, [00:18:32] Dexter Hardy: and, and [00:18:33] Vince Menzione: estimates. [00:18:33] Dexter Hardy: What I would tell everyone that’s listening, I would invite you to consider [00:18:37] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:18:38] Dexter Hardy: the following. [00:18:39] Dexter Hardy: If you’re not in the marketplace with a IP, co-sale or MAC eligible solution, you’re not eligible for that. [00:18:49] Vince Menzione: That’s right. [00:18:50] Dexter Hardy: Spend. And so is that worth it for you as an organization to say, yes, we need to figure out this and get involved with that? [00:19:01] Vince Menzione: So I’m an SI and I raise my hand. I’m like, Dexter, help me. [00:19:06] Vince Menzione: What happens next? [00:19:08] Dexter Hardy: I would say. Let me introduce you to my team. [00:19:12] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it. [00:19:13] Dexter Hardy: Um, [00:19:14] Vince Menzione: and you’ve been building your team since, uh, we go back now four years, but like yeah. You, you’ve been growing your business, hired some incredible people in your [00:19:22] Dexter Hardy: team. Yeah, we have some rock stars on our team. I’m really, really happy with my team. [00:19:25] Dexter Hardy: Uh, you know, we’re still growing and it’s, it’s a wonderful thing to be in this economy and still growing. Yes. Um, and like I said, yes, we, I would introduce you to my team and my team would then help you, uh, through. The marketplace advisory. We can help you with the health check. We can do the strategic advisory, the alignment around, here’s what we’re doing. [00:19:47] Dexter Hardy: Another thing that I’ll go ahead and put in here, if you already have listings in the marketplace and people aren’t clicking on them, we have marketplace optimization as well. [00:19:58] Vince Menzione: I love that [00:19:59] Dexter Hardy: because we, again, that conversation comes up all the time. Yeah. We put, we, we invested in Marketplace and we have our listing out there. [00:20:08] Dexter Hardy: Nobody’s clicking on it. Well, we can help you with that too. [00:20:11] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:20:12] Dexter Hardy: Right, because to your point, it’s not just building an ar, arbitrarily writing something about it, putting it in marketplace. Right. That’s, that’s an arbitrary approach. We’re saying how do you turn those into a lead gen, revenue gen, um, operation arm of your business. [00:20:29] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:20:29] Dexter Hardy: Which is what we call market marketplace operating system. [00:20:33] Vince Menzione: Marketplace operating. Okay. So we got another, I got another word I need to learn. Another acronym I need to learn. [00:20:38] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. You know, I [00:20:39] Vince Menzione: less, [00:20:40] Dexter Hardy: I’ve been around Microsoft too long, I guess. [00:20:42] Vince Menzione: Yes. I [00:20:42] Dexter Hardy: created all these, [00:20:45] Vince Menzione: so, um, just perspective could, because you’ve been in the marketplace since we talked about COVID. [00:20:50] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:20:51] Vince Menzione: Really. So that’s five years. Five [00:20:52] Dexter Hardy: years. Yeah. [00:20:54] Vince Menzione: Um, talk about how it’s changed from your perspective. I mean, I, we talk about it all. We talk, we have leaders like Jason and Cyril comes here and. Does, uh, speaks about some changes going on, but tell us your perspective on how it’s evolved. [00:21:08] Dexter Hardy: Um, so the marketplace is always evolving really. [00:21:12] Dexter Hardy: Um, from, from when we got in early in the marketplace. Uh, REO didn’t exist. Multi, multi-party. Private offers didn’t exist. The amount of committed spend on hyperscalers little was, wasn’t there. Um, the seller, the field sellers within the hyperscalers. Marketplace wasn’t part of their thing. So, um, you know, when that, when that frontier, not just that, not to confuse terms when that frontier opened up Yeah. [00:21:43] Dexter Hardy: Like there were, you know, it, it really wasn’t a clear path on how do you channel, how do you do sales, how do you integrate with the team? Um, and now there’s a lot more options, uh, for organizations that want to keep some of those motions together. Disti are now able to get involved with the conversation. [00:22:05] Dexter Hardy: They were kinda locked out for a while, but now with the s and the multi-party private offers and disti are in the conversation, [00:22:12] Vince Menzione: it’s lit up the disti like crazy. Yeah. In fact, we were, we just spent time with a few and some friends there and [00:22:19] Dexter Hardy: yeah. [00:22:19] Vince Menzione: Yeah, it’s been wild to watch this. [00:22:21] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:22:21] Vince Menzione: We haven’t talked about AI very much. [00:22:24] Vince Menzione: I mean, we talked about it from a solution and something you put in the, the market as an agent. But we haven’t talked about the change in a big way. Um, what’s your perspective for the partners out there and how they need to think about AI and embracing it and where they are in the journey? [00:22:41] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. Um, I really, AUL said something, uh, in his, in the panel discussion that he had the other day and it, it just really resonated with me. [00:22:53] Dexter Hardy: Uh, will AI take your job? Probably not. The person who’s using AI [00:23:00] Vince Menzione: will take [00:23:00] Dexter Hardy: the job. Will take you [00:23:01] Vince Menzione: job. Yes. [00:23:02] Dexter Hardy: Same thing. That’s really [00:23:04] Vince Menzione: so true. [00:23:05] Dexter Hardy: Same thing for, same thing for companies. Yeah. If you don’t have, and I, I’ll, I’m, I, I’m really gonna ask, I should have asked Jason this question. Why isn’t there a badge for frontier firms for SDCs? [00:23:21] Dexter Hardy: That’s a solution. Partner badge, not a frontier firm. [00:23:24] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:23:24] Dexter Hardy: but I’ll say if your company isn’t investing in combining people and ai, you’re missing the boat. [00:23:36] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So be a frontier firm. [00:23:37] Dexter Hardy: Be a frontier firm where it doesn’t matter if you’re an si, SDC, if you are not leveraging that superpower of how do we do things faster, better, quicker. [00:23:50] Dexter Hardy: Make that part of your go to market and your operating total operations, you’re going to get left behind. [00:23:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah. We’re hearing it loud and clear. I mean, all the sessions we had yesterday. [00:24:02] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:24:02] Vince Menzione: All the people like yourself that have been here are all frontier firms. They’re all companies that have leaned in, in a big way. [00:24:07] Dexter Hardy: Right. [00:24:08] Vince Menzione: Um, and in some respect, I mean, we we’re, I’m, I’m saying proceed with caution because I, I know by 2030 our world is gonna look very radically different than it looks today. [00:24:17] Dexter Hardy: Yep. [00:24:18] Vince Menzione: Uh, we just, I need to make sure we have the security and the governance and the data structure the right way so that we just don’t, things don’t just go crazy in some respects. [00:24:27] Vince Menzione: Right? [00:24:27] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. And I, I do think that, um, to your point, you have to, we still have to keep the human factor in everything that we’re doing. Um, there is, again, it’s AI plus your experience that makes you better. [00:24:46] Vince Menzione: Yeah, agreed. [00:24:47] Dexter Hardy: AI in the hands of someone who has no idea what they’re doing is just a, it’s a faster way to failure, right? [00:24:53] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. Because they have, they still don’t understand the concepts. And so I really want to make sure that, you know, when you think about ai, think about it from the context of experience, right? Yeah. [00:25:06] Vince Menzione: And yeah, we can go, we can go down a, a whole discussion point here about ethics and what I’ll call AI for good. [00:25:14] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Like I said, having the right approach, having an ethical approach. We talked about Microsoft on stage yesterday with people like Brad Smith, who, uh, there’s people that have this, this right philosophy and approach to ai. Right. That [00:25:29] Dexter Hardy: right. [00:25:29] Vince Menzione: It will do good for the world and not bad for the world. [00:25:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:25:33] Dexter Hardy: And I think that has to be, well, I’ll just speak for myself. Can you do something and should you do something [00:25:42] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:25:43] Dexter Hardy: You have to, that should be a question that you’re asking yourself. You should be evaluating and you have to have whatever your moral compass is that has to align with your moral compass. [00:25:53] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. Because they’re, you know, because with AI the can you do something becomes a lot bigger. Yeah. [00:26:02] Vince Menzione: Good point. Good point. [00:26:03] Dexter Hardy: Should you do it well, you know, greater good. I think as a, as a collective, one of the things that’s. If it hasn’t rained true. Uh, we all live on this planet. We all are part of the, we’re all in part of a connected ecosystem. [00:26:21] Dexter Hardy: Um, and so can we do it? Should we do it? Those are questions that we need to, you know, really think about as we continue to leverage AI and do the things that we’re doing. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of opportunities. [00:26:36] Vince Menzione: Good points, good points. So for partners watching, listening today, um, two, couple things. [00:26:43] Vince Menzione: First of all, it’s changing fast. We need like, what would be, we’re at the beginning of 2026. We’re the first quarter, 2026, maybe the end of the first quarter at this point. [00:26:53] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:26:54] Vince Menzione: What is the one or two or three things that partners need to go do differently or better? And then, um, what would you say to them about marketplace and embracing marketplace? [00:27:09] Dexter Hardy: So I’m gonna answer the second question first. [00:27:12] Vince Menzione: Okay. Sounds good. [00:27:14] Dexter Hardy: Get in the marketplace. [00:27:15] Vince Menzione: Get in the marketplace, [00:27:17] Dexter Hardy: period. [00:27:17] Vince Menzione: Like why wouldn’t you be in the marketplace? [00:27:20] Dexter Hardy: Every hyperscaler has doubled down, tripled down. Yeah. On their marketplace. Microsoft had multiple marketplaces, now it’s just one. [00:27:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:27:29] Dexter Hardy: Writing should be all over the wall. Not that [00:27:31] Vince Menzione: one. There is, there is no market without marketplace. I mean, literally today, the old way, days of selling, the old days of co-selling are gone. [00:27:39] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:27:39] Vince Menzione: Like the days when we, we got pos and we, we sent a, an Excel spreadsheet to Microsoft to tell ’em about the deals that were co-sell. [00:27:47] Vince Menzione: Ready? Those days are gone. So you’re saying we’ve gotta be in the marketplace now and then, what would you say maybe the one thing that’s, let’s limit it to one for all of our amazing viewers, listeners, and ultimate partner guests, when when you, when I see you in Bellevue again, ’cause you’re gonna be in Bellevue, May 11th to the 13th again. [00:28:08] Vince Menzione: Absolutely. With us helping lead the marketplace conversation. What do they need to be doing now? Right now? Besides getting the marketplace? [00:28:18] Dexter Hardy: Besides getting the marketplace, I, I would, I would do a hard look at operations. [00:28:24] Vince Menzione: Operations. [00:28:25] Dexter Hardy: Like a lot of companies, they’re growing and they, what is it? How are we looking internally in our organizations to figure out again, can we do it? [00:28:34] Dexter Hardy: Should we do it? Companies need to focus on their superpower, even, even the big ones, right? Um, being. Not having the focus, not look, looking at or listening to your why as an organization can, can put you in a, in a really weird space. And so, uh, with everyone being able to grow and do what we’re doing, I would say lean into your why, [00:29:01] Vince Menzione: like into your why. [00:29:02] Dexter Hardy: Lean into your why. [00:29:03] Vince Menzione: I think too, I think what you, what you’re saying here, and I’m, my, my reaction to it too is that, uh, we’re, we’re so caught up in the moment right now. And things are changing, so it feels like they’re changing so fast, like coming back to philanthropic and [00:29:20] Dexter Hardy: yeah. [00:29:20] Vince Menzione: What’s evolved just in the last month or so that people are taking their eye off the why or the wall, so to speak and reacting? [00:29:29] Vince Menzione: Is that, is that your point? [00:29:31] Dexter Hardy: Yeah, that’s my point and, and I’ll give you an example. So AI is different from the following technology, but. And I both were around for the blockchain, blockchain, blockchain conversation. [00:29:45] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:29:45] Dexter Hardy: And if you weren’t doing blockchain, you weren’t part of the conversation. I invite you to consider how many conversations have you heard about blockchain do? [00:29:56] Dexter Hardy: Again, AI is a little bit different because it’s, it’s an enabler. It’s, it’s, it’s, it, it does a lot more than that. But I, I will say. AI is gonna become table stakes. And that’s why I say you have to, you have to embrace it as an organization. Yeah. And if you’re not, you’re gonna get left behind. [00:30:13] Vince Menzione: Okay. It’s a drop. [00:30:14] Vince Menzione: Drop the mic moment there. So drop the mic. I’m gonna ask you one more question, personal question. Yeah. I’d love to ask this of every single one of my guests. [00:30:22] Dexter Hardy: Yep. [00:30:23] Vince Menzione: I probably have asked this to you before, but I’m gonna ask it to you again. [00:30:26] Dexter Hardy: Yes. [00:30:28] Vince Menzione: You are hosting a dinner party. You can have this dinner party anywhere in the world. [00:30:32] Vince Menzione: We could talk about locations as well, and you can invite any three guests from the present or the past to this amazing dinner party. [00:30:41] Dexter Hardy: Mm-hmm. [00:30:42] Vince Menzione: Whom would you invite today and why? [00:30:48] Dexter Hardy: Wow. So the last time I answered that question, for those who didn’t hear the first podcast, it was Barack Obama. [00:30:56] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Nelson [00:30:57] Dexter Hardy: Mandela. [00:30:58] Dexter Hardy: And my great-grandparents. [00:30:59] Vince Menzione: Your great-grandparents. I remember your great-grandparents [00:31:02] Dexter Hardy: In this conversation, it’s gonna be more than three people. I’m sorry. [00:31:07] Vince Menzione: All right. But [00:31:07] Dexter Hardy: it make [00:31:08] Vince Menzione: some exceptions here. We’ll make them. [00:31:10] Dexter Hardy: It would be my great-grandparents. Still [00:31:13] Vince Menzione: nice. [00:31:14] Dexter Hardy: My parents and my children. [00:31:18] Vince Menzione: Very cool. [00:31:19] Dexter Hardy: Because I want to look back and let them see the same reason that I had them there before. [00:31:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:31:26] Dexter Hardy: Look at what you started. [00:31:27] Vince Menzione: Nice. I love that. [00:31:29] Dexter Hardy: Look at the continuation of your legacy in my parents. [00:31:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:31:32] Dexter Hardy: Look at what I have been able to build because of the investments and the things that you’ve poured into the love, the energy, the effort, the sacrifice, and then the sacrifices that I’m making to pass into that legacy. [00:31:46] Dexter Hardy: The next legacy. So this would be a. This is why I would say leaning to your why, like understand the importance of family. [00:31:54] Vince Menzione: Tell us about your great, your great grandparents. You told me about this on the last podcast for those who didn’t, didn’t listen in. [00:32:01] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:32:02] Vince Menzione: And don’t have the inclination to go back. [00:32:05] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. [00:32:05] Vince Menzione: But I think it’s a great story. [00:32:06] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. So, you know, growing up in the south [00:32:10] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:32:10] Dexter Hardy: Alabama specifically, uh, my great grandparents were part of, you know, slavery era. [00:32:16] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:32:16] Dexter Hardy: Jim Crow. Jim Crow. Crow. Yeah. The whole. [00:32:21] Dexter Hardy: The history of the United States and what, how it was built, you know, [00:32:26] Vince Menzione: an important part of the history of the United States, by the way, that we all should never forget. [00:32:29] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. So again, some of those, some of the ceilings that are out there now, there wasn’t even an option for. [00:32:36] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:32:36] Dexter Hardy: And so that’s why I really wanted them to, I would really want them to be here to see something that they probably could never even conceive as an option of, of it being. [00:32:47] Dexter Hardy: Uh, to be able to see where things are and then to, you know, why my kids, if this is where we are right now, I want you to dream big. The same amount of energy it takes to think small is the same amount [00:33:04] Vince Menzione: of energy it takes to think big. Dream big. Dream big. Dream. [00:33:09] Dexter Hardy: Dream big. [00:33:10] Vince Menzione: I think we’re gonna leave on that message. [00:33:12] Dexter Hardy: Yeah, [00:33:12] Vince Menzione: that’s a great message. [00:33:13] Dexter Hardy: Awesome. [00:33:14] Vince Menzione: So great to see you, my friend. It’s [00:33:16] Dexter Hardy: always a pleasure [00:33:16] Vince Menzione: to be with you, so always a real pleasure for me as well. [00:33:19] Dexter Hardy: Yeah, [00:33:19] Vince Menzione: and I want to thank you for watching and listening and being part of Ultimate Partner and the Ultimate Partner YouTube channel and our great guest and friend, Dexter Hardy. [00:33:30] Vince Menzione: Great to see you again. [00:33:31] Dexter Hardy: Always a pleasure us. Thank you, [00:33:33] Vince Menzione: sir. [00:33:33] Dexter Hardy: All right. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks. [00:33:35] Vince Menzione: Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.

Winning the AI Trust Race Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this compelling discussion from the Ultimate Partner Winter Retreat, Vince Menzione sits down with Marc Monday of ServiceNow and marketing expert Ashleigh Vogstad to deconstruct the “tectonic shifts” currently hitting the tech industry. As the market moves from AI excitement into a period of “POC fatigue,” the conversation pivots to the essential groundwork required for success: clean data, governed workflows, and the transition from an attention economy to a trust-based machine economy. They explore how Gen Z’s massive spending power is reshaping marketplaces and why simply automating a 27-step bad process with AI is a recipe for failure. Whether you are a partner manager or an entrepreneur, this episode provides a roadmap for staying human in a machine-to-machine world. Key Takeaways The market is experiencing “POC fatigue,” making it critical to transition from experimental AI to real-world value driven by central databases and knowledge graphs. ServiceNow is shifting focus toward “Control Tower” solutions to govern and orchestrate how various AI agents interact with mission-critical data. We are moving from a human-centric “attention economy” to a “trust economy” where machines make high-stakes decisions on behalf of users. Automating an existing 27-step approval process without rethinking the workflow first results in an “automated bad process” rather than a solution. By 2030, 75% of B2B buyers will be Gen Z, a demographic that favors authentic voices and direct-to-fan platforms like Substack over traditional channels. Hyperscaler partnerships are becoming essential “third-party validation” layers that allow AI agents to verify a company’s win rates and credibility. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags ServiceNow, Marc Monday, Ashleigh Vogstad, Ultimate Partner, AI Fatigue, Agentic AI, Control Tower, Trust Economy, Knowledge Graph, Workflow Engine, Gen Z B2B, Marketplace, Hyperscalers, Machine-to-Machine, Data Governance, POC Fatigue, Substack, LinkedIn, Digital Transformation, Co-Selling, Partner Programs, ERP Intelligence, Uncanny Valley, Marketing Lag, Shared Business Planning. Transcript Ashleigh and Marc Monday Audio Episode [00:00:00] Ashleigh Vogstad: But the reality is, if you’re not using AI in a very meaningful way in your sales and marketing functions of your businesses, I mean you’re just way behind. [00:00:13] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Come join me now for a compelling discussion on the impacts of the tectonic shifts we’re all seeing. Maybe just a second about roles and responsibilities. Most of you know Ash from previous, uh, things you’ve been doing with us. [00:00:34] Vince Menzione: But, but maybe for you, Martin, this is your first time. [00:00:36] Marc Monday: Where should I [00:00:37] Vince Menzione: look there? Alternate partner. Their lives [00:00:38] Marc Monday: there? [00:00:39] Vince Menzione: Uh, yeah, over here is good. Either one. [00:00:41] Marc Monday: Look over there. Which would you prefer? [00:00:43] Vince Menzione: Um, this is good. [00:00:44] Marc Monday: Great. It’s, [00:00:45] Vince Menzione: and, but right now I’m just asking you for everybody, tell everybody who you are in your role. [00:00:49] Vince Menzione: ’cause you just shifted roles at ServiceNow. It’s [00:00:51] Marc Monday: true. It’s true. Hello everyone. My name is Mark one day and I lead the America’s partner business, uh, partner sales business at ServiceNow today. And effective Monday I’ll lead the global partner team. Uh, Jen Odes, who’s been on the podcast. Yes. She’s been and I are switching roles. [00:01:07] Marc Monday: Jen’s gonna go run the patch and I’m gonna run the programs, uh, effective next week. [00:01:11] Vince Menzione: That’s fantastic. [00:01:12] Marc Monday: And I live in Seattle. [00:01:15] Vince Menzione: You live in Seattle. Yeah. And you made the trip out here. I really appreciate that. It’s a long journey. And Vancouver or Whistler? So both of you came from the, from the West coast. [00:01:23] Marc Monday: This may be the first snowboarding panel in history of ultimate partner. [00:01:29] Ashleigh Vogstad: I liked the question earlier. Somebody asked, did anyone leave the snow to be here? It was literally a blizzard. I did not know if I would make it driving at 4:00 AM to the airport in a total whiteout. [00:01:41] Marc Monday: You’re getting zero sympathy from me Live in Whistler. [00:01:44] Vince Menzione: So, so Service now has been, uh, I would say on the forefront of this AI thing. I mean, like you were early in and control towers, that I always get the, the nomenclature wrong, but I do feel like we are seeing some, a level of fatigue right now. And I keep seeing, I mean, it feels like every, we’re getting whiplashed at least the last few weeks. [00:02:03] Vince Menzione: Are you seeing that? And what are the two or three biggest blockers you’re seeing now in the market? [00:02:10] Marc Monday: I think there’s, there’s a lot of excitement obviously in the marketplace, but there is a bit of AI fatigue. There’s a POC fatigue, I think that’s going on. I think the reality is we have to make AI real, and the reality is it starts with good data, uh, a, a central, uh, a database, and really making sure that that’s extensible through a knowledge graph. [00:02:31] Marc Monday: And then that provides us the ability to identify that workflow. Then importantly, um, making it real and, and as fast as possible. And I think that’s really important for the customer. One of the value props of ServiceNow, of course, is that we’ll meet the customer where they are with whatever their estate has, [00:02:47] Vince Menzione: right? [00:02:47] Marc Monday: So any hyperscaler, any workload, any core dataset, um, any LLM and, um, our history is as a workflow engine, and so we can bring that level of knowledge to their business. And then importantly, we bring together the governance and orchestration from a control tower perspective. [00:03:08] Vince Menzione: Nice. Ash had perspective on this, on the kind of the whiplash we’ve been feeling. [00:03:13] Vince Menzione: From From the marketing agency side? [00:03:15] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. I mean, what comes to mind is the Miriam Webster dictionary said that LOP is the 2025 Word of the Year lop and Satchin Nadella actually came out with some press immediately following on that, saying that essentially that LOP is an exactly a useful construct to be having a conversation around the future of media. [00:03:37] Ashleigh Vogstad: But I think what this is pointing to is just we’re all navigating. Exactly how much AI is good ai, and maybe we will get into a little bit later, but what is the difference between selling to a human being and selling to a machine? Um, and really when we’re getting into this age agent landscape, it’s much more about that machine to machine conversation. [00:04:01] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s not necessarily. Human eyeballs on recommendation links that is paid for by advertising. It’s more of a trust economy actually, where machines wanna be able to make decisions on our behalf with high trust so that you continue to enable that machine to make those decisions for you. [00:04:22] Vince Menzione: We talked about the data. [00:04:23] Vince Menzione: I thought we’d double click a little bit on that. In fact, that point it would normally have been here, but because of the snow wasn’t able to, they focus in on this governance and this data element. I was thinking maybe we could talk a little bit about that, because it doesn’t seem like AI will work properly if we don’t have the data to stay governed and clean, right? [00:04:42] Marc Monday: I think this is the amazing opportunity for the partners out there. They do this already. This is one of those assessments that’s so quick and not easy, but clear to deliver a value prop as a partner. Let’s get you ready for ai. Let’s make sure that we’re ensuring that your data’s in a extensible in a way across, uh, some sort of knowledge graph that can be accessed across a number of different, um, use cases. [00:05:09] Marc Monday: And oftentimes that’s multiple data sets. And so how do you get those columns and rows organized in a way that’s extensible for an agent, that we’re basically asking to do something that is an unique opportunity for partners right now. And I, I think that we maybe missed that step. So I see what I see happening right now is we’ve gotta come back to that as a starting point for the partners. [00:05:31] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about agent ai or you also have orchestration AI as well. I wanna talk about their, your new service platform specifically, but maybe if you could double click with this on that. [00:05:42] Marc Monday: Well, I think that, you know, everyone is kind of trying to figure out how do we get there and who’s gonna orchestrate and govern what AI agent is calling on, what data set at what time, and what sequence. [00:05:54] Marc Monday: You may have a mission critical application that needs to have immediate access, and you may have other agents that have casual access. How do you control that in a meaningful way is gonna be become increasingly important. So we have the idea of this product that we call control tower. The control tower gives you the ability to manage that orchestration as well as the governance. [00:06:14] Vince Menzione: Any perspective on this? [00:06:17] Ashleigh Vogstad: I think I’ll share the perspective. As an entrepreneur, I know many people here represent. Companies that are our clients and are, are massive in scale and, and hyperscalers. But I think there are some people in the room who are running their own organizations. I think when I came out, Vince asked, you know, Ash growth mindset, how are you actually living this? [00:06:36] Ashleigh Vogstad: And we’re going through a journey in my business right now around what are all of the data sources that we have and how can we get that into an enterprise resource planning type system so that we can then overlay more intelligence. And that’s kind of where we’re at in the, it’s funny ’cause when you look at those maturity curves, they try and fit you in a box. [00:06:57] Ashleigh Vogstad: Nobody here likes being in a box. Um, and we’re in a corner. Yeah. In some ways it’s like we’re in that agentic box. I built an agent last week, funny enough for Microsoft actually, um, an executive comms agent, but in one hand we’re on that end and on the other, our data’s a mess and we really can’t apply a lot of intelligence to the majority of the data sources within our organization. [00:07:20] Ashleigh Vogstad: So we’re getting that all together right now. [00:07:22] Vince Menzione: When you came out, we talked a little bit, you were, you were mentioning having an advertising agency, marketing agency. The changes that are going on right now. Right? The attention economy and the trust economy. And I thought maybe you could double click with us on that. [00:07:35] Vince Menzione: ’cause that’s, uh, very interesting to see this shift. [00:07:39] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s a huge shift. So, uh, 1964 Canadian philosopher, Marshall McCluen, he comes out and he says The medium is the message. [00:07:49] Audience Question: Yeah. [00:07:49] Ashleigh Vogstad: And so you wanna think about how is agenta a different medium and what are the biases that this medium inherently has? So in my media world, you know, you get these storytelling tools rolling out at Speed Chat, GBT, soa, and in the beginning they’re really at that low end of the curve. [00:08:08] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, they can produce a shitty first draft, uh, but the content that they’re creating is really low emotional resonance. If you take kind of a neuroscientist perspective on this, and I’m definitely not a neuroscientist, but the part of your brain that’s responsible for that pattern recognition, your cortical sal circuit, that’s what’s kicking in. [00:08:29] Ashleigh Vogstad: And when you’re looking at, say, an advertisement, you’re starting to think, you know, is what I’m looking at actually commensurate with what I expect to see? And when it’s not, you can trigger that what psychologists call your uncanny valley. Now some will argue that on County Valley is really diminishing these days because AI generated media is getting better and better. [00:08:52] Ashleigh Vogstad: And I do think that it’s something you want to lean in, but you also wanna think intelligently around how you’re using this new medium and exactly what its, what its biases are. [00:09:03] Vince Menzione: Is that the gut syndrome? Like when you feel something in your gut? Is that what you described? [00:09:07] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the classic example is Coca-Cola. [00:09:10] Ashleigh Vogstad: So 2024 Coca-Cola rolled out their very nostalgic for many of us holiday campaign, and they decided to use tools like Luma Dream Machine to make this whole Santa Claus North Pole, but AI generated universe. And it had that classic stuff around, you know, six fingered people and it gave you this. Kind of creepy post-apocalyptic vibe and the campaign completely tanked in market. [00:09:37] Ashleigh Vogstad: Or more recently, last year, mango rolled out a new fashion line Mango’s a huge global fashion retailer. They rolled out a new fashion line, and in their advertisements they had AI generated models and AI generated clothing. Like to sell a real line. So, you know, you, you have to really be thinking about, again, when we come to an attention economy based on human beings or a machine economy based on trust, many of these companies are still selling to us human beings. [00:10:09] Ashleigh Vogstad: And I, I think they can forget that at times. [00:10:12] Vince Menzione: So what’s your guidance to customers today and to this audience and viewers watching us today from a go-to market motion? In this world of ai, like what? What are you telling? What? How are you counseling these organizations? [00:10:25] Ashleigh Vogstad: You need to have an authentic voice. [00:10:27] Ashleigh Vogstad: We, we’ve heard this a million times, so I’ll try and put a bit of a, a different spin on it at platforms direct to fan platforms, things like Substack. Substack grew 48% last month. I mean, we are seeing this skyrocket, and that’s a new channel where you can have an authentic voice. Many people in this room, myself included, we live on LinkedIn as the business to business platform. [00:10:50] Ashleigh Vogstad: Consider expanding out into, into a new channel, um, would be one of my recommendations. Interesting. [00:10:57] Vince Menzione: Any, anything else from, uh, what you developed or what you use and ai and what do you, what, what tools do you recommend they use and what. [00:11:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: There. [00:11:06] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:11:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: What are we seeing with our, so I can give this example of this executive comms agent that we built. [00:11:12] Ashleigh Vogstad: Or even part, yeah, we’re building agents all the time, so what we try to do is think about what is our customer seeking to solve. We heard a lot today about outcomes, and then we challenge an AI first lens, which is how can we build something with AI to make this easier, better, faster, more creative? We’ll even do things, we’re a marketing agency, so we’ll even do things like beat the bot, pitch competitions. [00:11:37] Ashleigh Vogstad: So this is where you’re inviting your agent into the room and you’re asking it to put the pitch together, say for ServiceNow and Microsoft, and what can it come up with? And then we put it in a room of human beings and see who can out pitch. Bot, um, and come up with a more novel, creative idea. But the reality is, if you’re not using AI in a very meaningful way in your sales and marketing functions of your businesses, I mean, you’re just way behind. [00:12:07] Ashleigh Vogstad: And I see it a bit more advanced in all honesty and sales because I think some of your large. Organizations push the AI down to the sellers. Mm-hmm. Um, so they’re somewhat forced to use it, but in marketing, I’m still seeing a real lack, which is funny since generative AI came out in 2022 and everybody thought the marketing function was the one to really be disrupted and displaced. [00:12:30] Ashleigh Vogstad: I do think your marketing teams need to be leaning in more. [00:12:35] Vince Menzione: We were talking about trust earlier. I wanna weave this into the conversation. Right. How do, how do you. How do you think through trust and applying trust in the area I world, I’ll ask you both this question under service. Now think about it. How do you think about it or transcend? [00:12:54] Marc Monday: Maybe I’ll take a step back. I, I think just to kind of go back to the previous question, I think we’re in this age of massive complexity. Incredible complexity. Nina said it earlier, the customers kind of want us to tell them what to do. What are the steps? We’re at this dichotomy of this level of complexity that’s almost unimaginable and we have to make it simple. [00:13:18] Marc Monday: I think that’s the first one. And then that, that is put up against this notion of we have to go incredibly fast ’cause the market’s moving faster than we can even understand it. [00:13:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:13:29] Marc Monday: And then we have to add on this veneer, and this is where the partner community becomes so important of how do we scale? [00:13:35] Marc Monday: So how do you take simplicity, speed, and scale and bring it to market? It starts with the data, of course it starts with the workflow, but I might just take a giant step back and say one of the things that another partner opportunity you might run to really consider is automating a bad process, even with AI is still a bad process. [00:13:58] Marc Monday: So again, a partner opportunity is, let’s zoom back out and say if your approval. Takes 13 steps in 27 days, building an AI process around that. Without rethinking it might not be the right solution. So I think part of it is also like rather than just dictating all of the steps, part of it, to the point of telling the customer the steps is getting them to participate in that conversation. [00:14:29] Marc Monday: Why do you have 27 approval layers? Well. It’s the most dangerous thing in the language. It’s because we’ve always done it that way. Well, what if we did it differently? Yeah. And so I think that’s an area where the trust is a two-way street and you can’t just the part, the customer shouldn’t just outsource all of their decision making to you. [00:14:50] Marc Monday: At the same time, you have to bring them into that discussion of what are you trying to accomplish and what is your, um, risk appetite relative to that. [00:15:02] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, that, that’s great, mark. I mean, trust is a really important conversation. I think about the Amazon versus Perplexity lawsuit right now that some are headlining the end of commerce. [00:15:14] Ashleigh Vogstad: Um, and so really this precedent setting case, what this is about is perplexity. Essentially is disintermediating the Amazon platform. So you know it’s making purchase decisions on your behalf, so, so this idea of trust in the agent world is something I think about a lot. And how do you optimize trust for this agentic world? [00:15:36] Ashleigh Vogstad: The professor I was mentioning, Eric Zow, who has this attention economy and the trust economy for agents where my research is leaning in is really around what is the hyperscaler layer on top of that. My working theory is that hyperscaler partnerships are just gonna become more important because the machines need to verify via trusted third party data sources what it is that you’re up to. [00:16:02] Ashleigh Vogstad: So how many deals have you done? Uh, what is your win rate percentage? This kind of information is incredibly valuable to the agent world, and so I think we’re gonna see an. Increasing lean in to these third party validation co-selling systems like partner center. [00:16:22] Marc Monday: I mean, just to add onto yeah. This idea, I mean, we do talk a lot about trust, but attention is probably underserved if I think about the role of a partner manager or an alliance director, it’s all about the trade-offs of what am I gonna spend my time on today? [00:16:37] Marc Monday: And you’re being pulled in a million directions, and I dunno about you, but it’s probably 900 to 10,000 unread emails and maybe you’ll respond to your immediate messages and if something happens, you’ll respond in in text. Part of it is also delineating between the busyness and the impact, and I think a lot of that’s also part of this discussion of how do we get focused on the outputs that matter. [00:17:02] Marc Monday: Really helping the customer get there through that discussion, which again goes back to it has to be a dialogue with the customer rather than just, this is the solution. Here’s our SOW. We’ll see you in six months. [00:17:14] Vince Menzione: Agree. We have a couple extra minutes. I was thinking of maybe opening it up for you. Any questions? [00:17:19] Vince Menzione: We have a mic in the back and I’m sure people have questions about this topic is, is fascinating to me and I wanna make sure that we’ve covered any of the questions we have. We have one right in the front from Shannon. [00:17:30] Marc Monday: Send the hard [00:17:31] Vince Menzione: questions over there. Not Yes. I’ll take the Easy books. Yeah. [00:17:36] Audience Question: You referenced marketing lag. [00:17:38] Audience Question: I think all of us would love to see marketing leading. [00:17:41] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yes. [00:17:42] Audience Question: Um, so how are you infusing within your marketing team at different levels around content creation? Um, there’s so much, uh, ego right on being a graphic designer or an editor, a copy editor that they. The human inflation in that conversation is a, is a hard thing to get them over. [00:18:02] Audience Question: And now AI can help this. How are you? [00:18:04] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, let’s have a conversation after. But you just brought up a funny No, I’m gonna answer as well, but you brought up, brought up a funny, uh, conversation we had internally, just in the last 24 hours we’re interviewing for a new creative director and one of our candidates said, yes, but I don’t do Figma. [00:18:20] Ashleigh Vogstad: I’m not a UX person. I just laughed and I said, you know, the day is coming where It’s a designer, it’s a UX person, it’s a project manager, a program manager, a copywriter. You know, AI is condensing a lot of roles in that way. So I think being multidisciplinary in your skillset is, um. Is quite valuable, but I’ll also take this into a hyperscaler direction and say, no. [00:18:46] Ashleigh Vogstad: Here audiences, 75% of it buyers are going to be Gen Z by 2030. They have 12 trillion in spending power. I was in Silicon Valley yesterday, uh, helping a customer with a wind story. They did a $12 million transaction through Marketplace. Now that’s very impressive, but it would’ve been more impressive two years ago. [00:19:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: There are more and more, 10 million plus. Deals happening through marketplace. And so if you look at that Gen Z and start to understand them and their buying behavior, like another example is, I think it’s 80%, no, no half, sorry, half of Gen Z last month made a purchase via Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. They are used to making these online transactions and average purchase price is going up. [00:19:35] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, $500,000 plus is starting to be the average in some of these enterprise selling platforms. So as a marketing team, how are we kind of going in and leading the marketplace? Conversation I think is really critical and there’s technical elements to that. [00:19:52] Marc Monday: Maybe the caveman view of that would be, um, the other side, which is I think someone earlier said, we have to know where our customer is at. [00:20:00] Marc Monday: And a lot of our, we are very lucky. We live in this very insular tech bubble and we’re thinking about, you know, where we are 10 years from now and the customer’s gonna are gonna get there eventually, and it’s gonna happen faster. But I would say in marketing, I mean the two easiest use cases right now are around localization. [00:20:16] Marc Monday: Language localization and then specific market localization, like we don’t have to solve world hunger right now. There are some steps and those steps are some of the easy things. Localization probably is a big component of your marketing budget. That’s something that you can get really good, really fast language localization, addition market localization. [00:20:35] Marc Monday: This market is a healthcare market. This market is an SMB market. Those are two areas where that through partner marketing motion can to get accelerated very quickly and has a tremendous ROI. [00:20:47] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Great one. Nina, you had a question [00:20:50] Audience Question: three Mark. You, you just, you just hit on part of it is that value proposition message is, it’s really easy in AI to, to fine tune that. [00:20:59] Audience Question: The other thing that I’ll be very transparent about, um, at least in my organization and America’s partner, we only work with um, third party. Marketing vendors now that are AI first period. [00:21:12] Audience Question: Nice. We [00:21:12] Audience Question: completely cleaned out who the vendors are that we will approve to work with. Wow. Um, so because we can also see the cost reduction, but it is a mindset change. [00:21:22] Audience Question: They have to, they, if, if they’re gonna be positioning this, it has to be inherent. It has to be part of their culture of, at. [00:21:29] Marc Monday: Ashley made a really wonderful point. I mean, this bad first draft is so key and so, you know, in the past we would’ve spent. A couple days or maybe even a week on a really bad first draft. [00:21:40] Marc Monday: And the bad first draft is just to generate feedback. You can generate a bad, a good, bad first draft in a couple of minutes with the right prompts. [00:21:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah, good. Point. Point questions to the back, Steven. [00:21:55] Audience Question: Mark, as you guys are building out agents, the orchestration to manage them, is that taking you into workflows outside of ServiceNow? [00:22:05] Audience Question: Yes. [00:22:07] Vince Menzione: Repeat the question, sorry. Yeah. Just in case people aren’t getting [00:22:09] Marc Monday: Yes. The question is, um, for ServiceNow specifically, um, is that taking you out of your traditional business? And I think he, he means it’s probably business in it, and the answer is yes. So our value promise is that we can go north, south, east, west, across the estate. [00:22:24] Marc Monday: Regardless of the workflow. So there are scenarios where we are expanding. Of course, we have a commitment to driving the CRM business, moving beyond just customer service management, but all the way through the process to CPQ and we’ll productize many of those things. But the reality is, if the workflow touches, let’s say. [00:22:42] Marc Monday: Uh, a, a big database, you know, from one of your known providers, uh, an HCM system, your our traditional IT system. This is maybe around service delivery of a particular set of kit to a new employee for onboarding or offboarding across a number of those systems of record. Yes, we’ll continue to do that, and honestly, it’s the value promise for us that because we are capable of working with. [00:23:06] Marc Monday: Every hyperscaler, every application, every data set, we can go up and down and across the state. [00:23:12] Audience Question: Hi everyone. I’m Jen Pauls. Hey, Jen. I have a um, I have a question for you. So when you’re incorporating AI, and also you mentioned trust, how do you make sure that the offerings that you’re coating on are feasible specifically for that whole individual partner and client? [00:23:34] Audience Question: And you’re not repeating. Something. Does that make sense to you? Yeah. Like how do you make sure that there is an individualized component that is original in thought, even though you’re feeding this pipeline, all these combined thoughts? [00:23:51] Marc Monday: I, I don’t wanna push back on the premise, but I do think in some instances, partners, implementers will have competing solutions that do effectively the same thing. [00:23:59] Marc Monday: Ideally they’re differentiated, but I do think publishing a, a standard. Particularly from a security and a reliability perspective, what that traditionally we would’ve called that API standard, and then a level of validation, either via human validation or systemic AI validation is really key. Um, the solution that gets marketed, let’s say, in our marketplace should work and it should be secure and it should be reliable. [00:24:25] Marc Monday: So we processes to manage that, if that’s the question. [00:24:29] Audience Question: Right? Well, it would, you know, yes. Yes. But. Um, when you’re trying to create a dispute or an offering, right, that’s specific to that particular partner, this is where I’m going. How do you make sure that the thoughts that are coming in are specifically, I guess, individualized for that one partner and what they’re doing and how they’re going to make a new, um, new, uh, track or a new journey in what you’re selling? [00:24:57] Ashleigh Vogstad: I mean, I would answer that I think with differentiation is still really important. And if anything, if we had an 80 20 rule for 80% of the lift is coming from ai, we’re all still here and employed because there is a rule for the, the human, at least currently in that 20%. And I would say. Running teams who are often building new offers and products, both on the ISV and SI side of things. [00:25:25] Ashleigh Vogstad: Getting that unique differentiation is critically important. Like that’s where a lot of value is created. Or you could look at, I mean Nabil probably has stories about this all day in the MSP world is it’s really challenging for MSPs to differentiate on top of their core offering, but that is where value creation happens. [00:25:43] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. Nina more, I’ll [00:25:44] Audience Question: just piggyback on that. My recommendation to a lot of, of our partners today is build out agents at that 80% watermark. Right? And that’s a little bit what you were talking about, the 80, 20, 80% of that functionality. Quite honestly, if you’re looking at an call center or something, is something that can be ported. [00:26:05] Audience Question: The, the magic is working with the partner on what X 20 is that differentiates their business, their experience, how, uh, the applicability to. So I, I will, I, to your point about ology, the premise, I mean it, to me, I think repeatability is, is awesome. It’s a superpower. It’s gonna get us there faster. It’s in that 20%. [00:26:31] Audience Question: Yeah. [00:26:34] Vince Menzione: Thank, perfect, thank you. [00:26:36] Marc Monday: Maybe I’ll close with with one really simple use case just for all of us that are in the partner profession and we work in alliances or partner management. The easiest and best, most effective use case for us as power users today is a shared business plan. Here are the goals and objectives of us as a vendor or a platform provider. [00:26:57] Marc Monday: Here are the goals and objectives of us as the implementer or a resell partner. Um, and in the past I used to describe this as a really complicated bow tie. On one side, you’d have our goals, and on the other side you’d have the, the, the implementer’s goals. And you’d spend all this time weaving together a knot and try to tie it together. [00:27:16] Marc Monday: That activity can happen in about five seconds with the right prompt. And you can very quickly say, oh, you guys think about a CV. We think about a RR Oh, your fiscal year is, is offset. Your fiscal year isn’t, oh, you call this product something different. Um, we care about platform revenue. We care about services revenue. [00:27:35] Marc Monday: You can reconcile that into a pretty darn good shared scorecard and business plan in a matter of seconds. Yeah, and that is a huge time saver. I [00:27:45] Vince Menzione: love that. [00:27:47] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s just an ama uh, it just thumbs up for me because that joint business planning just doesn’t happen enough. I, I’m in some of the biggest alliances on, on the planet really, and it’s shocking to me how little joint business planning is done. [00:28:00] Ashleigh Vogstad: And for the marketing question, Shannon, like how can marketers lean in? I mean, market development funds are made available based on things like joint business plugs. [00:28:09] Vince Menzione: That’s right. Yeah, really great point. Great voice. Thank you so much. So good to have you finally have you here. Thank you, mark and Ash. [00:28:17] Vince Menzione: Thank you so much [00:28:18] Audience Question: Owens. [00:28:19] Vince Menzione: Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.

Mastering Ecosystem Growth and AI Transformation Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this episode, Vince Menzione sits down with Rebecca Jones, Chief Growth Officer of Bridge Partners, to deconstruct the “Power of Three” co-selling model and the shift from AI experimentation to scalable business outcomes. They explore the critical importance of customer-centricity, the role of agentic workflows in solving complex B2B problems, and why the most successful leaders prioritize progress over perfection to show momentum within weeks rather than years. From her background in the financial sector to her experience scaling with industry titans like Microsoft, Rebecca provides a masterclass on navigating the current “tectonic shifts” in technology through strategic alignment and executive commitment. Key Takeaways Bridge Partners focuses on connecting strategy to execution, boasting a 90% referral rate driven by deep expertise in product marketing and partner ecosystems. The market is shifting from mere AI “dabbling” to purposeful applications in MVP and scale, specifically through agentic AI that tackles real business problems. Success in today’s landscape requires knowing your underlying value and maintaining an unwavering focus on customer-centricity. The “Power of Three” (Hyperscaler, GSI, and ISV) remains the ultimate design for go-to-market scaling, provided there is a clear joint value proposition. To show immediate momentum, new executives should focus on “quick wins” achievable within six to eight weeks rather than long-term three-year plans. Effective co-selling requires removing blockers like compensation misalignment and securing top-down executive sponsorship across all leadership silos. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. https://youtu.be/nClWjCm6S6A At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags Rebecca Jones, Bridge Partners, Chief Growth Officer, co-selling, Power of Three, Hyperscaler, GSI, ISV, SAP, Microsoft, agentic AI, AI experimentation, pipeline velocity, pre-sales workshops, account-based marketing, ABM on steroids, GTM strategy, executive sponsorship, partnership ecosystems, B2B growth, tech industry trends 2026, Ultimate Partner, Vince Menzione, orchestration, value proposition. Transcript Rebecca Jones Audio Episode [00:00:00] Rebecca Jones: Because most of the agents I’ve seen drop into um, a lot of the areas where you and I can download are features. [00:00:07] Vince Menzione: Yes, [00:00:08] Rebecca Jones: they’re really feature agents. I love where we are ’cause we’re starting to tackle real business problems. [00:00:17] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Today I’m joined by Rebecca Jones, the Chief Growth Officer of Bridge Partners for this compelling discussion. Rebecca, welcome to the podcast. [00:00:33] Rebecca Jones: Thank you, Vince. [00:00:34] Vince Menzione: I am so thrilled to have you in Boca in the studio. [00:00:37] Vince Menzione: We’ve been working together now for a couple of years. We [00:00:39] Rebecca Jones: have, [00:00:40] Vince Menzione: and yesterday we were at the Ultimate Partner live executive winter retreat here in Boca. Uh, we’re recording in late February, early March timeframe. And, uh, just it was so thrilling to have everyone in the room yesterday. [00:00:55] Rebecca Jones: Was it? I mean, the energy. [00:00:56] Rebecca Jones: It was amazing. [00:00:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:00:58] Rebecca Jones: it was amazing. And thank you so much for having me. I mean, Florida’s gorgeous this time of year. It’s nice to get outta Seattle. [00:01:04] Vince Menzione: Well, it’s, it’s always, I, I, we, we love Seattle. Yes, we love, we do love to be in Seattle and especially in the spring, which we’ll be there together. We’ll talk about that in a little bit, but, um. [00:01:14] Vince Menzione: This is our first time actually having an interview. I mean, we’ve had you on stage. Yes. We’ve had Bridge as a part. Bridge Partners has been a partner. It’s ultimate partner. How’s that? And, uh, you’ve led some workshops. You help organizations to be successful and I thought just like to start out like, tell us more about you. [00:01:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah, bridge Partner and your role at Bridge Partners. And, uh, just to frame, to frame the conversation today. [00:01:40] Rebecca Jones: Okay. Of course. So let me tell you a little bit about my background. Um, I’ve been in the technology industry for a few decades now, and I started within the product and go to market, side of the house. [00:01:54] Nice. [00:01:54] Rebecca Jones: And I’ve navigated across a number of functional areas. From product to partner and sales. [00:02:02] Vince Menzione: So product development, [00:02:04] Rebecca Jones: engineering, [00:02:04] Vince Menzione: product marketing. Product marketing. [00:02:05] Rebecca Jones: Product marketing. [00:02:06] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:02:07] Rebecca Jones: Yes. And so when you look back on the areas of where I focus my time, it’s really how do you help customers grow and how do you help companies grow? [00:02:17] Rebecca Jones: Um, and a lot of my background is in B2B. [00:02:20] Vince Menzione: Very cool. [00:02:21] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. [00:02:21] Vince Menzione: And where’d you get your start? [00:02:23] Rebecca Jones: I started actually in the financial sector. [00:02:26] Vince Menzione: Very cool. [00:02:27] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, [00:02:27] Vince Menzione: very cool. That’s, well, that’s a good grounding and [00:02:30] Rebecca Jones: it’s an excellent grounding. And when you look back, and when I look back at what that provided as a foundation, it’s really the economics of a business and how do you help a business and what are the trend lines behind that by industry and and whatnot. [00:02:45] Rebecca Jones: And so I moved from that over to. More agency view, and so the real market facing view and then back inside to really look at how companies develop their products and bring ’em to market. [00:02:56] Vince Menzione: That’s an exciting, well, I think it’s exciting. I hope our listeners and viewers think it’s exciting and I know Bridge Partners because when I was at Microsoft, we worked with Bridge Partners. [00:03:06] Vince Menzione: But for the listeners and viewers that are with us today, maybe a little bit of background about the company and its, and its structure and go to market. [00:03:13] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, of course. So Bridge Partners is almost 20 years old. [00:03:18] Vince Menzione: Wow. [00:03:19] Rebecca Jones: Wow. [00:03:19] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:03:19] Rebecca Jones: Can you believe it? [00:03:20] Vince Menzione: We were newbies when I was working with you. [00:03:22] Rebecca Jones: We, we were newbies and uh, the company was really founded on the principle of how do you connect strategy to execution. [00:03:32] Rebecca Jones: And within that, our first customer was Microsoft. [00:03:36] Vince Menzione: Interesting. [00:03:37] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, and that was an incredible spot to be and an incredible time to be in a company that started to evolve and grow with one of the titans in the industry. And obviously a incredible market leader in the tech industry. [00:03:56] Vince Menzione: Well, and that time 20 years ago, ’cause I was, I was along for that journey. [00:03:59] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. [00:04:00] Vince Menzione: Uh, it was a time of tumultuous change at Microsoft. [00:04:03] Rebecca Jones: Yes. [00:04:04] Vince Menzione: Uh, in fact, we were talking about the, uh, entrepreneur’s dilemma earlier, uh, today, and Microsoft was going through that period where, you know, we, everyone loves Steve Bomber, but there was a time within the organization that it was stuck. [00:04:18] Rebecca Jones: Mm-hmm. [00:04:19] Vince Menzione: And it had to transform as an organization. [00:04:22] Rebecca Jones: A hundred percent. And so when you think about companies like Microsoft, it’s not only what they do, but how they bring that to market. Yep. And uh, so when you think about where Bridge Partners started and having the privilege to be in Microsoft of all places to, um, cut your teeth on you look at where we started and where we’ve grown from there. [00:04:44] Rebecca Jones: Uh, within the tech industry, we’ve worked across, um, multiple hyperscalers. We’ve worked across, uh. Really the top tier tech and telco, those top 100. Yep. And all the household names. And then throughout that, across the partner ecosystem, because you and I both know these companies grow and scale their businesses through the partner ecosystem, and so we’ve been privileged to work across. [00:05:08] Rebecca Jones: Multiple depth and breadth partners in that play. [00:05:12] Vince Menzione: And as an agency, are you more known for project management go to market? Uh, what, what are the areas and focus where the outcomes that you achieve? [00:05:21] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, so we’re known for. Being on the growth side of the house. And how I define that is you find us in marketing, but that center of gravity is in product marketing. [00:05:32] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:05:32] Rebecca Jones: And then how you scale that through partner ecosystems and then supporting that field or that sales organization. So when you think about those three pillars within the organization, that’s where you’ll find us. [00:05:43] Vince Menzione: And why would I choose Bridge Partners? [00:05:46] Rebecca Jones: Oh, well, um, based on experience. Um, and then when you think about Bridge Partners, it’s not, um, just what we do, but when you take a look at our engagements and background, we’re over 90% referral. [00:06:01] Vince Menzione: Wow. [00:06:02] Rebecca Jones: And so people take us with them and um, what I look at is have we actually moved the needle or driven the customer outcomes? And when you think about the customers that we’ve worked with and the companies in this industry. It’s quite a roster and I don’t take that lightly because if you’re going to help support these companies and help them grow, it’s a testament to how we were able to accomplish that. [00:06:27] Rebecca Jones: Because all these companies have complex enterprise organizations. Their go to market is nuanced and how they want to, and then, um, get and grow. And so these are just a couple of the different ways that we’ve been able to be successful. [00:06:42] Vince Menzione: Fantastic. You know, you’ve done workshops at our events and talked to our community about how to help them achieve their greatest results. [00:06:50] Vince Menzione: What would you say to them? Now we’re living in this time? I, I I, I said this earlier, I don’t want to use the term tectonic shifts, but I’m running out of words to describe how tumultuous this time feels right now to me. [00:07:03] Rebecca Jones: It’s interesting you say that. I was thinking about that. ’cause both you and I have been in the industry for a bit. [00:07:08] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. And, um, there’s some pattern recognition happening right now for me and how I look at the go to market and these, these points in time and the evolution and. This point in time, it is a tectonic shift. But a lot of companies have other, have had to go through these challenges before. If you think about, um, the migration to the cloud and [00:07:33] Vince Menzione: yes, [00:07:33] Rebecca Jones: all of the unlocks that it has, and at the end of the day it’s, it’s shifting and thinking about new business models and it’s shifting and thinking about go to market, but there is. [00:07:43] Rebecca Jones: There are things that ring true no matter where you are. And one of the things I’ve always taken a look at is, do you know your underlying value and relevance in market? And are you being customer centric? That never goes outta style, right? Do [00:07:58] Vince Menzione: you know your value and are you customer centric? That makes a lot of sense, right? [00:08:02] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And do they, what do you do? And, and do they, how do what, how do they answer to that question? [00:08:07] Rebecca Jones: Well, that’s a, that’s a thinking question. Yes. Right? Yes. It takes a minute to think about that. Um, where is your moment of relevance with a customer? [00:08:16] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:08:17] Rebecca Jones: Where is your moment of relevance with a customer? [00:08:19] Rebecca Jones: And when you think about your reason to exist as a business, you have a really defined ICP, an ideal customer profile, and where’s your moment of relevance and. Yes. There’s a lot happening right now, and I think also because of where we sit in the industry and being in the midst of all of these giants with incredible technology to bring to market. [00:08:44] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. We’re, we’re in the front end of this wave or the, the, the tectonic shift that you’re talking about. It’s just, you know, it’s unsettling to a certain degree, but it’s really energetic and it’s. Dynamic and, and there’s so much opportunity out there. So [00:08:59] Vince Menzione: much so, you know, you had me thinking about the $600 billion that’ll be invested this year and just in cloud infrastructure and chips, right? [00:09:08] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So data centers and chips, and talk about that being like kind of creating this wave, this huge tsunami that’s coming for the beaches and, and everything seems to be. Every week there’s a new announcement, and recently it’s been philanthropic and clawed. And yes, uh, the markets are reacting. They’re, um. [00:09:30] Vince Menzione: They’re almost, uh, imploding in some ca in some cases because they’re trying to react the financial analysts, they’re trying to react to what’s happening right now. [00:09:38] Rebecca Jones: It, the investment is massive and it’s, it’s incredible and it’s massive. And over the last year, you saw a lot of experimentation. Yeah. And you saw a lot of dabbling, a lot of, you know, quite. [00:09:52] Rebecca Jones: Frankly, a little bit of concern about is this gonna pay off? [00:09:56] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:09:57] Rebecca Jones: And when you look at where we are in this chain cycle and this adoption cycle, we’re right at the front end, the early adopters. And so a lot of the work that we’re doing, and where I’m focused on is how do you move from experimentation? To truly having some movement over into MVP and scale. [00:10:18] Rebecca Jones: And so I’ll just harken back to Yeah, [00:10:19] Vince Menzione: please. [00:10:20] Rebecca Jones: That product mindset of when you’re looking at opportunity within the business, there was a lot of, um, there was a lot of pockets of experimentation just for fun. Just for fun. And so when you look across the business, um, and what, what we observed was, um, businesses of all different sizes, experimenting and, and some were just, they’re fun, they’re dabbling, right? [00:10:45] Rebecca Jones: But it, it changed in the second half of last year, people became much more thoughtful, much more purposeful, um, thinking forward about how would this be applied to my business? Yeah, because the question now isn’t. Could we do this? It’s really, should we do this [00:11:03] Vince Menzione: right? And and there was a period of time, I don’t mean to interrupt you, but there was a period of time when we were talking about earlier in in last year, we were talking about halluc hallucinations still. [00:11:13] Vince Menzione: Yes. So there was a lack of confidence on the platform side. Yes. Microsoft had brought out. Uh, it’s copilot solutions early to market. And there was some, uh, pushback from the community saying, we’re not seeing the results of that. Yeah. From the financial community specifically. And then I think what you said is then the second half of the year things started to change. [00:11:35] Vince Menzione: There was greater confidence. The [00:11:36] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, [00:11:37] Vince Menzione: I’d say the models got better. [00:11:38] Rebecca Jones: The models got better. But when you think about innovation, that’s inherent risk, [00:11:43] Vince Menzione: right? [00:11:43] Rebecca Jones: Right. Yes. When, when you’re on an innovation curve, yes, that’s risk. And so you have to look at as any great CFO will tell you diversification innovation. [00:11:56] Rebecca Jones: When you start to look at that market landscape, you’re creating risks. Yes. So they’re investing a lot and they wanna know when the payoff is coming back into the business. Right? Or back into the market. [00:12:08] Vince Menzione: So Rebecca, where is the AI market right now? [00:12:13] Rebecca Jones: Oh, that is a tough and great question, Vince. [00:12:18] Vince Menzione: I mean, we’ve gone through it and I’ll, I’ll kind of frame this for, yes, for, for everyone, at least from my perspective of what’s happened, right? [00:12:24] Vince Menzione: So, uh, September, 2022. Chat, GBT. Yeah. So we get into chat bots or chat bot, chat bot, chat bot, chat bot the first year or so, beginning of last year, 2025. A agentic AI really starts to take hold. It’s, it becomes a new term. In fact, I don’t think we were even using the term agentic AI before the end of 24, beginning of 25. [00:12:47] Vince Menzione: And then agents have really proliferated, um, all of the marketplaces now have agents and people are developing their own agents and so on. And all the tools, like all, all the cloud tools have agent capabilities. And now, um. We’re in 2026 and we’re still in the first quarter. It feels like the agents are starting to rule the world and maybe taking over the world [00:13:10] Rebecca Jones: they might be. [00:13:11] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:13:11] Rebecca Jones: right. There is definitely a proliferation of agents and I’m anticipating a lot of consolidation of that. ’cause most of the agents I’ve seen drop into, um. A lot of the areas where you and I can download are features. [00:13:26] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:13:26] Rebecca Jones: They’re really feature agents and those will get consolidated ’cause the where we are and you ask where we are in the market. [00:13:33] Rebecca Jones: What I love. I love where we are ’cause we’re starting to tackle real business problems. And what I’m observing and what we’re working on is really helping connect back into the business to really start that transformational work. [00:13:48] Vince Menzione: So take us through that. I’d love that. I’d love, give us a scenario or [00:13:51] Rebecca Jones: give us a use case. [00:13:52] Rebecca Jones: Do this. Yeah. I think’s really great scenarios here that I can walk you through. And first and foremost it is, and I’m gonna go back and I talked about specialization in specialty areas. Yes. That’s really important. Um, we talked yesterday during the conference around, um, industry. What industry are you in? [00:14:11] Rebecca Jones: You know, I’m in tech and that’s, that’s, we know that industry, we know those business models really well. That’s extremely important. And then you move within that. And what functions do you know and functions in this, you know, order are the product marketing function, how does that work? [00:14:30] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:14:30] Rebecca Jones: How does that work in an enterprise organization or a sales function or a. [00:14:36] Rebecca Jones: Partner function. And within that, what are all the workflows? How do these teams operate together? And so that’s where that curiosity comes in of not just how you did the work. How is the work orchestrated? [00:14:49] Vince Menzione: Inter orchestration is a huge topic area. [00:14:51] Rebecca Jones: Orchestration is a huge topic. Let’s, let’s go [00:14:53] Vince Menzione: there. [00:14:54] Rebecca Jones: E Exactly. [00:14:55] Rebecca Jones: And that’s where that curiosity, you know, I was talking about pattern recognition comes in how is the work designed? And that becomes. The blueprint for how you start to think about agentic workflows. And if you don’t have a great workflow, you don’t wanna replicate that in an agent, but Exactly. You definitely need to understand that. [00:15:18] Rebecca Jones: And so why don’t I take something that, um, I think will resonate for anyone listening to this podcast, because everyone is probably looking for growth this year and wanting to accelerate [00:15:28] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:15:29] Rebecca Jones: Sales. Their pre-sales funnel. So if we just take that pre-sales motion and specifically now with where partners might play in that or where, um, technology companies might want to enable their partners better. [00:15:47] Rebecca Jones: When I start to break down a pre-sales function, you have areas within that. Whole workflow that your marketing department might be driving. They might be driving top of the funnel or or demand programs. And then as you move down the funnel, let’s call it mid funnel, that really has opportunities for partner and field sellers to come in and. [00:16:07] Rebecca Jones: You might be seen or observing that your, um, pipeline velocity is not where you want that, right? Mm-hmm. You might be, you know, as they say, stuck. Stuck. [00:16:18] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:16:19] Rebecca Jones: And so when you start to look at what agents could do within that, I’ll use a real use case, um, around pre-sales workshops. You and I are both familiar with that. [00:16:28] Vince Menzione: We, we are, we were just talking about this last night, in fact, at dinner, about pre pre-sales workshops and how this is still such a vital component, how organizations work together. [00:16:37] Rebecca Jones: Such a vital component, um, for multiple reasons, right? You get to engage directly with the customer. You get to spend time with that customer. [00:16:46] Rebecca Jones: You get to ensure you understand what are their most pressing use cases and really help them design and buy into a solution far before you get to a proposal. And quite frankly, if you do this right. You also have an adoption plan, and then think about it from other functional areas in the organization. [00:17:02] Rebecca Jones: You start to pattern match across those presale workshops. You can start to see the use cases that are most valuable in market and start to put that into your messaging. So you think about presale workshop, it’s just not the activity of having a workshop, but if you could build an agent. To really help design around partners, enabling partners to deliver better presale workshops. [00:17:27] Rebecca Jones: Interesting. And how are you ingesting information that goes into the workshop? How are you helping, um, develop materials and first drafts faster for proposals post? How are you. Data is informing this. What are you collecting and what are you providing, and then what are you delivering? If you take that one simple component in a pre-sales process, you can see where I’m going. [00:17:53] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. All of a sudden, an ecosystem starts to show up around how could you connect better back with product marketing? What are they doing? What could you inform them with, with the data that you’re bringing in? [00:18:03] Vince Menzione: Interesting. [00:18:03] Rebecca Jones: And then what are the. Deterministic pathways outside of that, that you could be informing downstream down to first, first stress faster on proposals. [00:18:13] Rebecca Jones: Are you helping those partners with an adoption plan? The service partners in there. And so that is the designer and the architect of understanding how that workflow comes to life. And then you can really start to think about the outcomes that you wanna drive. And that’s where I love to start the conversations. [00:18:31] Rebecca Jones: That shouldn’t be an afterthought. That should be where you start. [00:18:35] Vince Menzione: So how do you, how do you, how do you start with this? You gave me a great example, but how do you apply this in the business? Like what do you take when you meet with a client to talk about pre-sales workshops as an example? [00:18:47] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. [00:18:47] Vince Menzione: You take a proforma of what a pre-sales workshop would look like. [00:18:51] Vince Menzione: I’m, I’m, I. I might be wrong on this, but you have, like, you, you now have, uh, AI or AI that they go out and pull the data that you would normally ask maybe in some, some, uh, process, uh, information flow process that we grab and, and pull this into the, to the, to the form. The [00:19:10] Rebecca Jones: first question I always ask is, why. [00:19:12] Rebecca Jones: Why is this so important and valuable? I might have an assumption why, based on my experience, but I want the facts, right? I wanna know how they’re measuring it today, so we have a baseline and I wanna understand what their goals are. [00:19:28] Vince Menzione: Okay? [00:19:29] Rebecca Jones: Are they looking to increase revenue? X percentage. Uh, how many deals are they anticipating? [00:19:38] Rebecca Jones: How many presale workshops do they typically deliver through partner a year? Are they looking to scale that? Probably, yes. Are they looking to increase the value that they’re getting into contract post presale workshop? Probably yes. But I want that empirical data. And then I also wanna know where are they storing that? [00:19:57] Rebecca Jones: Where are they sourcing that? And so it, it really. The question and the question set really is understanding the business outcomes and the why. I, I ask a lot of why, and it really helps you frame in what would be the best outcome or the best solution, and then where do you start? Because there’s a lot of appetite for a. [00:20:21] Rebecca Jones: A transformational workflow from A to Z. And that’s a hard place to, [00:20:26] Vince Menzione: it’s hard show momentum. It’s hard. It’s hard, [00:20:27] Rebecca Jones: right? [00:20:27] Vince Menzione: It’s, it’s hard to document your current workflow flows. [00:20:30] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. [00:20:30] Vince Menzione: Let alone come back and do this ally. [00:20:33] Rebecca Jones: Yes. [00:20:34] Vince Menzione: And create the best outcomes. [00:20:36] Rebecca Jones: Yes. [00:20:36] Vince Menzione: So I go back to this and I go, well, what, what creates the best outcomes? [00:20:39] Vince Menzione: Where the customer signs at the dotted line, and then how do you work back from that to the pre-sales workshop? Is that how [00:20:46] Rebecca Jones: you do it? A hundred percent. It’s a hundred percent. And then where do you start? How do you show, um, progress, not perfection. And so in this world, there’s a lot of, um, pressure. To show progress, outcomes, momentum. [00:21:00] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. And these very significant investments that are being made. And so how do you get them to quick wins? And so you know this, for any new executive coming into role, what are your quick wins? Yes. Right? Yes. You need to transform an organization, you need to transform a function. How do you set them up for success? [00:21:19] Rebecca Jones: And that’s always in my mind, that’s always in the mind of. The bridge partners, leaders of how do you set this leader up for success? And it’s that point between strategy and execution. How do you help them show quick wins? And so I broke you down that process. Yep. Of how would you think about in that use case, how to bring that back and help them show quick wins? [00:21:42] Rebecca Jones: Not in six months or a year, but in six weeks to eight weeks. How do you, how do you get them on that journey and then help them build to that next slide. And [00:21:51] Vince Menzione: in fact, that’s how you, you, you’ve made your, your name or your fame in the industry is really coming in and helping some of these executives, especially when they’re newer in role. [00:22:00] Rebecca Jones: Yes. [00:22:00] Vince Menzione: And those of us who’ve been around the Microsoft ecosystem know this well. Like you get asked day one, what’s your plan? The, while the fire, while the fire hose is blowing in your face at a hundred, a hundred miles an hour? Uh, what’s your plan? [00:22:14] Rebecca Jones: What’s your plan? What’s your [00:22:14] Vince Menzione: plan? [00:22:15] Rebecca Jones: What is your plan? [00:22:16] Vince Menzione: Yeah, yeah. [00:22:16] Vince Menzione: And then you have to show some measurable results fairly quickly. [00:22:19] Rebecca Jones: You have to [00:22:20] Vince Menzione: because you’re asked to get up in front of everyone. Yeah. Very soon. [00:22:23] Rebecca Jones: And that’s a blueprint that we have. We have, it’s a quick win. And when you think about all of these organizations that we’ve worked with, um, speed to market is a value signal. [00:22:36] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:22:36] Rebecca Jones: Right? And that speed and quality. Where are you willing to take the risk? Where are you willing to fail fast? And what outcomes are non-negotiable and what are, and so when you look at that, there’s, there’s conversations that need to be had on. And being able to filter out the noise to get down to what’s really gonna move the needle, um, for our clients and for the executives that we work with. [00:23:06] Rebecca Jones: So they can show momentum and progress quickly. And then we talked a lot about it. We don’t do three year plans, right? We’re gonna help you show progress in months, [00:23:16] Vince Menzione: nice. [00:23:17] Rebecca Jones: And in quarters, right? It’s not, um, 10 years. [00:23:19] Vince Menzione: Can anybody even have a three year plan anymore? [00:23:22] Rebecca Jones: Who’s got one? [00:23:23] Vince Menzione: I’d love to spend some time on co-selling with you. [00:23:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Just because I know this was a topic that came up one of our workshops in the Yeah. We hosted, yes. Last year we hosted a session. With another partner. Bridge Partners. [00:23:34] Rebecca Jones: Yes. [00:23:35] Vince Menzione: And you talked about the power of three and I know you’ve published some information about the power of three. I thought maybe we’d talk about that. [00:23:41] Vince Menzione: ’cause I think that is fascinating and it seems very relevant even in yesterday’s conversation. Uh, there was a conversation about another partner, uh, that is looking to build an ecosystem that hasn’t really thought about building out an ecosystem before, as an example. And this, this, I think is some of the work that you do really applies against this. [00:24:01] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. This, I mean, it, it’s a hot topic, right? Yeah. Power of three, which fits under the umbrella of co-sell Yes. And co-selling. And everyone has a slightly different definition, so I’ll define where we play. Good in there. Um, and then I’ll talk to you about the power of three, um, because that’s one of. Um, I’ll call it the scenarios under co-selling. [00:24:23] Rebecca Jones: Yes. And it’s a very popular one. It [00:24:24] Vince Menzione: is pop Well, it is for v various reasons too because, and I’ll just set the context for this. We were used to co-selling being a technology organization and a and a hyperscaler, like a Microsoft. [00:24:37] Rebecca Jones: Yes. [00:24:37] Vince Menzione: Going to do something together and driving direct output or sales. Now we have finally seen where marketplaces, which has become the co-sell engine, have now enabled the channel. [00:24:49] Vince Menzione: Um, the reseller enabled, uh, offers now to now, uh, operate on behalf of, and so at least in that case, that’s three right there. Now, there might be more than just three. We talk about the seven seats of the table, but the power of three is palpable right now. [00:25:04] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. Let me tell you about that concept of the power of three. [00:25:07] Rebecca Jones: ’cause when you think about the classic one [00:25:10] Vince Menzione: yeah, [00:25:10] Rebecca Jones: it’s a hyperscaler. [00:25:11] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:25:12] Rebecca Jones: A GSI. And then an ISB. [00:25:15] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:25:15] Rebecca Jones: Right? [00:25:16] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:25:16] Rebecca Jones: I mean that’s the, that’s the power, the powerful power, the three three, [00:25:19] Vince Menzione: the three giants in the [00:25:20] Rebecca Jones: room. The three giants. Yeah. And that’s rarefied air. [00:25:24] Vince Menzione: It is [00:25:25] Rebecca Jones: very [00:25:26] Vince Menzione: verified air. It’s, [00:25:26] Rebecca Jones: yeah. Right. And, uh, we do, we have a published article on that, um, and running a power three with SAP, uh, and it is, um, it changes the dynamics. [00:25:41] Rebecca Jones: Of how companies are gonna scale and grow in this market, right? [00:25:46] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:25:46] Rebecca Jones: Because we know, um, that what got you to this point? Is likely not gonna get you to that next stage of growth. And all the conversations around the platform play is the partner ecosystem, right? And I look at the opportunity, not just with the power through, I’m gonna talk to you a little bit more about that story and what we’re doing there and how we’re looking at that. [00:26:12] Rebecca Jones: Um, but it is the ultimate. Design for your go to market. Yeah. When you think about how partners and the various types of partners can help you scale, but you need to know what you need. You absolutely need to know, [00:26:29] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:26:30] Rebecca Jones: What are you trying to achieve in your go to market and what’s missing? [00:26:34] Vince Menzione: What are the gaps? [00:26:34] Vince Menzione: Gaps? [00:26:35] Rebecca Jones: What are the gaps? Are the gaps before you apply? Yes. The power of three, or I’ll talk to you about a couple other use cases within that. So the power of three. Has long been on everybody’s, you know, can, can we get this done right? Can you pattern match the customer set? I’ll often refer to it as a BM on steroids, account-based marketing and on steroids. [00:26:59] Rebecca Jones: Can you pattern match, um, the, the hyperscaler, let’s just use Microsoft in this scenario, the, the. High potential customers of Microsoft Joint with SAP joint, with A GSI. And the more specialized and specific you get in there, it’s not just any, because think about the size of these, you know, companies. Yeah, right. [00:27:24] Rebecca Jones: Then you start to look at, well, let’s get a little bit more specific on these product sets, these industries, these use cases. And then you start to refine that where you can start to identify your greatest opportunity for growth. So that’s the first stage of that. And it is, you know, we, we think about where is that overlap and where is that opportunity, but how do you activate that? [00:27:51] Vince Menzione: And it’s complex because, uh, as you, as you mentioned those three. Organizations, each of them have different go to markets. [00:27:59] Rebecca Jones: They do, [00:27:59] Vince Menzione: they have different, a different mapping of their geographies and their ideal customer profiles. [00:28:05] Rebecca Jones: Mm-hmm. [00:28:06] Vince Menzione: Um, and they, yeah, and they apply different tactics and selling tactics and channel tactics and so on that you have to layer in or you have to take into account when you build this. [00:28:15] Vince Menzione: And SAP’s a very different go-to market motion than a Microsoft, than a, than a, an EY or any name the GSI percent. Yeah. [00:28:23] Rebecca Jones: And so that is why not only is it, um, complex from a. Sharing and figuring out what data you’re going to share. Yeah. But how do you activate it? How [00:28:35] Vince Menzione: do you activate it? [00:28:36] Rebecca Jones: And uh, and that is what all companies are striving to do. [00:28:41] Rebecca Jones: Who are you gonna go to market with? Yeah. What is your best play in the industry? And so I, you know, while this one. There’s very few companies that are gonna be able to activate directly with the hyperscaler, right? Yes. Uh, Microsoft AWS or Google. Um, but there are ways in which you can apply this strategy no matter the size of your organization. [00:29:05] Rebecca Jones: And so when you think about. The power of three. It could be any combination. You are the designer, you are the decider of who is in your power of three. And when you start to kind of unpack that a little bit, it could be Microsoft, SAPN one ISV, or it could be a combination of complementary I ISVs that unlock a play. [00:29:28] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. [00:29:29] Rebecca Jones: Like migration to the cloud. [00:29:31] Vince Menzione: Right. [00:29:31] Rebecca Jones: Like it, it could be [00:29:33] Vince Menzione: backup and recovery. I could rattle off the different types of solutions. Yeah. [00:29:37] Rebecca Jones: What is, where are you seeing the greatest opportunity to scale and what ISVs could come in to help you do that? So when you extract that from the power of three, the classic power of three of Costone, you brought that down to, you know, how do you think about that in the masses of marketplace? [00:29:56] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. Or partners of any size. I like to bring this back to. Where do you believe your greatest opportunity is? Do you have, um, opportunity or weakness in your portfolio, your product set? Could a partner come in and help augment that? Do you have a tech platform and you need a services arm to help extend that? [00:30:19] Rebecca Jones: I I mean the, it it, the world’s your oyster. Yeah. You get to kit this together any way you need and then. The power of bringing these companies together. And you and I both know, and that was much of the conversation yesterday, is, um, the greater goodness of companies coming together Yes. To compliment one another to solve a customer problem. [00:30:39] Vince Menzione: How do you take it from concept to execution? Because to me, that’s. Especially when you’re talking about not just one organization like a micro, you’re working with a Microsoft or an SAP, but you’re layering in three types of organizations and you’re going across different sales motions. How do you get them all? [00:30:58] Vince Menzione: How do you get them all aligned in working together the right way? [00:31:02] Rebecca Jones: Magic. Magic. [00:31:03] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:31:04] Rebecca Jones: I’m kidding. [00:31:04] Vince Menzione: Call bridge, call Rebecca [00:31:07] Rebecca Jones: Magic. [00:31:07] Vince Menzione: Nine nine nine five five five five. [00:31:09] Rebecca Jones: Let, let, let me, uh, let me talk about that because [00:31:13] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:31:13] Rebecca Jones: it’s one, there’s the good work, there’s the good thought work and the strategy of how to ensure you’re, you’re pointing and you’ve got the team lined up, right? [00:31:22] Rebecca Jones: Right. And the players lined up. But activation of that. Oh, [00:31:28] Vince Menzione: massive work. [00:31:29] Rebecca Jones: It’s massive work. Yeah. And it’s not a set it and forget it. [00:31:33] Vince Menzione: Right, [00:31:34] Rebecca Jones: right, [00:31:34] Vince Menzione: right. [00:31:35] Rebecca Jones: And when you think about the alignment, and you talked about we, we’ve got different fiscal year ends and we’ve got different sales and center plans. I will talk about a few things. [00:31:45] Rebecca Jones: One, executive sponsorship, top down. [00:31:48] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:31:48] Rebecca Jones: Right. Um, ensuring, you know, compensation. You gotta get rid of the blockers and the barriers. [00:31:55] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:31:56] Rebecca Jones: And you have to make it easy and you have to create that space because it’s really, and I’ll talk to you about some of the platforms and technology behind it, but it’s humans working together. [00:32:07] Rebecca Jones: There’s a lot of power in what we’re able to do now with, um, part tech platforms and with agentic solutions. And how do you automate this and how do you bring more power and visibility? Better than ever and, and more than ever. But at the end of the day, we’re activating teams. Across companies. Yep. To work together to bring this together. [00:32:34] Rebecca Jones: And there are playbooks, um, and any, there’s great playbooks out there, but you need to activate that. [00:32:41] Vince Menzione: You need to activate it. And you, you said you gotta get the executive commitment at the top? [00:32:45] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. [00:32:46] Vince Menzione: Not just at the CEO level, but across the leadership team. That’s right. In every silo. Uh, you’ve gotta get, uh, the organization, you have to get compensation taken care of because those, those can be blockers, those could be real blockers from getting the results you want to get. [00:33:00] Vince Menzione: And then you gotta get activation. [00:33:03] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. [00:33:03] Vince Menzione: Right? [00:33:04] Rebecca Jones: You gotta get activation and you have to be really clear on how you’re gonna activate what’s gonna move the needle. And you have to be ready to test, learn, optimize, and you need to put those into sprints. So I’ll give some examples around that. [00:33:20] Vince Menzione: Please do take us through the sprints. [00:33:21] Vince Menzione: ’cause this is, this is getting beyond the theory now. This is what I really wanted to capture with you. Take us through it. [00:33:28] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. [00:33:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:33:29] Rebecca Jones: So let’s just say we’ve got, we’ve got a power of three. [00:33:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:33:32] Rebecca Jones: You know, um, ready to roll and, and we’ve picked our industry and we have our use case. Um, between the three of us, the three players, you’re gonna start by allowing someone, and in this case it’s been Bridge Partners to really ensure we have a joint value prop, um, proposition for that end customer. [00:33:54] Rebecca Jones: Mm-hmm. And, you know, you gotta take a little ego out of the room. Typically on the power of three, you’ve got the leading companies coming in. But at the end of the day, if you’ve done this right, it’s, it’s customer first. It’s what’s gonna help solve this customer pain point in that language. And then when you think about activation, it’s who’s, who’s in role first? [00:34:20] Rebecca Jones: Right. And who’s taking point in these customer conversations. Right. Okay. And that is really, really, that’s important. Important. That is important. Who has the relationship? Yeah. Who is going to take lead and who’s gonna follow? And it gets all the way down to whose paper. Is this on? And that’s, that’s sometimes hard. [00:34:41] Rebecca Jones: You’ve got three players in the room, but it’s incredibly important to have those conversations and ensure that this is really end state for the customer. Yeah. So really going through roles and responsibilities and how are we gonna architect this for the customer’s success. Yeah. So that is a critical component of the playbook and then understanding. [00:35:02] Rebecca Jones: Where and what programs are we gonna drive, and then who’s taking what actions. And so I, I mentioned a BM on steroids a little before. Yes. There’s amazing things that you can be doing in market, [00:35:14] Vince Menzione: account-based marketing, [00:35:15] Rebecca Jones: m account-based based marketing, you dunno. Um, account-based marketing and there are some amazing things. [00:35:20] Rebecca Jones: Really truly connected sales and marketing, in this case. Connected sales, marketing and partner. Yeah. And how do you activate these partners together? [00:35:27] Vince Menzione: You used the term part tech, which. Not everyone understands partner technologies. Yes. Organizations like Partner Tap, work Span. Yeah. Tackle. [00:35:37] Rebecca Jones: Structured. Yeah. [00:35:38] Vince Menzione: Structured. If you, these are companies that help with co-selling methodologies, marketplace methodologies. [00:35:44] Rebecca Jones: Yes. [00:35:45] Vince Menzione: Or combining all of those, [00:35:46] Rebecca Jones: if you know, uh, J McBain, uh. Beautiful visual flat map of, um, it looks a little, the 28 moments. Yes. I was just, well, the 28 moments and he’s got the part tech landscape. [00:35:59] Vince Menzione: Oh, [00:35:59] Rebecca Jones: the islands. The islands. [00:36:00] Vince Menzione: Yes. The islands. [00:36:00] Rebecca Jones: Yes, we got it. But there are part tech solutions that support [00:36:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:36:03] Rebecca Jones: Partner programs, co-sell programs, partner marketing, you know. Yes. And really help to automate a lot of those processes. [00:36:11] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:36:12] Rebecca Jones: Um, and a lot of those programs. [00:36:13] Vince Menzione: So Rebecca is such a great conversation today. [00:36:16] Vince Menzione: I mean, we can go. Thank you so deep on this. [00:36:18] Rebecca Jones: I know. [00:36:18] Vince Menzione: Which means that we’re all gonna have to be back together in Redmond. You live in the Seattle area? I do. And you’ll be with us. Um, we’ll be hosting the Ultimate Partner, live in, uh, may, May 11th to the 13th. If you’re marking your calendar as listeners and friends, uh, and you’ll be there and. [00:36:36] Vince Menzione: Probably driving some more of this conversation in a workshop format, I hope. [00:36:41] Rebecca Jones: I hope so too. Yeah, it was really rewarding last year. I mean, there’s nothing more powerful to be in the room with partners because the partners are frontline to customers. [00:36:51] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:36:51] Rebecca Jones: And understanding what they’re seeing and hearing. [00:36:53] Rebecca Jones: And I always think voice of the customer is your ultimate signal. Yeah. So I can’t wait to be there. [00:36:58] Vince Menzione: Very cool. And I have a favorite question I ask all of my guests now. Uh, it is a favorite of mine. You are hosting a dinner party and you can choose where in the world you wanna host this dinner party, and you can invite only three guests, though from the present or the past to this amazing dinner party. [00:37:18] Vince Menzione: Whom would you invite Rebecca and why? And why? [00:37:22] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I’d, um, this is such a great question. I think on every single day I’d have a different collection of folks that I’d want at my home. Uh, I’ve had dinner at some amazing places for me. I would love to host this at my home. [00:37:38] Vince Menzione: Very cool, very [00:37:39] Rebecca Jones: cool. Uh, and the people that I would want there for this particular dinner party, I’m gonna pick, um, three iconic women. [00:37:51] Rebecca Jones: Coco Chanel, [00:37:52] Vince Menzione: Coco Chanel very cool [00:37:54] Rebecca Jones: designer. [00:37:55] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:37:56] Rebecca Jones: Um, really changed how women thought about an identity and wardrobe. Um, I would invite Georgia O’Keefe. Wow. She’s my favorite artist. [00:38:07] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:38:08] Rebecca Jones: Um, she is one of my favorite artists. Uh, I’m, uh, art and history background. And, uh, [00:38:16] Vince Menzione: that explains, [00:38:17] Rebecca Jones: that, explains that, um, a really interesting perspective. [00:38:22] Rebecca Jones: I love her view on landscapes and. She, [00:38:26] Vince Menzione: that’s why I know her as, you know, landscapes [00:38:28] Rebecca Jones: a landscape artist, um, and much more behind that. And then I would bring one of my favorite authors in, who’s Tony Morrison? [00:38:36] Vince Menzione: Tony [00:38:37] Rebecca Jones: Morrison. [00:38:38] Vince Menzione: I don’t know Tony Morrison. [00:38:39] Rebecca Jones: Oh, um, I would, beloved is her book and Oh, yes. When you think about. [00:38:45] Rebecca Jones: Um, and this is really my passion, my background in art and literature and design, and to have three, three women there, that voice of Tony Morrison, you’ve put that book on your list. Okay. It, it, it changed my life. Uh, and, um, Coco Chanel and, um, Giorgio O’Keefe, I think it would be a really interesting conversation. [00:39:07] Rebecca Jones: I love very cool trailblazers, women who really helped. I don’t know how much they recognize how much they really changed the narrative for other women, um, in their fields and together. But I think it’d be a really fun evening. [00:39:23] Vince Menzione: Very different. Very different. Uh, I was, I know a little bit about Cocoa Chanel ’cause my mom was always in the beauty and fashion industry. [00:39:31] Vince Menzione: So as a kid growing up, I mean her shoe was iconic. [00:39:34] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. [00:39:34] Vince Menzione: Iconic. Chanels an iconic brand was iconic. And, and she was a, wasn’t she a survivor of the. Of, uh, Nazi Germany maybe or something. There’s some, there’s some background or there’s [00:39:44] Rebecca Jones: some background. Flee. Flee [00:39:45] Vince Menzione: Nazi Germany [00:39:46] Rebecca Jones: or something. And what she’s really known for is, um, well many things, but yes, as a designer, really changing the tone and temperature Yes. [00:39:56] Rebecca Jones: Of um. How, you know, fashion and female identity. I think she, um, created the, what everybody knows is the little black dress and really got all that more structured and more modern look and feel of how to, how to wear and just really created a powerful path. [00:40:14] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Yeah. Very cool. [00:40:15] Rebecca Jones: So that’s who I’d have it, this one. [00:40:16] Vince Menzione: That will be a funer. [00:40:17] Rebecca Jones: Next time I’m on your podcast, I’d have a whole new crew. [00:40:21] Vince Menzione: Okay. Well I might. Bring dessert. If you don’t mind, I might bring a little, maybe a little chocolates I think maybe might be very appropriate would for this group and just maybe pop in for a few minutes. [00:40:29] Rebecca Jones: That would be great. [00:40:30] Vince Menzione: Because I don’t wanna inter interrupt the flow my, because this is be a great conversation. Oh my, [00:40:33] no, [00:40:33] Rebecca Jones: you would, I think you’d have a ball. [00:40:34] Vince Menzione: Okay. I, [00:40:35] Rebecca Jones: I mean, I know how close you were to your mother. [00:40:37] Vince Menzione: I am. [00:40:37] Rebecca Jones: And so, yeah. [00:40:39] Vince Menzione: So, um, this isn’t, again, I use this tumultuous term, but we are living in interesting times right now. [00:40:47] Rebecca Jones: We are. [00:40:47] Vince Menzione: And for all of our viewers and listeners. What is your advice to them? What is the one thing you would say? We’re in the first quarter of 2026. Yeah. This ball is moving fast or this puck is moving fast. Yeah. If you were a hockey player, um, what would you say to us now? What, what, what is the one thing you would go do if you’re not doing it now that you should be doing? [00:41:11] Rebecca Jones: Take a moment. Take a moment. As leaders. Your company and your organizations are looking for clarity. They’re looking for a path forward, and there’s a lot of energy out there, which is very exciting, but it can be also very distracting. [00:41:30] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:41:31] Rebecca Jones: So hold some confidence and clarity for your organization and figure out where you need to be and where you’re going. [00:41:39] Rebecca Jones: That’ll help set your strategy, and this will all come into view. And so what I look to is how do we help enable the organization to grow? And by doing that, you ha you have to put the oxygen mask on yourself. Yeah. Take a moment. [00:41:53] Vince Menzione: Pause. [00:41:55] Rebecca Jones: Pause. Reflect, reflect. I told you I walked down to the beach this morning. [00:41:59] Rebecca Jones: It’s a great moment. Take a moment for yourself. It’s not passing you by. We’re just getting started. [00:42:06] Vince Menzione: Did you hear that? My friends and listeners? Take a moment. And so great to have you here in the room. Yeah. [00:42:13] Rebecca Jones: Thank you so [00:42:14] Vince Menzione: much. Thank you. And I want to thank our listeners, our viewers, for following along, ultimate Guide to Partnering and our YouTube channel Ultimate Partner. [00:42:23] Vince Menzione: And please, please, please come join us. We have an incredible year ahead. This was our event, number one of five. And Ultimate partner Live will be in Bellevue on the 11th through the 13th of May. [00:42:36] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, I’ll [00:42:36] Vince Menzione: see. You’ll see you there. Rebecca will be there. It’s [00:42:38] Rebecca Jones: in my backyard. [00:42:39] Vince Menzione: It’s in your backyard. And we are gonna have incredible leaders in the room. [00:42:42] Vince Menzione: So thank you for watching. Thank you for listening to The Ultimate Partner. [00:42:47] Rebecca Jones: Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming [00:42:50] Vince Menzione: soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.s I, as I wrap up here, I just wanna make sure that what, where

Description Stop experimenting with AI and start driving ROI. Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this keynote from the Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat, Nina Harding breaks down the massive shift happening in the AI landscape as customers move away from experimental pilots and demand concrete ROI and business outcomes. She emphasizes that the era of selling products and time-and-materials approaches is over, replaced by outcome-based, verticalized selling where vendors and partners share accountability. Through real-world examples in healthcare and retail, Harding outlines how partners can leverage Copilot Studio, Agent 365, and Microsoft’s incentive programs to build specific superpowers, differentiate themselves, and ultimately lead the AI mission alongside Microsoft. Key Takeaways Customers are no longer interested in AI experimentation and now expect immediate, concrete return on investment. Selling products is dead; the modern approach requires a consultative, signal-based strategy focused entirely on business outcomes. The traditional time-and-materials billing model is disappearing as clients demand shared accountability for project success. Rapid proliferation of AI agents has made security and governance top priorities for enterprise customers. Success in the Microsoft ecosystem now requires partners to highly verticalize their value propositions by industry. Defining and clearly articulating your unique “superpower” or niche is essential to stand out to the Microsoft field sales organization. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJJ4Zcf4tZc&t=1920s If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags Nina Harding, Microsoft AI, artificial intelligence ROI, AI agents, Agent 365, Copilot Studio, outcome-based selling, verticalization, healthcare AI, retail AI, Cognizant, Davos 2026, AI governance, AI security, technology transformation, Ultimate Partner Live, enterprise AI adoption, digital transformation, system integrators, AI pilots Transcript [00:00:00] Nina Harding: More importantly, we want to serve more and more people faster, and AI is coming in and having a very practical approach in healthcare alone. [00:00:14] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out [00:00:19] Vince Menzione: crowd. Come join me now for a compelling discussion on the impacts of the tectonic shifts we’re all seeing. [00:00:27] Vince Menzione: I feel incredibly fortunate, uh, to have this, this, this friend Nina who came into the studio here for the first time, actually earlier, well last year, geez, earlier this year. [00:00:38] Vince Menzione: It was last year, right after my accident I think. And, uh, we gotta spend some time together. And she was so good to, uh, make her time available and her team’s time available to come down here to be with us today. Ne I’m so thrilled to have you. I am going to turn over the stage to you. Uh, you’ve got some incredible learnings. [00:00:57] Vince Menzione: I know you’ve been on the AI tour with Microsoft. Yeah. And you’ve got some great learnings you’re gonna share about what’s happening. Absolutely. So it’s so great to have you. [00:01:05] Vince Menzione: It’s nice to see you. [00:01:06] Nina Harding: Nice to see you. [00:01:07] Nina Harding: Thank you. Well, thanks everyone. It’s great to see so many familiar faces and then some new faces as well. [00:01:15] Nina Harding: Um, because we’re in a little bit more of an intimate environment, I thought I would approach this a little bit differently. Give you some better insights into what we’re actually hearing at Microsoft with our customers, some of the things that are actually moving the needle that we’re seeing some of our partners do. [00:01:34] Nina Harding: So really to share some of the best practices out there, and hopefully you’ll leave with some more insight or tips and tricks, um, is really what I would love to do because our job. Collectively is really this transformation and to take a advantage of it out there in the market right now. [00:01:57] Nina Harding: Let’s see [00:01:57] Nina Harding: here. [00:01:59] Nina Harding: I can move slides. Well, this one isn’t moving. Any slides? [00:02:07] Nina Harding: No. Okay, great. So, um, some of you might. Uh, know that I’m a Floridian now, right? So I just live right up, up the way in Palm Beach. Um, so not too far, but I still wouldn’t miss this opportunity to be with all of you. Um, there is an energy that I think that we’re all feeling right now, and, uh, it’s, it’s palpable. [00:02:32] Nina Harding: We’re finding right now that our customers are really going from this landscape of experimenting with ai. Really to looking at the outcomes and having expectations around the momentum that they’re seeing. Right. That’s a big shift, right? We, and things are going pretty quickly, so I look at things almost quarterly now on what is that core message and what are, what is the difference in the tone from our customers of what they’re expecting? [00:03:06] Nina Harding: What we’re gonna talk a little bit about today is how all of you, our partners, are such a critical part of that journey. Actually, sometimes the most important part. You’re on the front lines with the customers. You’re the ones having those conversations. You’re the ones that are in there arm to arm with their teams, listening to what they’re experiencing, their challenges that they’re facing, and they’re really wanting now to go from this world of, Hey, we have lots of different pilots. [00:03:41] Nina Harding: Right? A lot of us know that right into, oh my gosh, it’s not about pilots anymore. They really want that ROI story. They want those outcomes and it’s looking very different for all of us. The way that we sell, the way that we go into our engagements, the way that we even price things, the way that we, meaning Microsoft partner and customer are locking arms is fundamentally very different. [00:04:15] Nina Harding: We have to go in collectively. We have to also be responsible for the outcomes and deliver on those. ROI is that headline that we’re all after. Right. It is the most important part of the puzzle right now because there isn’t a single boardroom that isn’t talking about AI and you guys are all experiencing it. [00:04:39] Nina Harding: It’s easier than ever to go in and have the conversation. The hardest part is how do we quickly get to an ROI study, so you or ROI case so that we can continue to build on that. And when you’re looking at this every. Customer is providing signals out there to help you grow that penetration into the account. [00:05:04] Nina Harding: And I’m gonna share some of the signals that I think that are really meaningful. But that’s the most important thing is we’re no longer, and I know you guys all know this, we’re no longer selling product at all anymore. We’re selling those outcomes. And I can tell you at Microsoft, we’re spending a tremendous amount of time retraining all of our sales reps. [00:05:25] Nina Harding: Really to be focused on how do you listen and do that consultative signal based sale. How do you actually go in and start selling, not selling, but I mean it is selling, but listening to the journey that they want to go through. What are the challenges that they’re facing and what’s the transformation that we’re able to kind of go and be a part of together with our partners? [00:05:54] Nina Harding: Notice it’s not about product. Product is just the tools in your tool chest to create those outcomes. So that’s gonna be really important as we go through this journey. [00:06:09] Nina Harding: Uh, so I saw the, the title of the session, uh, mentioned Davos and Davos was an interesting time. Uh, Microsoft has a very, actually, a very big presence at Davos and, uh, we had over 300 customer meetings there, uh, where we were meeting with some of the top companies around the globe. And it was very much affirmed that. [00:06:34] Nina Harding: Uh, the, the concept of AI we’re past, like curiosity stage, right? We’re way past that and we’re even past that. The art of the possible discussion, right? Uh, what the, the customers are almost at the point is, is come in and tell me, tell me what to do. Show me how to do it. It’s a very different position than, Hey, we’re presenting you with all these different possibilities. [00:07:08] Nina Harding: They’re They’re tired. They’re tired of all the possibilities. They wanna get to the brass tacks of how are you gonna change my customer service department? How are you gonna make it easier for my hr? How am I going to derive growth? What are some of the other things that you guys are experiencing out there? [00:07:23] Nina Harding: Like what are some of those other ROI drivers that people are asking, where am I gonna find the money? What for? For doing the project or out of the project? Other people? I Okay. To do the project. Okay. Resourcing. Okay. So what we’re seeing here is that, uh, the conversation is very much now focused on, okay, I need sec, I need security. [00:07:50] Nina Harding: That has been louder than ever before. So, Vince, the one thing I would say about that slide where you had those five different pillars, I’d put security on the bottom. Understanding your data, your data platform on the bottom, those are consistent across all those pillars. And then you can kind of hit at them. [00:08:10] Nina Harding: But, uh, there’s a lot of energy, there’s a lot of excitement, but it’s rooted in what are you materially going to do to change my business, and is your skin in the game to help me do it and I’ll pay you for that outcome? The concept of this time and materials approach gone. Gone. Even at Microsoft, we’re adjusting to the fact that the customers aren’t like, oh. [00:08:35] Nina Harding: Just hand it over to a system integrator and they’ll deliver on it. They’re like, oh no, we want you accountable too. You’re accountable for the outcomes as well, which is, oh gosh, okay. How do we do that in a partnery model that makes sense where we’re not tripping over each other, but we’re going in stronger together. [00:08:54] Nina Harding: We have one message together and we’re really focused on driving that. They’re also really concerned around the governance of all these agents, right? I see a lot of heads shaking on this. I mean, there’s a lot of proliferation right now. There’s a lot of excitement. I mean, I don’t know in your companies, but people are building agents faster and quicker, uh, than ever before, and some of them are really, really cool and they’re making huge point savings of times. [00:09:22] Nina Harding: Everything from. You know, some of you guys have probably heard me talk about everything from, uh, working on performance reviews to what are all of the incentives that we have for partners and making that easy to understand to, uh, to helping me understand patterns in our financials and what partners are really performing and growing. [00:09:45] Nina Harding: All of these agents are just popping up everywhere, but that creates a real governance issue and a real security issue for a lot of companies as well. So you take all of this and you hear this momentum and I think, uh, that together we’re really well poised. I think Microsoft is in a unique position together with you. [00:10:07] Nina Harding: On this frame, we have Agent 365, which helps you manage all these different agents, right? So that’s an exciting. How many of you’re familiar with agents? 365. Great. And I promise I’m not a product person. I’m not gonna do a lot of pitches, so don’t worry about that, um, at all. But, uh, we also have copilot studio and foundry, and so we have this whole, uh, set of capability, but that capability only comes to life if we’re able to connect with the customer, build the outcome, and making sure that the CEOs see all of us as their partners on that strategy and journey. [00:10:47] Nina Harding: So what does that look like? So I talked a little bit about signals, and signals, is that ability to listen to the, to the customers, what’s really, really me, uh, meaningful and frontier firms are doing this on a consistent basis all the time. Listening to the specific needs use cases, et cetera. So we at Microsoft have been trying to not only share all these different use cases that we have exposure to, but in addition. [00:11:17] Nina Harding: We turned on functionality, and I’ll talk about that in a little bit so that we can also share amongst each other as a community and understand those use cases. Uh, what’s really important is that, um, we’re moving from this world of all these like little one-off projects to a strategy and a platform that everyone wants to move to, but it’s all also getting powered by agents. [00:11:42] Nina Harding: That’s, that’s where we are today. So. [00:11:49] Nina Harding: Having a little trouble. I’m not gonna go through this too. Everyone’s familiar with this in, in here, the Frontier overview. If you’re not, let me know. Um, but basically one of the things that we find is really helpful is, is just sharing where we have seen proof behind having the conversation around the AI journey. [00:12:12] Nina Harding: Around the, the customer journey as you’re going out there. Um, there are really four different areas that we’ve talked about, and I’m not going to drain this ’cause there’s lots and you can, you can, uh, go onto the internet. You can see me talking about all these different areas. I don’t wanna spend too much time here, but these are four of the different. [00:12:33] Nina Harding: I would say categories where when you’re looking at different ways that you can make a material difference with the, the, the customer that we find the most momentum. So around enriching employee experiences, changing the way we, uh, engage with customers. Uh, changing processes as well. And then, uh, the outcomes, like really transforming the way we go about business. [00:12:59] Nina Harding: And we wanna do something about bringing it in to the flow of the work, everyday work. How many of you are finding that you’re actually using agents in your day-to-day workflow? Isn’t that cool? And then as you continue to use it, it becomes easier and easier and easier. And. I know from my team, I’m starting to look at what is the e everyday usage versus the monthly usage, right? [00:13:26] Nina Harding: It’s the every day. It’s become almost, uh, your second hand. And what’s important, uh, on this is that we’re giving, uh, listening to all these signals giving, um, the consistency, um, of the, the engagement with. With the clients, we’re able to all share the same stories and be able to scale at a much faster pace. [00:13:54] Nina Harding: So what does that look like? Here we go. Um, one of the things that we talk about at Microsoft, and the reason why I have this up here is that we’ve moved the conversation away from product into these customer outcomes, which really becomes about. Industry discussion. You have to speak their voice. You have to understand their business problems. [00:14:21] Nina Harding: You have to listen for what is materially different. So I’m actually sharing this, which you don’t normally see in a lot of presentations out to Microsoft about the structure of the organization, the takeaway. This is a sales organization in enterprise. The takeaway that I want you to have from that is look at the verticalization. [00:14:43] Nina Harding: We’ve done. It’s no longer by territory. The ball has moved, the conversation has moved entirely. So what does that say to all of you as well? Your value proposition as you’re working with our field has to be verticalized. The way you engage has to be verticalized. What you say, um, what the, the outcomes that you think differentiates yourself. [00:15:12] Nina Harding: Verticalized. So there isn’t the approach of like doing this like mask gorilla campaign across, for example, the Americas. And I’m just using this as an example on, um, the small and medium business side as well. Um, the, they’re a little bit more territory based still, but um, at least at the enterprise, everything has to be about customer value. [00:15:38] Nina Harding: Customer value. So, um, what this also suggests to me is the way we’re working and where we’ve seen a lot of success is when all of you are starting to tailor your messages and differentiate yourselves by customer success stories. Use cases where you’ve had premise, uh, penetration as a software partner, but you have to tie it back to the industry again. [00:16:05] Nina Harding: It’s just different. And so if I’m very transparent that that’s become, has gone from a nice to have to critical as the field is looking at, who are those go-to partners? It’s the go-to partners that speak retail. It’s the go-to partners that speak oil and gas and I don’t know, I, I, I see some nodding of heads. [00:16:27] Nina Harding: Some people know this, some people don’t. But I can see the shift tremendously over the last six months. So, um, hopefully that’s helpful in, in, in kind of sharing just how we’re walking the walk and talking the talk. So as I go back to industry, um, I thought what would be helpful is to take a few examples so you have a chance to see. [00:16:52] Nina Harding: In life, what are, what are we actually seeing at Microsoft? And if you guys are seeing something else, I would love to hear that too. But these, this is an example in healthcare and when we’re looking at, uh, a particular industry, we’re looking at what are some of the pain points? What are the top trends? [00:17:11] Nina Harding: What are some of the challenges folks are, are facing? And then what are the use cases that are really making traction here? This is a different way of taking that frontier vision and doing that click down by industry. And so what we’re also doing is we’re looking at who are partners that can help us in healthcare that can help answer some of these key challenges. [00:17:35] Nina Harding: Who are the ones that have the ability to have those material conversations in that trust? In healthcare, for example, there’s a ton of pressure. I mean. We all are consumers of healthcare. Hopefully we, all of us, have been lucky enough to have healthcare, um, in the, in this, uh, forum, but there’s a lot of clinician burnout, rising costs, right? [00:18:01] Nina Harding: The, the expense for, uh, medicines and so forth. But more importantly, we want to serve more and more people faster, and AI is coming in and having a very practical approach. Healthcare alone. So many of you, I talk about, um, the fact that at one point I was paralyzed, right? So I was paralyzed from T two down and, um, I go in every six months for an MRI, uh, to check, to check if everything’s still functioning. [00:18:32] Nina Harding: And the nervous system is going well. My doctor has had to manually look at that. Now he’s using AI to look at. History and the progression since 2008. That’s game changing. And on top of that, he is looking at me and having a conversation and looking in my eyes and observing me instead and using Dragon to have it feel epic to really think about how that’s changed my personal experience with the healthcare system and changed how a physician can show up. [00:19:09] Nina Harding: So there are many, many, um, many use cases around like patient access and, uh, innovation that we’re trying to do, surgeries, uh, being able to do clinical, clinical trials, but AI is everywhere and that’s what’s really important is that we’re figuring out for all of you what your software solution. Services offering, or even if you’re selling that, you have that value, value proposition down at that level. [00:19:43] Nina Harding: So let’s take a look at retail, for example. We have a short little video. Are we gonna be able to run that video? This is where we’re seeing a lot of shrinking. Margins, people wanting more, uh, intimacy with their customer. Here we go. [00:21:09] Nina Harding: Are we good? Well, that was a quite, uh, quite a nice, uh, uh, digital response to the end of the video. But what you’re seeing is people are using it in all different facets as we go into an example. I always love to do, use examples of partners that are hitting the mark ’cause we can all learn from ’em and myself included. [00:21:30] Nina Harding: We’re partners that are really successful. I chose to use Cognizant. Cognizant was actually our partner Si of the year, um, at the Americas level. And one of the things, and I won’t drain it on, um, the right hand side of this, uh, the slide, but they really are helping the customer’s move in a framework approach by industry, uh, to an AI landscape. [00:21:58] Nina Harding: Uh, they, they have secured an end-to-end solution and they’re focused on real business outcomes, and they have been growing at over 30% year over year. Huge. That’s great. Right? That’s what we all want for our businesses. And so what you’re seeing here is. They have a narrative around the frontier firms and they pull that through when they’re engaged in the clients and with our field. [00:22:27] Nina Harding: And then they’re using the incentives that we have. And don’t worry, I have a slide on some of the incentives we have, um, to actually make sure that they’re using those effectively in the pre-sales motion, but most importantly on the adoption and the change management after they’ve actually, uh, built out the solutions. [00:22:45] Nina Harding: And that’s really, really, really key here. So here’s an example of, um, of Cognizant at Coldwater Creek and Soft Surroundings. They had two different platforms and they brought it all together and then they brought Dynamics in as well. And what they have actually been able to do is improve a lot of the inventory management, the visualization, um, of all the inventory around. [00:23:14] Nina Harding: Around all of their stores and their warehouses, and they’ve been able to streamline the fulfillment and improved, uh, reduced back orders. What you’re seeing is those are all concrete examples of the outcomes that they were trying to drive for at the beginning, and those were all. Key pain points. And so they go in, cognizant will go in and understand with what are the material things that you are, that’s keeping you up at night, that is creating that drainage, uh, in your accounts or if you could transform, what does that look like? [00:23:52] Nina Harding: And so there, they spend the whole conversation together with Microsoft focused on doing that. And then we do the outcome based proposal. Very different, right? It creates for a much stronger vendor relationship, and the customer feels like they really have in the essence of the word partners, helping them to be successful. [00:24:15] Nina Harding: Right. [00:24:20] Nina Harding: Here we go. So I promised you some of the incentives, and I know you might just take a, a quick peek at some of these. These are, these are, um, some of the incentives that. Microsoft has put forward to help our partners on this journey. Uh, this is a slide that we’ve created from the America’s perspective to try and simplify it. [00:24:42] Nina Harding: Now there’s a lot behind it, right? But to try and help simplify, um, where are the incentives available? And I think this is one of the first times you’re actually saying what’s available for the sis. Versus for the software partners. And then we’re gonna hear more today about what’s also available for the channel partners as well. [00:25:03] Nina Harding: Um, it’s really thinking about what is your behavior as a partner? How are you showing up? How are, uh, you making a contribution to that customer? And then how can Microsoft best support you in that journey? So there’s all sorts of, uh, all sorts of incentives here, and it’s really, uh, designed to be flexible to what you need. [00:25:24] Nina Harding: But for the, I, I think it’s very focused on the value proposition as well that you bring to the table. So, um, I encourage you to take a look at this, make sure that you have this in your diary or your flipping of, of how are we maximizing, um, deals. And we can certainly go through a lot more of this. And we have webinars and so forth that will take you through all of that. [00:25:52] Nina Harding: Alright, so. I’ve talked a lot about this outcome-based selling, and that’s, it’s literally how Microsoft is starting to move forward on how do we go about engaging with the customers and with our partners. You’re gonna see, because our customers are asking more Microsoft involved and for us to go jointly into the opportunities. [00:26:16] Nina Harding: Not that we necessarily, we’re not building out a larger consulting force or anything like that, but. We want to make sure that the customer ask that Microsoft is engaged in working with our partners, is honored, um, and that we’re, we’re part of that, and that we’re also sharing our, our experiences and learning from all of you at the same time on who has the best, uh, approach, Beth best, best methodologies and best practices to light up our customers together. [00:26:51] Nina Harding: But the ROI doesn’t really show up just in dollars alone. We all know this, right? Um, it could be in, uh. Satisfaction it could be in care. So as you’re starting to look at this new evolution of how we’re really landing the value proposition of ai, we have to think outside of the box that it’s not just monetary and it’s not, I think you said savings or securing funds and so forth, but it’s really of how do I leapfrog into the modern world? [00:27:22] Nina Harding: How do I change that entire experience and think outside of the box? And, uh, make sure that the conversation is not just about how do we optimize certain practices, but how do we have this more executive level strategy conversation on the future of how we’re gonna engage with our clients, uh, their clients in a much more, um, I think transformative and personal [00:27:51] Nina Harding: way as we go forward. [00:27:54] Nina Harding: So we know that if the outcomes are the, what we’re looking to go drive, the next question is really how do we go do that? And that is gonna be through the agents on here. You’ll see just from from out in the market, what we see will light up the market. We think that, or I can’t even say we, IIDC says 81% of leaders are expecting agents. [00:28:24] Nina Harding: Full utilization in the next 12 to 18 months. And to be honest, I think this quote is probably even two months old. So we’re already, we’re probably down to like, you know, eight, eight to 12 months. And what I’m seeing that proliferation happening, it’s crazy. So understanding that value proposition, um, whether you’re from a software company or a services company or even some of our resellers, what’s that niche? [00:28:52] Nina Harding: What’s that industry or sub-industry? What is that? Horizontal. I go after customer service within, uh, the manufacturing vertical. Right. And then are you building out agents or do you have capability? And that’s what we’re doing internally at Microsoft as well, is to help make that really visible to the field so that you’re differentiated. [00:29:15] Nina Harding: Differentiation is gonna be really key right now because there’s so many people that say, oh, I do migration services, or I can help with data, or I can do security. But it’s the specificity around the industry and what you are truly known for within that space. So one of the things that we look to do is, is looking at all of the different areas where we see agents popping up. [00:29:44] Nina Harding: And this is a helpful slide. Sometimes I think, um, it starts to highlight, um, where we’re seeing some traction in financial services. Or in healthcare manufacturing. And then when I talk about the horizontals or the personas, you start to see some of the um, really repeatable, high return on investment type of things. [00:30:08] Nina Harding: Is this resonating with some of you guys? Yeah. I’m seeing a hit, a lot of head nods. This, if you’re on the services side, right? We’re in an intimate setting. This is where I encourage you to try and build an agent, right? Package that agent, put it on marketplace, make that available, and then make that known to our field sales organization. [00:30:27] Nina Harding: ’cause they are looking for quick wins along those lines. [00:30:31] Nina Harding: So on that, um, [00:30:36] Nina Harding: uh, one of the things that we’re along the journey for is the skilling. This is moving at such a fast pace, right? Um, so you’re looking at. Um, anthropic is really a big topic right now, right? Gemini, you’re looking at cloud, you’re, um, or Claude. [00:30:55] Nina Harding: Um, you’re looking at all of these different, uh, scenarios and one of the things at Microsoft is we really wanna be open to all of these different technologies because our customers are open. So we want to be part of taking you on that journey. And one of the things that we invest in white. [00:31:12] Nina Harding: Significantly is all of the training. Um, and I wanna encourage you guys to take advantage of it. Training is not a one-time thing. It is, it is a constant muscle that you must exercise. So as I come to my conclusion, I have a couple three key things, right? One is really understanding what your superpower is, right? [00:31:33] Nina Harding: The partners that I’m finding are really aligned well with the field are really winning. Those stories are the ones that have. Know and can articulate their superpowers. What am I known for? What are the use cases I can either build to or have agents against? And where have I done this consistently? And packaged really, really concretely, right? [00:31:55] Nina Harding: Um, this, this proliferate of like, I can do everything. Unfortunately, you get lost a little bit in the noise, right? So clear positioning, proof point’s, so critical right now, and reinforcing that credibility with the clients that have adopted. The second thing is that you’ve heard a little bit about this hopefully. [00:32:16] Nina Harding: How many of you have heard of the part partner success story? Okay, this is really, really key. We launched about maybe a month ago, and we already have over a hundred, uh, stories from partners, and the field is loving it. What it is is it brands the stories with your brand if you submit them. So what? Talk about credibility, um, with the field and with our marketers to have your name and that recognition picked up. [00:32:45] Nina Harding: It’s really, really fantastic. So I encourage you to do that. For those of you taking quick snaps, I did put a code on here, so if you wanna go straight to it, uh, you can take it. Um, and go explore with it. What’s nice about it is it’s AI based, so it will help you write these stories very, very quickly. [00:33:04] Nina Harding: There’s no reason why your sales reps can’t be writing these stories, and then yes, [00:33:11] Nina Harding: uh, yeah, you can do no meaning like from enterprise. No. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You can do it on any, on any, there is a different level of fidelity of if you have the customer’s permission. Right. Um, to pu to publish it or not. And that’s some functionality we’re working on. If there’s enough traction of, of this is to help you guys. [00:33:32] Nina Harding: Secure that with Microsoft. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it can be any customer there. But I encourage you to take a look at that. And I know I’m two minutes over here, so I’m just gonna leave you with this. Um, at the end of the day, as I, as I wrap up here, I just wanna make sure that what, where we’re going and we’re going together, that it’s simple and actionable between us and it’s easy for our field to understand. [00:34:00] Nina Harding: Where you play the value proposition you play so that we’re going into deals even more effectively together. Right? So you heard industry, sub-industry, persona level or horizontal. Put that in if, um. Figuring out what your superpower is, making sure that you’re trained, that there’s evidence around the success, and capturing that in ways, uh, that are critical to not only your business, but giving us the visibility of that success. [00:34:31] Nina Harding: Like scream from the rack rafters. Use these tools to make sure that we know just how transformational you’ve been in some of the customers and where you’re uniquely winning. So, so important. So keep investing in the skilling. You can see my kind of like five power plays, right? And the last one always being that superpowers. [00:34:56] Nina Harding: So with that, um, if we do all of these things consistently, you won’t just be keeping up with ai. I think we will all be leading on that AI mission. So thank you very much. I appreciate it. [00:35:14] Vince Menzione: Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.

Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ The Shift from Attention to Trust In this compelling episode, Ashleigh Vogstad, CEO of Transcends, joins Vince Menzione to discuss the tectonic shifts occurring in the global partner ecosystem. Ashleigh shares her firsthand experiences studying AI at Oxford, the rise of the “Trust Economy,” and the controversial Amazon vs. Perplexity lawsuit. They dive deep into the practicalities of becoming a “Frontier Firm,” the importance of building proprietary AI agents, and the ways Gen Z and AI-driven marketplaces are revolutionizing the buyer journey. Whether you are looking to win Microsoft Partner of the Year or navigate the demise of traditional SaaS, this conversation provides a strategic roadmap for leading through the AI revolution. Key Takeaways The economy is shifting from a focus on human attention to a foundation of verified trust. Future commerce will involve “selling to machines” as AI agents begin making purchasing decisions on behalf of humans. Microsoft is prioritizing “Frontier Firms” that integrate AI into every customer interaction and internal process. Gen Z buyers are prioritizing product value and “dupes” over traditional brand names, with 75% of buyers expected to be Gen Z by 2030. To win Partner of the Year, organizations must publicly celebrate “better together” stories with validated customer wins. Modern leaders should transition from a “growth mindset” to a “frontier mindset” to keep pace with rapid technological change. https://youtu.be/xJmd43NvfnI If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags Trust Economy, Selling to Machines, Amazon vs Perplexity Lawsuit, Frontier Firm, AI Agents, Copilot Studio, Anthropic Claude, Microsoft Partner of the Year, B2B Marketplaces, Gen Z Buyer Behavior, Digital Freedom, AI Therapy, Ray Kurzweil Singularity, Substack Growth, Co-selling Partnerships, MCI Funding, Azure Accelerate, Agentic AI, Transcending Tech, Ashleigh Vogstad. Transcript Asleigh Vogstad Audio Podcast [00:00:00] Ashleigh Vogstad: The attention economy is about selling to human beings. Now, if you look at something like the Amazon versus Perplexity lawsuit, the whole underlying premise is around the shift of no longer selling to humans directly, but of selling to machines. [00:00:19] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Today I’m joined by Ashley Waad. The CEO of transcends for this compelling discussion. Ash, welcome back to the podcasts. [00:00:34] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s so good to be here, Vince. Thank you. Uh, [00:00:37] Vince Menzione: so well, we’re back in Boca again and we were just here yesterday for the Ultimate Partner Executive Winter Retreat in person. [00:00:44] Vince Menzione: What a great event we had together. [00:00:46] Ashleigh Vogstad: It was phenomenal. Thank you so much for having us there and on stage and, and genuinely the community is like a family, so seeing so many familiar faces and spending some quality time was just great. [00:00:57] Vince Menzione: It has really, truly become like family. It really, I’m, I’m, I’m having so much fun with this and getting to watch. [00:01:04] Vince Menzione: Not just our business grow and our community grow, but to see all of our friends and, uh, organizations like Transcends that have been with us since the beginning, since the very first ultimate partner acting even before the first ultimate partner. And, uh. We were just talking about. I’d love to catch up with what you’ve been doing. [00:01:22] Vince Menzione: Like you just came, you’ve been on a whirlwind. I mean, you’re always, every time like it’s, where’s Ash? She’s, uh, she’s on a plane again, or she’s on, she’s on the slopes. But tell us where you were just this week. [00:01:34] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. The week started in a snowstorm, actually transporting myself from Whistler. I didn’t know if I would make it to the airport, but then down to Silicon Valley and [00:01:45] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:01:46] Ashleigh Vogstad: Wow, that place is just inspiring and eyeopening. I mean, seeing the Nvidia campus, a MD, it’s really just other worldly and it had me reflecting on, it’s [00:02:00] Vince Menzione: not Whistler. Yeah, it’s [00:02:02] Ashleigh Vogstad: definitely not Whistler. Definitely not Whistler [00:02:05] Vince Menzione: about, [00:02:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: um, yeah, it just had me reflecting on being down there. I used to spend a lot of time in the Valley around 2017 and. [00:02:13] Ashleigh Vogstad: In this theme of AI and kind of what’s really coming, I was, I was thinking about, I had met this woman, Julia Moss Bridge, who’s a neuroscientist studying ai. She had a project called Loving Ai, and I was down there when they had borrowed Sophia, this humanoid robot from S and Robotics. [00:02:32] Vince Menzione: Oh yes. Yes. [00:02:33] Ashleigh Vogstad: Really interesting. [00:02:34] Ashleigh Vogstad: Sophia’s actually a citizen of Saudi. Mm-hmm. First, first robot to actually be made citizen of a country. So they had Sophia set up and the part that was just mind boggling at the time was that Sophia was hosting in real life therapy sessions with actual human beings sitting across the table. And what really struck me as. [00:02:59] Ashleigh Vogstad: Kind of just, you know, that was only eight, nine years ago. And that was esoteric. Wacky and [00:03:05] Vince Menzione: eerie. [00:03:05] Ashleigh Vogstad: Weird. [00:03:05] Vince Menzione: Eerie at the time. [00:03:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: Incredibly eerie. Yeah. I mean, a, a human getting, uh, you know, therapy sessions from a robot sitting across the table. Yeah. And it just had me thinking how far we’ve come today. In 2025, Harvard Business Review said that therapy is actually the number one use case for ai. [00:03:26] Vince Menzione: I’ve heard that. That is striking. I go back to COVID. We were having this conversation last night at at the dinner for the Ultimate Partner event, and I think that COVID allowed us to transcend, [00:03:42] Ashleigh Vogstad: mm-hmm. [00:03:42] Vince Menzione: No pun intended there, but actually accelerate where we are today, that the acceptance of AI and the acceleration, or the ability to accept change so quickly. [00:03:56] Vince Menzione: Started with COVID because we were so, so we were forced on whatever it was, March 10th I think, here in the United States to shut down everything and move to this remote life. [00:04:08] Ashleigh Vogstad: Mm-hmm. [00:04:09] Vince Menzione: And I think we’ve been shocked by that. I think our systems have all been shocked by that. And then here comes chat GBT in November of 2022 and we’re like. [00:04:20] Vince Menzione: Shocked in some respects, but like really everyone has embraced it in such a strong way, and now we’re getting. It’s almost daily update. You know, we’re gonna talk, I know we’re gonna talk about Anthropic and some of the things that’s been happening just in this last month that are striking and changing that have a lot of organizations trying to navigate, which is what, you know, you, you help organizations do. [00:04:43] Vince Menzione: But it feels like this is happening so fast and will continue to happen so fast. And as I said yesterday, I don’t know what this world’s gonna look like by 2030. [00:04:53] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, and I think the thing is, is that nobody knows what the world is gonna look like in 2030. I’ve been reading Ray Kurz Well’s, the Singularity is nearer, so the original book, the Singularity is near and he’s known to be a very accurate predictionist on the future. [00:05:11] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. But even with someone like that, you know, there, there nobody really knows what the world is gonna look like. And when you talk about COVID. At transcends, we have a value of digital freedom. So I founded the business in 2018, which was pre COVID. I as a fully remote organization, and at the time that was, you know, more groundbreaking, but then very quickly with CI that, that became the so-called new normal. [00:05:37] Ashleigh Vogstad: But we’re always thinking about. You know, remote first doesn’t mean remote only, and I think in this tide of what you’ve talked about, technological change being more acceptable and the pace of change. One of the interesting things that we see as a go-to-market agency is that in-person events are increasing. [00:05:56] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:05:57] Ashleigh Vogstad: People want and crave the face-to-face. Just like with the ultimate partner series. [00:06:02] Vince Menzione: I felt it. So it was striking yesterday. It, it seems like it’s, again, this was event number nine for us, but to see the, um, uh, receptiveness isn’t the right term, but it was this, uh, people, the, the embracing. Of seeing each other and hugging each other and being in the same room with each other. [00:06:22] Vince Menzione: And even people that didn’t know each other, like by the, the, as the day evolved, this, uh, connection that they all seemed to have with one another during the sessions and participating, everyone actively participated in the sessions. And, um, I said this in the beginning, we’re not a Slack channel and we’re not like some post on LinkedIn. [00:06:43] Vince Menzione: Uh, we’re there, there’s no playbook that’s set today around partnerships or even go to markets and marketing that we could espouse and say, this is the playbook for the next year. Right. It’s, it’s changing so rapidly. [00:06:55] Ashleigh Vogstad: So rapidly, [00:06:57] Vince Menzione: and you’ve embraced it. And I, and what we’re gonna talk about right now, I mean, I, I, you know, you’ve embraced AI in such a strong way. [00:07:04] Vince Menzione: Um, personally and with your business, I want to, I wanna dive in here a little bit. First of all, a couple things For those of those who are listening who don’t know you, I think maybe just a moment about transcends and your role, and then I wanna dive in on how you’re thinking about ai because I know you’re doing some things personally. [00:07:22] Vince Menzione: I want you to share that with, with our listeners and viewers today. [00:07:25] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, great. And I just wanna comment that it was a cool moment yesterday being up on stage with yourself and Mark Monday from ServiceNow and having the audience so engaged and active and Nina Harding from Microsoft stepping up and entering the conversation. [00:07:40] Vince Menzione: So cool. [00:07:41] Ashleigh Vogstad: It just made for such a collaborative experience, which was a cool moment, but yeah. Um, so. I founded this business, transcends a go-to-market agency after being at Microsoft myself. And really our differentiation is deep strategic partnerships with hyperscalers, whether that’s AWS, Google, Microsoft, and you know, that. [00:08:03] Ashleigh Vogstad: It comes with a challenge to be on the leading edge of technology. [00:08:08] Vince Menzione: Yes, [00:08:09] Ashleigh Vogstad: it, it’s really an imperative for our business and we are an AI first firm. Microsoft talks a lot about Frontier Firm, and I’ll take a, a different kind of angle on it. You know, when I think about Frontier. I now think about it as instead of the growth mindset, I now think about a frontier mindset. [00:08:28] Vince Menzione: Frontier mindset. You have to change my principles. [00:08:32] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, maybe, like you said, the world is changing so rapidly. Yeah, it’s [00:08:36] Vince Menzione: changing rapidly. [00:08:36] Ashleigh Vogstad: And what a frontier mindset means is that as we’re approaching work for our clients, we are thinking about AI innovation in every single customer. Interaction, customer innovation. [00:08:49] Ashleigh Vogstad: So today we’re building AI agents into much of the work that we’re delivering for clients. And as a business owner and leader, I’ve been challenged to also think critically around how I’m choosing to run the company. And right now we’re going through a huge overhaul of where we have data sitting in silos and different applications. [00:09:09] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yep. And getting that into one place with one view so we can start layering on more insight. AI innovation. [00:09:17] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And data’s such an critical part, part of this, as we, we talked about yesterday. But you know, even the, what you said, which is, would, would’ve been striking a year ago to say, we’re an AI first, uh, agency isn’t as striking anymore. [00:09:32] Vince Menzione: Uh, we heard Nina when we were having this conversation on stage yesterday, say that it’s an imperative at Microsoft that the agencies that they choose to work with, the third party vendors that they work with have to be an AI first organization. I have to be a frontier firm, and so I’m a, I am sensitive to the word frontier firm. [00:09:53] Vince Menzione: I understand why Microsoft uses it and I understand the value of what we used to call, you know, customer zero or back in the day we used to say eating your own dog food, but essentially being an organization that has leaned in, in a way, and with ai. Even more so, so important to do it. So tell us, I know you’ve done some things personally as well, but tell, tell us what you’ve done with the organization. [00:10:18] Vince Menzione: Uh, you talked about data and making data available and having, having a true data state as opposed to silos of data, but then you also made some personal investments and sacrifices. I would say. [00:10:30] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. [00:10:30] Vince Menzione: Yeah. In terms of what you’re doing around ai, [00:10:32] Ashleigh Vogstad: so I mean, let’s start on the personal side. I’m the CEO of my organization, and you can read in books or news articles that it is critical for AI transformation to start at the C-suite and specifically in the CEO seat. [00:10:46] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:10:46] Ashleigh Vogstad: And that really. Landed for me and so I’m personally leading in About two weeks ago, I built an agent, just end-to-end on my own, got into copilot studio. Wow. Got comfortable with the interface. You know, I was clunky moving around in there at first, chose my model. You know, I went with one of the anthropic Claude models for this particular project and built up an agent that can deliver executive communications like. [00:11:14] Ashleigh Vogstad: Thought leadership blogs, uh, LinkedIn posts, but in a particular human being’s voice by ingesting things like their social profiles, their SharePoint sites, where they live and work. And it has been so surprising doing an ab test between just what a chat GBT or a copilot could produce. [00:11:32] Yeah. [00:11:33] Ashleigh Vogstad: In comparison with the authenticity of the voice coming from the agent. [00:11:37] Ashleigh Vogstad: Uh, it was just a really cool experience to roll up the sleeves and get in there. But also I think the, the investment that you’re referring to is, I made a big decision to return to school and uh, got accepted to go to Oxford. [00:11:52] Vince Menzione: Wow. [00:11:52] Ashleigh Vogstad: And I’m studying artificial intelligence there. [00:11:54] Vince Menzione: That is incredible. That is incredible. [00:11:57] Vince Menzione: Oxford, uh, we’ve heard of that school before here in the United States. [00:12:03] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, it’s been a really great experience. It’s in person, so I’m traveling there about every 60 to 90 days and living on campus. I mean, really, Oxford isn’t. Formally a campus, it’s sort of a, a city and a university all, all ruled into one and the experience has been really powerful. [00:12:21] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yes. One of the things I wanted to get outta the program was a more global perspective, and it’s been fascinating to me that about half the faculty so far, or or professors, guest lecturers that have been coming into the program have been from China or very direct experience working in the Chinese market. [00:12:38] Vince Menzione: That is fascinating. [00:12:39] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s been a completely different view. Or for example, you know, really digging into some of the legal cases that are driving precedence for how AI is interacting with corporations. [00:12:51] Vince Menzione: Mm. [00:12:51] Ashleigh Vogstad: One of the big ones for me has been looking at Amazon versus p perplexity. This is still a live case that’s happening right now. [00:12:58] Ashleigh Vogstad: And you know, I think it was Forbes magazine that the headline was the End of Commerce for this case because it’s really about. How human beings are being replaced with machines and hearing some of the world’s leading thinkers, leading AI researchers on these topics has just been really expansive. [00:13:19] Vince Menzione: It’s fascinating. [00:13:20] Vince Menzione: I mean, it’s, this started a couple years ago with, uh, Hollywood, in fact. Suing the industry or suing the technology companies with regards to, uh, employment, right? Mm-hmm. About the, the, uh, copyright infringement and what’s gonna happen in the entertainment industry. And I think that was just a one very small example. [00:13:40] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, voice people think about DeepFakes. Yeah. And they think about video, but actually voice is a big issue. And you look at the, um, you know, the what happened between Scarlett Johansson and her voice in her, and then open AI rolling out a voice that sounded identical. Sounds like her. [00:13:59] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:13:59] Ashleigh Vogstad: To Scarlett Johansen and, and where that went. [00:14:01] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s, it, this is a new ground for, for everybody that we’re going through right now. [00:14:07] Vince Menzione: It is. We can dive and go in so many different directions, but let’s talk about marketing and advertising since that’s kind of. Transcends core, and a lot of the people that watch and listen to us are in the partnership world. [00:14:22] Vince Menzione: They’re leading organizations, they own organizations, the the chief executives or CVPs of organizations. Let’s talk about advertising and where that’s going. [00:14:32] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, great. [00:14:33] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:14:33] Ashleigh Vogstad: I mean, uh, I love Marshall McCluen. He’s a Canadian theor, uh, media theorist, and in 1964, he very famously said, the medium is the message. [00:14:43] Ashleigh Vogstad: And what that really means when you peel back the layers is that every type of communication medium has these inherent biases. And I think what we’re experiencing right now is this new medium of artificial intelligence, and I’m really interested in exploring what that means for the media world. So. If I gonna take you back to 1997, there’s this really famous, the Innovator’s Dilemma. [00:15:10] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yes. Kind of a classic business 1 0 1 type book by Clayton Christensen. Yes. And he talks about this theory of disruption where new technologies, emerging technologies start at the low end of the market. They gain this momentum and they eventually displace incumbents. And you know, sometimes seemingly out of nowhere. [00:15:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And Microsoft was a good example of this at that time. [00:15:32] Ashleigh Vogstad: Def, [00:15:32] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:15:33] Ashleigh Vogstad: All the big players. All the big players. I mean, Google go for search as well, right? So that’s one of the classic examples. And so. If we look at storytelling technology, you have things like chat, GBT and Sora entering the scene. And in the beginning, you know, they’re producing a shitty first draft. [00:15:51] Ashleigh Vogstad: Uh, you know, it’s things like post-apocalyptic dogs with five finger human beings. Yeah. Things like this. But, you know, and they really lacked emotional resonance. But as we all know. That’s not the case anymore. No, it’s [00:16:05] Vince Menzione: not. [00:16:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: AI is increasingly producing content that is very powerful and is starting to resonate with people. [00:16:13] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, I’m definitely not a neuroscientist, but if we, we look into the neuroscience, it’s your cortical sal circuit that. Kind of is responsible for pattern recognition and it compares what you’re seeing in the real world with what you expect to see. So when you take this into a space of advertising, you know, if there’s an ad that is AI generated, that is just weird and kind of. [00:16:38] Ashleigh Vogstad: Tweaking for you. [00:16:39] Vince Menzione: Like that robot we were talking about earlier, [00:16:41] Ashleigh Vogstad: like the robot we were Exactly, yeah. Like Sophia, you enter what psychologists call the uncanny valley, so it’s like what you’re looking at isn’t exactly what you’re expecting to see and the Spidey sense is, is tweaking. You know, that’s a low place of emotional resonance. [00:16:58] Ashleigh Vogstad: This world is changing really, really quickly and we’re seeing AI generated media make huge impacts in the market Now, tools like Luma Dream Machine, I mean, it’s incredible what they can achieve today. [00:17:11] Vince Menzione: It’s fascinating. We see it in, you know, I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. That’s sort of the world of our business community, and you can very easily detect when someone is doing a post. [00:17:22] Vince Menzione: Or they’re writing an art, whatever they’re doing. Right. Some type of draft of something. Uh, and you can tell when it’s ai, I mean, it’s so easy to tell, and even people are generating reports and claiming that their research papers or studies or whatever they call them, uh, and it’s AI generated and it’s just the authenticity isn’t there. [00:17:39] Vince Menzione: The, the sense that this is real. That it can be trusted is not there. And I think trust is what we’re talking about here too, as well. [00:17:47] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. I mean, let’s go to authenticity ’cause that’s super important. Yeah. And I know a lot of your listeners, you come from the hyperscaler world of partnerships. You need to have that differentiated, better together story. [00:17:59] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. It’s really important to have an authentic voice in market. And I think about that also in terms of platforms and channels. We’re seeing a decrease in certain major social media platforms, and yet Substack spiked 48% in monthly active users last month. [00:18:15] Vince Menzione: That’s [00:18:16] fascinating. [00:18:16] Ashleigh Vogstad: Um, you know, and I think that one of the reasons is it’s viewed as a more authentic channel where you’re getting thought leadership from people that you’re, you know, genuinely interested in hearing their, their points of view. [00:18:28] Ashleigh Vogstad: And I think that’s really an important piece in here. [00:18:31] Vince Menzione: Yeah, you mentioned this yesterday and you had me thinking about it as well because we have used LinkedIn for everything internally, our newsletter, which has been around for six or seven years now. But that Substack is really, and I go to Substack too, to, if I really wanna dig in on a topic. [00:18:47] Ashleigh Vogstad: Mm. [00:18:47] Vince Menzione: And there’s a particular author that I like their point of view, I’ll follow, I’ll follow them on Substack. [00:18:53] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. I mean, and this comes, maybe brings us around to who is the buyer and who is the audience, and who do we need to be thinking about when we’re designing sales and marketing programs. And really we’re, we’re shifting into the place of the Gen Z buyer by 20 30, 70 5% of buyers are gonna be Gen Z. [00:19:12] Ashleigh Vogstad: They’re gonna control 12 trillion in. Spend [00:19:16] Vince Menzione: by 2030. ’cause we, we’ve been, we’ve been saying that the millennial is the new buyer the last three years. I think Jay said it right here at this stage. [00:19:23] Ashleigh Vogstad: Mm. [00:19:24] Vince Menzione: Um, so now it’s Gen Z. [00:19:27] Ashleigh Vogstad: And they’re buying online. Yeah, they’re buying in marketplaces. Yeah. So a stat recently was that roughly half of them made purchases on the social platforms of YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok in the last month. [00:19:39] Ashleigh Vogstad: I mean, that buyer behavior of being inside. Social type application and directly making a purchase. And I think in the B2B world, we need to take lessons from here and start thinking more front and center than we even have been around marketplaces. I mean, part of my reason for being in Silicon Valley this week was to celebrate a $12 million transaction that happened via Marketplace and two years ago that would’ve been a huge deal. [00:20:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: Huge, [00:20:07] Vince Menzione: huge. [00:20:07] Ashleigh Vogstad: And, and it still is a really big deal, but these things are becoming. More and more common experiences. Very much so. We need to be there and in that conversation. [00:20:16] Vince Menzione: So how are you thinking about it? How are you directing your clients to behave or act around it? What are you, what are you doing exactly that we could take to this community perhaps and share with them. [00:20:28] Ashleigh Vogstad: I’ll bring it back to the authenticity piece because you need to have a product that delivers value first and foremost. There is, there is no substitution for that. Yeah, and what I would say is. One of my professors at Oxford, Eric Zow, he has this theory that I’m really digging into and finding very fascinating, which is that for the last several decades we’ve been in the attention economy, and that’s shifting to the trust economy. [00:20:55] Ashleigh Vogstad: Now the attention economy is about selling to human beings. Yeah. It’s about the, the business model is essentially that you need human being eyeballs on lists of recommendation links. Yeah. Whether that’s from Google or from, you know, searching, shopping on Amazon, you get this list of recommendation links and the economic engine that drives that business model is advertising. [00:21:19] Ashleigh Vogstad: Now, if you look at something like the Amazon versus Perplexity lawsuit, the whole underlying premise is around the shift of no longer selling to humans directly, but of selling to machines, or in other words, agents who are making purchases, s on behalf on your behalf. And an agent isn’t going to be razzle dazzled by some inauthentic story. [00:21:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:21:44] Ashleigh Vogstad: They’re gonna be looking for third party validation on Exactly. You know, they need to be sure that they’re making the right decision. [00:21:51] Vince Menzione: They’re gonna look at surveys, they’re gonna look at customer comments. Like if I went through my Amazon site and I was looking to see what people said about the purchase or the product and specifically Exactly. [00:22:01] Vince Menzione: The agent’s gonna do this on my behalf, is what you’re saying. [00:22:04] Ashleigh Vogstad: This is what I’m saying. Yeah. And, and. I believe that to layer on top of, you know, Eric Z’s philosophy, I’ve been thinking about this in terms of the hyperscaler world, and I think that this is the time to lean into co-selling partnerships. [00:22:18] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, because being third party validated by somebody like AWS Microsoft and having all that co-sell data, what are your recent wins? Yes, that’s really high integrity, trusted data source for an agent to make a purchasing decision, and marketplaces are a key part of that. [00:22:35] Vince Menzione: So we’ll move from AI will take a, a more active role in the marketplace. [00:22:40] Ashleigh Vogstad: I definitely believe so. [00:22:42] Vince Menzione: Which makes total sense. I, you know, we’ve been doing this for nine or 10 years now, and when I was at Microsoft, we started co-selling. In fact, it was, uh, Aaron Feiger was up on stage yesterday talking about it. Right? January of 2016, co-selling began. [00:22:55] Ashleigh Vogstad: Mm. [00:22:56] Vince Menzione: And there were only a few companies doing it. [00:22:59] Vince Menzione: Right. So she worked with one of the very first ones that were doing it. Uh, the challenge we have today is there are tens of thousands of partner organizations in the marketplace that are all trying to get the attention of the Microsoft sellers. Hmm. As, or the Google sellers or the AWS sellers and tell their story. [00:23:19] Vince Menzione: And a seller only has so many minutes in a day, they have a quota that they have to hit. These quotas are tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars of annual quota of cloud consumption. And I wanna sell my $50,000 widget, whatever it is. Yeah. Right. And I, I don’t understand why I’m not getting a callback. [00:23:38] Vince Menzione: And this, this is the dilemma we’ve faced because of, because of this, uh, scarcity of time and this over overwhelming of tech, you know. Tech, tech buyers trying to make this all happen, so now the AI can come in and help me solve for it as a seller, right? [00:23:55] Ashleigh Vogstad: The AI is definitely acting as an interface to make recommendations to field sellers in different organizations and. [00:24:04] Ashleigh Vogstad: To, to kind of take this on a, a tangent. Dupes. So a dupe. I know people of my generation, we’d think about this like a knockoff Right. You know, a knockoff handbag. [00:24:15] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:24:15] Ashleigh Vogstad: Dupes have exploded. [00:24:16] Vince Menzione: Fake. Fake Rolexes. [00:24:18] Ashleigh Vogstad: Exactly. The fake Rolex for sure. And I think it was in December, P WC rolled out a survey. 81% of Gen Z were planning to purchase a dupe this holiday season. [00:24:29] Vince Menzione: That’s wild. [00:24:30] Ashleigh Vogstad: Dupes can be, you know, we gave luxury, good examples, but Louis [00:24:34] Vince Menzione: Vuitton and yeah. So, [00:24:35] Ashleigh Vogstad: but furniture, these sorts of things. And the important takeaway here for tech is the same principle will land, is that people are looking for value out of a product, not necessarily a name brand. AI is accelerating this whole process, and agents are gonna be looking at the same thing. [00:24:56] Ashleigh Vogstad: They’re looking for that authenticity in terms of the actual product value. So, you know, beware there’s lots of disruption happening in the market right now with this dupe mentality, which is actually a cultural shift talking about I appreciate value over a superficial. Brand name. In some cases, there’s also a, a small contrary trend where certain luxury goods are rising because yes, things are never that simple. [00:25:22] Vince Menzione: So you work with a lot of these tech companies, a lot of SaaS companies, is we, we call them ISVs, we also call them, uh, software development companies. Now we keep changing these acronyms around. Uh, there’s been a lot of, uh, consternation in that segment, I would say, around ai. Right, because a lot of them are getting told that they’ll be outta business in a few years. [00:25:43] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. I think Satya Nadella famously said this last year that SAS will go away. Right? He’s predicting the demise. How do you help some of these organizations to differentiate? And there’s some of these are huge value organizations. We have have them in the room with us, ServiceNow and Veeam and Adobe. [00:26:01] Vince Menzione: Um, how do you help them achieve their results? ’cause that’s what you, you know, your organization is really helping these organizations to achieve their pinnacle as a partner. What do you, what do you say to them now and how do you help them through this time? [00:26:16] Ashleigh Vogstad: I’m on the side of the fence that I really can’t see an organization ripping out something like Salesforce, Adobe, ServiceNow. [00:26:24] Vince Menzione: Agreed. [00:26:24] Ashleigh Vogstad: I mean that the amount of change management and. The extent to which these, these platforms are embedded, actually running and operating organizations. I personally, if, if we’re calling those companies, SaaS companies, I don’t agree that that layer is gonna go away. I mean, we’re seeing these organizations lean into AI in a huge way to borrow Microsofts. [00:26:50] Ashleigh Vogstad: Term, you know, they’re all becoming frontier firms. [00:26:54] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:26:54] Ashleigh Vogstad: So where I would go to, to answer that question, we do work with many, you know, organizations on that caliber, on things like their marketplace strategy on how to light up the fields of different hyperscalers. It really does come down to things like having a strong drumbeat with the Microsoft field, celebrating your win stories. [00:27:15] Ashleigh Vogstad: Maybe that’s where I’ll land as Please do the marketer, because it sounds so simple, and I don’t know why we kind of continue to come back to this, but we’re talking about that third party validation and really, um, in order to have that, like what the hyperscalers want is you jointly celebrating success. [00:27:36] Ashleigh Vogstad: Here’s the kicker. Publicly. [00:27:38] Vince Menzione: Publicly, [00:27:39] Ashleigh Vogstad: you know, you need a customer story on your website, a press release that contains a quote from your customer. Ideally, also a quote from an executive at one of the hyperscalers. Like, actually lean in to live the value of your better together story. And when you do that, when you, when it comes around to partner of the year time, and we talk to you about, okay, what client stories are we gonna feature? [00:28:03] Ashleigh Vogstad: We’re even gonna know because when we Google you, we can see the public press of the joint wins that you’ve been celebrating. And I can tell you that that is a huge indicator on whether or not you’re well-placed to be in the 4% of partners who actually win Partner of the Year award’s. [00:28:20] Vince Menzione: Fascinating to me. [00:28:21] Vince Menzione: ’cause to me it would feel like table stakes maybe ’cause where we sit is ultimate partner and where this room sits with all the top partners that I just assume that everybody follows that. That, that guidance. [00:28:34] Ashleigh Vogstad: Mm. [00:28:34] Vince Menzione: And so this is really impactful and I want to get here because I know you spent a lot of time here and we’ve talked about it before, but I think the partner of the year awards, when we first met many years ago, that was a you, you’ve expanded the business, but that’s still a core mission and and value that you bring to the community and to the partner ecosystem is helping them through this process. [00:28:55] Vince Menzione: So I know that that’s gonna be coming up soon, so I thought maybe we’d spend a couple moments on that. [00:29:00] Ashleigh Vogstad: Partner of the Year awards, regardless of which partner, I mean, Salesforce has their own awards there. There’s more and more award programs coming out, and they’re a great way to celebrate the incredible work that your organization has done. [00:29:13] Ashleigh Vogstad: Jay McBain is brilliant on this. He’ll talk a lot about the increase in valuation. Yeah. The, the increase in stock valuation or the likelihood that if you’re looking to be acquired, that you’re acquired within 12 months of a partner of the year win it. It’s really impressive. There is strong business value there. [00:29:33] Vince Menzione: He like, he likes, he likes to tell the story of that when the award is handed to them and they go back into the audience, that the private equity people are all over them right then and there and making offers. I mean, that’s the visual that you get [00:29:47] Ashleigh Vogstad: and it’s very powerful. Yeah. Very powerful. It’s very powerful and it, it can make it worthwhile to invest in the process, but don’t invest in the process if you haven’t been investing in the process for the 12 months. [00:29:57] Ashleigh Vogstad: Prior, [00:29:58] Vince Menzione: exactly. [00:29:58] Ashleigh Vogstad: The Microsoft field or you we’re talking about Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. They need to know about your win that that needs to be top of mind for them. Yeah. How much Azure revenue is it driving? Was it a huge marketplace? Build sales and. You know, one of the questions I get asked a ton, everybody wants to know how do we get money out of the hyperscalers? [00:30:20] Ashleigh Vogstad: How do I get access to marketing development funds or all these different programs? Yeah. You know, at Microsoft, some of these programs are like EI and customer investment funds or Azure Accelerate, you know, and there’s millions and millions and millions of dollars in these, these buckets of funds, but. [00:30:36] Ashleigh Vogstad: An interesting point of view is that it’s actually a scorecard metric for many people at Microsoft who have partnership roles for you to be drawing down those funds. [00:30:45] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:30:45] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, your interests are actually aligned here, and so again, when it comes to Partner of the Year awards, how much money have you pulled down? [00:30:54] Ashleigh Vogstad: How much have you been an activating partner of key Microsoft programs that they’re pushing? What are you doing with marketplace rewards? How are you resing? Those into your business. These are the types of things that you really wanna be thinking about. Sitting it. You know, this time of year we probably will get the awards were likely be due in July. [00:31:13] Ashleigh Vogstad: They haven’t officially announced timelines, but you’ve got a few months to start moving these pieces into place. [00:31:18] Vince Menzione: And there are quite a few of them. And to your point, Nina, when she was up on stage here yesterday, there were at least 10 or 12 award. Uh. Funding categories that were on her, that were on her slide. [00:31:31] Vince Menzione: Her partner, her partner slide. So, [00:31:33] Ashleigh Vogstad: and what great looks like for a partner is that you understand your end-to-end funnel as it is mapped to Microsoft’s SEM model, the Microsoft customer Engagement model. Mm-hmm. The first stage there, inspire and design. That’s really the marketing space of lead generation. [00:31:50] Ashleigh Vogstad: So how are you generating leads with webinars, in-person, event activations, digital campaigns, and then at the very end, in the fifth column, you have the Microsoft outcomes that you’re driving. Yes. Whether that’s Azure consumed revenue, marketplace build sales, co-pilot, monthly active usage, these sorts of things. [00:32:10] Ashleigh Vogstad: And in each of those SEM swim lanes. There’s Microsoft funding associated to it. And that’s one of the things that Nina Harding was showing yesterday. When and where does it make sense to make requests for EA funds versus Azure accelerate the MCI funding? There’s different workshop proof of concept funding, and those all fall at specific stages in that EM model. [00:32:33] Vince Menzione: And what you’re also pointing out in this conversation is that the co the partners need to understand that mm, they need to understand MM. We talked about it years ago. I’ve had, haven’t had anybody on stage recently talk about m You could probably take us through that if we wanted to devote some time here, uh, and then understand all of those categories and how to access those funds. [00:32:52] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, it’s critical and. The number one place we point partners, if you want a quick overview of what that looks like is to Microsoft’s FY 26 solution playbooks. Nice. They’re available on the web for download. There’s, well, there used to be three, but they’ve added a few agen being, being one. So, so there’s a handful of, they had [00:33:11] Vince Menzione: simplified it, now they’re, now they’re expanding it back again. [00:33:14] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, exactly. I think there’s now a breakout for security as well. Yes. So take a look at those playbooks. It will map programs and incentives very specifically to each solution area and to each sales play that are gonna be available to you. And then we’re always happy to guide people through the details [00:33:32] Vince Menzione: as well. [00:33:32] Vince Menzione: I love that. I love that. And reach out to the. Ashley is just amazing at this process. I’ve, I’ve watched her for years now, work with some of the top, what have become the pinnacle partners of Microsoft and with the award season coming up. So we wanna make sure we have a plug there. But I also wanna talk about like, podcasts with you. [00:33:50] Vince Menzione: Um, you’ve been on this podcast multiple times, been in the studio before doing this, and I understand you have your own podcast now. So tell us about that. [00:33:58] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, Vince, I just wanna say. As a friend and a mentor. You’ve been so inspiring. Thank you. And I think from years ago when we met, there was this seed in my brain of, you know, I, I should really get out there. [00:34:13] Ashleigh Vogstad: And you talk a lot about growth mindset and fear setting is, is one of Tim Ferriss’s terms? Yes. And models. [00:34:21] Vince Menzione: I love Tim Ferris. I’ve been, been a fan of his for 10 years now. So that’s settled. We all got started with this. Sorry. Sorry, I [00:34:26] Ashleigh Vogstad: interrupt. No, no, not at all. [00:34:27] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:34:28] Ashleigh Vogstad: And. I think it’s just been, it’s been back there. [00:34:31] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. That I’m really passionate around having voice is how I think about it. And as a marketing agency, we’re really amplifying the voice, um, or helping companies to find their voice, particularly in hyperscaler partnerships. And what better way to assist, you know, authentically the amazing people in our network, in our community and our clients than with our own channel where we can celebrate their stories and success? [00:35:00] Vince Menzione: Very cool. [00:35:01] Ashleigh Vogstad: So the podcast is called Transcending Tech. It’s about [00:35:06] Vince Menzione: very cool transcending tech. Just so you don’t [00:35:08] Ashleigh Vogstad: transcending tech. [00:35:08] Vince Menzione: It’s out there now. [00:35:10] Ashleigh Vogstad: It, we just released our first episode. Okay. I think two days ago. [00:35:13] Vince Menzione: So by the time we’re live, yes. We’ll, we’ll be able to access it. Good. [00:35:17] Ashleigh Vogstad: You will be able to access it. [00:35:18] Ashleigh Vogstad: The first episode is with Alyssa Fit. Patrick from Elastic. [00:35:21] Vince Menzione: Oh my goodness. [00:35:22] Ashleigh Vogstad: And the concept of the podcast, it’s long form and it’s really about getting to the people behind the platforms. [00:35:29] Vince Menzione: Very cool. [00:35:29] Ashleigh Vogstad: And to the stories that transcend technology. So we’re here to get to know the human beings behind. Agents. [00:35:38] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:35:38] Ashleigh Vogstad: And taking the time to, to go in deep and really explore that. [00:35:43] Vince Menzione: So I am excited to see all the developments here with the, with the podcast. And you’re gonna be joining us again. You were just here, you in Boca. But you’ll be joining us again in Bellevue. Not too far a little bit. Closer ride or travel, uh, for you to come to Bellevue. [00:35:57] Vince Menzione: We’re gonna be hosting the first ultimate partner live, which is our larger events in this beautiful facility, this new Intercontinental hotel, which is fabulous. And, uh, you’re gonna be taking a more active role. Your leadership around AI is. Palpable and we’re gonna love to have you on stage and talking through some of the changes. [00:36:17] Vince Menzione: I, I suspect by the time we get to Bellevue we’ll have a lot more to talk about. That hasn’t even happened yet. [00:36:23] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, I’m really excited. I’ll have been through my next cohort at at Oxford, kind of coming out hot from there back to the Pacific Northwest, and really excited to just share the learnings and Awesome. [00:36:35] Ashleigh Vogstad: Genuinely. It’s also helping me in my own research, really formulate particularly around the role of ag agentic AI in hyperscaler partnerships. [00:36:43] Vince Menzione: That’s so cool. And then what I’ll say is this, and I don’t know, we on the space perspective, and I’ll, the team will probably hang me for this because we haven’t done it yet, but if you wanna bring the podcast along with you, there might be, we’ll see if we can find an extra room for you to set up. [00:36:58] Vince Menzione: If you wanna do some interviews while you’re. In, at the event. So [00:37:02] Ashleigh Vogstad: you’re so generous, Vince. [00:37:03] Vince Menzione: That’s [00:37:04] Ashleigh Vogstad: amazing. [00:37:04] Vince Menzione: Thank you. Again, I can’t say for certainty yet, but, uh, let’s see, let’s see what happens with that. So, uh, let, let’s, uh, you know, I always, we, we have known each other for years and I just assume everybody knows this amazing Ashley sda. [00:37:19] Vince Menzione: But, um, we always, I like to ask this question because it helps us kind of dig in a little bit about you personally. And it’s my favorite question. I ask all my guests this question now, and it’s, um, you’re hosting a dinner party, Ashley, you are, pick a pace, place, you wanna have this dinner. We could talk about parts of the world. [00:37:36] Vince Menzione: You’ve traveled all extensively. Uh, and you can invite any three people, guests from the present. Or the past to this amazing dinner party you’re throwing. Whom would you invite and why? [00:37:52] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s a beautiful question, Vince and. Instantly I go to a place in terms of the location, since you asked that part, which was surprising. [00:38:01] Ashleigh Vogstad: I, I like that is my home. I, I love where I live up in Whistler, Canada and [00:38:08] Vince Menzione: I hear it’s beautiful. I haven’t been yet, [00:38:10] Ashleigh Vogstad: it’s so gorgeous and it’s, it’s my own sanctuary. You know, I live on a plane 75% of the time and coming back to that place is really grounding for me. Yes. So, so I would love to have it at, at my home and to invite. [00:38:24] Ashleigh Vogstad: Pippa Malrin would be one. She, Pippa [00:38:26] Vince Menzione: Malrin. [00:38:27] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. She’s sure. I get an advisor to the White House for many administrations. Okay. She’s an economist and she just has really interesting perspective on geopolitics. Uh, I follow her on Substack ’cause she’s a big substack. Okay, now [00:38:41] Vince Menzione: I need to look. This is awesome. [00:38:42] Vince Menzione: The [00:38:43] Ashleigh Vogstad: mal, she’s fantastic. I would say Dr. Lisa Sue, the CEO, Dr. Lisa of a md. [00:38:49] Vince Menzione: Okay. Yes, yes. I know a little bit about her. [00:38:51] Ashleigh Vogstad: So she was one of Time Mag, I think she was the only woman in Time Magazine’s, group of people of the year, which was basically this AI cohort in including, you know, the Elon Musks of the world. [00:39:03] Ashleigh Vogstad: Uh, it’s just so impressive what she’s doing with leadership in a MD. I don’t think it’s as public as. Anybody else who is on the cover of that magazine, but it’s incredibly powerful. [00:39:14] Vince Menzione: Yeah, they’ve made a com uh, turnaround’s probably not the right word, but it seems like they’ve made a tremendous, uh, gains turnaround probably in the last few years. [00:39:23] Ashleigh Vogstad: I would say that many would say turnaround. And then lastly is Dr. Fefe Lee, who. For those in the AI space, particularly AI research space. I mean, she’s arguably number one. Um, she’s leading at Stanford currently. [00:39:37] Vince Menzione: Wow. This is gonna be a heady conversation, but you know, I love conversations. So if you don’t mind, maybe I’ll bring dessert and come, come in for a few moments, maybe do some podcast interviews there. [00:39:48] Vince Menzione: How’s that? [00:39:49] Ashleigh Vogstad: That sounds absolutely perfect, Vince, [00:39:50] Vince Menzione: so, so good. So good to have you here today. So great. Good to have you in the studio again, and, uh, excited for transcends and all the great work you’re doing. Um. This time with ai. I think you, uh, we talked about this a little bit last night. I think you’ve made some really wise, personal and professional decisions about how to lead and how to take this forward and not kind of rest on your laurels, which you see so many organizations do People fear change [00:40:17] Ashleigh Vogstad: Hmm. [00:40:18] Vince Menzione: And you embrace it, which is just, it’s astounding to me that you do that and, um. I look forward to working with you in the future and for years and years to come. So I will ask you one more question though, because we are still at the precipice of these tectonic shifts and we’re still early in 2026. And so for our listeners and our viewers today, what would be the one thing you would tell them that they need to go do now that possibly they haven’t done yet as they prepare for 2026 and beyond? [00:40:52] Ashleigh Vogstad: The generic phrase would be, be curious, but if we want an action, it would be go build an agent. [00:40:59] Vince Menzione: Go build an agent [00:41:00] Ashleigh Vogstad: if, if you haven’t already. Yeah. And, and I’m, yeah. Speaking hopefully to like a business audience, you know, to, to anyone. Yeah. Really, um, find something that is interesting that you’re passionate about. [00:41:12] Ashleigh Vogstad: A, a use case that it doesn’t have to be some big thing. It could be quite mundane, but just something that’s gonna help you in your role. It’s, you know, what is creativity is an interesting question, and I can tell you that sitting down and hands-on keys and actually creating something is, is a beautiful, powerful experience. [00:41:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Awesome. All right. We’re all gonna go create agents this weekend, so thank you for listening. Thank you for viewing the Ultimate Partner on our YouTube channel, ultimate Partner, and on each end of your platforms at the Ultimate Partner. Thank you for being with us and supporting us all these years. [00:41:50] Vince Menzione: Thank you. Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.

The Deal You Never Knew Existed. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this deep dive, Jay McBain reveals the harsh reality of the “28 Moments” in a modern B2B buying journey, using a multi-million dollar SAP deal at AstraZeneca as a wake-up call for vendors. He explains how traditional marketing leads are failing in the “decade of the ecosystem,” where trusted partners like NTT and SoftwareOne are winning deals in “light blue” partnership moments months before a customer ever downloads an ebook. If you aren’t visible in the seven-layer stack or collaborating with the partners who hold the customer’s trust, you aren’t just losing the deal—you’re losing the entire market. https://youtu.be/NO-P6X2dTAo?si=8e_sVesqvwaC0M-E Key Takeaways Most vendors lose major deals without ever knowing a transaction was even taking place. The average considered purchase involves 28 distinct moments of research and influence before a sale. Trusted partners often close the deal in the “middle moments” months before the money is actually spent. Traditional marketing leads (MQLs) are often too “flimsy” compared to deep partner-led relationships. Winning in the ecosystem requires being part of a “seven-layer stack” of integrated technology and services. Data-sharing platforms like Crossbeam and Workspan are now essential to seeing the “invisible” pipeline. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: 28 Moments, Jay McBain, Ecosystem Strategy, AstraZeneca SAP Deal, Seven Layer Stack, B2B Buying Journey, Partner Ecosystem, NTT, SoftwareOne, Channel Strategy, Buyer Intent, Informa TechTarget, Collaborative Selling, Crossbeam, Partner Tap, Workspan, Marketplace Tracking, Co-selling, Tech Integration, Revenue Architecture, Pipeline Growth, Trusted Advisor, Digital Transformation, SAP Optimization, Microsoft AWS Competition. Transcript: [00:00:00] Jay McBain: So if you’re a vendor trying to get into that seven layer stack and you don’t have that relationship, or you don’t have the knowledge that NTT or software one is going in, this will have been a deal that would’ve never hit your pipeline and you’ll have no knowledge. So you will have lost this deal without knowing there was a deal. [00:00:19] Vince Menzione: We’ve been talking 28 moments, but you have a slide. I thought we’d spend some time here because, you know, every conversation with you is about 28 moments, but you finally took the time to analyze one of your deals or one of the deals that was going on with one of your clients and come up with the 28 moments. [00:00:36] Vince Menzione: I thought we’d spend a little time here because this journey slide is a wake up call. Uh, it’s, it’s, it’s all around. Why, why we need to think about all of those. Points we need to think about communities and analysts and marketplaces and proof of concepts and architecture and everything else. I thought maybe you’d take us through this a little bit. [00:00:53] Vince Menzione: ’cause this was for a client, AstraZeneca, by the way. This was, uh, if you don’t know this, ICI Americas was the precursor of mm-hmm. AstraZeneca. It was the first SAP customer in North America. [00:01:03] Jay McBain: Nice. I did [00:01:04] Vince Menzione: not know that. That’s why Microsoft and SAP both headquartered. In that area, near nearby, that client. [00:01:10] Vince Menzione: That’s, uh, news, new news. [00:01:11] Jay McBain: And by the way, this is an SAP deal we’re looking at. Yeah. Uh, so two things here. One is that, um, while I was declaring the decade of the ecosystem, you know, spending time with you and Boca, in between that time we got acquired. Canals, which was Latin for channel, got acquired by oia, part of Informa TechTarget, part of this bigger informa company, which is a Fortune 100 company outta the uk. [00:01:32] Jay McBain: Fantastic. You know, we’re part of this massive organization that is really around buyer intent. How, you know, a tech target and, uh, running hundreds of magazines like Information Week and Computer Week that customers and partners read running hundreds of events, the biggest events on the planet. [00:01:49] Vince Menzione: Crazy [00:01:49] Jay McBain: in B2B, like Black Hat and all these things are run by [00:01:52] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:01:53] Jay McBain: informa. [00:01:53] Jay McBain: So it’s got this massive mountain of data. About the 28 moments. So when you start to think if you’re a CMO and you start to think about the early moments, you, you think about somebody reading an ebook or, um, going to a, a webinar or going onto a LinkedIn live just like this one. Yeah, going to a major event and getting a pair of socks from you. [00:02:13] Jay McBain: Um, but anything early in the journey. These are the m qls. These are the things that I need enough of them to be credible before I hand them over to my sales team. ’cause I don’t wanna be laughed out of the room. Hey, they read an ebook. They must, AstraZeneca must be buying millions of dollars of stuff. [00:02:27] Vince Menzione: Traditional marketing lead. [00:02:29] Jay McBain: Traditional marketing lead. So they’re a bit nervous about sharing that. And then later on, the sales motions, the demos and all the progression of the sales. This was the two decades before us, the decade of sales, decade of marketing. But the 28 moments, just to take a step back, if you haven’t heard, it is just a considered purchase. [00:02:46] Jay McBain: It’s about psychology, human psychology. When you go and buy a car, second most expensive thing that you will purchase you on average will go through 28 moments getting ready for that purchase. Some people go through two moments and they just drive to the Cadillac dealership to see Larry, who’s been selling Cadillacs to the family for 80 years. [00:03:04] Jay McBain: Yep. Some people spend 58 moments. That’s probably me. [00:03:07] Vince Menzione: That’s you, a, [00:03:08] Jay McBain: you know, going through all the depreciation, watching every YouTube video, you know, going to the end of the earth. But the average is 28. So you start to think about this, this is the same buying a car considered purchase, that you would buy a million dollars in software. [00:03:21] Jay McBain: From Microsoft or SAP. So when you look at these moments, you start to think, you know, how is you before you buy that car, downloading the invoice price, downloading this month’s backend rebates. Should I buy it in January? Should I buy it in February? All these decisions you make before you get to that dealership, you’re smarter than the salesperson, smarter than the sales manager. [00:03:39] Jay McBain: You know what 5,000 people bought the car for within 50 miles of you? I mean, you’re just so smart. You actually don’t need the dealership anymore. Just Carvana to me, hand me the keys. Exactly. But now in buying technology, hardware, software services, customers are getting this smart. And here’s all the moments they take to get this smart. [00:03:57] Jay McBain: But the thing we always had in mind in this decade of the ecosystem was the 96% there are trusted people. Yeah. Spending decades building that trust that come in in critical moments. They’re not marketing moments, they’re not sales moments. They are fully partnership moments. Yeah. And they’re on this slide in light blue. [00:04:15] Jay McBain: So if you were to look at this deal and, and somebody in marketing is finding these eBooks and webinars and they think there might be something, AWS got a direct hit on their website. So there’s something brewing at AstraZeneca. It, it might be in, it’s a big pharmaceutical company, so you’re probably spending millions of dollars if something’s brewing. [00:04:31] Jay McBain: Yep. But guess what? At the same time, in December on this six month journey. Partners come in with five different paid projects, consulting, advisory design projects, and in this case it was NTT software one, Yash and uh, ISV was there. Yep. But NTT won three different. Deals right at that critical stage. It wasn’t Accenture, it wasn’t Deloitte, NTT at this particular department of AstraZeneca had spent the decades building those relationships. [00:04:58] Jay McBain: So they were the one, and they won critical part of this. And so that’s when the deal is won. And it’s not at April when the money’s being spent. Yeah, it’s, it’s not in March when a couple more ISVs joined the mix, that seven layer stack that solves this particular problem, it was right there. So if you’re a vendor trying to get into that seven layer stack and you don’t have that relationship, or you don’t have the knowledge that NTT or software one is going in, this will have been a deal that would’ve never hit your pipeline and you’ll have no knowledge. [00:05:30] Jay McBain: So you will have lost this deal without knowing there was a deal, which makes up again, the majority of your tam. [00:05:34] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:05:35] Jay McBain: But what if I did have this agentic ability to see this deal coming, and I’m a cybersecurity company, I’m just competing for layer five of the deal, but I know that it’s all happening in December. [00:05:46] Jay McBain: So the two things that jump out on this particular slide is one, they don’t just show up in December. [00:05:51] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:05:51] Jay McBain: this went closed one in their Salesforce CRM in August, September, well, before the customer ever read an ebook. So now you’re not dealing with a flimsy MQL. You’re dealing with a couple of great, you know, top partner 1000 sized firms. [00:06:09] Jay McBain: One of them is a partner, 30 firm. [00:06:11] Vince Menzione: Exactly. [00:06:12] Jay McBain: That is absolutely going into and earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in services to guide the customer to a millions of dollars in purchase. And, and you can imagine in that boardroom. With A CMO saying, Hey, I got this stuff here. And the head of channels or partnerships saying, no, no, this is real. [00:06:32] Jay McBain: Here’s the names, faces, and places. Yeah. And here’s how it’s happening. And this is exactly, this is the Gantt chart, this is the show up, this is the project, this is the outcome. This is exactly how it’s playing out. Now if I could go back and the board and the C-suite should be asking us, well, how many more deals like this can you see? [00:06:50] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:51] Jay McBain: If our TAM is, you know, how many billions of dollars? Could you double our pipeline by seeing more of these middle moments? And if we got a couple of months to spend with these partners before they get in front of the customer, could they build more of our portfolio into the deal so we’re not just layer five, maybe we’re layer three and layer five. [00:07:10] Vince Menzione: This slide screams at me. Integr Tech integration Cha. A partner channel integration of tech, uh, whether it’s Crossbeam, whether it’s Partner Tap, whether it’s work span, or any of these other technologies, tackle any of these technologies that are tracking marketplace, that are tracking partner to partner, co-selling. [00:07:30] Vince Menzione: Getting the integration points. The only way to really understand the situation here, because this is a multinational company. Yeah. It’s being touched at all PO points around the globe. And to understand who’s calling who, who’s influencing who, and getting a real view, you know, a uber view of what that looks like is super important. [00:07:47] Jay McBain: It is. And you know, if I’m trying to sell like a cross beam or partner tab or work span or something into my executive team, I’m just showing them this slide. [00:07:54] Vince Menzione: Exactly. [00:07:54] Jay McBain: Would you like to know about this deal? Like you see, October is the start of the timeline here. Would you like to know about this deal in August, September? [00:08:00] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:08:01] Jay McBain: Would you like to know about it automatically? Again, we’re not waiting for somebody, a human in a cubicle to go fill out a form. We’re not waiting for them to call somebody at our in, in a cubicle at our company. Yeah. We’re literally age genically sharing platforms, and so when this triggers that AstraZeneca and now triggers in our CRM system as well, our team on AstraZeneca gets notified and it gets notified in September before the 28 moments even starts. [00:08:27] Jay McBain: This, the power of this, of doubling, tripling your pipeline and then winning a bigger yield, a bigger percentage of that pipeline. This is the holy grail of our industry, and no one’s gonna get to a hundred percent. You’re not gonna have a hundred percent of your tam covered by your pipeline. No one’s gonna win a hundred percent of that. [00:08:43] Jay McBain: But again, we only have to be 10 or 20% better than our competitors and we need to start moving on this now. [00:08:50] Vince Menzione: So your imperative for the partners here, well everyone watching here today, I mean, this screams to me build your ecosystem strategy in such a strong and succinct way. What else would you say to them? [00:09:00] Jay McBain: I mean, the second thing that jumps out, you see two AWS direct touches here. This is something that this would be inbound. This AWS would see this deal in their pipeline. [00:09:09] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:09:10] Jay McBain: Because the customer came to them. AWS lost this deal. Crazy. So Microsoft won this deal. I, I mentioned Microsoft outgrowing AWS Yeah. [00:09:19] Jay McBain: ’cause in this particular case, NTT and Software One and Yash came in with Microsoft. Yeah. To solve an SAP optimization, Microsoft, and, you know, seven layer deal. So whether you’re in AWS, whether you’re in Microsoft, whether you’re anywhere else in this industry, you’re thinking like, you’re not gonna probably overtake what happens in December. [00:09:39] Jay McBain: These are the most trusted, smartest people in the room. And whatever happens in those projects is the seven layer stack the customer’s gonna buy in March, April. So I, I start to think about this and go, I need to win. ’cause NTT has a wonderful relationship with AWS. [00:09:55] Vince Menzione: They do, [00:09:56] Jay McBain: I mean, partner of the year level. [00:09:57] Jay McBain: I mean, they’ve got 10,000 people certified. I mean, there’s just a, you know, there’s no one at AWS that, um, you know, would take a, a loss here because it’s a wonderful relationship. And Software One, they [00:10:09] Vince Menzione: go back to Microsoft actually 30, 40 years though they do. They were Dimension data before that. Yeah. [00:10:14] Vince Menzione: And they have the long hit Legacy And Software One. Software one as well. You, [00:10:19] Jay McBain: you know, well Software one is Microsoft’s biggest reseller, uh, in Europe. And now with Crayon, you know, one of the biggest in the world. So I would be nervous if I was looking at this and saw Software one coming in with NTT and watching these things take place if I were able to see this back in September, October and work with these companies. [00:10:38] Jay McBain: That’s where kind of Microsoft came into the picture. And this never hit Microsoft’s pipeline. No Microsoft salesperson ever worked on it, but millions of dollars came to Microsoft. Yeah. Uh, out of this deal. So there are examples of where Microsoft gets touched and AWS wins the deal. So this isn’t meant to say that it happens in every case, but it’s meant to say data rules the future, and agent ai, the ability to plumb in these boxes. [00:11:00] Jay McBain: Working with Informa tech, target people that can plumb in the boxes for you with third party data, helping you with the light blue boxes. We gotta be obsessed over these light blue boxes. [00:11:11] Vince Menzione: It’s incredible. The Ultimate Partner Winter Retreat is gonna be here in the Boca Studio. This is the third year that we’re gonna be here in Boca. [00:11:21] Vince Menzione: This is always a favorite of our community members, our executive members, our sponsors and speakers. We’ll all be here in the studio, which is a really intimate setting. We can see upwards of 40, 50 people. Uh, we’ll be hosting an incredible dinner at the Boca Resort overlooking the golf course. That’s an incredible property and, uh, we’d love to have you join us. [00:11:45] Vince Menzione: Thank you for being part of the ultimate Partner community, and I hope to see you this year at one of our events. Thank you.

Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ https://youtu.be/-flNeKF6CxQ?si=xIIQ4LUl7oraQjkg Microsoft’s Cyril Belikoff joins Vince Menzione to reveal the seismic shift occurring within the newly reimagined Microsoft Marketplace. As the industry moves toward a predicted $300 billion partner opportunity by 2030, this discussion deconstructs the evolution of the “Frontier” vision, the launch of the AI apps and agents category, and the critical “Resale Enabled Offer” (REO) that is currently doubling deal sizes for early adopters. Whether you are a software company looking to scale globally or a reseller aiming to stitch together complex AI solutions, the message is clear: the flywheel is already spinning, and those who wait for a “perfect strategy” risk being permanently displaced by more agile competitors who are getting their feet wet today. Key Takeaways The Microsoft Marketplace has been reimagined into a single destination for discovering, buying, and deploying AI apps and agents. Analysts predict a staggering $300 billion opportunity for partners within the Microsoft Marketplace by 2030. The new Resale Enabled Offer (REO) allows software companies to authorize channel partners to resell on their behalf across specific geographies with minimal overhead. Cloud migration is far from over, as massive amounts of on-premise data and ISV apps still need to be modernized for the AI era. Marketplace deal sizes are doubling as customers use Azure commitments to retire their marketplace acquisition costs. Successful partners are moving away from “boiling the ocean” strategies and instead focusing on transacting one or two deals to learn the ecosystem’s mechanics. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Microsoft Marketplace, AI apps and agents, Resale Enabled Offer, REO, Cyril Belikoff, Azure Marketplace, AppSource, cloud solutions, software companies, digital transformation, AI strategy, channel led sales, ISV solutions, cloud migration, Azure commitments, Microsoft Cloud, Frontier vision, MSP opportunity, marketplace transacting, AI monetization, global scale, procurement, IT deployment, technical modernization, partner ecosystem, business applications. Opening Lines: [00:00:00] Cyril Belikoff: Marketplace is really the extension of our vision for Frontier, uh, and the Microsoft Cloud. You know, the, the Microsoft technology takes a customer a long way, but in many ways to complete the thought. If you’re in football terms, you want to cross over the line and score touchdown. You can’t just get, uh, to the red zone. [00:00:20] Cyril Belikoff: You actually need partner solutions. [00:00:26] Vince Menzione: So let’s, let’s kick off to Marketplace a little bit right, too, because, uh, it’s been a big year for Marketplace, or 20, the first half of 2026 fiscal year 2026 has been a big year. A lot of announcements, a lot of things going on in the world, in marketplace. Where do we wanna start there? Let’s recap some of it. [00:00:44] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Um, so, um. It feels like a long time ago, but in, at the end of September, [00:00:51] Vince Menzione: yeah. [00:00:52] Cyril Belikoff: Um, at the AR tour, uh, in Chicago, we announced a new Microsoft marketplace. We reimagined that experience. It’s a new customer experience, single destination for customers to. You know, discover, find, try, buy, and deploy cloud solutions, AI apps and agents all in one place. [00:01:11] Cyril Belikoff: And so historically, we’ve had a little bit, uh, of decentralization. We had this thing called the Azure Marketplace and AppSource for different experiences. AppSource was more for teams and, and copilot. Um, and, and office, Azure Marketplace. Of course, that was for Azure. We brought all of that into one place. [00:01:30] Cyril Belikoff: So customers, whether they are looking for a SaaS solution running on Azure, an agent that snaps into copilot, an experience that runs in our security store, now they can go to one place. Um. marketplace.microsoft.com. It’s one, it’s the new Microsoft marketplace. And we have an, of course, we have a, we had, we launched a brand new category, AI apps and agents, and we launched that category in September. [00:01:54] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, bringing together numerous, uh, uh, partner offerings. Yeah. And today we have the largest catalog, um, probably in the mid four thousands of AI and agents. Wow. Available to customer. So fantastic. There was, there was quite a big moment in September. Um, and then fast forward a little bit to November, we announced a resale enabled offer, um, at Ignite [00:02:15] Vince Menzione: eo. [00:02:16] Vince Menzione: Eo [00:02:16] Cyril Belikoff: eo. I, [00:02:17] Vince Menzione: I like EO reminds me of the band back in the day. [00:02:19] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. R Speedwagon. There you go. Uh, well, and it’s, it’s not that far from it because Oreo accelerates. Yeah. Um, what partners can do, uh, with the marketplace and really connects. Software companies and resellers, which I’m sure we’ll talk about in a second. [00:02:34] Cyril Belikoff: But that’s really the recap, um, of, uh, you know, the new Microsoft marketplace, how we enabling it for, uh, for partners through the the resell enable offer. [00:02:45] Vince Menzione: So, I know we talked on this a little bit, but I wanna maybe just expand on it. What does the frontier push and the marketplace evolution mean for partners? [00:02:53] Vince Menzione: Because I, I think it’s huge for both, for these partners to really monetize and accelerate their success working with you. [00:03:00] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. So, um. Marketplace is really the extension of our vision for Frontier, uh, and the Microsoft Cloud. You know, the, the Microsoft technology takes a customer a long way, but in many ways to complete the thought and to, you know, uh, uh. [00:03:20] Cyril Belikoff: If you’re in football terms, you wanna cross over the line and score a touchdown, you can’t just get, uh, to the red zone. You actually need partner solutions. [00:03:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:03:29] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, and so that’s where the partner solutions, combined with Microsoft’s first party offerings become a really, really. Great offering and powerful offering for our customers to, to become Frontier. [00:03:40] Cyril Belikoff: So we have obviously a ton of AI experiences, our own co-pilot experiences, uh, Microsoft Foundry, which is a platform for ai, but in, in many ways, we need those industry solutions. We need those AI apps and agents from partners to complete that offering. And that’s really. How it comes together and, uh, you know, uh, I heard you from o was just on before me. [00:04:01] Cyril Belikoff: They actually predict that the Microsoft marketplace, uh, is a 300 billion partner opportunity by 2030. Yeah, they’re talking about, I think, mid eighties growth. We have literally seen our business for the last three years, and we are in the middle of our, uh, you know, third year doubling. And so when you get three or four years of doubling every year, that’s compounded doubling. [00:04:24] Cyril Belikoff: Um, so, uh, we have seen lots of momentum from customers, lots of interest. We’ve made it, you know. Interesting for customers. Um, and incentivize our customers with their Azure commitments that can retire their marketplace, uh, acquisitions that way. We’ve made it, we’ve put incentives for partners and for our own sellers. [00:04:44] Cyril Belikoff: So we really creating the flywheel for everybody in the market to see value from, uh, the marketplace. So. Like, like, like you mentioned, like m the, uh, you know, suggested [00:04:55] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:04:55] Cyril Belikoff: It’s only exploding the opportunity on marketplace. [00:04:58] Vince Menzione: Well, and you both touched on the fact that the data is not in the cloud yet. [00:05:02] Vince Menzione: Not all the data that needs to be in the cloud in order to drive the future of where we wanna go from a society. Mm-hmm. And from a business application perspective needs to be in the cloud. So huge opportunities for partners around data states, around securing that data, governing that data, and so on, on top of all the business applications, [00:05:19] Cyril Belikoff: right? [00:05:19] Vince Menzione: As promise. So incredible. Yep. So let’s [00:05:22] Cyril Belikoff: talk about, yeah. The call migration. The call migration, people think that is over and it’s long from over because customers have plenty, uh, on premise, uh, not only Microsoft technology, but the, the, the, the software company or the ISV app that sits on top of it. Yeah. [00:05:36] Cyril Belikoff: And that needs to be migrated, managed, modernized, um, and marketplace is a big part of that too. Um, but there’s so many services and, um, opportunities around it. [00:05:45] Vince Menzione: Incredible opportunity. Let’s talk about the channel and the channel opportunity. You, you touched on this earlier, right? So this really lighting up the channel. [00:05:53] Vince Menzione: I saw this loud and clear when we were at Ignite. Like this is a huge opportunity for the Es, for the resellers, for all the partners. And as part of REO, you’ve got huge opportunities you’re laying out for them for the 500,000 part partners. You know, we talk about the Bill Gates moment down here in Boca. [00:06:09] Vince Menzione: This is where it all started. Uh, yep. How, how do you think about marketplace in the channel today? [00:06:16] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. You know, it’s, um, it’s vital. You know, we have a customer need, um, from. The smallest is small business all the way to enterprise. And the really, the only way we serve that, the only way we know how to serve that is with our partners from the largest of partners that serve our top enterprises down through, um, what we call small and medium and then down to our small business. [00:06:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:41] Cyril Belikoff: Um, and so, you know, we have seen our. You know, while our, we’ve seen a doubling of our business, we’ve seen three, three and a half to four x doubling of our channel led sales. [00:06:53] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:54] Cyril Belikoff: Um, over the last year. And so while our overall business is doubling, channel is accelerating even, you know, even more. [00:07:02] Cyril Belikoff: And so there, there’s a need from our customers because they buy from our channel and there’s obviously a need from the channel. And so we created this resale enabled offer. As you mentioned, we, um. We announced private preview in September and launched GA at Ignite. So, you know, uh, November, just before Thanksgiving holiday and retail Enable offer is all about scale and how we connect a, a, an independent software vendor or a software company. [00:07:27] Cyril Belikoff: To authorize a channel partner to resell on their behalf on a particular geography. And then that allows software companies to expand into new markets with very little overhead. And it allows the channel partners to create a set of offerings, not only from one partner, but you might have multiple software companies or applications that you stitch that are together to create an end-to-end customer offering or experience. [00:07:51] Cyril Belikoff: And so we are seeing, we are seeing many to many relationships. So software companies might authorize many resellers, many markets they’re in, for example. Yep. And then resellers, um, they’re, they’re becoming authorized resellers from many software companies so that they can really stitch together, end into end solution. [00:08:09] Cyril Belikoff: And it, we’re loving it and we are getting great feedback. It is early days for our global availability for, uh, re office, which. But we had partners that were literally waiting, um, uh, and waiting for deals. And within the first week there was, they were, uh, processing the, the Oreo deals at, at, at quite large scale already. [00:08:31] Cyril Belikoff: So. We are excited about the feedback that we’re getting. We, as you know, we, we stay close to that feedback and we listen well, um, and adjust from it. So we got more work to do, but, um, it’s a great opportunity for, to connect our, our multiple types of partners, software companies, and resellers. [00:08:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah, I agree. [00:08:49] Vince Menzione: And you know, I talk to a lot of these organizations myself, and there is palpable excitement. In the channel from Distees that were sort of disengaged a couple of years ago, maybe, trying to figure out where they were gonna monetize. And the other way area that’s aligned to this as well is the Ms. P community. [00:09:06] Vince Menzione: So these MSPs are getting bigger and bigger, and organizations like Accenture, Avanade, and ndl. Or becoming MSPs or creating Ms. P practices within their own firms. But there’s even these smaller MSPs, but many of ’em are getting to a billion dollars or more. These were little mom and pop companies years ago, but the customer so needs to have, you know, especially with ai, right? [00:09:27] Vince Menzione: Because we’re in a constant state of evolution right now. I need somebody that can help me on the tooling and then also help me on, you know, getting the tooling to work. And so, uh, we’re seeing a lot of excitement from that. Community, which wasn’t really as engaged with Microsoft the way they that they are now. [00:09:43] Vince Menzione: They’re really getting engaged in a big way. [00:09:46] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, it’s promising. Like you say, you know, the, the, we’re all learning this new AI world and obviously marketplace has taken off. We’ve had the classic SaaS solutions or cloud solutions on marketplace for a while, but really un having the local partner that’s close to the customer, what the customer’s trying to need to do and be able to connect the, the traditional. [00:10:07] Cyril Belikoff: Software as a service applications with these new AI experiences and really, uh, stitch them together and help them operationalize, you know, in their own, you know, cus in their own terms and what they’re trying to, uh, do is so important. You know, um, and to your point there, there are large, they’re the large ones that are seeing opportunity on the marketplace. [00:10:27] Cyril Belikoff: But the, you know, when you get down to, uh, medium and smaller businesses, they really need their local friendly resetter to help them. [00:10:35] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:10:35] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, so you’re right. We are seeing an, a new en energy engagement from not only our existing 500,000 partners, but a bunch of those new ones. [00:10:44] Vince Menzione: So, uh, again, second week of 2026, and people are really just starting to wake up from the holidays. [00:10:50] Vince Menzione: Now they’re getting ready for their s ks. All these partners are lining up and getting their teams aligned. Uh, you’re in front of them. Let’s have a conversation like what should they be doing better and differently? What do they need to go do now? It’s 2026. [00:11:06] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Um, you know, first of all, if you’re a software company, you know, understand what the, the Microsoft marketplace can help you with, uh, can help you scale to global markets, remove burdens like tax, um, a processing, engaging with customers. [00:11:21] Cyril Belikoff: Um, we’re seeing an acceleration and doubling of, uh, not an acceleration deals, but doubling of deal sizes, as you know, through the marketplace. Uh, and there. It helps with engagement at different types of companies, whether it’s, or different types of, uh, roles in a company, whether it’s a, a procurement person or an IT person or a business person. [00:11:42] Cyril Belikoff: So, you know, get onto the marketplace, create offerings, um, and give us feedback. And then on the reseller side, um, also lots of opportunities, you know, register as, as a reseller, um, you know, understand the benefits and. The, the Azure sponsorships that we have available for you, that you can close deals with their, their, their credits and, and incentives that we provide to you. [00:12:06] Cyril Belikoff: And then figure out how you do your first deal with a software company. Um, yeah. You know, a lot of people will say like, should I have a big strategy? And Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you want to, that’s okay, but just getting into. Uh, the marketplace, figuring out one or two deals, transacting and seeing the opportunity is many ways the best way to do it and to learn it yourself. [00:12:28] Cyril Belikoff: And then you figure out, okay, where, where’s the opportunity for me in this deal? Am I in the transaction? Uh, am I in the services around the transaction or combination? Um, and just getting your feet wet will get you going and, and, uh, get you learning. [00:12:42] Vince Menzione: You know, I think about this in the, the time the partners are, they have this huge opportunity with Microsoft around marketplace and then thinking about how they build their own ecosystem. [00:12:52] Vince Menzione: And like you said, don’t, don’t try and boil the ocean, right. Don’t try and do it all at once. Mm-hmm. But start out small, but understand, you know, work with the Microsoft teams, understand how, how co-selling works, how to engage with the, with the Microsoft organization. How to, how to be up on marketplace, how to situationally. [00:13:09] Vince Menzione: You know, Jay and I were talking about this 28 moments and he talked about a deal that started out as an AWS deal, but it wound up a Microsoft deal because NTT and Software one were involved in the in the deal and influencing the customer’s decision process. Right working with Microsoft. And so we just need to be smarter, I think. [00:13:28] Vince Menzione: I think today it’s a very different model than it was 20 years ago when you and I got started in this business. Uh, yeah. And people just really need to go think about this more strategically in how they build this. [00:13:39] Cyril Belikoff: It’s great. I totally agree. Um, like I said, getting your feet wet, understanding the co-sell to your point and, and, and how Microsoft sells. [00:13:48] Cyril Belikoff: Um, and then understand what customers are trying to, you know, get, get, get out of it with their, their Azure commitments and how they can retire their Azure commitments through purchases on marketplace, which in sense them, um, to also work on the marketplace. So you, I think partners will find Microsoft sellers. [00:14:04] Cyril Belikoff: Own compensation, um, incentive to work. We’ll find that customers are incentive to transact on the marketplace. And so just enter that, you know, triangle and, and get engaged and, uh, and learn and then give us feedback. Like, like I’ve mentioned many times with you, we, uh, we take feedback every month from customers and partners in, in forums like this, um, in other forums, and then we evolve and, you know, build out, uh, stronger experiences. [00:14:31] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Cyril, I want to thank you again. So great to have you join us today and, uh, so excited to continue our, our mutual relationship and our beneficial relationship in 2026. So thank you again for everything you do and supporting us. [00:14:45] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Happy New Year to yourself and uh, and your community and, uh, thanks so much again. [00:14:50] Cyril Belikoff: Appreciate it. [00:14:50] Vince Menzione: Thank you, Cyril. The Ultimate Partner Winter Retreat is gonna be here in the Boca Studio. This is the third year that we’re gonna be here in Boca. This is always a favorite of our community members, our executive members, our sponsors and speakers. We’ll all be here in the studio, which is a really intimate setting. [00:15:12] Vince Menzione: We can see upwards of 40, 50 people. Uh, we’ll be hosting an incredible dinner at the Boca Resort overlooking the golf course. That’s an incredible property and, uh, we’d love to have you join us. Thank you for being part of the ultimate Partner community, and I hope to see you this year at one of our events. [00:15:30] Vince Menzione: Thank you.

Stop losing the AI revenue multiplier game. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this episode, Jay McBain reveals why focusing solely on consumer AI hype is a massive mistake that causes businesses to miss the real opportunity: the 99% of business data currently sitting in cold storage. We discuss the critical shift toward “Agentic AI” and integrations, where the real money lies for partners—moving from a standard transaction to a $3 to $7 multiplier effect. Jay also issues a stark warning about the “book of failure” waiting for companies that refuse to adopt a platform mindset, explaining why you can’t hire your way out of the talent shortage and must embrace the seven-partner ecosystem to survive the next decade. https://youtu.be/RXRJW027Qz8 https://youtu.be/RXRJW027Qz8 Key Takeaways Partners can unlock a $3 to $7 multiplier on every dollar of Microsoft revenue by focusing on the full customer journey. 99% of the world’s business data is not yet trained into models, representing the massive “Agentic AI” opportunity. The talent shortage is forcing end customers to outsource because they cannot compete with hyperscalers for AI skills. Integration is now the number one buying criteria for modern customers, necessitating a platform approach. We are overestimating the AI change in two years but vastly underestimating the transformation coming in ten years. Your visible pipeline may be less than 10% of your total addressable market because you aren’t seeing the 28 moments before a sale. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags Agentic AI, AI Multiplier, Cold Storage Data, Business Integration, Jay McBain, Platform Economy, Ecosystem Strategy, Managed Services, Co-selling, Hyperscaler Partnerships, Talent Shortage, Magnificent Seven, Digital Transformation, 28 Moments, AI Governance. Transcript: [00:00:00] Jay McBain: And getting from one to two to $3 a multiplier. So if Microsoft wins a hundred thousand dollars, I win $300,000 at 75% margin. And a sticky customer that’s gonna continue to enrich every 30 days forever. [00:00:16] Vince Menzione: I want to double click here. You talked about ag agentic technology and ai. I just wanna go back in on this. [00:00:21] Vince Menzione: So where is the money? Where’s the real money for the partners that are, that are participating? Microsoft? We’ll talk to Microsoft about Frontier Firm in a little while, but is it on advisory? Is it on build? Is it on managed services or ongoing optimization? Of the, of the stack. Where, where is it? [00:00:36] Jay McBain: Yeah. All the above. [00:00:37] Vince Menzione: All of the above. [00:00:38] Jay McBain: So Microsoft is famous for, you know, $8 and 45 cents of multiplier. We’ve written probably three dozen of these reports. Just this year. So whether you’re in a cyber platform, whether you’re in a hyperscaler platform, big SaaS platform, the first thing the CEO does when they get on CNBC or they get, uh, on their keynote in Vegas is say, Hey, you know, you can make $7 and 5 cents. [00:01:01] Jay McBain: You can make $7 and 13 cents, and here’s where it’s. This percentage of it is in consulting advisory. This percentage is in design and architecture, implementation, integration, managed services. This is how much, it’s a small little slice in procurement. If you wanna resell, that’s fine, but here is the opportunity and there’s no customer on the planet that’s gonna outsource seven to one. [00:01:23] Vince Menzione: Right? [00:01:23] Jay McBain: You know, it’s not advisable that anyone hands over the keys. You have to have some insourced talent Absolutely. To keep the thing running. But what would’ve been in the past, maybe one to one, or you know, two to one, is quickly becoming three to one to say that I can’t find, as an end customer, the AI talent to do this. [00:01:43] Jay McBain: I can’t find the cyber talent. I can’t find the infrastructure talent. I, I can’t find the talent. Even if I did, I can’t compete with these magnificent seven. I can’t compete with these big partners in terms of what they can pay. So now my ability, and now a younger buyer, majority buyer, now being a millennial loves a team sport. [00:02:02] Jay McBain: So they don’t mind this outsourcing of talent where they need it, and that’s why there’s seven partners around the table. But in this multiplier effect, the biggest opportunity for partners is not a specific skill or not a specific part of the journey. It’s actually understanding this multiplier and better serving the customer. [00:02:20] Jay McBain: Through before, during, and after the transaction and getting from one to two to $3 a multiplier. So if Microsoft wins a hundred thousand dollars, I win $300,000 at 75% margin. And a sticky customer that’s gonna continue to enrich every 30 days forever. [00:02:38] Vince Menzione: I love that. Uh, we can talk all day about ai. There’s a couple things specifically though, but what is the one missed? [00:02:45] Vince Menzione: Conception that partners have about Agen, AI’s impact on go-to market? [00:02:50] Jay McBain: Well, the misconception I can broadly at this point is that all of the hype cycle in the first, you know, two to three years of build out has been all consumer. [00:02:58] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:02:59] Jay McBain: So, Nvidia being the richest company and you know, Elon Musk becoming the richest person and all the changes that are happening and you know, how, how the world’s mostly it’s a consumer story. [00:03:08] Vince Menzione: It is. [00:03:09] Jay McBain: You know, Chachi PT became the fastest growing product in history. And you know, to the point of having 850 million, you know, daily users. Crazy. You know, just in a couple of years we’ve all changed our behavior from going to do a search and getting a bunch of links and then clicking the links to try to find the answer to answer first. [00:03:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:03:26] Jay McBain: And you start to think now through the business side of it, 99% of world’s business data has yet to be trained or tuned into models. 83% of it sits in cold storage at the edge. So I, I always tell the story. I mean, probably the most likely story in our industry is when you get your flight canceled and now you’ve got this chat bot [00:03:45] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:03:45] Jay McBain: You know, that comes and cancels your flight and is very empathetic, you know, feels really bad for you, but it can’t do anything. [00:03:52] Vince Menzione: No. [00:03:53] Jay McBain: So what I would like as a consumer when you do that, is to go download my 53 years of flying and understand what kind of flyer I am. ’cause I could be the, you know, we’re sorry we canceled your flight. [00:04:05] Jay McBain: We’ve already got a Marriott night for you and an Uber waiting at the curb and we’ll have you back here at 5:00 AM for the next available flight. Or you happen to be like me. We’re gonna get you on a flight. You gotta run across the airport. But we got a flight, you know, waiting to go and that’ll get you about six hours away from your home and your kids. [00:04:24] Jay McBain: We already have a hertz rental waiting. Yeah. And you’re gonna drive that six hours, but you’re gonna be home, you know, to take your kids to school tomorrow. Exactly. So that’s the business data. And that goes to finance, that goes to pharmaceutical. I mean, it goes into every industry, but if that chat bot got access to the business data and being able to act on a richer set of data about you personally, and then became AG agentic. [00:04:46] Jay McBain: Again, I don’t want to go to Marriott. I don’t wanna go to Uber. I don’t wanna go to Hertz. There’s a thousand permutations in a canceled flight and I, and I, you know, wanna notify my family and there’s so many things going on that age Agentic work becomes everything, which I love it, by the way, in our partnership term is called integrations. [00:05:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:05:04] Jay McBain: Our buyers now in integration, first buyer, it’s their number one criteria and every company thinking through their adjacencies. Including technology companies have to be the most integrated of their set of competitors. [00:05:17] Vince Menzione: So we need to get this part right. [00:05:19] Jay McBain: We have to get this part right. [00:05:20] Vince Menzione: What do you think, what do you think the time horizon is for that? [00:05:23] Vince Menzione: When are we gonna, when are we gonna see that chat bot that comes back and says, Jay, I’ve rebooked your flight. I’ve got the Hertz rental car ready for you. I’ve notified Michelle and the kids, and here you go. [00:05:33] Jay McBain: Yeah. Well for me that’s a 10 year horizon. [00:05:36] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:05:37] Jay McBain: I mean, the biggest problem is no airline right now. [00:05:39] Jay McBain: No company right now wants to open up their cold storage and, you know, forklift it up into. You know, a consumer level, large language model. Yeah. So the security isn’t set yet. The governance, the compliance, the risk, all the different things. Nobody wants to be first, uh, in, in that area. So we’re running little pilots. [00:05:59] Jay McBain: The pilots, you know, aren’t converting into production at the level we want. But that, that, that goes back to the Bill Gates quote. You know, we tended to overestimate what would happen in two years. Two years, but we’re absolutely underestimating what’s gonna happen in 10. [00:06:12] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:06:13] Jay McBain: This has been the fastest growing industry for 50. [00:06:15] Jay McBain: It’s going to be for the next 10 guaranteed, but probably for the next 20 to 50 as well. And, and this is that stage of how do you start to make these integrations? If you go to the platform slide, this is the, you know, I, I tried to think through the, what would the book read when, when 53% of companies that we know and love today fail. [00:06:36] Jay McBain: Somebody writes the book, you know, they invented the thing that killed them or they, you know, as mismanagement or whatever, it’s, you know, the book always starts, you blame the CEO for the first chapter. You blame the board fiduciary responsibility in the second chapter, but now you got like eight more chapters to write. [00:06:51] Jay McBain: I think the answer is here. [00:06:53] Vince Menzione: I [00:06:53] Jay McBain: agree. Winning in the AI era is platforms. Big platforms working with other platforms up on the upper right, the integrations. Yep. That’s the number one criteria. It’s the airline working with all the different pieces. It’s the real estate agent working with all the different pieces the bank working with. [00:07:11] Jay McBain: All our lives all become interconnected, and these agents start working side doors and back doors on our behalf. Before we ever know we need them before the flight’s even canceled. [00:07:20] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:07:21] Jay McBain: And then the seven partnerships, the services and channel partnerships. If you’re in cybersecurity, 91.6% of it goes through the channel. [00:07:30] Jay McBain: That’s how it’s transacted. You need channel partnerships, but you also need partnerships with the other six partners around the table. You’re not just gonna win without one reseller. You are gonna have to build the other partnerships. So to get to the two or three, that’s the services and channels you have to win In alliances, this is a big part of ultimate partnerships. [00:07:47] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:07:47] Jay McBain: Is winning with the hyperscalers, winning with the SaaS companies, winning on these marketplaces, winning with the big cyber platforms, distribution platforms. These bigger platforms are starting to take shape and this is what they look like working well. And you could compete tooth and nail in the morning. [00:08:03] Jay McBain: And be best friends by the afternoon. [00:08:04] Vince Menzione: Your frenemies. [00:08:05] Jay McBain: Your frenemies. Yeah. And then finally it all comes to go to market. You got these 28 moments before a sale and somebody is earning and winning those moments. And in the majority of cases, you’re never gonna see these moments. And that’s why your pipeline is less than half of your TAM and maybe less than 10% of your tam. [00:08:23] Jay McBain: ’cause you just don’t have visibility to where your buyers are. But the more partners, the seven partners that you connect to. You’re gonna start to see them and the more technology and more agentic technology that you connect, you don’t want humans filling out deal registration forms. You don’t want humans calling other humans. [00:08:40] Jay McBain: You want all of this being shared. The more of this you do in go to market, the co-selling, the co-marketing, co-innovation, all of this comes together. This is the rest of the book. If the companies today in every industry aren’t driving a platform in their own industry. They’re going to probably fail. [00:08:58] Vince Menzione: Absolutely. You know, we talk about situational awareness in an account. You talk about the seven seats at the table. The customer is talking to all these companies. You may not know about it. You think you’re, you’re dominant in the account, and they’re relying on all these decision makers that I think you said 6.3 is the actual number, right? [00:09:13] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Uh, analysis wise, how many. Organizations are part of that trusted group. You need to go influence all of those. You need to build the co-develop co, co-create with those organizations as well. And you need to be thinking about the whole ecosystem. This ties into this conversation about the decade of the ecosystem. [00:09:30] Vince Menzione: You know, you’ve been talking about it since 2020, maybe a little bit before. I think you might’ve even in this podcast studio. It might have been one of the first times we talked about the decade of the ecosystem. It really feels like this is the moment that all of this comes together. Maybe this slide defines why organizations need to think ecosystem and not vendor channel, if you [00:09:49] Jay McBain: agree. [00:09:50] Jay McBain: Yeah. And there’s a couple of, you know, companies and more than a couple that kind of have this slide posted in the CEO’s office. [00:09:58] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Should be. [00:09:59] Jay McBain: Every [00:09:59] Vince Menzione: CEO should be, and uh, every CEO should see this. The Ultimate Partner Winter Retreat is gonna be here in the Boca Studio. This is the third year that we’re gonna be here in Boca. [00:10:10] Vince Menzione: This is always a favorite of our community members, our executive members, our sponsors and speakers. We’ll all be here in the studio, which is a really intimate. Setting, we can see upwards of 40, 50 people. Uh, we’ll be hosting an incredible dinner at the Boca Resort overlooking the golf course. That’s an incredible property. [00:10:32] Vince Menzione: And, uh, we’d love to have you join us. Thank you for being part of the ultimate Partner community, and I hope to see you this year at one of our events. Thank you.

Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this episode, we dive deep into Microsoft’s new “Frontier Firm” concept—a strategic framework designed to help organizations become AI-first. We explore the four key pillars of the success framework: enriching employee experiences, reinventing customer engagement, reshaping business processes, and bending the innovation curve. The discussion also covers critical updates from Microsoft Ignite, including the introduction of “IQs” (Work, Fabric, and Foundry) and the new Agent 365 for observability. Finally, we outline the massive opportunities for Azure partners, from core migration to building unified data platforms and deploying AI agents. Key Takeaways A Frontier Firm is an AI-first organization built on a four-pillar success framework. The four pillars are enriching employee experience, customer engagement, business process, and innovation. New “IQs” (Work, Fabric, Foundry) provide the intelligence layer for AI agents to operate effectively. Agent 365 was announced to provide security, identity, and observability for AI agents. Change management is just as critical as technology implementation for AI adoption. Azure partners have three main opportunities: migration, unified data platforms, and building AI apps. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Frontier Firm framework, Microsoft AI strategy, Azure partner ecosystem, AI-first organization, enriching employee experiences, reinventing customer engagement, bending the innovation curve, Work IQ, Fabric IQ, Foundry IQ, Agent 365, AI observability, AI agents, Azure migration, unified data platform, Microsoft Ignite announcements, AI change management, Ultimate Partner winter retreat, Boca studio, ISV success, Azure incentives, tech leadership. https://youtu.be/ZbS61Kr6gGw?si=_ET6-Z5i2JYvFj1c Transcript: [00:00:00] Cyril Belikoff: AI is changing our daily operations. And how can, uh, on a day-to-day, uh, basis can those people get their heads around what AI is and then help them, um, you know, leverage ai more [00:00:16] Vince Menzione: talking about leadership, Microsoft’s leadership around frontier firms. How should partners think about frontier firms? [00:00:23] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, it’s a great question. [00:00:25] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, in the last, you know, six months or so, we introduced, uh, this concept of a frontier firm, which is really around an organization that is AI first. Yeah. Uh, now of course that’s not new. Um, but really we wanted to try and leverage all the experiences that we’ve had with many, many customers and partners and put it into some sort of. [00:00:47] Cyril Belikoff: Success framework and provide sort of, uh, uh, ingredients, if you will, on how to best get there. And so we came up with the success framework for Becoming Frontier, uh, in, in four areas. One is about, uh, enriching employee experiences, reinventing customer engagement, reshaping business process, and bending the innovation curve. [00:01:07] Cyril Belikoff: And if you look at any of the innovation that’s happened around AI and, and, and becoming AI first, um. All of the projects that we’ve done, the thousands, the tens of thousands of projects on a LA we’ve done have fallen into one of those four categories. So we really, we, we spoke about the success framework and how we can help customers, you know, become frontier. [00:01:28] Vince Menzione: Take us through it one more time. Maybe just a, a, a few, a little comment on each one of those four, because I think, yeah. Every single one of ’em standing on their own is so important for organizations. [00:01:36] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. That if you really think about it, it’s about how are we driving business outcomes. So the first one is en enriching employee experiences. [00:01:44] Cyril Belikoff: Nice. So each of us is an employee of some organization. And how is that organization enriching that experience, leveraging AI so that individuals can do great work, uh, whether they’re a developer. Or a marketer like myself or a salesperson or someone in HR or finance, AI is changing our daily operations. [00:02:06] Cyril Belikoff: And how can, uh, on a day-to-day, uh, basis can those people get their heads around what AI is and then help them, um, you know, leverage AI more? Then there’s reinventing customer engagement that’s really about. Our, our customer’s customer. And so how do we rethink that, uh, help them rethink those engagements with ai. [00:02:28] Cyril Belikoff: The third is reshaping business process. Of course, uh, we know about the opportunity with AI and agents and how we can streamline process, you know, remove hurdle, move, remove friction, make it faster and easier. Then the final is about bending the innovation curve, and that’s really about the new wave of, of experiences and applications and maybe even business models that might come up for our customers and how we help them with ai. [00:02:54] Cyril Belikoff: So, uh, like I mentioned, this concept of becoming frontier is relatively new, but we have the success framework on those four areas and, and deep experience in those four areas where we’ve helped, you know, thousands and thousands of customers over the last three or four years. [00:03:09] Vince Menzione: So you lead the Azure partner business. [00:03:11] Vince Menzione: How do you think about product strategy and can you share more about Azure partner opportunities specifically? [00:03:21] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Um, I’ll take a little, a, a minor step back and talk just more broad, more broadly about, uh, Microsoft and then I’ll drill into Azure. It’s a great question. I love Azure. As you know, I’m Yes. [00:03:32] Cyril Belikoff: Um, part of the Azure team, um, but I, I mentioned becoming Frontier and at. At, um, at Ignite, we announced some company-wide announcements around products that we have available to help fulfill on those promises of becoming Frontier. Um, we announced three, what we call IQs, a work iq, a Fabric IQ, and a Foundry iq. [00:03:54] Cyril Belikoff: Those are really the intelligence within the organization that your AI and agents can leverage as a platform to get smarter. So Work IQ is essentially the knowledge about your employees and how your employees work. Um, of course, that’s, uh, confidential and proprietary to you, so no one else gets to see it. [00:04:12] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. But we provide you with the ability to leverage that information so that employees can, you know, work better. Then Fabric iq, that’s the how your business operates. Uh, so your business processes and then Foundry iq, that’s the sort of business knowledge, how, you know, different types of knowledge, whether it’s a database or a web storage or. [00:04:31] Cyril Belikoff: Document storage and how you can curate that so that you can have AI and agents sort of get smarter in the organization. Nice. And then of course, observability. You want to be able to observe all of this as an organization. AI can do interesting things and so you want to, you know, govern and observe. And so we announce this thing called Agent 365. [00:04:49] Cyril Belikoff: They’ve got a lot of news, which, um, just think about that as a, um. Like Microsoft 365 provides security and identity for a human agent. 365 does that for agents. So of course you want to make sure that agents, uh, have access to some things, not everything. They have an identity so you can track them and what they’ve, and what they’ve done on your behalf. [00:05:12] Cyril Belikoff: Um, and, uh, there’s observability in terms of, you know, how they operate. So we made a ton of product announcements to serve how we are helping customers becoming frontier. So lots of great new and, and lots of opportunity. ’cause as you, as you know, um, in ai it’s not only about the technology implementation or project identification, there’s a lot of change management there, um, in, in, in the technical systems, but in humans like. [00:05:40] Cyril Belikoff: We all workers today, and we, we operate our daily work in a certain way. In order to operate differently with ai, we have to train ourselves and there’s a bunch of change management opportunity for partners in addition to the technology adopt, uh, adoption implementation opportunity. So that’s sort of at the all up Microsoft level for Azure. [00:06:01] Cyril Belikoff: Obviously Azure’s, you know, fabric and foundry I mentioned earlier, that’s part of Azure and so yeah. Azure is the AI foundation, but we have other areas that customers are looking to us for. First is, you know, core migration and modernization. There are many customers that have plenty on premises estate and in order to Yeah. [00:06:19] Cyril Belikoff: Put AI around their data, it needs to be in the cloud. Exactly. Um, and so we’re still working with customers to migrate and modernize their infrastructure and then build a unified data platform. Uh, sort of the next area. Once they get the, their data in the cloud, they wanna stitch it together, whether it’s structured data or unstructured data into one sort of experience. [00:06:41] Cyril Belikoff: And then finally, obviously you wanna build AI apps and agents on top of all of that. So those are three major areas and tons of opportunities for partners, you know, in those areas. Uh, through things like our incentive programs, uh, Azure accelerates our, our, um, program for software companies or ISVs IV success, all layering out incentives, programs, and assistance to help customers in those three or four areas. [00:07:06] Vince Menzione: The Ultimate Partner Winter Retreat is gonna be here in the Boca Studio. This is the third year that we’re gonna be here in Boca. This is always a favorite of our community members, our executive members. Our sponsors and speakers, we’ll all be here in the studio, which is a really intimate setting. We can see it upwards of 40, 50 people. [00:07:29] Vince Menzione: Uh, we’ll be hosting an incredible dinner at the Boca Resort overlooking the golf course. That’s an incredible property. And, uh, we’d love to have you join us. Thank you for being part of the ultimate Partner community, and I hope to see you this year at one of our events. Thank you.

Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this high-impact podcast episode to kick off 2026, Vince Menzione sits down with Jay McBain (Canalys/Informa) to decode the tectonic shifts reshaping the technology ecosystem. Jay reveals why the tech economy is forecasting double-digit growth while the broader economy lags, introducing a “Tale of Two Cities” where direct infrastructure sales are booming but partner influence is more critical than ever. He explains the drop in channel transact share to 66.7% and why the “96% Partner Assist” is the new metric for success. Jay also details the shift away from traditional “Gold/Silver/Bronze” programs toward point systems that recognize partners at every one of the “28 moments” in the customer journey, from influence to long-term retention. Key Takeaways The tech industry is forecast to grow 10.2% in 2026, outpacing the global economy’s 2.7% growth. Channel transact share has dropped from 75% to a forecast of 66.7% as infrastructure deals go direct. Nvidia and the “Magnificent Seven” are driving a massive direct infrastructure build-out for the next era. Microsoft measures a 96% “Partner Assist” rate, with up to seven partners involved in every deal. 80% of customers now prioritize partner certifications and competencies over relationships when choosing partners. The number one request from partners is to be recognized for value across all 28 moments, not just the point of sale. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Jay McBain, Canalys, Informa Tech, Partner Assist, 28 Moments, Tech Growth 2026, Channel Strategy, Nvidia, Infrastructure Buildout, Partner Economics, Microsoft Ecosystem, AWS, Direct Sales, Indirect Sales, Partner Influence, Multiplier Effect, Customer Journey, Partner Programs, Tech Economy, Ecosystem Orchestration. https://youtu.be/ntogEr6mjKg?si=_AaBPBfv9KcMRA9D Transcript: [00:00:00] Jay McBain: By the way, marketplaces, the massive growth in marketplaces for everyone that doesn’t own the marketplace is also an indirect sale. It should be helping these numbers. Yeah, so, but there’s one company that’s driving and happens to be the most valuable company in the world right now. [00:00:15] Vince Menzione: Let’s start off with the first, my burning question I have first, let’s cover it first. [00:00:21] Vince Menzione: If you had a sum up 2026 for partners in one sentence. What is it and what are people still underestimating? [00:00:29] Jay McBain: Yeah, it’s one, one word is probably opportunity. Opportunity. Um, so we look around the world, uh, the world economy without technology in it is gonna grow at 2.7%. That’s about $120 trillion with technology in it, technology industry, we’re forecasting to grow by double digits. [00:00:47] Jay McBain: Amazing. You know, in a world that’s growing at two, uh, we’re expecting 10.2%. Growth. And this industry, as you know, is surrounded by partners. Yes. And there are opportunities in hardware, in software, in services, in telco, all the different parts of the customer’s budget. And to look through the double digits though, I mean the, the extension of the sentence is, it’s a tale of two cities. [00:01:11] Jay McBain: Yeah. I was gonna ask you about this. Police do. There isn’t an opportunity in every slice. You know, some of the slices are shrinking by single digits. Some of them are growing by low single digits, but some of them are in the 20, 30, 40% growth range. And this is what partners are starting to think, these tectonic shifts that are happening, the ultimate partnerships that are happening are in very specific places that you kicked off this session talking about. [00:01:35] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So I would love to di dive in here because we have your, we have your slide up behind us. In fact, in talking about this $6.1 trillion economy around te uh, tech and telco and this opportunity. So, you know, we’re, there are gonna be winners and losers right in, in terms of these, uh, these segments or slices of the economy. [00:01:55] Vince Menzione: We can talk about that now. I, I think maybe it would be a good idea to talk about both the channel and, and why the par the channel plays such a big role in this growth. And then talk about what the winners and losers are gonna be. [00:02:07] Jay McBain: Yeah, I mean, broader. Um, actually if we go to the next, uh, slide, there is, um, a declining number and in the world economy that 120 trillion, 75% of it. [00:02:20] Jay McBain: Uh, moves indirectly. You bought your last car from a dealer. Yeah. You bought your last, uh, TV from a retailer, you know, peanut butter from a grocer, that type of thing. But the agencies, the brokers, the resellers, the retailers, the franchisees, the gas stations, pharmacies, grocery, all the different parts of the 27 industries, you know, play an incredible role. [00:02:40] Jay McBain: Our industry was at 75, not just three years ago. Wow. It dropped to 73.2. Two years ago, down to 70.1 last year, and this year’s forecast to be 66.7, so it’s dropping by about 3% each year and it’s this how money changes hands. Yeah. By the way, marketplaces, the massive growth in marketplaces for everyone that doesn’t own the marketplace is also an indirect sale. [00:03:05] Jay McBain: It should be helping these numbers. Yeah, so, but there’s one company that’s driving and happens to be the most valuable company in the world right now, Nvidia. Yeah. And the broader data center buildup mostly on consumer side, but this infrastructure data center build out globally happening right now is mostly happening direct. [00:03:22] Jay McBain: Yeah. There are the magnificent seven who are spending hundreds of billions of dollars each. On these chips and on this, uh, capability and capacity for this next 20 year era. And this is not a resell gain. They’re not buying through distribution and not buying through a reseller. And that’s where you talk about haves and have nots. [00:03:40] Jay McBain: You talk about this economy that, you know, Nvidia for example, was growing at triple digits, quarter in, quarter out, you know, becoming the most valuable company. And it’s not. A traditional technology opportunity, right? There isn’t managed service providers inside these data centers. There isn’t technology folks like VARs and system integrators in plugging in the equipment. [00:04:02] Jay McBain: Yeah. So we gotta watch and, and look at where this next shift takes us and where this multiplier opportunity wraps around it. So that’s the second number here. 96%. Which hasn’t changed. This is a number by the way, that Microsoft measures Yes. Understand. And, and Microsoft looks at it and, you know, second most valuable company in the world measures every deal they’re in and then have been for decades. [00:04:26] Jay McBain: And they measure this 96% of partner assist upwards of seven partners in every one of their deals. And looking at this partner assist number is what drives them. And in Microsoft’s case. You know, perhaps without a better product price or uh, promotion than their lead competitor. AWS, they’ve outgrown them for 26 straight quarters. [00:04:45] Jay McBain: Yes. And they point to place as the reason why that two, three, maybe even four of those seven partners may be leading with Microsoft in critical moments. And so every company, large, medium, and small, look at this partner assist number. And this is where we take that ecosystem conversation. [00:05:02] Vince Menzione: So with 96% partner assist, why do partners touch, touching, everything still feel invisible in many cases. [00:05:11] Vince Menzione: And what’s the one move that they, they make? Or need to make to make them undeniable to [00:05:15] Jay McBain: vendors in 2026? Yeah, I mean, this is a long legacy. There’s 44 years of legacy of being measured at the point of sale where programs were built and paid at the point of sale. Yeah. Assuming you did a bunch of stuff like consulting and design and advisory before the point of sale, assuming you’re gonna stay after the sale and get the renewal and get the upsell, cross sell, and enrichment, there was this assumption, but you were really recognized only at one moment. [00:05:41] Jay McBain: And when we did the survey last year across, you know, 20,000 partners around the world, the number one thing they’re asking vendors for now. Is to recognize, measure monitor me at every moment. Mm-hmm. 28 of them before the sale every 30 days. Forever after the sale. Yep. At the point of sale, the provisioning, the procurement, all the pieces of where we add value. [00:06:02] Jay McBain: And now Microsoft was one of the leaders that came out with a point system over three years ago to say, we’re gonna start measuring and, you know, spreading the program dollars around a little bit like peanut butter. There’s over 400 companies now who have followed suit. You know, Cisco goes live in two weeks, so we’re in this mode now where the world is changing of economics, of partnering. [00:06:23] Jay McBain: It’s changing how recognition happens and it’s the number one thing partners want. [00:06:27] Vince Menzione: Yeah, we’re moving away from the gold, silver, bronze, uh, days of the past and, and tying ’em to these moments. In particular, the Ultimate Partner Winter retreat is gonna be here in the Boca Studio. This is the third year. [00:06:41] Vince Menzione: That we’re gonna be here in Boca. This is always a favorite of our community members, our executive members, our sponsors and speakers. We’ll all be here in the studio, which is a really intimate setting. We can see it upwards of 40, 50 people. We’ll be hosting an incredible dinner at the Boca Resort overlooking the golf course. [00:07:01] Vince Menzione: That’s an incredible property and uh, we’d love to have you join us. Thank you for being part of the ultimate Partner community, and I hope to see you this year at one of our events. Thank you.

Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. AI agents are your next customers. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/  Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this exclusive interview, Vince Menzione sits down with Darryl Peek, Vice President for Partner Sales (Public Sector) at Elastic, to decode how Elastic achieved the rare “triple crown”—winning Partner of the Year across Microsoft, Amazon, and Google Cloud simultaneously. Darryl breaks down the engineering-first approach that makes Elastic sticky with hyperscalers, reveals the rigorous metrics behind their partner health scorecard, and shares his personal “one-page strategy” for aligning mission, vision, and execution. From leveraging generative AI for cleaner sales hygiene to the timeless lesson of the “Acre of Diamonds,” this conversation offers a masterclass in building high-performance partner ecosystems in the public sector and beyond. https://youtu.be/__GE0r2fPuk Key Takeaways Elastic achieved “Pinnacle” status by aligning engineering roadmaps directly with hyperscaler innovations to become essential infrastructure. Successful public sector sales require a dual approach: leveraging resellers for contract access while driving domain-specific co-sell motions. Partner relationships outperform contracts; consistency in communication is more valuable than only showing up for renewals. Effective partner organizations track “influence” revenue just as rigorously as direct bookings to capture the full value of SI relationships. Generative AI can automate sales hygiene, turning scattered meeting notes into actionable CRM data and reducing friction for sales teams. The “Acre of Diamonds” philosophy reminds leaders that the greatest opportunities often lie within their current ecosystem, not in distant new markets. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Keywords: Elastic, Darryl Peek, public sector sales, hyperscaler partnership, Microsoft Partner of the Year, AWS Partner of the Year, Google Cloud Partner, partner ecosystem strategy, co-sell motion, partner metrics, channel sales, government contracting, Carahsoft, generative AI in sales, sales hygiene, Russell Conwell, Acre of Diamonds, open source search, observability, security SIM, vector search, retrieval augmented generation, LLM agnostic, partner enablement, influence revenue, channel booking, SI relationships, strategic alliances. Transcript: Darryl Peek Audio Episode [00:00:00] Darryl Peek: I say, I tell my team from time to time, the difference between contacts and contracts is the R and that’s the relationship. So if you’re not building the relationship, then how do you expect that partner to want to lean in? Don’t just show up when you have a contract. Don’t just show up when you have a renewal. [00:00:13] Darryl Peek: Make sure that you are reaching out and letting them know what is happening. Don’t just talk to me when you need a renewal, right? When you’re at end of quarter and you want me to bring a deal forward, [00:00:23] Vince Menzione: welcome to the Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi. Own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. [00:00:34] Vince Menzione: We just came off Ultimate Partner live at Caresoft Training Center in Reston, Virginia. Over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this episode brings you right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in. So we have another privilege, an incredible partner, another like we call these, if you’ve heard our term, pinnacle. [00:01:00] Vince Menzione: I think it’s a term that’s not widely used, but we refer to Pinnacle as the partners that have achieved the top rung. They’ve become partners of the year. And our next presenter, our next interview is going to be with an organization. And a person that represents an organization that has been a pinnacle partner actually for all three Hyperscalers, which is really unusual. [00:01:24] Vince Menzione: Elastic has been partner of the Year award winner across Microsoft, Amazon, and Google Cloud, so very interesting. And Darrell Peak, who is the leader for the public sector organization, he’s here in the Washington DC area, was kind enough. Elastic is a sponsor event, and Darryl’s been kind enough to join me for a discussion about what it takes to be a Pinnacle partner. [00:01:47] Vince Menzione: So incredibly well. Excited to welcome you, Darryl. Thank you, sir. Good to have you. I love you. I love your smile, man. You got an incredible smile. Thank you. Thank you, Vince. Thank you. So Darryl, I probably didn’t do it any justice, but I was hoping you could take us through your role and responsibilities at Elastic, which is an incredible organization. [00:02:08] Vince Menzione: Alright. Yeah, [00:02:09] Darryl Peek: absolutely. So Darrell Peak vice President for partner sales for the US public sector at Elastic. I’ve been there about two and a half years. Responsible for our partner relationships across all partner types, whether that’s the system integrators, resellers, MSPs, OEMs, distribution Hyperscalers, and our Technology Alliance partners. [00:02:26] Darryl Peek: And those are partners that aren’t built on the Elastic platform. In regards to how my partner team interacts with our team. Our ecosystem. We are essentially looking to further and lean in with our partners in order for them to, one, understand what Elastic does since we’re such a diverse tool, but also work with our field to understand what are their priorities and how do they identify the right partners for the right requirements. [00:02:50] Darryl Peek: In regards to what Elastic is and what it does elastic is a solution that is actually founded on search and we’re an open source company. And one of the things that I actually did when I left the government, so I worked for the government for a number of years. I left, went and worked for Salesforce, then worked for Google ran their federal partner team and then came over to Elastic because I wanted to. [00:03:11] Darryl Peek: Understand what it meant to be at an open source company. Being at an open source company is quite interesting ’cause you’re competing against yourself. [00:03:17] Vince Menzione: Yeah, that’s true. [00:03:18] Darryl Peek: So it’s pretty interesting. But elastic was founded in 2012 as a search company. So when you talk about search, we are the second most used platform behind Google. [00:03:28] Darryl Peek: So many of you have already used Elastic. Maybe on your way here, if you use Uber and Lyft, that is elastic. That is helping you get here. Oh, that is interesting. If you use Netflix, if you use wikipedia.com, booking.com, eBay, home Depot, all of those are search capabilities. That Elastic is happening to power in regards to what else we do. [00:03:47] Darryl Peek: We also do observability, which is really around application monitoring, logging, tracing, and metrics. So we are helping your operations team. Pepsi is a customer as well as Cisco. Wow. And then the last thing that we do is security when we’re a SIM solution. So when we talk about sim, we are really looking to protect networks. [00:04:03] Darryl Peek: So we all, we think that it’s a data problem. So with that data problem, what we’re trying to do is not only understand what is happening in the network, but also we are helping with threat intelligence, endpoint and cloud security. So all those elements together is what Elastic does. And we only do it two ways. [00:04:18] Darryl Peek: We’re one platform and we can be deployed OnPrem and in the cloud. So that’s a little bit about me and the company. Hopefully it was clear, [00:04:24] Vince Menzione: I’ve had elastic people on stage. You’ve done, that’s the best answer I’ve had. What does Elastic do? I used to hear all this hyperbole and what? [00:04:32] Vince Menzione: What? Now I really understand what you do is an organiz. And the name of the company was Elasticsearch. [00:04:36] Darryl Peek: It was [00:04:37] Vince Menzione: elastic at one time when I first. Worked with you. It was Elasticsearch. [00:04:40] Darryl Peek: Absolutely. Yeah. So many moons ago used to be called the Elk Stack and it stood for three things. E was the Elasticsearch which is a search capability. [00:04:48] Darryl Peek: L is Logstash, which is our logging capability. And Cabana is essentially our visualization capability. So it was called Elk. But since we’ve acquired so many companies and built so much capability into the platform, we can now call it the elastic. Platform. [00:05:00] Vince Menzione: So talk to me about your engagement with the hyperscalers. [00:05:02] Vince Menzione: You’ve been partner of the Year award winner with all three, right? I mentioned that, and you were, you worked for Google for a period of time. Yes. So tell us about, like, how does that work? What does that engagement look like? And why do you get chosen as partner of the year? What are the things that stand out when you’re working with these hyperscalers [00:05:19] Darryl Peek: and with that we are very fortunate to be recognized. [00:05:23] Darryl Peek: So many of the organizations that are out there are doing some of the same capabilities that we do, but they can’t claim that they won a part of the year for all three hyperscalers in the same year. We are able to do that because we believe in the power of partnership, not only from a technology perspective, but also from a sales perspective. [00:05:39] Darryl Peek: So we definitely lean in with our partnerships, so having our engineers talk, having our product teams talk, and making sure that we’re building capabilities that actually integrate within the cloud service providers. And also consistently building a roadmap that aligns with the innovation that the cloud service providers are also building towards. [00:05:56] Darryl Peek: And then making sure that we’re a topic of discussion. So elastic. From a search capability, we do semantic search, vector search, but also retrieval augmented generation, which actually is LLM Agnostic. So when you say LLM Agnostic, whether you want to use Gemini, Claude or even Chad, GBT, those things are something that Elastic can integrate in, but it actually helps reduce the likelihood of hallucination. [00:06:18] Darryl Peek: So when we’re building that kind of solution, the cloud service provider’s you’re making it easy for us, and when you make it easy, you become very attractive and therefore you’re. Likely gonna come. So it becomes [00:06:28] Vince Menzione: sticky in that regard. Very sticky. So it sounds like very much an engineer, a lot of emphasis on the engineering aspects of the business. [00:06:35] Vince Menzione: I know you’re an engineer by background too, right? So the engineering aspects of the business means that you’re having alignment with the engineering organizations of those companies at a very deep level. [00:06:44] Darryl Peek: Absolutely. So I’m [00:06:45] Vince Menzione: here. [00:06:45] Darryl Peek: Yeah. And being at Elastic has been pretty amazing. So coming from Google, we had so many different solutions, so many different SKUs, but Elastic releases every eight weeks. [00:06:54] Darryl Peek: So right before you start to understand the last release, the next release is coming out and we’re already at 9.2 and we just released 9.0 in May. So it’s really blazing fast on the capability that we’re really pushing the market, but it’s really hard to make sure that we get it in front of our partners. [00:07:10] Darryl Peek: So when we talk about our partner enablement strategy, we’re just trying to make sure that we get the right information in front of the right partners at the right time, so this way they can best service their customers. [00:07:19] Vince Menzione: So let’s talk about partner strategy. Alyssa Fitzpatrick was on stage with me at our last event, and she Alyssa’s fantastic. [00:07:25] Vince Menzione: She is incredible. Yes, she is. She was a former colleague at Microsoft Days. Yes. And then she, we had a really interesting conversation. About what it takes, like being in, in a company and then working with the partners in general. And you have, I’m sure you have a lot of the similarities in how you have to engage with these organizations. [00:07:42] Vince Menzione: You’re working across the hyperscalers, you’re also working with the ecosystem too. Yes. ’cause the delivery, you have delivery partners as well. Absolutely. So tell us more about that. [00:07:50] Darryl Peek: So we kinda look at it from a two, two ways from the pre-sales motion and then the post-sales. From the pre-sales side. [00:07:56] Darryl Peek: What we’re trying to do is really maximize our, not only working with partners, because within public sector, you need to get access to customers through contract vehicles. So if you want to get access to some, for instance, the VA or through GSA or others, you have to make sure you’re aligned with the right partners who have access to. [00:08:12] Darryl Peek: That particular agency, but also you want domain expertise. So as you’re working with those system integrators, you wanna make sure that they have capability that aligns. So whether it is a security requirement, you wanna work with someone who specializes in security, observability and search. So that’s the way that we really look at our partner ecosystem, but those who are interested in working with us. [00:08:30] Darryl Peek: Because everybody doesn’t necessarily have a emphasis on working with a new technology partner, [00:08:36] Vince Menzione: right? [00:08:36] Darryl Peek: So what we’re trying to do is saying how do we build programs, incentives and sales plays that really does align and strike the interest of that particular partner? So when we talk about it I tell my team, you have to, my grandfather to say, plan your work and work your plan. And if you fail a plan, you plan to fail. So being able to not only have a strong plan in place, but then execute against that plan, check against that plan as you go through the fiscal year, and then see how you come out at the end of the fiscal year to see are we making that progress? [00:09:01] Darryl Peek: But on the other side of it, and what I get stressed about with my sales team and saying what does partners bring to us? So where are those partner deal registrations? What is the partner source numbers? How are we creating more pipeline? And that is where we’re now saying, okay, how can we navigate and how can we make it easier? [00:09:17] Darryl Peek: And how can we reduce friction in order for the partner to say, okay, elastic’s easy to work with. I can see value in, oh, by the way, I can make some money with. [00:09:25] Vince Menzione: So take us through, have there been examples of areas where you’ve had to like, break through to this other side in terms of growing the partner ecosystem? [00:09:33] Vince Menzione: What’s worked, what hasn’t worked? Yes, I’d love to learn more about that. [00:09:36] Darryl Peek: I’ll say that and I tell my team one, you partner program is essential, right? If you don’t have an attractive partner program in regards to how they come on board, how they’re incentivized the right amount of margin, they won’t even look at you. [00:09:49] Darryl Peek: The second thing is really how do you engage? So a lot of things start with relationships. I think partnerships are really about relationships. I say I tell my team from time to time, the difference between contacts and contracts is the R and that’s the relationship. So if you’re not building the relationship, then how do you expect that partner to want to lean in? [00:10:07] Darryl Peek: Don’t just show up when you have a contract. Don’t just show up when you have a renewal. Make sure that you are reaching out and letting them know what is happening. I like the what Matt brought up in saying, okay, talk to me when you have a win. Talk to me when you have something to talk about. [00:10:22] Darryl Peek: Don’t just talk to me when you need a renewal. When you’re at end the quarter and you want me to bring a deal forward, that doesn’t help ab absolutely. [00:10:28] Vince Menzione: So engineering organizations, sales organizations, what are, what does a healthy partnership look like for you? [00:10:35] Darryl Peek: So I look at metrics a lot and we use a number of tools and I know folks are using tools out there. [00:10:41] Darryl Peek: I won’t name any tools for branding purposes, but in regards to how we look at tools. So some things that we measure closely. Of course it’s our partner source numbers, so partner source, bookings, and pipeline. We look at our partner attached numbers and pipeline as well as the amount or percentage of partner attached business that we have in regards to our overall a CV number. [00:11:00] Darryl Peek: We also look at co-sell numbers, so therefore we are looking at not only how. A partner is coming to us, but how is a partner helping us in closing the deal even though they didn’t bring us the deal? We’re also looking at our cloud numbers and saying what amount of deals and how much business are we doing with our cloud service providers? [00:11:15] Darryl Peek: Because of course we wanna see that number go up year over year. We wanna actually help with that consumption number because not only are we looking at it from a SaaS perspective, but also if the customer has to commit we can help burn that down as well. We also look at influence numbers. [00:11:27] Darryl Peek: Now, one of the harder things to do within a technology business is. Capturing all that si goodness. And saying how do I reflect the SI if they’re not bringing me the deal? And I can’t attribute that amount of deal to that particular partner, right? And the way that we do that is we just tag them to the influence. [00:11:44] Darryl Peek: So we’re able to now track influence. And also the M-S-P-O-E-M work that we are also tracking and also we’re tracking the royalties. And lastly is the professional service work that we do with those partners. So we’re looking to go up into the right where we start them out at our select level, we go to our premier level and then our elite level. [00:12:00] Darryl Peek: But left and to the right, I say you gotta go from zero to one, one to five, five to 10, and then 10 to 25. So if we can actually see that progression. That is where we’re really starting to see health in the partnership, but also the executive alignment is really important. So when our CEO is able to meet with the fellow CEO of the co partner company that is really showing how we are progressing, but also our VPs and others that are engaged. [00:12:20] Darryl Peek: So those are things that we really do measure. We do have a health score card and also, we track accreditations, we track certifications as well as training outcomes based on our sales place. [00:12:30] Vince Menzione: Wow. There’s a lot of metrics there. Yeah. So you didn’t bring, you didn’t bring any slides with that out? [00:12:35] Darryl Peek: Oh, no. I’m not looking at slides, by the way. [00:12:40] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about marketplace. [00:12:42] Darryl Peek: All right? [00:12:42] Vince Menzione: Because we’ve had a lot of conversations about marketplace. We’ve got both vendors up here talking about marketplace and the importance of marketplace, right? You’ve been a Marketplace Award winner. We haven’t really talked about that, like that motion per se. [00:12:55] Vince Menzione: I’d love to s I’d love to hear from you like how you, a, what you had to overcome to get to marketplace, what the marketplace motion looks like for your organization, what a marketplace first motion looks like. ’cause a lot of your cut a. Are all your customers requiring a lot of direct selling effort or is it some of it through Marketplace? [00:13:14] Vince Menzione: Like how does it, how does that work for you? [00:13:15] Darryl Peek: So Elastic is a global organization. Yeah. So we’re, 40 different countries. So it depends on where we’re talking. So if we talk about our international business, which is our A PJ and EMEA business we are seeing a lot more marketplace and we’re seeing that those direct deals with customers. [00:13:28] Darryl Peek: Okay. And we’re talking about our mirror business. A significant amount goes through marketplace and where our customers are transacting with the marketplace and are listing. On the marketplace within public sector, it’s more of a resell motion. Okay. So we are working with our resellers. [00:13:39] Darryl Peek: So we work our primary distribution partner is Carahsoft. So you heard from Craig earlier. Yes. We have a strong relationship with Carahsoft and definitely a big fan of this organization. But in regards to how we do that and how we track it we are looking at better ways to, track that orchestration and consumption numbers in order to see not only what customers we’re working with, but how can we really accelerate that motion and really get those leads and transactions going. [00:14:03] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Very cool. And I think part of the reason why in, in the government or public sector space it has a lot to do with the commitments are different. Absolutely. So it’s not government agencies aren’t able to make the same level of commitments that, private sector organizations were able to make, so they were able to the Mac or Microsoft parlance and also a AWS’s parlance. [00:14:23] Vince Menzione: Yeah, [00:14:24] Darryl Peek: definitely a different dynamic. Yeah. And especially within the public sector. ’cause we have Gov Cloud to work with, right? That’s right. So we’re working with Microsoft or we’re working with AWS, they have their Gov cloud and then we Google, they don’t have a Gov cloud, but we still have to work with them differently. [00:14:35] Darryl Peek: Yeah. Within that space. That’s [00:14:36] Vince Menzione: right. That’s right. So it makes the motion a little bit differently there. So I think we talked through some of this. I just wanna make sure we cover our points [00:14:43] Darryl Peek: here. One thing I’ll do an aside, you talked about the acre of diamonds. I’m a big fan of that story. [00:14:47] Vince Menzione: Yeah, let’s talk about Russ Con. Yeah, [00:14:49] Darryl Peek: let’s talk about it. Do you all know about the Acre Diamonds? Have you all heard that story before? No. You have some those in the audience. [00:14:55] Vince Menzione: I, you know what, let’s talk about it. All [00:14:56] Darryl Peek: See, I’m from Philadelphia. [00:14:57] Vince Menzione: I didn’t know you were a family. My daughter went to Temple University. [00:14:59] Vince Menzione: Ah, [00:15:00] Darryl Peek: okay. That’s all I know. So Russell Conwell. So he was, a gentleman out of the Philadelphia area and he went around town to raise money and he wanted to raise money because he believed that there was a promise within a specific area. And as he continued to raise this money, he would tell a story. [00:15:14] Darryl Peek: And basically it was a story about a farmer in Africa. And the farmer in Africa, to make it really short was essentially looking to be become very wealthy. And because he wanted to become very wealthy, he believed that selling his farm and going off to a long distant land was the primary way for him to find diamonds. [00:15:28] Darryl Peek: And this farmer didn’t sold us. Sold his place, then went off to to this foreign land, and he ended up dying. And people thought that was the end of the story, but there was another farmer who bought that land and one time this big, and they called him the ot, came to the door and said you mind if I have some tea with you? [00:15:43] Darryl Peek: He said, all right, come on in. Have a drink. And as he had the drink, he looked upon the mantle and his mouth dropped. And then the farmer said what’s wrong? What do you say? He says, do you know what that is? No. He said no. Do you know what that is? He says, no. He said, that’s the biggest diamond I’ve ever seen, and the farmer goes. [00:16:01] Darryl Peek: That’s weird because there’s a bunch right in the back where I go grab my fruits and crops every day. So the idea of the acre diamonds and sometimes that you don’t need to go off to a far off land. It is actually sometimes right under your feet, and that is a story that helped fund the starting of Temple University. [00:16:16] Vince Menzione: I’m gonna need to take you at every single event so you can tell this story again. That’s an awesome job. Oh, I love it. And yeah, they founded a Temple University. Yeah. Which has become an incredible university. My daughter, like I said, my daughter’s a graduate, so we’re Temple fan. That’s great story. [00:16:31] Vince Menzione: That is a very cool, I didn’t realize you were a Philadelphia guy too, so that is awesome. Go birds. Go birds. All right, good. So let’s talk, I think we talked a little bit about your ecosystem approach, but maybe just a little bit more on this, like you said, like a lot of data, a lot of metrics but also a lot of these organizations also have to under understand the engineering side of things. [00:16:53] Vince Menzione: Oh, yeah. There’s a tremendous amount to become. Not everybody could just show up one day and become an elastic partner [00:16:58] Darryl Peek: absolutely. Absolutely. So take us [00:16:59] Vince Menzione: through that process. [00:17:00] Darryl Peek: Yeah. So one of the things that we are trying to mature and we have matured is our partner go to market. [00:17:06] Darryl Peek: So in order to join our partner ecosystem, you have to sign ’em through our partner portal. You have to sign our indirect reseller agreement. ’cause we do sell primarily within the public sector through distribution. And we only go direct if it is by exception. So you have to get justification through myself as well as our VP for public sector. [00:17:21] Darryl Peek: But we really do try to make sure that we can aggregate this because one thing that we have to monitor is terms and conditions. ’cause of course, working with the government, there’s a lot of terms and conditions. So we try to alleviate that by having it go through caresoft, they’re able to absorb some, so this way we can actually transact with the government. [00:17:36] Darryl Peek: In regards to the team though we try to really work closely with our solution architecture team. So this way we can develop clear enablement strategies with our partners so this way they know what it is we do, but also how to properly bring us up in a conversation. Also handle objections and also what are we doing to implement our solutions within other markets. [00:17:55] Darryl Peek: So those are things that we are doing as well as partner marketing. Top of funnel activity is really important, so we’re trying to differentiate what we’re doing with the field and field marketing. So you’re doing the leads and m qls and things of that nature also with partner marketing. So our partner marketing actually is driven by leads, but also we’re trying to transact. [00:18:10] Darryl Peek: And get Ps of which our partner deal registration. So that is how we align our partner go to market. And that is actually translating into our partner source outcomes. [00:18:18] Vince Menzione: And I think we have a slide that talks a little bit about your public sector partner strategy. [00:18:23] Darryl Peek: Oh yeah. Oh, I share that. So I thought maybe we could spin it. [00:18:25] Darryl Peek: Absolutely. [00:18:25] Vince Menzione: I know you we can’t see it, but they can. Oh, they can. Okay. Great. [00:18:29] Darryl Peek: There it’s there. [00:18:30] Vince Menzione: It’s career. [00:18:31] Darryl Peek: One thing, I think this was Einstein has said, if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. So that was the one thing. So I always was a big fan of creating a one page strategy. [00:18:39] Darryl Peek: And based on this one page strategy one of the things when I worked at Salesforce it was really about a couple things and the saying, okay, what are your bookings? And if you don’t have bookings, what does your pipeline look like? If you don’t have pipeline, what does your prospecting look like? [00:18:51] Darryl Peek: Yeah. If you don’t have prospecting what does your account plan look like? And if you don’t have an account plan, why are you here? Why are you here? Exactly. So those are the things that I really talk to my team about is just really a, it’s about bookings. It’s about pipeline. It’s about planning, enablement and execution. [00:19:05] Darryl Peek: It’s about marketing, branding and evangelism, and also about operational excellence and how to execute. Very cool. So being able to do that and also I, since I came from Salesforce, I talk to my team a lot about Salesforce hygiene. So we really talk about that a lot. So make, making sure we’re making proper use of chatter, but also as we talk about utilizing ai, we just try to. [00:19:21] Darryl Peek: How do we simplify that, right? So if we’re using Zoom or we’re using Google, how do we make sure that we’re capturing those meeting minutes, translating that, putting that into the system, so therefore we have a record of that engagement with that partner. So this is a continuous threat. So this way I don’t have to call my partner manager the entire time. [00:19:36] Darryl Peek: I can look back, see what actions, see what was discussed, and say, okay, how can we keep this conversation going? Because we shouldn’t have to have those conversations every time. I shouldn’t have to text you to say, give me the download on every partner. Every time. How do we automate that? And that’s really where you’re creating this context window with your Genive ai. [00:19:53] Darryl Peek: I think they said what 75% of organizations are using one AI tool. And I think 1% are mature in that. But also a number of organizations, it’s 90% of organizations are using generative AI tools to some degree. So we are using gen to bi. We do use a number of them. We have elastic GPT. Nice little brand there. [00:20:11] Darryl Peek: But yeah, we use that for not only understanding what’s in our our repositories and data lakes and data warehouses, but also what are some answers that we can have in regards to proposal responses, RP responses, RFI, responses and the like. [00:20:23] Vince Menzione: And you’re reaching out to the other LLMs through your tool? [00:20:26] Darryl Peek: We can actually interact with any LLM. So we are a LLM Agnostic. [00:20:29] Vince Menzione: Got it. Yep. That’s fantastic. And this slide is we’ll make this available if you don’t have a, yeah, have a chance. We’ll share it. I [00:20:36] Darryl Peek: am happy to share, yeah. And obviously happy to talk, reach out about it. Of, of course. I simplified it in order to account for you, but one of the things that I talk about is mission, vision of values. [00:20:45] Darryl Peek: And as we start with that is what is your mission now? How is anybody from Pittsburgh, anybody steal a fan? Oh wow. No, there’s a steel fan over [00:20:54] Vince Menzione: here. There’s one here. There’s a couple of ’em are out here. So I feel bad. [00:20:57] Darryl Peek: The reason why I put immaculate in there is for the immaculate reception, actually. [00:21:00] Darryl Peek: Yes. And basically saying that if you ever seen that play, it was not pretty at all. It was a very discombobulated play. Yeah. And I usually say that’s the way that you work with partners too, because when that deal doesn’t come in, when you gotta make a call, when you’re texting somebody at 11 o’clock at night, when you’re trying to get that at, right before quarter end. [00:21:17] Darryl Peek: Yeah. Before the end of it. It really is difficult, but it’s really creating that immaculate experience. You want that partner to come back. I know it’s challenging, but I appreciate how you leaned in with us. Yes, absolutely. I appreciate how you work with us. I appreciate how you held our hand through the process, and that’s what I tell my team, that we have to create that partner experience. [00:21:32] Darryl Peek: And maybe that’s a carryover from Salesforce, Dave. I don’t know. But also when we talk about enhancing or accelerating our partner. Our public sector outcomes that is really working with the customer, right? So customer experience has to be part of it. Like all of us have to be focused on that North star, and that is really how do we service the customer, and that’s what we choose to do. [00:21:48] Darryl Peek: But also the internal part. So I used to survey my team many moves ago, and I said, if we don’t get 80% satisfaction rate from our employees how do we get 60% satisfaction rate from our customers? Yeah. So really focus on that employee success and employee satisfaction. It’s so important, is very important. [00:22:03] Darryl Peek: So being able to understand what are the needs of your employees? Are you really addressing their concerns and are you really driving them forward? Are you challenging them? Are you creating pathways for progression? So those are things that I definitely try to do with my team. As well as just really encouraging, inspiring, yeah. [00:22:19] Darryl Peek: And just making sure that they’re having fun at the same time. [00:22:21] Vince Menzione: It shows up in such, I, there’s an airline I don’t fly any longer, and it was a million mile member of and I know it’s because of the way they treat their employees. [00:22:29] Vince Menzione: Because it cascades Right? [00:22:30] Darryl Peek: It does. Culture is important. [00:22:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Absolutely. [00:22:32] Darryl Peek: What is it? What Anderson Howard they say what col. Mark Andresen culture eat strategy for [00:22:37] Vince Menzione: breakfast. He strategy for breakfast? Yes. Very much this has been insightful. I really enjoyed having you here today. Really a great, you’re a lot of fun. You’re a lot of fun. [00:22:43] Vince Menzione: Darry, isn’t you? Amazing. So thank you for joining us. Thank you all. Thank And you’re gonna be, you’re gonna be sticking around for a little while today. I’m sticking around for a little while. I’ll be back in little later. I think people are gonna just en enjoy having a conversation with you, a little sidebar. [00:22:55] Darryl Peek: Absolutely. I’m looking forward to it. Thank you all for having me. Glad to be here. And thank you for giving the time today. [00:23:01] Vince Menzione: Thank you Darryl, so much. So appreciate it. And you’re gonna have to come join me on this Story Diamond tool. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Partner. [00:23:12] Vince Menzione: We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate partner experience. It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. [00:23:38] Vince Menzione: UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started as we’re taking this studio. And we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here, including our January live stream, the Boca Winter Retreat, and more to come. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level.

Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. AI agents are your next customers. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/  Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ https://youtu.be/vEdq8rpBM3I In this data-rich keynote, Jay McBain deconstructs the tectonic shifts reshaping the $5.3 trillion global technology industry, arguing that we are entering a new 20-year cycle where traditional direct sales models are obsolete. McBain explains why 96% of the industry is now surrounded by partners and how successful companies must pivot from “flywheels and theory” to a granular strategy focused on the seven specific partners present in every deal. From the explosion of agentic AI and the $163 billion marketplace revolution to the specific mechanics of multiplier economics, this discussion provides a roadmap for navigating the “decade of the ecosystem” where influence, trust, and integration—not just product—determine winners and losers. Key Takeaways Half of today’s Fortune 500 companies will likely vanish in the next 20 years due to the shift toward AI and ecosystem-led models. Every B2B deal now involves an average of seven trusted partners who influence the decision before a vendor even knows a deal exists. Microsoft has outpaced AWS growth for 26 consecutive quarters largely because of a superior partner-led geographic strategy. Marketplaces are projected to grow to $163 billion by 2030, with nearly 60% of deals involving partner funding or private offers. The “Multiplier Effect” is the new ROI, where partners can make up to $8.45 for every dollar of vendor product sold. Future dominance relies on five key pillars: Platform, Service Partnerships, Channel Partnerships, Alliances, and Go-to-Market orchestration. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Keywords: Jay McBain, Canalys, partner ecosystem, channel chief, agentic AI, marketplace growth, multiplier economics, B2B sales trends, tech industry forecast, service partnerships, strategic alliances, Microsoft vs AWS, distribution transformation, managed services growth, SaaS platforms, customer journey mapping, 28 moments of truth, future of reselling, technology spending 2025, ecosystem orchestration, partner multipliers. T Transcript: Jay McBain WORKFILE FOR TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Vince Menzione: Just up from, did you Puerto Rico last night? Puerto Rico, yes. Puerto Rico. He dodged the hurricane. Um, you all know him. Uh, let him introduce himself for those of you who don’t, but just thrilled to have on the stage, again, somebody who knows more about what’s going on in, in the, and has the pulse on this industry probably than just about anybody I know personally. [00:00:21] Vince Menzione: J Jay McBain. Jay, great to see you my friend. Alright, thank you. We have to come all the way. We live, we live uh, about 20 minutes from each other. We have to come all the way to Reston, Virginia to see each other, right? That’s right. Very good. Well, uh, that’s all over to you, sir. Thank you. [00:00:35] Jay McBain: Alright, well thank you so much. [00:00:36] Jay McBain: I went from 85 degrees yesterday to 45 today, but I was able to dodge that, uh, that hurricane, uh, that we kind of had to fly through the northern edge of, uh, wanna talk today about our industry, about the ultimate partner. I’m gonna try to frame up the ultimate partner as I walk through the data and the latest research that, uh, that we’ve been doing in the market. [00:00:56] Jay McBain: But I wanted to start here ’cause our industry moves in 20 year cycles, and if you look at the Fortune 500 and dial back 20 years from today, 52% of them no longer exist. As we step into the next 20 year AI era, half of the companies that we know and love today are not gonna exist. So we look at this, and by the way, if you’re not in the Fortune 500 and you don’t have deep pockets to buy your way outta problems, 71% of tech companies fail over the course of 10 years. [00:01:30] Jay McBain: Those are statistics from the US government. So I start to look at our industry and you know, you may look at the, you know, mainframe era from the sixties and seventies, mini computers, August the 12th, 1981, that first IBM, PC with Microsoft dos, version one, you know, triggered. A new 20 year era of client server. [00:01:51] Jay McBain: It was the time and I worked at IBM for 17 years, but there was a time where Bill Gates flew into Boca Raton, Florida and met with the IBM team and did that, you know, fancy licensing agreement. But after, you know, 20 years of being the most valuable company in the world and 13 years of antitrust and getting broken up, almost like at and TIBM almost didn’t make payroll. [00:02:14] Jay McBain: 13 years after meeting Bill Gates. Yeah, that’s how quickly things change in these eras. In 1999, a small company outta San Francisco called salesforce.com got its start. About 10 years later, Jeff Bezos asked a question in a boardroom, could we rent out our excess capacity and would other companies buy it? [00:02:35] Jay McBain: Which, you know, most people in the room laughed at ’em at the time. But it created a 20 year cloud era when our friends, our neighbors, our family. Saw Chachi PT for the first time in March of 2023. They saw the deep fakes, they saw the poetry, they saw the music. They came to us as tech people and said, did we just light up Skynet? [00:02:58] Jay McBain: And that consumer trend has triggered this next 20 years. I could walk through the richest people in the world through those trends. I could walk through the most valuable companies. It all aligns. ’cause by the way, Apple’s no longer at the top. Nvidia is at the top, Microsoft. Second, things change really quickly. [00:03:17] Jay McBain: So in that course of time, you start to look at our industry and as people are talking about a six and a half or $7 trillion build out of ai, that’s open AI and Microsoft numbers, that is bigger than our industry that’s taken over 50 years to build. This year, we’re gonna finish the year at $5.3 trillion. [00:03:36] Jay McBain: That’s from the smallest flower shop to the biggest bank. Biggest governments that Caresoft would, uh, serve biggest customer in the world is actually the federal government of the us. But you look at this pie chart and you look at the changes that we’re gonna go through over the next 20 years, there’s about a trillion dollars in hardware. [00:03:54] Jay McBain: There’s about a trillion dollars in software. If you look forward through all of the merging trends, quantum computing, humanoid robots, all the things that are coming that dollar to dollar software to hardware will continue to exist all the way through. We see services making up almost two thirds of this pie. [00:04:13] Jay McBain: Yesterday I was in a telco conference with at and t and Verizon and T-Mobile and some of the biggest wireless players and IT services, which happen to be growing faster than products. At the moment, there is more work to be done wrapping around the deal than the actual products that the customer is buying. [00:04:32] Jay McBain: So in an industry that’s growing at 7%. On top of the world economy that’s grown at 2.2. This is the fastest growing industry, and it will be at least for the next 10 years, if not 2070 0.1% of this entire $5 trillion gets transacted through partners. While what we’re talking to today about the ultimate partner, 96% of this industry is surrounded by partners in one way or another. [00:05:01] Jay McBain: They’re there before the deal. They’re there at the deal. They’re there after the deal. Two thirds of our industry is now subscription consumption based. So every 30 days forever, and a customer for life becomes everything. So if every deal in medium, mid-market, and higher has seven partners, according to McKinsey, who are those seven people trying to get into the deal? [00:05:25] Jay McBain: While there’s millions of companies that have come into tech over the last 10 to 20 years. Digital agencies, accountants, legal firms, everybody’s come in. The 250,000 SaaS companies, a million emerging tech companies, there’s a big fight to be one of those seven trusted people at the table. So millions of companies and tens of millions of people our competing for these slots. [00:05:49] Jay McBain: So one of the pieces of research I’m most proud of, uh, in my analyst career is this. And this took over two years to build. It’s a lot of logos. Not this PowerPoint slide, but the actual data. Thousands of people hours. Because guess what? When you look at partners from the top down, the top 1000 partners, by capability and capacity, not by resale. [00:06:15] Jay McBain: It’s not a ranking of CDW and insight and resale numbers. It is the surrounding. Consulting, design, architecture, implementations, integrations, managed services, all the pieces that’s gonna make the next 20 years run. So when you start to look at this, 98% of these companies are private, so very difficult to get to those numbers and, uh, a ton of research and help from AI and other things to get this. [00:06:41] Jay McBain: But this is it. And if you look at this list, there’s a thousand logos out of the million companies. There’s a thousand logos that drive two thirds of all tech services in the world. $1.07 trillion gets delivered by a thousand companies, but here’s where it gets fun. Those companies in the middle, in blue, the 30 of them deliver more tech services than the next 970. [00:07:08] Jay McBain: Combined the 970 combined in white deliver more tech services. Then the next million combined. So if you think we live in an 80 20 rule or maybe a 99, a 95 5 rule, or a 99 1 rule, we actually live in a 99.9 0.1 parallel principle. These companies spread around the world evenly split across the uh, different regions. [00:07:35] Jay McBain: South Africa, Latin America, they’re all over. They split. They split among types. All of the Venn diagram I just showed from GSIs to VARs to MSPs, to agencies and other types of companies. But this is a really rich list and it’s public. So every company in the world now, if you’re looking at Transactable data, if you’re looking at quantifiable data that you can go put your revenue numbers against, it represents 70 to 80% of every company in this room’s Tam. [00:08:08] Jay McBain: In one piece of research. So what do you do below that? How do you cover a million companies that you can’t afford to put a channel account manager? You can’t afford to write programs directly for well after the top down analysis and all the wallet share and you know exactly where the lowest hanging fruit is for most of your tam. [00:08:28] Jay McBain: The available markets. The obtainable markets. You gotta start from the community level grassroots up. So you need to ask the question for the million companies and the maybe a hundred thousand companies out there, partner companies that are surrounding your customer. These are the seven partners that surround your customer. [00:08:48] Jay McBain: What do they read, where do they go, and who do they follow? Interestingly enough, our industry globally equates to only a thousand watering holes, a thousand companies at the top, a thousand places at the bottom. 35% of this audience we’re talking. Millions of people here love events and there’s 352 of them like this one that they love to go to. [00:09:13] Jay McBain: They love the hallway chats, they love the hotel lobby bar, you know, in a time reminded by the pandemic. They love to be in person. It’s the number one way they’re influenced. So if you don’t have a solid event strategy and you don’t have a community team out giving out socks every week, your competitors might beat you. [00:09:31] Jay McBain: 12% of this audience loves podcasts. It’s the Joe Rogan effect of our industry. And while you know, you may not think the 121 podcasts out there are important, well, you’re missing 12% of your audience. It’s over a million people. If you’re not on a weekly podcast in one of these podcasts in the world, there’s still people that read one of the 106 magazines in the world. [00:09:55] Jay McBain: There are people that love peer groups, associations, they wanna be part of this. There’s 15 different ways people are influenced. And a solid grassroots strategy is how you make this happen. In the last 10 years, we’ve created a number of billionaires. Bottom up. They never had to go talk to la large enterprise. [00:10:15] Jay McBain: They never had to go build out a mid-market strategy. They just went and give away socks and new community marketing. And this has created, I could rip through a bunch of names that became unicorns just in the last couple of years, bottoms up. You go back to your board walking into next year, top down, bottom up. [00:10:34] Jay McBain: You’ve covered a hundred percent of your tam, and now you’ve covered it with names, faces, and places. You haven’t covered it with a flywheel or a theory. And for 44 years, we have gone to our board every fourth quarter with flywheels and theory. Trust me, partners are important. The channel is key to us. [00:10:57] Jay McBain: Well, let’s talk at the point of this granularity, and now we’re getting supported by technology 261 entrepreneurs. Many of them in the room actually here that are driving this ability to succeed with seven partners in every deal to exchange data to be able to exchange telemetry of these prospects to be able to see twice or three times in terms of pipeline of your target addressable market. [00:11:26] Jay McBain: All these ai, um, technologies, agentic technologies are coming into this. It’s all about data. It’s all about quantifiable names, faces, and places. Now none of us should be walking around with flywheels, so let’s flip the flywheels. No. Uh, so we also look at, and I sold PCs for 17 years and that was in the high times of 40% margins for partners. [00:11:55] Jay McBain: But one interesting thing when you study the p and l for broad base of partners around the world, it’s changed pretty significantly in this last 20 year era. What the cloud era did is dropped hardware from what used to be 84% plus the break fix and things that wrap around it of the p and l to now 16% of every partner in the world. [00:12:16] Jay McBain: 84% of their p and l is now software and services. And if you look at profitability, it’s worse. It’s actually 87% is profitability wise. They’ve completely shifted in terms of where they go. Now we look at other parts of our market. I could go through every part of the pie of the slide, but we’re watching each of the companies, and if you can see here, this is what we want to talk about in terms of ultimate partner. [00:12:43] Jay McBain: Microsoft has outgrown AWS for 26 straight quarters. They don’t have a better product. They don’t have a better price, they don’t have better promotion. It’s all place. And I’ll explain why you guess here in the light green line. Exactly. The day that Google went a hundred percent all in partner, every deal, even if a deal didn’t have a partner, one of the 4% of deals that didn’t have a partner, they injected a partner. [00:13:09] Jay McBain: You can see on the left side exactly where they did it. They got to the point of a hundred percent partner driven. Rebuilt their programs, rebuilt their marketplace. Their marketplace is actually larger than Microsoft’s, and they grew faster than Microsoft. A couple of those quarters. It is a partner driven future, and now I have Oracle, which I just walked by as I walked from the hotel. [00:13:31] Jay McBain: Oracle with their RPOs will start to join. Maybe the list of three hyperscalers becomes the list of four in future slides, but that’s a growth slide. Market share is different. AWS early and commanding lead. And it plays out, uh, plays out this way. But we’re at an interesting moment and I stood up six years ago talking about the decade of the ecosystem after we went through a decade of sales starting in 1999 when we all thought we were born to be salespeople. [00:14:02] Jay McBain: We managed territories with our gut. The sales tech stack would have it different, that sales was a science, and we ended the decade 2009, looking at sales very differently in 2009. I remember being at cocktail parties where CMOs would be joking around that 50% of their marketing dollars were wasted. They just didn’t know which 50%. [00:14:23] Jay McBain: And I’ll tell you, that was really funny. In 2009 till every 58-year-old CMO got replaced by a 38-year-old growth hacker who walked in with 15,348 SaaS companies in their MarTech and ad tech stack to solve the problem, every nickel of marketing by 2019 was tracked. Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot, HubSpot, driving this industry. [00:14:50] Jay McBain: Now, we stood up and said the 28 moments that come before a sale are pretty much all partner driven. In the best case scenario, a vendor might see four of the moments. They might come to your website, maybe they read an ebook, maybe they have a salesperson or a demo that comes in. That’s four outta 28 moments. [00:15:10] Jay McBain: The other 24 are done by partners. Yeah, in the worst case scenario and the majority scenario, you don’t see any of the moments. All 28 happen and you lose a deal without knowing there ever was a deal. So this is it. We need to partner in these moments and we need to inject partners into sales and marketing, like no time before, and this was the time to do it. [00:15:33] Jay McBain: And we got some feedback in the Salesforce state of sales report, which doesn’t involve any partnerships or, or. Channel Chiefs or anything else. This is 5,500 of the biggest CROs in the world that obviously use Salesforce. 89% of salespeople today use partners every day. For the 11% who don’t, 58% plan two within a year. [00:15:57] Jay McBain: If you add those two numbers together, that’s magically the 96% number. They recognize that every deal has partners in it. In 2024, last year, half of the salespeople in the world, every industry, every country. Miss their numbers. For the minority who made their numbers, 84 point percent pointed to partners as the reason why they made their numbers. [00:16:21] Jay McBain: It was the cheat code for sales, so that modern salesperson that knows how to orchestrate a deal, orchestrate the 28 moments with the seven partners and get to that final spot is the winning formula. HubSpot’s number in separate research was 84% in marketing. So we’re starting to see partners in here. We don’t have to shout from the mountaintops. [00:16:44] Jay McBain: These communities like ultimate Partner are working and we’re getting this to the highest levels in the board. And I’ll say that, you know, when 20 years from now half of the companies we know and love fail after we’re done writing the book and blaming the CEO for inventing the thing that ended up killing them, blaming the board for fiduciary responsibility and letting it happen. [00:17:06] Jay McBain: What are the other chapters of the book? And I think it’s all in one slide. We are in this platform economy and the. [00:17:31] Jay McBain: So your battery’s fine. Check, check, check, check. Alright, I’ll, I’ll just hold this in case, but the companies that execute on all five of these areas, well. Not only today become the trillion dollar valued companies, but they become the companies of tomorrow. These will be the fastest growing companies at every level. [00:17:50] Jay McBain: Not only running a platform business, but participating in other platforms. So this is how it breaks out, and there are people at very senior levels, at very big companies that have this now posted in the office of the CEO winning on integrations is everything. We just went through a demographic shift this year where 51% of our buyers are born after 1982. [00:18:15] Jay McBain: Millennials are the number one buyer of the $5 trillion. Their number one buying criteria is not service. Support your price, your brand reputation, it’s integrations. The buy a product, 80% is good as the next one if it works better in their environment. 79% of us won’t buy a car unless it has CarPlay or Android Auto. [00:18:34] Jay McBain: This is an integration world. The company with the most integrations win. Second, there are seven partners that surround the customer. Highly trusted partners. We’re talking, coaching the customer’s, kids soccer team, having a cottage together up at the lake. You know, best men, bate of honors at weddings type of relationships. [00:18:57] Jay McBain: You can’t maybe have all seven, but how does Microsoft beat AWS? They might have had two, three, or four of them saying nice things about them instead of the competition. Winning in service partnerships and channel partnerships changes by category. If you’re selling MarTech, only 10% of it today is resold, so you build more on service partnerships. [00:19:18] Jay McBain: If you’re in cybersecurity today, 91.6% of it is resold. Transacted through partners. So you build a lot of channel partnerships, plus the service partnerships, whatever the mix is in your category, you have to have two or three of those seven people. Saying nice things about you at every stage of the customer journey. [00:19:38] Jay McBain: Now move over to alliances. We have already built the platforms at the hyperscale level. We’ve built the platforms within SaaS, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, Marketo, NetSuite, HubSpot. Every buyer has a set of platforms that they buy. We’ve now built them in cybersecurity this year out of 6,500 as high as cyber companies, the top five are starting to separate. [00:20:02] Jay McBain: We built it in distribution, which I’ll show in a minute. We’re building it in Telco. This is a platform economy and alliances win and you have alliances with your competitors ’cause you compete in the morning, but you’re best friends by the afternoon. Winning in other platforms is just as important as driving your own. [00:20:20] Jay McBain: And probably the most important part of this is go to market. That sales, that marketing, the 28 moments, the every 30 days forever become all a partner strategy. So there’s still CEOs out there that believe platform is a UI or UX on a bunch of disparate products and things you’ve acquired. There’s still CFOs out there that Think platform is a pricing model, a bundle model of just getting everything under one, you know, subscription price or consumption price. [00:20:51] Jay McBain: And it’s not, platforms are synonymous with partnerships. This is the way forward and there’s no conversation around ai. That doesn’t involve Nvidia over there, an open AI over here and a hyperscaler over there and a SaaS company over here. The seven layer stack wins every single time, and the companies that get this will be the ones that survive this cycle. [00:21:16] Jay McBain: Now, flipping over to marketplaces. So we had written research that, um, about five years ago that marketplaces were going to grow at 82% compounded. Yeah, probably one of the most accurate predictions we ever made, because it happened, we, we predicted that, uh, we were gonna get up to about $85 billion. Well, now we’ve extended that to 2030, so we’re gonna get up to $163 billion, and the thing that we’re watching is in green. [00:21:46] Jay McBain: If 96% of these deals are partner assisted in some way, how is the economics of partnering going to work? We predicted that 50% of deals by 2027. Would be partner funded in some way. Private offers multi-partner offers distributor sellers of record, and now that extends to 59% by 2030, the most senior leader of the biggest marketplace AWS, just said to us they’re gonna probably make these numbers on their own. [00:22:14] Jay McBain: And he asked what their two competitors are doing. So he’s telling us that we under called this. Now when you look at each of the press releases, and this is the AWS Billion Dollar Club. Every one of the companies on the left have issued a press release that they’re in the billion dollar club. Some of them are in the multi-billions, but I want you to double click on this press release. [00:22:35] Jay McBain: I’m quoted in here somewhere, but as CrowdStrike is building the marketplace at 91% compounded, they’re almost doubling their revenue every single year. They’re growing the partner funding, in this case, distributor funding by 3548%. Almost triple digit growth in marketplace is translating into almost quadruple digit growth in funding. [00:23:01] Jay McBain: And you see that over and over again as, as Splunk hit three, uh, billion dollars. The same. Salesforce hit $2 billion on AWS in Ulti, 18 months. They joined in October 20, 23, and 18 months later, they’re already at $2 billion. But now you’re seeing at Salesforce, which by the way. Grew up to $40 billion in revenue direct, almost not a nickel in resell. [00:23:28] Jay McBain: Made it really difficult for VARs and managed service providers to work with Salesforce because they couldn’t understand how to add services to something they didn’t book the revenue for. While $40 billion companies now seeing 70% of their deals come through partners. So this is just the world that we’re in. [00:23:44] Jay McBain: It doesn’t matter who you are and what industry you’re in, this takes place. But now we’re starting to see for the first time. Partners join the billion dollar club. So you wonder about partnering and all this funding and everything that’s working through Now you’re seeing press releases and companies that are redoing their LinkedIn branding about joining this illustrious club without a product to sell and all the services that wrap around it. [00:24:10] Jay McBain: So the opening session on Microsoft was interesting because there’s been a number of changes that Microsoft has done just in the last 30 days. One is they cut distribution by two thirds going from 180 distributors to 62. They cut out any small partner lower than a thousand dollars, and that doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s over a hundred thousand partners that get deed tightening the long tail. [00:24:38] Jay McBain: They we’re the first to really put a global point system in place three years ago. They went to the new commerce experience. If you remember, all kinds of changes being led by. The biggest company for the channel. And so when we’re studying marketplaces, we’re not just studying the three hyperscalers, we’re studying what TD Cynic is doing with Stream One Ingram’s doing with Advant Advantage Aerosphere. [00:25:01] Jay McBain: Also, we’re watching what PAX eight, who by the way, is the 365 bestseller for Microsoft in the world. They are the cybersecurity leader for Microsoft in the world and the copilot. Leader in the world for Microsoft and Partner of the Year for Microsoft. So we’re watching what the cloud platforms are doing, watching what the Telco are doing, which is 25 cents out of every dollar, if you remember that pie chart, watching what the biggest resellers are converting themselves into. [00:25:30] Jay McBain: Vince just mentioned, you know, SHI in the changes there watching the managed services market and the leaders there, what they’re doing in terms of how this industry’s moving forward. By the way, managed services at $608 billion this year. Is one and a half times larger than the SaaS industry overall. [00:25:48] Jay McBain: It’s also one and a half times larger than all the hyperscalers combined. Oracle, Alibaba, IBM, all the way down. This is a massive market and it makes up 15 to 20 cents of every dollar the customer spend. We’re watching that industry hit a trillion dollars by the end of the decade, and we’re watching 150 different marketplace development platforms, the distribution of our industry, which today is 70.1% indirect. [00:26:13] Jay McBain: We’re starting to see that number, uh, solidify in terms of marketplaces as well. Watching distributors go from that linear warehouse in a bank to this orchestration model, watching some of the biggest players as the world comes around, platforms, it tightens around the place. So Caresoft, uh, from from here is the sixth biggest distributor in the world. [00:26:40] Jay McBain: Just shows you how big the. You know, biggest client in the world is that they serve. But understand that we’re publishing the distributor 500 list, but it’ll be the same thing. That little group in blue in the middle today, you know, drives almost two thirds of the market. So what happens in all this next stage in terms of where the dollars change hands. [00:27:07] Jay McBain: And the economics of partnering themselves are going through the most radical shift that we’ve seen ever. So back to the nineties, and, and for those of you that have been channel chiefs and running programs, we went to work every day. You know, everything’s on fire. We’re trying to check hundred boxes, trying to make our program 10% better than our competitors. [00:27:30] Jay McBain: Hey, we gotta fix our deal registration program today, and our incentives are outta whack or training programs or. You know, not where they need to be. Our certification, you know, this was the life of, uh, of a channel chief. Everybody thought we were just out drinking in the Caribbean with our best partners, but we were under the weight of this. [00:27:49] Jay McBain: But something interesting has happened is that we turned around and put the customer at the middle of our programs to say that those 28 moments in green before the sale are really, really important. And the seven partners who participate are really important. Understanding. The customer’s gonna buy a seven layer stack. [00:28:09] Jay McBain: They’re gonna buy it With these seven partners, the procurement stage is much different. The growth of marketplaces, the growth of direct in some of these areas, and then long term every 30 days forever in a managed service, implementations, integrations, how you upsell, cross-sell, enrich a deal changes. So how would you build a program that’s wrapped around the customer instead of the vendor? [00:28:35] Jay McBain: And we’re starting to hear our partners shout back to us. These are global surveys, big numbers, but over half of our partners, regardless of type, are selling consulting to their customer. Over half are designing architecting deals. A third of them are trying to be system integrators showing up at those implementation integration moments. [00:28:55] Jay McBain: Two thirds of them are doing managed services, but the shocking one here is 44% of our partners, regardless of type, are coding. They’re building agents and they’re out helping their customer at that level. So this is the modern partner that says, don’t typecast me. You may have thought of me in your program. [00:29:14] Jay McBain: You might have me slotted as a var. Well, I do 3.2 things, and if I don’t get access to those resources, if you don’t walk me to that room, I’m not gonna do them with you. You may have me as a managed service provider that’s only in the morning. By the afternoon I’m coding, and by the next morning I’m implementing and consulting. [00:29:33] Jay McBain: So again, a partner’s not a partner. That Venn diagram is a very loose one now, as every partner on there is doing 3.2 different business models. And again, they’re telling us for 43 years, they said, I want more leads this year it changed. For the first time, I want to be recognized and incentivized as more than just a cash register for you. [00:29:57] Jay McBain: I want you to recognize when I’m consulting, when I’m designing, when you’re winning deals, because of my wonderful services, by the way, we asked the follow up question, well, where should we spend our money with you? And they overwhelmingly say, in the consulting stage, you win and lose deals. Not at moment 28. [00:30:18] Jay McBain: We’re not buying a pack of gum at the gas station. This is a considered purchase. You win deals from moment 12 through 16 and I’m gonna show you a picture of that later, and they say, you better be spending your money there, or you’re not gonna win your fair share or more than your fair share of deals. [00:30:36] Jay McBain: The shocking thing about this is that Microsoft, when they went to the point system, lifted two thirds of all the money, tens of billions of dollars, and put it post-sale, and we were all scratching our heads going. Well, if the partners are asking for it there, and it seems like to beat your biggest competitors, you want to win there. [00:30:54] Jay McBain: Why would you spend the money on renewal? Well, they went to Wall Street and Goldman Sachs and the people who lift trillions of dollars of pension funds and said, if we renew deals at 108%, we become a cash machine for you. And we think that’s more valuable than a company coming out with a new cell phone in September and selling a lot of them by Christmas every year. [00:31:18] Jay McBain: The industry. And by the way, wall Street responded, Microsoft has been more valuable than Apple since. So we talk in this now multiplier language, and these are reports that we write, uh, at AMIA at canals. But talking about the partner opportunity in that customer cycle, the $6 and 40 cents you can make for every dollar of consumption, or the $7 and 5 cents you can make the $8 and 45 cents you can make. [00:31:46] Jay McBain: There’s over 24 companies speaking at this level now, and guess what? It’s not just cloud or software companies. Hardware companies are starting to speak in this language, and on January 25th, Cisco, you know, probably second to Microsoft in terms of trust built with the channel globally is moving to a full point system. [00:32:09] Jay McBain: So these are the changes that happen fast. But your QBR with your partners now less about drinking beers at the hotel lobby bar and talking dollar by dollar where these opportunities are. So if you’re doing 3.2 of these things, let’s build out a, uh, a play where you can make $3 for every dollar that we make. [00:32:28] Jay McBain: And you make that profitably. You make it in sticky, highly retained business, and that’s the model. ’cause if you make $3 for every dollar. We make, you’re gonna win Partner of the year, and if you win partner of the year, that piece of glass that you win on stage, by the time you get back to your table, you’re gonna have three offers to buy your business. [00:32:51] Jay McBain: CDW just bought a w. S’s Partner of the Year. Insight bought Google’s eight time partner of the year. Presidio bought ServiceNow’s, partner of the year over and over and over again. So I’m at Octane, I’m at CrowdStrike, I’m at all these events in Vegas every week. I’m watching these partners of the year. [00:33:05] Jay McBain: And I’m watching as the big resellers. I’m watching as the GSIs and the m and a folks are surrounding their table after, and they’re selling their businesses for SaaS level valuations. Not the one-to-one service valuation. They’re getting multiples because this is the new future of our industry. This is platform economics. [00:33:25] Jay McBain: This is winning and platforms for partners. Now, like Vince, I spent 20 minutes without talking about ai, but we have to talk about ai. So the next 20 years as it plays out is gonna play out in phases. And the first thing you know to get it out of the way. The first two years since that March of 23, has been underwhelming, to say the least. [00:33:47] Jay McBain: It’s been disappointing. All the companies that should have won the biggest in AI have been the most disappointing. It’s underperformed the s and p by a considerable amount in terms of where we are. And it goes back to this. We always overestimate the first two years, but we underestimate the first 10. [00:34:07] Jay McBain: If you wanna be the point in time person and go look at that 1983 PC or the 1995 internet or that 2007 iPhone or that whatever point in time you wanna look at, or if you want to talk about hallucinations or where chat chip ET version five is version, as opposed to where it’s going to be as it improves every six months here on in. [00:34:30] Jay McBain: But the fact of the matter is, it’s been a consumer trend. Nvidia got to be the most valuable company in the world. OpenAI was the first company to 2 billion users, uh, in that amount of speed. It’s the fastest growing product ever in history, and it’s been a consumer win this trillions of dollars to get it thrown around in the press releases. [00:34:49] Jay McBain: They’re going out every day, you know, open ai, signing up somebody new or Nvidia, investing in somebody new almost every single day in hundreds of billions of dollars. It is all happening really on the consumer side. So we got a little bit worried and said, is that 96% of surround gonna work in ag agentic ai? [00:35:10] Jay McBain: So we went and asked, and the good news is 88% of end customers are using partners to work through their ag agentic strategy. Even though they’re moving slow, they’re actually using partners. But what’s interesting from a partner perspective, and this is new research that out till 2030. This is the number one services opportunity in the entire tech or telco industry. [00:35:34] Jay McBain: 35.3% compounded growth ending at $267 billion in services. Companies are rebuilding themselves, building out practices, and getting on this train and figuring out which vendors they should hook their caboose to as those trains leave the station. But it kind of plays out like this. So in the next three to five years, we’re in this generative, moving into agentic phase. [00:36:01] Jay McBain: Every partner thinks internally first, the sales and marketing. They’re thinking about their invoicing and billing. They’re thinking about their service tickets. They’re thinking about creating a business that’s 10% better than their competitors, taking that knowledge into their customers and drive in business. [00:36:17] Jay McBain: But we understand that ag agentic AI, as it’s going to play out is not a product. A couple of years ago, we thought maybe a copilot or an agent force or something was going to be the product that everybody needed to buy, and it’s not a product, it’s gonna show up as a feature. So you go back in the history of feature ads and it’s gonna show up in software. [00:36:38] Jay McBain: So if you’re calling in SMB, maybe you’re calling on a restaurant. The restaurant isn’t gonna call OpenAI or call Microsoft or call Nvidia directly. They’re running their restaurant. And they may have chosen a platform like Toast Square, Clover, whatever iPads people are running around with, runs on a platform that does everything in their business, does staffing, does food ordering, works with Uber Eats, does everything end to end? [00:37:08] Jay McBain: They’re gonna wait to one of those platforms, dries out agent AI for them, and can run the restaurant more effectively, less human capital and more consistently, but they wait for the SaaS platform as you get larger. A hundred, 150 people. You have vice presidents. Each of those vice presidents already have a SaaS stack. [00:37:28] Jay McBain: I talked about Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, et cetera. They’ve already built that seven layer model and in some cases it’s 70 layers. But the fact is, is they’re gonna wait for those SaaS layers to deliver ag agentic to them. So this is how it’s gonna play out for the next three and a half, three to five years. [00:37:45] Jay McBain: And partners are realizing that many of them were slow to pick up SaaS ’cause they didn’t resell it. Well now to win in this next three to half, three to five years, you’re gonna have to play in this environment. When you start looking out from here, the next generation, you know, kind of five through 15 years gets interesting in more of a physical sense. [00:38:06] Jay McBain: Where I was yesterday talking about every IOT device that now is internet access, starts to get access to large language models. Every little sensor, every camera, everything that’s out there starts to get smart. But there’s a point. The first trillionaire, I believe, will be created here. Elon’s already halfway there. [00:38:24] Jay McBain: Um, but when Bill Gates thought there was gonna be a PC in every home, and IBM thought they were gonna sell 10,000 to hobbyists, that created the richest person in the world for 20 years, there will be a humanoid in every home. There’s gonna be a point in time that you’re out having drinks with your friends, and somebody’s gonna say, the early adopter of your friends is gonna say. [00:38:46] Jay McBain: I haven’t done the dishes in six weeks. I haven’t done the laundry. I haven’t made my bed. I haven’t mowed the lawn. When they say that, you’re gonna say, well, how? And they’re gonna say, well, this year I didn’t buy a new car, but I went to the car dealership and I bought this. So we’re very close to the dexterity needed. [00:39:05] Jay McBain: We’ve got the large language models. Now. The chat, GPT version 10 by then is going to make an insane, and every house is gonna have one of the. [00:39:17] Jay McBain: This is the promise of ai. It’s not humanoid robots, it’s not agents. It’s this. 99% of the world’s business data has not been trained or tuned into models yet. Again, this is the slow moving business. If you want to think about the 99% of business data, every flight we’ve all taken in this room sits on a saber system that was put in place in 1964. [00:39:43] Jay McBain: Every banking transaction, we’ve all made, every withdrawal, every deposit sits on an IBM mainframe put in place in the sixties or seventies. 83% of this data sits in cold storage at the edge. It’s not ready to be moved. It’s not cleansed, it’s not, um, indexed. It’s not in any format or sitting on any infrastructure that a large language model will be able to gobble up the data. [00:40:10] Jay McBain: None of the workflows, none of the programming on top of that data is yet ready. So this is your 10 to 20 year arc of this era that chat bot today when they cancel your flight is cute. It’s empathetic, it feels bad for you, or at least it seems to, but it can’t do anything. It can’t book you the Marriott and get you an Uber and then a 5:00 AM flight the next morning. [00:40:34] Jay McBain: It can’t do any of that. But more importantly, it doesn’t know who you are. I’ve got 53 years of flights under my belt and they, I’m the person that get me within six hours of my kids and get me a one-way Hertz rental. You know, if there’s bad weather in Miami, get me to Tampa, get me a Hertz, I’m driving home, I’m gonna make it home. [00:40:56] Jay McBain: I’m not the 5:00 AM get me a hotel person. They would know that if they picked up the flights that I’ve taken in the past. Each of us are different. When you get access to the business data and you become ag agentic, everything changes. Every industry changes because of this around the customers. When you ask about this 35% growth, working on that data, working in traditional consulting and design and implementation, working in the $7 trillion of infrastructure, storage, compute, networking, that’s gonna be around, this is a massive opportunity. [00:41:30] Jay McBain: Services are gonna continue to outgrow products. Probably for the next five to 10 years because of this, and I’m gonna finish here. So we talked a lot about quantifying names, faces, places, and I think where we failed the most as ultimate partners is underneath the tam, which every one of our CEOs knows to the decimal point underneath the TAM that our board thinks they’re chasing. [00:41:59] Jay McBain: We’ve done a very poor job. Of talking about the available markets and obtainable markets underneath it, we, we’ve shown them theory. We’ve shown them a bunch of, you know, really smart stuff, and PowerPoint slides up the wazoo, but we’ve never quantified it for them. If they wanna win, if they want to get access, if they want to double their pipeline, triple their pipeline, if they wanna start winning more deals, if they wanna win deals that are three times larger, they close two times faster. [00:42:31] Jay McBain: And they renew 15% larger. They have to get into the available and obtainable markets. So just in the last couple weeks I spoke at Cribble, I spoke at Octane, I spoke at CrowdStrike Falcon. All three of those companies at the CEO level, main stage use those exact three numbers, three x, two x, 15%. That’s the language of platforms, and they’re investing millions and millions and millions of dollars on teams. [00:42:59] Jay McBain: To go build out the Sam Andal in name spaces and places. So you’ve heard me talk about these 28 moments a lot. They’re the ones that you spend when you buy a car. Some people spend one moment and they drive to the Cadillac dealership. ’cause Larry’s been, you know, taking care of the family for 50 years. [00:43:18] Jay McBain: Some people spend 50 moments like I do, watching every YouTube video and every, you know, thing on the internet. I clear the internet cover to cover. But the fact is, is every deal averages around these 28 moments. Your customer, there’s 13 members of the buying committee today. There’s seven partners and they’re buying seven things. [00:43:37] Jay McBain: There’s 27 things orchestrating inside these 28 moments. And where and how they all take place is a story of partnering. So a couple of years ago, canals. Latin for channel was acquired by amia, which is a part of Informa Tech Target, which is majority owned by Informa. All that being said, there’s hundreds of magazines that we have. [00:44:00] Jay McBain: There’s hundreds of events that we run. If somebody’s buying cybersecurity, they probably went to Black Hat or they probably went to GI Tech. One of these events we run, or one of the magazines. So we pick up these signals, these buyer intent signals as a company. Why did they wanna, um, buy a, uh, a Canals, which was a, you know, a small analyst firm around channels? [00:44:22] Jay McBain: They understood this as well. The 28 moments look a lot like this when marketers and salespeople are busy filling in the spots of every deal. And by the way, this is a real deal. AstraZeneca came in to spend millions of dollars on ASAP transformation, and you can start to see as the customer got smart. [00:44:45] Jay McBain: The eBooks, they read the podcasts, they listened to the events they went to. You start to see how this played out over the long term. But the thing we’ve never had in our industry is the light blue boxes. This deal was won and lost in December. In this particular case, NTT software won and Yash came in and sold the customer five projects. [00:45:07] Jay McBain: The millions of dollars that were going to be spent were solved here. The design and architecture work was all done here. A couple of ISVs You see in light blue came in right at the end, deal was closed in April. You see the six month cycle. But what if you could fill in every one of the 28 boxes in every single customer prospect that your sales and marketing team have? [00:45:30] Jay McBain: But here’s the brilliance of this. Those light blue boxes didn’t win the deals there. They won the deals months before that. So when NTT and Software one walked into this deal. They probably won the deal back in October and they had to go through the redlining. They had to go through the contracting, they had to go through all the stuff and the Gantt chart to get started. [00:45:54] Jay McBain: But while your CMO is getting all excited about somebody reading an ebook and triggering an MQL that the sales team doesn’t want, ’cause it’s not qualified, it’s not sales qualified, you walk in and say, no, no. This is a multimillion deal, dollar deal. It’s AstraZeneca. I know the five partners that are coming in in December to solidify the seven layers, and you’re walking in at the same time as the CMOs bragging about an ebook. [00:46:21] Jay McBain: This changes everything. If we could get to this level of data about every dollar of our tam, we not only outgrow our competitors, we become the platforms of the next generation. Partnering and ultimate partnering is all here. And this is what we’re doing in this room. This is what we’re doing over these couple of days, and this is what, uh, the mission that Vince is leading. [00:46:43] Jay McBain: Thank you so much. [00:46:47] Vince Menzione: Woo. Day in the house. Good to see you my friend. Good to see you. Oh, we’re gonna spend a couple minutes. Um, I’m put you in the second seat. We’re gonna put, we’re gonna make it sit fireside for a minute. Uh, that was intense. It was pretty incredible actually, Jay. And so I’m, I think I wanna open it up ’cause we only have a few minutes just to, any questions? [00:47:06] Vince Menzione: I’m sure people are just digesting. We already have one up here. See, [00:47:09] Question: Jay knows I’m [00:47:10] Vince Menzione: a question. I love it. We, I don’t think we have any I can grab a mic, a roving mic. I could be a roving mic person. Hold on. We can do this. This is not on. [00:47:25] Vince Menzione: Test, test. Yes it is. Yeah. [00:47:26] Question: Theresa Carriol dared me to ask a question and I say, you don’t have to dare me. You know, I’m going to Anyway. Um, so Jay, of the point of view that with all of the new AI players that strategic alliances is again having a moment, and I was curious your point of view on what you’re seeing around this emergence and trend of strategic alliances and strategic alliance management. [00:47:52] Question: As compared to channel management. And what are you seeing in terms of large vendors like AWS investing in that strategic alliance role versus that channel role training, enablement, measurement, all that good stuff? [00:48:06] Jay McBain: Yeah, it’s, it’s a great question. So when I told the story about toast at the restaurant or Square or Clover, they’re not call, they’re not gonna call open AI or Nvidia themselves either. [00:48:17] Jay McBain: When you look out at the 250,000 ISVs. That make up this AI stack, there is the layers that happen there. So the Alliance with AWS, the alliance they have with Microsoft or Google is going to be how they generate agent AI in their platforms. So when I talk about a seven layer stack, the average deal being seven layers, AI is gonna drive this to nine, and then 11, then probably 13. [00:48:44] Jay McBain: So in terms of how alliances work, I had it up there as one of the five core strategies, and I think it’s pretty even. You can have the best alliances in the world, but if the seven partners trusted by the customer don’t know what that alliance is and the benefits to the customer and never mention it, it’s all for Naugh. [00:49:00] Jay McBain: If you’re go-to market, you’re co-selling, your co-marketing strategies are not built around that alliance. It’s all for naught. If the integration and the co-innovation, the co-development, the all the co-creation work that’s done inside these alliances isn’t translated to customer outcomes, it’s all for naugh. [00:49:17] Jay McBain: These are all five parallel swim lanes. All five are absolutely critically needed. And I think they’re all five pretty equally weighted in terms of needing each other. Yes. To be successful in the era of platforms. Yeah. [00:49:32] Vince Menzione: And the problem is they’re all stove pipe today. If, if at all. Yeah. Maintained, right. [00:49:36] Vince Menzione: Alliances is an example. Channels and other example. They don’t talk to one another. Judge any, we’ve got a mic up here if anybody else has. Yep. We have some questions here, Jacqueline. [00:49:51] Question: So when we’re developing our channel programs, any advice on, you know, what’s the shift that we should make six months from now, a year from now? The historical has been bronze, silver, gold, right? And you’ve got your deal registration, but what’s the future look like? [00:50:05] Jay McBain: Yeah, so I mean, the programs are, are changing to, to the point where the customer should be in the middle and realizing the seven partners you need to win the deal. [00:50:15] Jay McBain: And depending on what category of product you’re in, security, how much you rely on resell, 91.6%. You know, the channel partners are gonna be critical where the customer spends the money. And if you’re adding friction to that process, you’re adding friction in terms of your growth. So you know, if you’re in cybersecurity, you have to have a pretty wide open reseller model. [00:50:39] Jay McBain: You have to have a wide open distribution model, and you have to make sure you’re there at that point of sale. While at the same time, considering the other six partners at moment 12 who are in either saying nice things about you or not, the customer might even be starting with you. ’cause there is actually one thing that I didn’t mention when I showed the 28 moments filled in. [00:51:00] Jay McBain: You’ll notice that the customer went to AWS twice direct. AWS lost the deal. Microsoft won the deal software. One is Microsoft’s biggest reseller in the world. They just acquired crayon. NTT who, who loves both had their Microsoft team go in. [00:51:18] Question: Mm. [00:51:19] Jay McBain: So I think that they went to AWS thinking it was A-W-S-S-A-P, you know, kind of starting this seven layer stack. [00:51:25] Jay McBain: I think they finished those, you know, critical moments in the middle looking at it. And then they went back to AWS kind of going probably WWTF. Yeah. What we thought was happening isn’t actually the outcome that was painted by our most trusted people. So, you know, to answer your question, listen to your partners. [00:51:43] Jay McBain: They want to be recognized for the other things they’re doing. You can’t be spending a hundred percent of the dollars at the point of sale. You gotta have a point of system that recognizes the point of sale, maybe even gold, silver, bronze, but recognizing that you’re paying for these other moments as well. [00:51:57] Jay McBain: Paying for alliances, paying for integrations and everything else, uh, in the cyber stack. And, um, you know, recognizing also the top 1000. So if I took your tam. And I overlaid those thousand logos. I would be walking into 2026 the best I could of showing my company logo by logo, where 80% of our TAM sits as wallet share, not by revenue. [00:52:25] Jay McBain: Remember, a million dollar partner is not a million dollar partner. One of them sells 1.2 million in our category. We should buy them a baseball cap and have ’em sit in the front row of our event. One of them sells $10 million and only sells our stuff if the customer asks. So my company should be looking at that $9 million opportunity and making sure my programs are writing the checks and my coverage. [00:52:48] Jay McBain: My capacity and capability planning is getting obsessed over that $9 million. My farmers can go over there, my hunters can go over here, and I should be submitting a list of a thousand sorted in descending order of opportunity. Of where my company can write program dollars into. [00:53:07] Vince Menzione: Great answer. All right. I, I do wanna be cognizant of time and the, all the other sessions we have. [00:53:14] Vince Menzione: So we’ll just take one other question if there are any here and if not, we’ll let I know. Jay, you’re gonna be mingling around for a little while before your flight. I’m [00:53:21] Jay McBain: here the whole day. [00:53:22] Vince Menzione: You, you’re the whole day. I see that Jay’s here the whole day. So if you have any other questions and, and, uh, sharing the deck is that. [00:53:29] Vince Menzione: Yep. Alright. We have permission to share the deck with the each of you as well. [00:53:34] Jay McBain: Alright, well thank you very much everyone. Jay. Great to have you.

Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. AI agents are your next customers. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/  Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this episode, Vince Menzione sits down with SHI leaders Joseph Bellian and Stefanie Dunn, alongside Microsoft’s Marcus Jewett, to dissect SHI’s massive evolution from a traditional Large Account Reseller (LAR) to a strategic Global Systems Integrator (GSI). They explore the cultural and operational shifts required to move from a transaction-heavy model to a services-led approach, highlighting their alignment with Microsoft’s MSEM methodology, the implementation of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), and their cutting-edge work with AI Labs and Agentic AI. Key Takeaways SHI has evolved from a transactional powerhouse into a Global Systems Integrator (GSI) focused on services and outcomes. The organization implemented the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to align vision, people, and data across sales and delivery. SHI serves as “Customer Zero” for Microsoft AI, implementing Copilot internally to better guide customers. The partnership mirrors Microsoft’s MSEM methodology to ensure seamless co-selling and customer success lifecycles. SHI’s AI Labs in New Jersey provides a secure environment for clients to build and test custom AI solutions. The shift requires moving from a “Hulk” (strength/sales) mindset to a “Tony Stark” (brainpower/strategy) mindset. Key Tags: SHI International, global systems integrator, Microsoft services, Joseph Bellian, Stefanie Dunn, Marcus Jewett, AI labs, agentic AI, MSEM methodology, entrepreneurial operating system, digital transformation, customer zero, copilot implementation, solution provider, cloud migration, data governance, services led growth. Ultimate Partner is the independent community for technology leaders navigating the tectonic shifts in cloud, AI, marketplaces, and co-selling. Through live events, UPX membership, advisory, and the Ultimate Partner® podcast, we help organizations align with hyperscalers, accelerate growth, and achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Transcript:Transcript: Joseph Bellian – Stefanie Dunn – Marcus Jewett WORKFILE AUDIO [00:00:00] Vince Menzione: We’ve got it. So it is interesting how these sessions kind of follow each other. Hopefully you’re seeing kind of a flow from marketplaces and the conversation about how to be a really great ISV to how an ISV took and built a channel strategy and how they integrated alliances and channels together. [00:00:16] Vince Menzione: Well, we have an, we have another really great example here to talk through. I have this, uh, incredible like background. Like I’m a hundred years old, basically. I don’t even want to tell anybody that. But, uh, I got to work with this organization way back in my days at Microsoft. They are, they were and are one of the top, I’ll call them, they were classically a reseller company. [00:00:40] Vince Menzione: They one of the largest, we call ’em large account resellers back in the day. Uh, their leader built a multi-billion dollar organization. I’m gonna let them talk through who they are today, but we have an opportunity to talk about transformation. From that lens now too, like how does an organization that’s really good at doing one thing evolve, transform and take advantage of these tectonic shifts we’re seeing? [00:01:03] Vince Menzione: So, uh, we’ve got some incredible leaders. I’m gonna have them come up on stage. And everybody introduced themselves from SHI and also from Microsoft. And we’re gonna have a really great conversation today. Great to have you. [00:01:26] Vince Menzione: So I’m gonna let, I’m gonna let you guys introduce yourselves because, uh, everybody knows you as DJ Marco Polo. So we’re gonna, we’ll start with you over in the far end, Marcus. Okay. Vince, I, [00:01:36] Marcus Jewett: I’ll try to be shy. [00:01:37] Vince Menzione: No, [00:01:37] Marcus Jewett: uh, hi everyone, my name is Marcus Jut, I am the Global Partner Development Manager for the SHI partnership. [00:01:43] Marcus Jewett: Uh, I have been overseeing this partnership for just under 12 years. Wow. So I have seen the evolutional journey of this partner and really proud of where they, uh, have matured their business and the partnership with Microsoft. [00:01:57] Stefanie Dunn: Thank you. Oh. [00:01:58] Marcus Jewett: Is there, is yours on? Oh, [00:02:00] Vince Menzione: mines [00:02:00] Stefanie Dunn: on. Hi, I am Stephanie Dunn, a director of Microsoft Services at SHI. [00:02:07] Stefanie Dunn: And it is an, it’s a pleasure to be here. It’s a pleasure to have Marcus as our PDM and, uh, Joe and Vince, uh, very, very happy to be here. Um, and I lead our Microsoft Services sales, uh, area. So across, uh, cloud AI business transformation and, uh. And, uh, data and ai. [00:02:28] Joseph Bellian: Great, great to have you, Stephanie. Thank you. [00:02:30] Joseph Bellian: Joe. Joe Bellion. I’m the VP of Microsoft Alliances and programs. Uh, I’ve been here at SHI for about eight months now, but been in and around the partner ecosystem for about a decade. Uh, I think of my organization of like kind of two aspects. So leading the charge around alliances, aligning our field sellers and specialists with Microsoft, as well as the, the programs backend incentives and operations. [00:02:51] Joseph Bellian: But, um, the real focus is driving the go to market strategy here at SHI. [00:02:55] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So great. So I started to allude to this earlier about like traditional, one of the top three or four companies actually. And we used to use the term, uh, LSP back in the day, or lar, we’ve got several iterations. Microsoft’s gone through several iterations of that name. [00:03:11] Vince Menzione: Marcus knows all of them probably by heart. Tell us what was the impetus to change the organization? Become more like a ser, a services led company as opposed to a transaction led organization? [00:03:21] Joseph Bellian: Yeah, absolutely. Throw one more acronym. SSP. SSP, that was another one. So, uh, solution provider. Um, but, uh, yeah, I, I’d say probably a couple things. [00:03:29] Joseph Bellian: Um, one, the big one, no news to anybody in the room and online as well. The shift with EAs, director of Microsoft, as well as, uh, the whole CSP hero motion. So we do recognize that opportunity, uh, to have services attached, to engage with our clients as well as our joint partnerships with Microsoft, uh, with services out in the field. [00:03:48] Joseph Bellian: Uh, the second one, probably the biggest one is our clients. Hearing out our clients that shift. Um, we’re talking about ai, ai, everything, AI services. Uh, we’re now in the whole era of agentic ai. What does that mean? How do you take advantage of those offerings? And so we recognize that, that our clients are spending millions of dollars with the Microsoft products, but how do you take advantage of that investment and maximize it in their environment? [00:04:13] Joseph Bellian: And so having services to help navigate those complex solutions, that’s where we’re, we’re leaning in. [00:04:18] Vince Menzione: So what did it take to change? Transformation doesn’t come easy. There’s mindset. There’s all these cultural changes that need to happen. From your perspective, both of your perspectives, what did it take internally for this change to happen? [00:04:31] Joseph Bellian: Yeah. Um, so if you, if you heard of the entrepreneurial operating system EOS Yes. And we’ve adopted that internally. Um, if you’re not familiar, it kind of comprises of six components. So vision, people, data, um, process. Issues and, um, uh, traction. So I apologize, that’s, uh, but take, take that model and put it into our business of what we did. [00:04:57] Joseph Bellian: Um, so two kind of twofold. One, moving our entire services practice organization under one, one operating rhythm, um, under Jordan Ello, our CTO. So pre-sales and delivery. So looking at that, the how we go to market with our services, single vision. Uh, single process. So it’s consistent as we’re engaging not only through our partners, but through our clients, but then also on the other side of the house, our Microsoft practice, having all of our resources under one roof so that it’s a single way we go to market. [00:05:28] Joseph Bellian: Aligning our go to market strategy, one-to-one with Microsoft. Why it, it does two things. One, it allows us to be very clear of how we are going to market to our clients, but it allows us to partner even better with our Microsoft counterparts. Yeah, when, when Microsoft, it’s always ever changing. You’re familiar, every six months to a year solution plays and the go-to-market strategy changes, uh, we’re there at the forefront in ensuring that we have our solutions mapped a hundred percent so that we can just co-sell together. [00:05:58] Joseph Bellian: Break down those walls. Let’s do more together. [00:06:00] Vince Menzione: And, uh, geographically you were sep, your teams were separated. You have a big operation in Texas. You also have a big New Jersey operation, which was where the company was founded, in fact. So I’d love to get the perspective on this, Marcus. From your perspective, like what did it do, what was it like before and what did it become? [00:06:17] Marcus Jewett: Oh yeah, let’s go back in the way back machine to 12 years ago. Um, it was a different partner, a different operating model, uh, in those early days. And this is really when we started to move customers from on-premises to more cloud-based subscription technologies. Uh, SHI was always just an incredible selling machine. [00:06:36] Marcus Jewett: If they could not do anything, they could always sell. And for any of you who are familiar with the Marvel movies, um. I, I, I, I use a reference internally with them. SHI was always like the Hulk root for strength. You know, you tell ’em to go sell something, Hulk Smash, they can knock that out. Well, as we really needed these partners to evolve and really help our customers with their technologies, whether it’s driving adoption, monthly active usage, consumption. [00:07:02] Marcus Jewett: We needed them to be more like Tony Stark, right? We needed the brain power, and so over the last, let’s call it five or six years, SHI has continued to invest in their Microsoft practice. They went from an organization that was really focused on management of EA acquisition of new Microsoft logo. To continuing to develop that muscle, but also investing in ways to help customers through their managed services, through their professional services. [00:07:28] Marcus Jewett: And it’s been a, a journey. Right? SHI is a large organization. For a long time they were Microsoft’s largest partner. And from a transactional build revenue perspective, and they still are in many ways, but we really needed them to demonstrate that they could help our, their customers, our shared customers take full advantage of all of the entitlements and the technology they, that they’ve purchased from us. [00:07:50] Marcus Jewett: And that’s really where the evolution has been with SHI when I first started, uh, this is like, God, 12 years ago, there were 20 people that were Microsoft centric resources that really were focused on. Customer acquisition and net new logos. And today that organization from a sales perspective is over 150 sellers. [00:08:09] Marcus Jewett: Wow. That are just focused on Microsoft. So that CSP, they, they fill the top of the funnel for services to help drive program utilization. And that’s not even talking about the dedicated services resources that works under Stephanie. So it’s been. An incredible journey. Microsoft has invested in SHI and in turn, SHI has invested into Microsoft. [00:08:31] Marcus Jewett: They’ve basically taken their approach in terms of how they go to market with Microsoft, and they’ve mirrored that almost like how Joe and I are wearing the same jacket. That’s really how they’ve aligned their, their go to market strategy, really making it a mirror where they take it. They’ve taken our Microsoft M methodology. [00:08:50] Marcus Jewett: And they’ve essentially adopted it and made it their own. So now when our sellers are talking with SHI sellers, they’re speaking the same language. [00:08:58] Vince Menzione: You’re teeing it up beautifully for your conversation with Stephanie here. Stephanie, I want to hear like how you’ve done all those things. ’cause it’s really your organization that’s focused on this, right? [00:09:06] Stefanie Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. So for us it’s all about shared outcomes. It we’re listening to the. Customer. We’re listening to Microsoft and we’ve really taken that to heart. Uh, the customer is at the center of every single thing that we do. I know all of us as partners. That’s really our vision, likely, and the reason why we’re here is our customers. [00:09:26] Stefanie Dunn: But really understanding how to take advantage of that partnership and build something incredible. And it is transformative. Uh, you know, we started as a licensing powerhouse, as Marcus alluded to, and now we’re going deep into services. So we’re aligning to co-sell motions. We’re aligning to the, the industries. [00:09:46] Stefanie Dunn: Uh, we’re creating marketplace offers. We’ve got our programs, uh, tied to all of our services offerings. And so when we look at the broader ecosystem, we see the vision of Microsoft. Uh, we’ve hired the right people, we’ve put the right processes into place, and we have the technology expertise in-house to really share. [00:10:08] Stefanie Dunn: In the journey with our customers and leading them. [00:10:11] Vince Menzione: And you know, you talk about like solution plays. You talked about industry. People don’t always recognize this when you talk to Microsoft sellers. They’re very focused on the industry they’re in, and you have to have those conversations that, this came up earlier, but we never got into this. [00:10:25] Vince Menzione: But you’re aligning your solution plays, you’re aligning your conversations to be very like healthcare and education, all those different markets, right? [00:10:32] Stefanie Dunn: We are. We are, which is very new for SHI in the services industry, and so you know, we’re taking our CSP plays. Um, our licensing plays and really saying, well, what can you do with that? [00:10:43] Stefanie Dunn: Right. You know, how can we advise you? And then we, we dig into the actual industry verticals to, to get tactical with them. You know, it’s, it’s about providing the strategy. It’s about providing the extra hands. They all need extra hands. They, you know, our, our customers need us. As an extension of their team. [00:11:01] Stefanie Dunn: And so for us it’s really important to dig into that and, and be, and be that, that listening ear and you know, that expert in the room for them, uh, from advisory standpoint. And so all of our se services sellers are advisors as well. They’re not selling a product, they’re not selling, uh, something individual. [00:11:19] Stefanie Dunn: We are selling to. Fill and fulfill their goals and business outcomes, which is extremely unique, I will say, because we do have that end to end. So it does start with the licensing. It starts with assessing what you really have, meeting with those advisors, and then putting together a roadmap to help them. [00:11:37] Stefanie Dunn: Understand. Okay, well this is what it’s gonna take to get you here. Here’s our, uh, we love reverse timelines at SHI and so, um, it’s d minus din and so this is where you wanna go and this is when you wanna get there. So this is how we’re gonna help you, uh, along that roadmap. [00:11:53] Vince Menzione: I am gonna put you on the spot here with m Sem. [00:11:55] Vince Menzione: ’cause I think Microsoft finally laid out a process a couple years ago for you to like line up to, ’cause you were doing one piece of it before. Do you want to talk about m how em plays in here and how SHI is leveraging it? [00:12:07] Marcus Jewett: Right. So, uh, across our SEM stages, there are five different stages, and this is the customer journey from these, you know, pre-sales, scoping, uh, engagements with customers all the way through delivery. [00:12:19] Marcus Jewett: And then of course, like that customer success lifecycle and managed services. Again, this was not a language or a way that SHI really approached their business. Again, it was very much like, let’s. Get the customer to purchase on an EA or let’s renew the customer. And then once that cycle was complete, then it, it was almost like adding fries. [00:12:38] Marcus Jewett: Would you like some services with your ea? Right. And, uh, it took a, it took a while, right? Some very, uh, difficult conversations, but we were able to find, finally get the right people in the room to make the right investments. And now when you think about how SHI goes to market, they don’t necessarily leverage the term SEM internally, but. [00:12:59] Marcus Jewett: All of their customer methodologies or their sales methodologies in terms of how they service their customers aligns perfectly. Even when we get into the descriptive part of building out our, uh, partner business plan, we did that across every stage of the M SEM methodology. So that we can ensure that the teams at SHI are in perfect alignment with the teams at Microsoft. [00:13:20] Marcus Jewett: So, uh, I’m, I’m really excited about how we’ve been able to mature the practice and how SHI is now 100% aligned with Microsoft across all of our solution areas, whether it’s. Security, you know, cloud and infrastructure or AI business solutions. There’s a very mirrored approach to how we support customers. [00:13:39] Marcus Jewett: Yeah. I want [00:13:40] Vince Menzione: to double click on the AI component. You know, we were up here earlier, Irwin and I were up here talking about being a frontier firm, and I’ll open it up to all, all of you to individually answer this. I know, Marcus, you have some insights here about the ai. You mentioned AI already. But also to Stephanie and Joe about how you’re taking AI and modern work and workplace and, and, and, and addressing this market specifically. [00:14:07] Vince Menzione: Where, where, where do we wanna start there? [00:14:09] Joseph Bellian: Yeah. One big one. Um, if you’re not familiar, we have ai, an AI labs, um, onsite, uh, lab, and based out of Jersey, one of our headquarters. So on the forefront of the AI technology, but the real focus there is being able to meet with our clients and obviously joint partnerships, um, to build and develop solutions safe, um, offline in a safe, secure environment. [00:14:33] Joseph Bellian: Because let’s be honest, I mean, ai, it’s moving fast and, and we, we, we need to ensure that our data’s secure. Um, and there’s a lot of risk out there. And so we are partnering, um, um, out there with Nvidia and other other providers, um, but specifically with Microsoft in the cloud, um, and securing that environment. [00:14:51] Joseph Bellian: So AI Labs, bringing our clients in, building custom solutions, the area of a jet AI’s here. It’s [00:14:57] Vince Menzione: there. It is here. Yeah, it is here, Stephanie. [00:15:00] Stefanie Dunn: Thank you. Yes, and I’ll just add, uh, for, for our customers, they need to make sure that their foundation is right. You know, they’re coming from maybe all different other clouds. [00:15:09] Stefanie Dunn: They’ve, you know, got multi-tenant really understanding what their structure looks like, and then. Creating that secure foundation. So we’ve got a lot, you know, we do a lot around, uh, just full M 365 migrations and then into understanding the identity and the security baseline under that, making sure that that’s correct. [00:15:29] Stefanie Dunn: And then we can start journeying into some of these other conversations. Data governance, data engineering, uh, all that is extremely important. We have an entire dedicated team, uh, within services sales. Pre-sales with essays or solution architects and delivery, uh, as well as just the project management. [00:15:48] Stefanie Dunn: And, and it’s just this full life cycle to understand where are you and we need to make sure that, that your structure’s built correctly or else it’s never gonna succeed. So a little bit, we take it back to the foundation level, I’ll just say from a customer, uh, engagement perspective to make sure that what they wanna do, they can do securely. [00:16:06] Marcus Jewett: Very cool. I, I’d like to add one other piece there. Um, you know, obviously to Joe’s point earlier, like if anyone says they know exactly what the AI journey will look like for most customers in six months, they’re probably not telling you the truth. Right? This is, we’re, we’re building the plane in the air. [00:16:22] Marcus Jewett: But, uh, one thing Microsoft has really built a foundation on is looking at our partners. And the ones who have adopted AI internally, especially Microsoft Technologies, and we call it Customer zero, right? Ensuring working with partners who have invested in their internal usage of Microsoft AI technology. [00:16:41] Marcus Jewett: So it’s all the various flavors of copilot. Rolling it out and implementing it across their organizations and building their own internal use cases, which they can go in turn and use to go help drive successful engagements with their end customers. So SHI has also been one of our, uh, brightest partners when it comes to that customer Zero journey. [00:17:01] Marcus Jewett: Uh, and it’s something I’m very, very proud of to see. Uh, we’re leveraging the, the use cases and the learnings our SHI is to really go out there and help customers navigate through their own. Uh, complexities of their AI journey as well. So, uh, my kudos to SHI as customer. Zero. Very proud of you and opera feels great. [00:17:20] Marcus Jewett: And you’re [00:17:20] Vince Menzione: providing support engineering, organ organization that supports this function? [00:17:24] Marcus Jewett: Oh, absolutely. As a globally managed partner, I mean, we’re, we’re gonna always be there to help our partners through the journey, right? So whether they need internal readiness or technical support, uh, whether it’s workshops, however we can help the partners best. [00:17:38] Marcus Jewett: Uh, position and posture themselves to go help customers with these, uh, AI engagements. Uh, we’re, we’re there to invest. Uh, we’ve invested in SHI for the last several years across, uh, ai, and we will continue to do so. [00:17:52] Vince Menzione: So what’s the message for the partner community, Joe, that, that, like, how should they perceive you? [00:17:57] Vince Menzione: How should they think about you? Should they, how should they think about engaging with you? Okay. [00:18:02] Joseph Bellian: Yeah, so I mean, obviously we’re an SSP, we’re never gonna, we’re never gonna, um, lose that, that accreditation with Microsoft. But the, the real focus of what we wanna be recognized as A-G-S-I-A global systems integrator, um, being able to engage our clients jointly, co-selling together and meeting them where they’re at across their digital journey. [00:18:21] Joseph Bellian: Uh, we have the capabilities to handle their licensing and understanding the complex matrix in their environment, their IT infrastructure. But being able to have a solution for every part of the journey of where they’re at, because every client’s in a different situation. Yeah. So, so in reality, it’s A-G-S-I-A global systems integrator, being able to engage across their journey. [00:18:42] Vince Menzione: So that’s a, did everybody hear that? ’cause I, I heard that for the first time. That’s a very different perception of the, of the previous organization and getting there. Uh, and you also, I remember this from the transactional side of the business. You were at the very type, at the top of the pyramid, right? [00:18:56] Vince Menzione: Yeah. You handled some of the largest corporations in the, in the world. Yeah. And you know companies as well as organizations like government, governmental organizations across different markets as well. [00:19:07] Joseph Bellian: Yep. A hundred percent. [00:19:08] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So GS. Yeah. [00:19:11] Marcus Jewett: And it’s really important to, for SHI to, to develop that GSI muscle. [00:19:15] Marcus Jewett: Uh, you mentioned at the beginning, Joe, that Microsoft, uh, we have various routes to market. Uh, one of those routes to market, uh, especially in the enterprise space or in our strategic space, is for customers to procure direct. Uh, SHI has longstanding relationships with those customers, and as these customers renew their agreements into a direct model with Microsoft, the way they stay engaged and add value to these prop, uh, to these customers is through their services, their professional services, their managed services. [00:19:42] Marcus Jewett: So going back to Joe’s Point around really defining themselves as a, uh, A GSI, that is also an SSP has been paramount to their overall transformational journey and their overall success. [00:19:55] Vince Menzione: And you also work, so I would assume you work with some of the ISVs in the room too. Yeah, I would think there’s some really great relationships or synergies. [00:20:01] Vince Menzione: Is that, is that an area of muscle you’ve been building out or, yeah, it’s battle, it’s an opportunity. [00:20:06] Joseph Bellian: I mean, I, I believe you have a segment coming up as well on it, um, around NPO. Um, and so there’s a, there’s a play in every motion from services, play services attached through ISVs, your SaaS offers. Um, we do recognize that that’s an opportunity. [00:20:18] Joseph Bellian: Uh, we’re having great success when you look at the marketplace, um, through the multi private party offers. Um, it allows us to expand our footprint and take, uh, take advantage of those relationships and co-sell together. So, absolutely. Wow. [00:20:30] Vince Menzione: Very cool. So you’re gonna be around most of the day today? Yes. I hope. [00:20:34] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. So for the partners that are in the room, I think that great conversations with both of you, Stephanie and Joe, and, uh, great conversation. Is there anything else we wanna share with everyone? [00:20:46] Marcus Jewett: Uh, no. It’s just, I would, I would leave you all with the fact that, again, uh, for every partner. Uh, make certain that you, you’re finding a way to differentiate yourself and tell your story. [00:20:57] Marcus Jewett: Uh, you may be doing some amazing work, uh, but if you’re not finding ways to, to tell that story and make certain your customers, and for me, Microsoft, make certain that, that the Microsoft teams you’re working with have very clear understanding of what your capabilities are today, then you may be missing the mark. [00:21:13] Marcus Jewett: I, I, I use this analogy all the time. Uh, the largest retailer on the planet. Who is it? Come on, help me out. I’m sorry. Largest retailer. Box Box. Walmart. Walmart, that’s right. You can turn on a television on any given day and you will still see a Walmart commercial. So yes, tell your story. Yes, very [00:21:34] Joseph Bellian: smart move. [00:21:34] Joseph Bellian: And one more, um, I just wanna make sure I land out there, is the success and where we go from here. Um, it’s this right here in the room. Um, us partnering together, bringing the partner ecosystem together. Um, in reality, we’re not competing together. We should be collaborating together and working together, um, in our client’s joint environments. [00:21:52] Joseph Bellian: Microsoft says it well, it’s that one Microsoft story. It’s that better together story and the more we can work together, the more success we’ll have together. [00:22:00] Vince Menzione: Awesome. I want to thank you so much for your sponsorship and for being here. Uh, big news here, I think it should be like on the front page of the partner ecosystem journal that you’re now, you’re now GSII think that that says quite, that says volumes to, to the community out there. [00:22:15] Joseph Bellian: Yeah. [00:22:15] Vince Menzione: Thank you. [00:22:15] Joseph Bellian: Absolutely. [00:22:16] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you both for joining us. So great to have you both. Thank you. Thank you, Marcus, to have you as well. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you very much Stephanie. So great. So great to spend time with you. Thank you. And this.

Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. AI agents are your next customers. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/  Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Jen Odess, Group Vice President of Partner Excellence at ServiceNow, joins Vince Menzione to discuss the company’s incredible transformation from an IT ticketing solution to a leading AI-native platform for business transformation. Jen dives deep into how ServiceNow has strategically invested in and infused AI into its unified platform over the last decade, enabling over a billion workflows daily. She also outlines the critical role of the partner ecosystem, which executes 87% of all implementations, and reveals the company’s strategic initiatives, including its commitment to the hyperscaler marketplaces, the goal to hit half a billion dollars in annual contract value for its Now Assist AI product, and the push for partners to adopt an ‘AI-native’ methodology to capitalize on the fact that customers still want over 70% of AI buying to be done through partners. Key Takeaways ServiceNow is an ‘AI-native’ company, having invested in and built AI directly into its unified platform for over a decade. The company’s core value today is in its unified AI platform, single data model, and leadership in workflows that connect the entire enterprise. ServiceNow will hit $500 million in annual contract value for its Now Assist AI products by the end of 2025, making it the fastest-growing product in company history. An astonishing 87% of all ServiceNow implementations are done by its global partner ecosystem, highlighting their crucial role. The company is leveraging the half-trillion-dollar opportunity of durable cloud budgets by driving marketplace transactions and helping customers burn down cloud commits using ServiceNow solutions. To win in the AI era, partners must adopt AI internally, co-innovate on the platform, and strategically differentiate themselves to rank higher in the forthcoming agentic matching system. Key Tags: ServiceNow, AI-native platform, Now Assist, Jen Odess, partner excellence, workflow leader, AI platform for business transformation, hyperscalers, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, AWS, marketplace transactions, cloud commits, AIDA model, agentic matching, F-Pattern, Z-Pattern, group vice president, MSP, GSI, co-innovation, autonomous implementation, technical constraints, visual hierarchy, UX, UI, responsive design. Ultimate Partner is the independent community for technology leaders navigating the tectonic shifts in cloud, AI, marketplaces, and co-selling. Through live events, UPX membership, advisory, and the Ultimate Partner® podcast, we help organizations align with hyperscalers, accelerate growth, and achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Transcript: Jen Odess Audio Podcast [00:00:00] Jen Odess: The AI platform for business transformation, and I love to say to people, it sounds like a handful of cliche words that just got stacked together. The AI platform for business transformation. Yeah. We all know these words, so many companies use ’em, but it is such deliberate language and I love to explain why. [00:00:20] Vince Menzione: Welcome to, or welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi on your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. Today we have a special leader, Jen Odes is the GVP for Partner Excellence at ServiceNow. And joins me here in the studio in Boca Raton. [00:00:40] Vince Menzione: Jen, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Vince. It’s so great to be here. I am so thrilled to welcome you. To Boca Raton, Florida. Our podcast home look at this amazing background we have Here is this, and this is where we host our ultimate partner Winter retreat. Actually, in February, we’re gonna give that a plug. [00:00:58] Vince Menzione: Okay. I’d love to have you come back. I’d love to have an invite. And you flew in this morning from Washington DC [00:01:04] Jen Odess: I did. It was 20 degrees when I left my house this morning and this backdrop. Is definitely giving me, island South Florida like vibes. It’s fabulous. [00:01:13] Vince Menzione: And we’re gonna talk about ServiceNow. [00:01:14] Vince Menzione: And you’re also opening an office down here? We [00:01:17] Jen Odess: are [00:01:17] Vince Menzione: in West Palm Beach. Not too far from where we are. Yes. Later 2026. Yeah. I love that. And then so we’ll work on the recruiting year, but let’s dive in. Okay. So thrilled to have ServiceNow and to have you in the room. This has been an incredible time for your organization. [00:01:31] Vince Menzione: I have been watching, obviously I work with Microsoft. We’ve had Google. In the studio, Amazon onboard as well. And other than those three organizations, I can’t think of any other legacy organization that has embraced AI more succinctly than ServiceNow. And I thought we’d start there, but I really wanna spend some time getting to know you and getting to know your role, your mission, and your journey to this incredible. [00:01:57] Vince Menzione: Leadership role as a global vice president. We’ll talk about Or [00:02:01] Jen Odess: group. Group Vice president. I know it doesn’t roll off the tongue. I get it. A group vice president doesn’t roll. [00:02:05] Vince Menzione: G-V-P-G-V-P doesn’t roll off the time. And in some organizations it is global. It is in other organizations, it’s group. So let’s, you’re not [00:02:12] Jen Odess: the first to say global vice president. [00:02:14] Jen Odess: Okay. I’ll take either way. It’s fine. [00:02:15] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Yeah. And might be a promotion. Let’s talk. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about you and your career journey and your mission. [00:02:22] Jen Odess: Yeah, so I’ve been at ServiceNow for five years. In fact, January will be like the five year anniversary and then it will be the beginning of my sixth year. [00:02:31] Jen Odess: Amazing. And I actually got hired originally to build out the initial partner enablement function. So it didn’t really exist five years ago. There was certainly enablement that happened to Sure. All individuals that were. Using, consuming, buying ServiceNow, working with ServiceNow. But the partner enablement function from pre to post-sale, that whole life cycle didn’t exist yet. [00:02:54] Jen Odess: So that was my initial job. I got hired to run partner enablement and it before. And how big [00:02:59] Vince Menzione: was your partner organization at that point? It must have been pretty small. [00:03:01] Jen Odess: It was actually not as small as you would think. Gosh, that’s a great question. You’re challenging my memory from five years ago. [00:03:08] Jen Odess: I know that we’re over 2,500 partners today and we add hundreds every year, so it had to have been in the low one thousands. Wow. Is where we were five years ago. But the maturity of the ecosystem is grossly larger today than it was then. I can imagine. So back then there was less than 30,000 individuals that were skilled on ServiceNow to sell or solution or deliver. [00:03:34] Jen Odess: Today there’s almost a hundred thousand. Wow. So yeah that’s like the maturity in the capability within the ecosystem. But before I start on my ServiceNow and my group vice president. Which is a great role, by the way. Group Vice President. Yeah. Partner Excellence group. I’m very proud of it. [00:03:49] Jen Odess: But but let me tell you what brought me here, please. So I actually came from a partner, but not in the ServiceNow ecosystem. Okay. I won’t name the partner, but let’s just say it’s a competitor, a competitive ecosystem. And I worked for a services shop that today I would refer to as multinational. [00:04:11] Jen Odess: Kind of a boutique darling, but with over 1,500 consultants, so Okay. A behemoth as well? Yeah. Privately held. And we were a force to be reckoned with, and it was really fun. I held so many roles. I was a customer success manager. I led the data science practice at one point. I ran global alliances and partnerships. [00:04:35] Jen Odess: At one point I was the chief of staff to the CEO at the time that company was acquired. Big global si. And and then at one point I even spun off for the big global SI and helped run a culture initiative to transform co corporate culture. Wow. Very inside the whole organization. Wow. That is very, yeah. [00:04:54] Jen Odess: Really interesting set of roles. And the whole reason I came to ServiceNow is by the time I was concluding that journey in that ecosystem on the services side, I felt like. I didn’t fully understand what it meant to be on the software product side. And I often felt like I approached friction or moments of frustration and heartache with resentment for the software company. [00:05:20] Jen Odess: Sure. Or maybe just a lack of empathy for what they must be going through as well. It always felt like I was on the kind of [00:05:26] Vince Menzione: negative you were on the other side of the table. Totally. [00:05:27] Jen Odess: Yeah. And, or maybe like the redheaded stepchild kind of a concept as a partner. And so I sought out to. Learn more, which is probably a big piece of my journey is just constant curiosity. [00:05:38] Jen Odess: Nice. And I thought I think the thing I’m missing is seeing what it means firsthand to be on the software product side. And that was what led me to a career at ServiceNow. Five years strong. Yeah. So [00:05:50] Vince Menzione: talk about partner experience for those who don’t know what that means. [00:05:53] Jen Odess: Yeah. Today my role is partner excellence, but it used to be partner experience. [00:05:58] Jen Odess: Okay. And so the don’t. Yeah, that’s normal to say both things. And they actually mean two very different things. [00:06:04] Vince Menzione: Yeah, I would say so. [00:06:05] Jen Odess: And we deliberately changed the title about a year ago. So today, partner Excellence is about really ensuring that we build a vibrant AI led ecosystem. And that’s from the whole life cycle of the partner, from the day they choose to be a partner and onboard, and hopefully to the day they’re just. [00:06:23] Jen Odess: Thriving and growing like crazy, and then across the whole life cycle of the customer pre to post sale. So it’s, we are almost like the underpinning and the infras infrastructure. Someone once said it’s like we’re the insurance policy of all global partnerships and channels. That’s how we operate across global partnerships and channels and service Now. [00:06:42] Vince Menzione: And you have a very intimate relationship with those partners. We’re gonna dive in on that as well. Yes. But let’s talk about this time like no other. I talk about tectonic shifts at all of our events. People that listen to our podcasts know we talk about the acceleration of transformation, and it’s happening so fast. [00:06:58] Vince Menzione: It was happening fast even during COVID. But then. I’ll call this date or time period, the November 20, 22 time period when Chat GPT launched. Oh yeah. And that really changed the world in many respects, right? Yeah. Microsoft had already leaned in with chat, GPT, Google, we talked to Google about this. [00:07:17] Vince Menzione: Even having them in the room was like, they were caught flatfooted in a way, and they had a lot of the technology and they didn’t lean in. But it feels like ServiceNow was one of the first, certainly on the ISV side of the house and refer to the term ISV. Loosely, because hyperscalers are ISVs as well. [00:07:34] Vince Menzione: They were early to lean in and have leaned it in such a way from a business application perspective that I believe we haven’t seen embracing and infusing AI into your platform. I was hoping we could dive in a little bit on ServiceNow from a. Kinda legacy, what the organization was and is today. [00:07:56] Vince Menzione: And then also this infusion of AI into the platform. If you don’t mind, [00:07:59] Jen Odess: I love this topic. Okay. And I feel like it’s such a privilege to talk about ServiceNow on this topic because we really are a leader in the category. I’ll almost rewind back to over 20 years ago when the company was founded. [00:08:11] Jen Odess: Today, fast forward, we are so much more than an IT ticketing company. We are, [00:08:16] Vince Menzione: but that was the legacy. That’s how I knew service now 20 years ago. [00:08:19] Jen Odess: And what a beautiful legacy. Yeah. But we have expanded immensely beyond that. And that’s the beautiful story to tell customers. That’s so fun. [00:08:28] Jen Odess: But what what I love is that. So 20 years ago, that was where we started. And today, do you know that over a billion workflows are put to work every single day for our customers? A billion [00:08:38] Vince Menzione: workflows, over a billion workflows. That’s crazy. [00:08:40] Jen Odess: And 87% of all implementations for ServiceNow were done by partnerships. [00:08:46] Jen Odess: And channels. That’s fantastic. So you think about those billion plus workflows daily, all because of our partner ecosystem. This is my small plug. I’m just very proud 80, proud 86%. [00:08:56] Vince Menzione: Did you hear that? Part’s 86%. [00:08:57] Jen Odess: Amazing. And so that’s like what we’re, that’s what we’re a leader in the category. We are a leader in workflows categorically. [00:09:05] Jen Odess: But then over a decade ago, we started investing in ai. We started building it right into our platform, and this becomes the next kind of notch on our belt, which is we are a unified platform. Nothing is bolted on, nothing is just apid in. Yeah, it is a unified platform. So all of that AI that for the past decade we’ve been building in into our platform. [00:09:28] Jen Odess: Just in our AI platform, which is now what we are calling it, the AI platform. [00:09:34] Vince Menzione: And I would say that unless you were a startup starting up from scratch today and building on an LLM, we were building in a way I don’t think any other organization’s gonna actually state that [00:09:45] Jen Odess: what’s actually why we call ourselves AI native. [00:09:47] Jen Odess: Yeah, beca for that exact reason. And that’s who we’re competing with a lot these days, is the truly AI native startups where they didn’t have, the 20 years. Previously that we had, but that’s what makes us so unique in the situation, is that unified AI platform, a single data model that can connect to anything. [00:10:07] Jen Odess: And then the workflow leader. And when you put all those things together, AI plus data, plus workflows and that’s where the magic happens. Yeah. Across the enterprise. It’s pretty cool. [00:10:17] Vince Menzione: That is very cool. And you start thinking about, and we start talking about agent as a, as an example. Let’s talk about this for a second. [00:10:23] Vince Menzione: You, when what is this bolt-on, we could use the terms co-pilot, we could use Ag Agent ai, but they are generally bolted onto an existing application today. So take us through the 10 years and how it has become a portion or a significant portion. Of ServiceNow. [00:10:41] Jen Odess: When say the question a little bit more. [00:10:43] Jen Odess: Like when you say it’s, yeah, when which examples have bolted on? [00:10:47] Vince Menzione: So exa, we, what we see today is the hyperscalers coming out with their own solution sets, right? They’re taking and they’re offering it up to their ecosystem to infuse it into their product and portfolio. To me, those that look like bolted on in many respects, unless it’s an AI need as a native organization, a startup organization. [00:11:07] Vince Menzione: They’re mostly taking and re-engineering or bolting onto their existing solutions. [00:11:12] Jen Odess: I follow. Yeah. Thank you for giving me a little more context. So I call this our any problem. It’s like one of the best problems to have we can connect into. Anything, any cloud, any ai, any platform, any system, any data, any workflow, and that’s where any hyperscaler, and that’s the part that makes it so incredible. [00:11:32] Jen Odess: So your word is bolt on, and I use the word any the, any problem. Yeah. We’ve got this beautiful kind of stack visual that just, it’s like it just one on top of the other. Any. Any, and no one else can really say that. I gotta see [00:11:45] Vince Menzione: that visual. Yeah. Yeah. So talk about this a little bit more. So you’re uniquely positioned. [00:11:52] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about how you position, you talked about being AI native. What does that imply and what does that mean in terms of the evolution of the platform? From ticketing to workflows to the business applications? What are the type of applications Yeah. Markets, industries that you’re starting to see. [00:12:08] Jen Odess: So I’ll actually answer this with, taking on a small, maybe marketing or positioning journey. So there was a time when our tagline would be The World Works with ServiceNow. There was a time when it was, we put AI to work for people and today and it, I think it was around Knowledge 2025, this came out. [00:12:28] Jen Odess: It was the AI platform for business transformation. And I love to say to people, it sounds like a handful of. Cliche words that just got stacked together. The AI platform for business transformation. Yeah. We all know these words, so many companies use ’em, but it is such deliberate language and I love to explain why. [00:12:46] Jen Odess: So the first is the AI platform is calling out that we are an AI native platform. We are a unified platform. It’s a chance to say all that goodness I already shared with you. Yeah. And the business transformation is actually telling the story of no longer being a solution. Point or no longer being an individual product that does X. [00:13:06] Jen Odess: It’s about saying. The ServiceNow platform can go north to south and east to west across your entire enterprise. Okay. Up and down the entire tech stack. Any. And then east to west, it can cut across the enterprise, the C-suite, the buying centers, all into one unified AI platform. With one data model. [00:13:26] Jen Odess: I love it. And so I love that AI platform for business transformation actually has so much purpose. [00:13:32] Vince Menzione: It does. So you’re going across the stack, so you’re going all the way from the bottom layer, all the way up to the top from the ue. Ui. And then you’re going across the organization, right? You’re going across the C-suite, you’re going across all the business functions of an organization. [00:13:46] Vince Menzione: Correct. And so the workflows are going across each of those business functions? [00:13:49] Jen Odess: Correct. And then our AI control tower is sitting at the very top, governing over all of it. [00:13:53] Vince Menzione: I love the control tower. [00:13:54] Jen Odess: I know the governance, security risk protocol, managing all the agents interoperability. Yeah. [00:14:01] Vince Menzione: And then data at the very bottom right. [00:14:03] Vince Menzione: Controlling all those elements and the governance of the data and the right, the cleanliness of the data and so on. Yeah. That’s incredible. I we could probably talk about business applications. I know one, in fact, I’ve had a person sit in this, your chair from we’ll call it a large GSIA very significant GSI one of the top five. [00:14:21] Vince Menzione: And they took ServiceNow and they applied it to their business partnering function. And they used, and we, you probably don’t know about this one, but I know that that’s a, an example of taking it and applying it all across all the workflows, across all the geographies of the organization and taking a lot of the process that was all done manually. [00:14:40] Vince Menzione: That was stove pipe business processes that were all stove piped and removing the stove pipe and making for a fluid organizational flow. [00:14:47] Jen Odess: And I’ll bet you the end user didn’t even realize ServiceNow was the backend. That’s some of the greatest examples actually. [00:14:53] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Yeah. So Jen, we work with all the hyperscalers. [00:14:56] Vince Menzione: We have a very strong relationship with Microsoft. Goes back many years, my back to my days at Microsoft and we’ve had Google in the room. We have AWS now as well. We bring them all together because we believe that partners work with, need to work with all three. And I know that you have had an interesting transformation at ServiceNow around the hyperscalers. [00:15:16] Vince Menzione: I was hoping you could dive in a little deeper with us. [00:15:19] Jen Odess: Yeah. We are so proud of our relationships with the hyperscalers, so the same three, so it’s Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS. And really it’s it’s a strategic 360 partnership and our goal is really to drive marketplace transactions. [00:15:34] Jen Odess: So ServiceNow selling in all of their marketplaces and then. Burn down of our customers cloud commits. I love it. It’s really a beautiful story for our customers and for the hyperscalers and for ServiceNow. And so we’ve, it’s brand, it’s a brand new announcement from late in the year 2025. Love it. And we’re really excited about it. [00:15:51] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And then we, and we get all of the marketplace leaders in the room. So we’ve worked with all of those people. And one of the key points about this is there is over a half a trillion dollars in durable cloud budgets with customers that [00:16:08] Vince Menzione: Already committed to, I know, so that tam available, a half a trillion dollars is available to customers to burn down and utilize your solutions and professional services with partners as well in terms of driving a complete solution. [00:16:21] Jen Odess: That’s exactly the motion we’re pushing is to go and leverage those cloud commits to get on ServiceNow and in some cases, maybe even take out other products to go with ServiceNow and actually end up funding the transition to ServiceNow. Yeah. Yeah. [00:16:37] Vince Menzione: So you serve thousands of customers today, thousands of customers. [00:16:42] Vince Menzione: I can’t even. Fathom the exact number, but you have this partner ecosystem that you described, and their reach is even more incredible, like hundreds of thousands. Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about how you think about that, and then how do you drive the partner ecosystem in the right way to drive this partner excellence that you described. [00:17:02] Jen Odess: Yeah, that’s a great question. So yeah, thousands of ServiceNow customers and we’re barely scratching the surface in comparison to our partners customers. So we have over 2,500 partners Wow. In our ecosystem. And today they cut across what I would call five routes to market. That partners can go to market with ServiceNow. [00:17:21] Jen Odess: Okay. The first is consulting and implementation. This will be your classic kind of consulting shop or GSI approach. The second is resell, just like it sounds. Yep. [00:17:30] Vince Menzione: Transactional. [00:17:31] Jen Odess: Yep. The third is managed service provider. [00:17:33] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:17:34] Jen Odess: The fourth is what we call build, which is. The ISV, strategic Tech partner realm, and then the fifth is hyperscaler. [00:17:43] Jen Odess: Those are the five routes to market. So partners can choose to be in one or all or two. It doesn’t matter. It’s whichever one fits the kind of business they want to go drive. Nice. Where they’re. Expertise lies. And then we’ve got partners that show up globally, partners that show up multinational and partners that show up regionally and then partners that show up locally, in country and that’s it. [00:18:06] Jen Odess: And we really want a diverse set of partners capable of delivering where any of our customers are. So it’s important that we have that dynamic ecosystem where we really push them. We’re actually trying hard to balance this. Yeah, you would’ve heard it from many of your other partners. This direct versus indirect. [00:18:24] Jen Odess: Yes. Motion. For anyone listening that doesn’t know the difference, right? Direct is ServiceNow is selling direct to a customer, there might be a partner involved influencing that will implement. Yeah, likely but ServiceNow is really driving the sale versus indirect where the whole thing routes through the partner. [00:18:39] Jen Odess: Right? Which is your classic reseller or managed service provider and often a an ISV. And you know that balance is never gonna be perfect ’cause we’re not gonna commit to go all direct or all indirect. We’re gonna continue to sit in this space where we’re trying to find a healthy balance. [00:18:56] Jen Odess: So I find a lot of our time trying to figure out how do you set all those parties up for success? Yeah. The parties are the ServiceNow field sellers? And then you’ve also got the partnerships and channels, so the ecosystem, and then you’ve got the people in global partnerships and channels. So my broader organization, and we’re all trying to figure out how to work harmoniously together and it’s a lot of, it is my job to get us there. [00:19:19] Jen Odess: And so we use lots of things like incentives and benefits and we will put in place gated entry, really strategic gated entry. What does [00:19:29] Vince Menzione: gated entry mean? [00:19:30] Jen Odess: Yeah. What I mean is if you want to have a chance at being matched with a customer Yeah. For a very specific deal. Or it’s really one of three to get matched. [00:19:41] Jen Odess: ‘Cause you can never match one-to-one. It has to be three or more. Okay. We have good compliance rules in place. Yeah. But in order to even. Like surface to the top of the list to be matched. There’s a gated entry, which is, you’ve gotta have validated practices. Okay. Which is how, it’s these various ways, as you described, you quantify and qualify the partner’s capabilities. [00:20:00] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So you have to meet these qualifications. Yes. And you could be one of three to enter and be. Potentially matched, considered significant or Yes. Match for this deal? [00:20:08] Jen Odess: Yes, that’s exactly right. So we use, various things like that. And then we try to carve what I would call dance card space reseller in commercial, try to sit here and like carve by geo, by region, by country dance card space as well to help the partners really know exactly where they can unleash versus, hey, this is the process and the rules of engagement. To go and sell alongside the direct org sales organization [00:20:33] Vince Menzione: and you’re gonna have multiple partners in the same opportunities. [00:20:37] Vince Menzione: Absolutely not. Not necessarily competing with each other. There’s three competing each with each other, but also you’re gonna have other partners that provide different capabilities as well. You might have that have some that are just transac. Those are gonna be those channel or reseller partners. [00:20:52] Vince Menzione: You might have an MSP that’s actually delivering, or at least providing some type of managed service on top of the stack. Like supporting the customer. Yeah. And then you might have an SI GSI an integration partner that’s also doing the con the consulting work around getting the solution to meet with the customer’s requirements. [00:21:12] Vince Menzione: Would you say [00:21:13] Jen Odess: so? That’s exactly right. Yeah. And actually in. AI era, we’re seeing more of it than ever. And even on the smaller deals, maybe not the GSIs on the smaller deals, but we’re seeing multiple partners come in to serve up their specific expertise, which is actually a best practice. That’s [00:21:33] Vince Menzione: terrific. [00:21:33] Jen Odess: We don’t want. If you’ve got an area that’s a blind spot and you’re a partner, but that’s something your customer is buying from you, there’s no harm in saying let’s bring in an expert in that category to deliver that piece of the business. That’s right. And we’ll maybe shadow and watch alongside. [00:21:46] Jen Odess: So we’re seeing more and more of it. And I actually think like the world of. Partnerships and ecosystems. If I go back to like my previous ecosystem as well, it’s become so much more communal than ever before. Yes. This idea that we can share and be more open and maybe even commiserate over the things, gosh, I can’t believe we have the same frustrations or we have the same. [00:22:09] Jen Odess: Wow, that’s amazing. And you’re in this country. And I’m in this country. And so we’re seeing more and more coming together on deals which I really respect a lot. ’cause So one of the new facts we’ve just learned actually, Vince, is that. Of all the ai buying that customers are doing out there, they actually still want over 70% of it to be done by partners. [00:22:32] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:22:33] Jen Odess: So even though it looks like it could be maybe set up easy configured, easy plug and play it. It to get, it’s not real ROI. You still need a partner with expertise in that industry or that domain, or in that location or in that language to come and bring the value to life. And we will certainly accelerate, help accelerate time to value with things that ServiceNow will do for our partners. [00:22:56] Jen Odess: But if over 70% is gonna go to partners and AI is so new, wouldn’t you want more than one partner Sometimes on a absolutely on a deal, at least while we’re all learning. I think we can keep ebbing and flowing [00:23:07] Vince Menzione: on this. We you, I dunno if Jay McBain, ’cause we’ve had him in the room here and he is a, he’s an analyst that does a lot of work around this topic. [00:23:14] Vince Menzione: And we talk about the seven seats at the table because there are, again, you need more you, first of all, you need to have your trusted, you need to have the organizations that you work with. And you also, in the world of ai, with all of the tectonic shifts, all the constant changing that’s going on right now, I need to make sure that I have the right. [00:23:31] Vince Menzione: People by my side that I can trust, they can help me deliver what I need to deliver. ’cause it might have changed from six months ago. And the technology is changing. Everything is changing so rapidly right now. So again, having all those right people I want to pick up on something ’cause we talked a little bit about MSPs and they’ve become a favorite topic of ours. [00:23:52] Vince Menzione: I have become acutely aware of the Ms P community recently. I kinda looked at them as well. There’s little small partners, but you’ve suggested this as well. They have regional expert, they have expertise in a specific area. And can be trusted, and maybe you’re integrating multiple solution sets for a customer. [00:24:11] Vince Menzione: But we’ve seen this MSP community become very vibrant lately, and I feel like they woke up to technology and to AI in such a big way. Can you comment on that? [00:24:20] Jen Odess: So we feel and see the same thing I’ve always valued what managed service providers bring to the table. It’s like that. [00:24:26] Jen Odess: Classic are you a transformation shop or are you a ta? The tail end or the run business shop? And so many partners are like we’re both, and I wanna be like, but are you? But now I feel like we finally are seeing the run business is so fruitful. So AI is innovating. All the time. [00:24:46] Jen Odess: We, we are innovating as a AI platform all the time. What used to be six month, every six months family releases of our software. Yeah. It became quarterly and now we’re practically seeing releases of new innovation every six to eight weeks. So why wouldn’t you want a managed service provider? Paying close attention to your whole instance on ServiceNow and taking into account all the latest innovation and building it into your existing instance, and then looking out for what new things you should be bringing in. [00:25:20] Jen Odess: So that’s the beauty of the, it’s almost partnerships, observing, and then suggesting how to keep. Doing better and more and better versus always jumping straight back to complete redesign and transformation. Yeah, and that’s one of the things I like about the MSPs in this space. [00:25:36] Vince Menzione: So let’s broaden out from this part of the conversation ’cause you’re giving specific guidance to the MSPs, but let’s think about this whole partner community. [00:25:43] Vince Menzione: And you’ve seen this transformation coming over to ServiceNow and even within ServiceNow these last five years. How do these organizations need to think differently? And how do they need to structure their services in this newent world? [00:25:58] Jen Odess: Great question. There’s really four things that I think they have to be thoughtful of. [00:26:02] Jen Odess: The first is maybe the most obvious they have to adopt AI as their own ways of doing work methodology. Delivery, whatever it is, because only through the, it’s not about taking out people in jobs, it’s about doing the job faster, right? It’s about getting the customer to value faster so that adoption of AI will make or break some partners. [00:26:24] Jen Odess: And our goal is that every partner comes on the other side of this AI journey, thriving and surviving. So we’re really pushing. This agenda. And maybe later I can talk to you a little bit more about this autonomous implementation concept. Please. ’cause I that will [00:26:37] Vince Menzione: resonate. So you’re saying they need to, we used to use the term eat their own dog food. [00:26:41] Vince Menzione: Now it’s drink your own champagne. Yeah. But they need to adopt it as well internally. [00:26:46] Jen Odess: Yeah. And I think whether they’re using, I hope they’re using ServiceNow as like a client, zero. To do some of that adoption. But there’s lots of other tools that are great AI tools that will make your job and your day-to-day life and the execution of that job easier. [00:26:59] Jen Odess: So we want them adopting all of that. The second is, we really need to see partners. Innovating on the ServiceNow platform. Yeah. And whether that’s building agents AI agents that go into the ServiceNow store, whether it’s building a really fantastic solution that we wanna joint jointly go to market with, or maybe it’s one of those embedded solutions you were commenting where the end user doesn’t even know that the backend, like a tax and audit solution that is actually just. [00:27:29] Jen Odess: The backend is all ServiceNow. Yeah. But that partner is going to market and selling it to all their customers. Exactly. So I think this co-innovation is gonna be a place that we will really win in market. The third is if a partner wants to stand out right now, they have to differentiate on paper too. [00:27:47] Jen Odess: It’s gotta like what does that mean? So if there’s 2,500 partners. And it’s not like we don’t walk around and just say, you should talk to this partner. Yeah. Or here’s my secret list. You should, we don’t do that. That’s not good business and it’s not compliant. So we have algorithms that take all the quantitative and qualitative data on our partners and they know all the data points ’cause it’s part of the partner program Nice. [00:28:10] Jen Odess: That they adhere to and then ranks them on status. And all those data points are what I’m referring to as on paper. You’ve gotta be differentiated. So whether or not you wanna be great at one thing or great across the whole thing, think about how all of those quantitative and qualitative data points are making you stand out, because that’s where those matches that I was referring to. [00:28:35] Jen Odess: Yes. That’s where that’s gonna come to life. And it’s skills, it’s capabilities. It’s deployments. So Proofpoint and deployments, customer success stories, csat, all the things. So [00:28:47] Vince Menzione: those are all the qualifi qualifiers for and more, but those are the types [00:28:49] Jen Odess: of qualifications. Yeah. [00:28:51] Vince Menzione: And then do your, does your sales organization do a match against that based on a customer’s requirements that they’re working with and who they work with and co-sell with? [00:29:00] Jen Odess: And I feel like you just lobbed me the greatest question. I didn’t even know you were gonna ask it, but I’m so glad you did. So today. Today there is something called a partner finder, which is which is nice, but it’s a little bit old school in a world of ai. Yeah. So you go to servicenow.com, you click partner from the top navigation, and then it says find a partner and you can literally type in the products you’re buying the country, you’re, that you’re headquartered out of. [00:29:26] Jen Odess: Whatever thing you’re looking for. And it will start to filter based on all those data points, the right partners, and you can actually click right there to be connected to a partner. So lead generation. Okay, interesting. But where we’re going is a agentic matching right in our CRM for the field. Oh. So those data points are gonna matter even more, and that’s where the gated. [00:29:48] Jen Odess: I say gated entry, which is probably too extreme, right? It’s really gated. If you wanna surface toward the top, there’s gated parameters to try to surface to the top, but those data points will feed the algorithm and it will genetically match right in our CRM for the field. Who are the best suited partners? [00:30:09] Jen Odess: Would you like to talk to them? [00:30:10] Vince Menzione: Okay. And so is it. Partner facing? Is it sales team facing [00:30:14] Jen Odess: Right now? It’s sales. It’ll, when it goes live, it will be sales team facing. Okay. But we have greater ambition for what partners can do with it. Yeah. Not just in the indirect motion, but also what partners may be able to do with it to interface with our field. [00:30:30] Jen Odess: The. [00:30:31] Vince Menzione: The, yeah the collaboration [00:30:33] Jen Odess: opportunity. Which is always a friction point that we’re working on [00:30:36] Vince Menzione: always because it’s very manual. It’s people intensive. Yeah. Partner development managers sitting on both sides of the equation and the interface between the sales organization and a partner organization is not always the. The easiest. So right. Automated, quite a bit of that. [00:30:49] Jen Odess: My boss is obsessed with the easy button, which I know is a phrase many of us in the US know from I think it’s an Office Depot, all these ways in which we can have easy button moments for the partner ecosystem is what we’re trying to focus on. [00:31:01] Jen Odess: I love the easy button. [00:31:02] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And I love your boss too. Yeah, he’s fabulous. Fabulous. So Michael and I go back like many years ago. You must have, [00:31:08] Jen Odess: yeah. You must have had paths crossing on numerous occasions. [00:31:12] Vince Menzione: Yeah we we worked together micro I’m going to hijack the session for a second here. [00:31:16] Vince Menzione: But when I first came to Microsoft, he was leading a, the se, a segment of the business, and he invited me to come to his event and interviewed me on stage at his event. [00:31:26] Jen Odess: No way. [00:31:26] Vince Menzione: And we got to know each other and yeah. So he was terrific. He was what a great find for, oh, he’s for service now. [00:31:32] Vince Menzione: He’s really [00:31:32] Jen Odess: has been a fantastic addition [00:31:34] Vince Menzione: to the global partnerships and channels team. And Michael, we have to have you on the podcast. Yes. Or cut down here in the studio at some point too with Jen and I. That’d be great. So this is terrific. We are getting it’s an incredible time. [00:31:44] Vince Menzione: It’s going so fast this time, 2022 was, seems like it was five, it feels like it was almost 10 years ago now. It wasn’t that we just started talking about it and you were implementing AI 10 years ago, but it wasn’t getting the attention that it’s getting today. And it really wasn’t until that moment that it really started to kick off in a way that everybody, yeah. It became pervasive overnight I would say. But now we’re starting 2026, like we’re at. This precipice of time and it’s continuing. I don’t even know what 2030 is gonna look like, right? So I’m a partner. [00:32:16] Vince Menzione: What are the one, two, or three things that I need to do now to win over and work with ServiceNow? [00:32:23] Jen Odess: One, two or three things? I’ll tell you the first thing. So today ServiceNow will end up hitting 500 million in annual contract value in our Now Assist, which is our AI products by the end of 2025, which is the fastest growing product in all of ServiceNow history. [00:32:37] Jen Odess: That’s one product that’s so there’s lots of SKUs. Yeah, but it is. It’s our AI product. Yeah. And it is, but yeah, because of all the various ways. [00:32:45] Vince Menzione: So half a billion dollars, [00:32:46] Jen Odess: half a billion by the end of 2025. And I think, someone’s gonna have to keep me honest here, but if memory serves me right, the first skews didn’t even launch until 2024. [00:32:54] Jen Odess: So we’re talking about wow, in a year it’s fast. Over 1,700 customers are live with our now assist products. Again, in a matter of, let’s call it over, a little over a year, 1,700 partners. So I think the first thing a partner needs to do is they’ve gotta get on this AI bandwagon, and they’ve gotta be selling and positioning AI use cases to their customers, because that’s the only way they’re gonna get. [00:33:20] Jen Odess: Experience and an opportunity to see what it feels like to deliver. So we have to do that. And I think you could sell a big use case like that big, we talked north, south, east, west, you could do that whole thing. Brilliant. But you could also start small. Go pick a single use case. Like a really simple example of something you wanna, some work you wanna drive productivity on. [00:33:41] Jen Odess: Yeah. And make sure you’ve got multiple stakeholders that love it and then go drive proving that use case. That’s what we’re telling a lot of partners. That’s the first thing. The second is they have got to build skills on AI and they have to keep up with it. And so we’re trying to really think about our broader learning and development team at ServiceNow is just next level. [00:34:00] Jen Odess: And they’re really re-imagining how to have more real time bite size. Training and enablement that will help individuals keep up with that pace of innovation. So individuals have got to get skilled. Yes. On AI today, of that a hundred thousand or so individuals in the ecosystem right now, about 35% of those individuals hold one or more AI credential. [00:34:25] Jen Odess: Again, that’s in a little over a year, which is the fastest growing skill development we’ve ever had, but it should be a hundred percent. Yeah. All of our goals should be that every account is being sold ai. ’cause that’s where the customer’s gonna get to value a ServiceNow is if they have the AI capabilities. [00:34:40] Jen Odess: And [00:34:41] Vince Menzione: how are you providing enablement and training? Is it all online? It’s, we have [00:34:44] Jen Odess: all sorts of ways of doing it. So that we have ServiceNow University, which is just a really robust, learning platform. Elba is our professor in residence. Very cool. Which is very cool. And they’re all content. [00:34:57] Jen Odess: Is free to partners. The training is free to partners that is on demand. Beyond that, partners can still get, instructor led training, whether that’s in person or virtual. And then my team offers enablement. That’s a little bit more, it’s like not formal training, it’s more like hands-on labs and experiences. [00:35:17] Jen Odess: We bring in lots of groups that sit around me that help and we very cool hands on with partners face-to-face. And do you do an annual event where you bring all these partners together? No, because we do we have three major milestones a year for partners. So the first is at sales kickoff, which is coming up the third week in January. [00:35:33] Jen Odess: And alongside sales kickoff is partner kickoff. Okay. And so we do a whole day of enabling them. So that’s your [00:35:39] Vince Menzione: partner kickoff? [00:35:40] Jen Odess: That’s partner kickoff. But of the, of all the partners in the ecosystem, it’s not like they can all make it. So we still also record and then live stream some of the content there. [00:35:49] Jen Odess: Then at Knowledge, there’s a whole partner track at Knowledge and same concept. Yeah, it’s like it’s all about customers and we wanna, build as much pipeline and wow as many customers as possible, but we also need to help our partners come along the journey. Then the third and final moment is in September, always, and it’s called our Global Partner Ecosystem Summit. [00:36:08] Jen Odess: We should have you, I’d love to join this next year. I love that. And it’s really, that’s the one time if sales kickoff is all about the sales motion in the field and knowledge is all about the customers and getting customers value. Global Partner Ecosystem Summit is only about the partners, what they need, why they need it, and what we’re doing to make their lives easier. [00:36:28] Jen Odess: I love it. Yeah. I’ll be there September. I love it. Dates yet set yet? I have to, it’s getting locked. I’ll get it to you. [00:36:34] Vince Menzione: Okay. All right. I’ll, we’ll be there. Okay. So you’ve been incredible. I just love having you. We could spend hours, honestly, and I want to have you back here. I’d love to, I have you back for a more meaningful conversation with the hyperscalers. [00:36:45] Vince Menzione: Talk to some of the partners that join us at Ultimate Partner events. We’ll find a way to do that, but I have this one question. It’s a favorite question of mine, and I love to ask all my guests this. Okay. You’re hosting a dinner party. And you could host a dinner party anywhere in the world. We could talk about great locations and where your favorite places are, and you can invite any three guests from the present or the past to this amazing dinner party. [00:37:11] Vince Menzione: We had one guest who wanted to do them in the future, like three people that hadn’t reached a future date. Whom would you invite Jen and why? [00:37:21] Jen Odess: Oh, first of all, you’re hitting home for me because I love to host dinner parties. I actually used to have a catering company. This is like one of those weird facts that, we didn’t talk about my pre services and ecosystem days, but I also had a catering company, so I love cooking and hosting dinner parties. [00:37:38] Jen Odess: So this is a great question. I feel like it’s a loaded question and I have to say my spouse. I love my husband dearly, but I have. To invite Lee to my dinner party. Okay. He’s in [00:37:47] Vince Menzione: Lee’s guest number one. Lee’s [00:37:49] Jen Odess: guest, number one. And the reason why is, first of all, I love him dearly, but he’s super interesting and he has such thought provoking topics to, to discuss and ways of viewing the world. [00:38:00] Jen Odess: He’s actually in security tech, so it’s like a tangential space, but not the same. [00:38:05] Vince Menzione: Yeah. But an important space right now, especially. Yeah. And [00:38:07] Jen Odess: he, yeah. And he’s, he’s just a delight to be around. So he’d be number one. Number two would be Frank Lloyd Wright. [00:38:15] Vince Menzione: Frank. Lloyd Wright. [00:38:17] Jen Odess: Yeah. I am an architecture and design junkie. [00:38:21] Jen Odess: Maybe I don’t do any of it myself, though. I dabble with friends that do it, and I try to apply it to my home life when I can. And Frank Lloyd Wright sort of embodies some of my favorite. Components of any kind of environment that you are experiencing, whether it’s a home or it’s an office building or it’s an outdoor space. [00:38:39] Jen Odess: I love the idea of minimalism and simplicity. I love the idea of monochromatic colors. I love the idea of spaces that can be used for multipurpose. And then I love the idea of the outside being in and the inside being out. I love it. So I would like love to pick his brain on some of his, how he came up with some of his ideas. [00:38:59] Jen Odess: Fascinating for some of his greatest. Yeah. Designs. Okay. That’s number two. Number three, I think it would be Pharrell Williams. Really? Yeah, I, Pharrell Williams. Yeah. I love fashion music and all things creativity. He’s got that, Annie’s philanthropic. He’s just yeah. The whole package of a good person. [00:39:26] Jen Odess: That’s super interesting and I very cool. I would love to pick his brain on what it was like to be behind the scenes on some of the fashion lines he’s collaborated with on some of his music collabs he’s had, and then just some of the work he’s doing around philanthropy. I would. I could just spend all night probably listening to him. [00:39:43] Jen Odess: This would be a [00:39:44] Vince Menzione: really cool conversation night. [00:39:45] Jen Odess: Don’t you wanna come to my dinner? Was gonna say, I’m sorry I didn’t invite you to identify. No [00:39:49] Vince Menzione: I was, can I bring dessert? [00:39:50] Jen Odess: Yeah. I come [00:39:50] Vince Menzione: for dessert. I, but it can’t, [00:39:51] Jen Odess: it has to be like a chocolate dessert. It’s gotta have [00:39:54] Vince Menzione: I love chocolate dessert. [00:39:55] Vince Menzione: Okay, great. So it would not be a problem for me, Jen. This is terrific. You have been absolutely amazing. So great to have you come here. Yeah. Such a busy time of year to have you make the trip here to Boca. We will have you back in the studio. I promise that I’ll have you back on stage. Stage. [00:40:10] Jen Odess: This is beautiful. [00:40:10] Jen Odess: Look at it. Yeah. This is [00:40:11] Vince Menzione: beautiful. And we transformed this into, to a room, basically a conference room. And then we also have our ultimate partner events. I would love to come, we would love to have you join us. Like I said, ServiceNow is such an impactful time. Your leadership in this segment market, and I wouldn’t say segment across all of AI in terms of all the use cases of AI is just so meaningful, especially for within the enterprise. [00:40:33] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Right now. So just really a jogger nut right now within the industry. So great to have you and have ServiceNow join us. So Jen, thank you so much for joining us. [00:40:42] Jen Odess: Thanks Vince. Appreciate the time. It’s a pleasure to be here. [00:40:44] Vince Menzione: Thank you very much. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Eye to Partnering. [00:40:50] Vince Menzione: We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate partner experience. It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. [00:41:16] Vince Menzione: UPX helps you get results. And we’re just getting started as we’re taking this studio. And we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here, including our January live stream, the Boca Winter Retreat, and more to come. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level.

Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. AI agents are your next customers. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/  Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this insightful session, Vince Menzione is joined by Erika Irby of Veeam and Pat Primavera of Microsoft to discuss the evolution of their strategic partnership. They unpack Veeam’s transition from a “drinking company with a software problem” to a $2 billion enterprise aiming for $5 billion, revealing the tactical shifts in engineering alignment, sales play development, and co-sell activation that led to their landmark five-year agreement. Pat shares his framework for precision execution within the Microsoft ecosystem, while Erika details how Veeam leveraged “customer zero” strategies and internal alignment to drive success. Key Takeaways Engineering alignment is the critical first pillar before attempting to execute go-to-market strategies. Successful co-selling requires specific packaged plays tailored to distinct seller roles like security specialists or ATSs. Alliance leaders and cloud sales leaders must be in the same room to create joint plans rather than doing internal selling later. Veeam’s commitment to Azure and aligning with Microsoft seller compensation was vital for their five-year agreement. Partners should act as “Customer Zero” by using tools like the Data Resilience Maturity Model on themselves first to prove value. The next major growth opportunity lies in Partner-to-Partner (P2P) collaboration to bundle solutions for the marketplace. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Veeam, Microsoft partnership, co-sell activation, ISV strategy, engineering alignment, precision execution, Veeam Data Cloud, Data Resilience Maturity Model, Azure commitment, partner-to-partner, P2P collaboration, channel marketing, sales plays, crossing the chasm, cyber resilience, agentic AI, customer zero, marketplace growth, alliance strategy, ecosystem transformation. Ultimate Partner is the independent community for technology leaders navigating the tectonic shifts in cloud, AI, marketplaces, and co-selling. Through live events, UPX membership, advisory, and the Ultimate Partner® podcast, we help organizations align with hyperscalers, accelerate growth, and achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Transcript: [00:00:00] Erika Irby: Kinda what you were talking about earlier about the, the idea of the channel is non-existent anymore, right? Like we’re, we’re all in this kind of universe of different entities and we all, you know, work together and orbit each other and compliment even, you know, frenemies. I mean, we look at them like, how can we learn? [00:00:15] Erika Irby: How can we grow? You know, how can we be better? [00:00:19] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner, live at Carahsoft Training Center in Reston, Virginia. [00:00:35] Vince Menzione: Over two days, we gather top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this episode brings you right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in. We have another incredible group of another organization here, and this is a really great conversation point too. Maybe I kind of alluded to it. [00:00:57] Vince Menzione: Um, you know, those who know me, when I started the podcast, I was actually doing individual consulting work, uh, before we got to do these events and really started to get front and center with the community in a big way. Uh, and Veeam was actually a client of mine back for several years. Um, so this is gonna be a really interesting conversation. [00:01:17] Vince Menzione: Uh, so we have two incredible leaders gonna be joining me up on stage here. Uh, Eric, I guess I’m gonna introduce ’em, right. So, Erica Irby, who recently rejoined Veeam, who’s been on stage before at other ultimate partner events and is a sponsor for us, and Eric Irby, who leads the channel marketing organization. [00:01:38] Vince Menzione: So taking Veeam, which is a large ISV, and making ’em front and center with the channel and the reseller community. And Pat Primavera, who I worked with at Microsoft, in fact, way back in the day, and his wife as well, who is now a leader in the ISV organization. We’re gonna have ’em go in the specifics of their roles, but having them join me on stage today. [00:01:57] Vince Menzione: So welcome you both on stage. Come on up and join me. I feel like come on down. Come on now. [00:02:08] Vince Menzione: Thank you. Thank you. So good to see you, pat. So great to have you here. It’s really great. So, um, yeah, so we are interesting. Great conversation by the way today. Uh, and it kind of flow, it’s kind of flowing into each other, right? ’cause we, we just had a couple of marketplace leaders up on stage talking about marketplace. [00:02:27] Vince Menzione: And at one point people thought that it was ISVs directly selling to customers, right? And there’s this whole other world out there. Uh, when I was working with Veeam, um, there were some, uh. Pratfalls, I guess probably looking for the right word here. Uh, but things have really changed in the last several years. [00:02:46] Vince Menzione: So first of all, Erica, maybe an introduction first to you and your new role. You were at Microsoft before this, but you were at being before that. So you boomerang back and then a leadership role. So take us through your, your role and your organization. [00:03:00] Erika Irby: Yeah. Uh, we call it, uh, Veeam Ringing, er, everything at Veeam. [00:03:05] Erika Irby: Uh, you have to have put Veeam in front of it, but, um, I started back at Veeam in 2014 and you had brought up earlier about, um, you know, when cloud. Was the new thing. And I remember very distinctly, um, attempting to get people to trust that they could put their backup in this nebulous thing called the cloud. [00:03:25] Erika Irby: And, you know, it was pretty wild back then. Yeah. Um, but I, I had several roles and then I ended up, um, moving to Microsoft and my ex-boss is right over there. Yeah. Thank you so much. Um, and then Veeam had an opportunity for me to come back and, and run their America’s channel marketing, and I said, sure. And I have been on board now for th my second three months, and, um, I’m loving it. [00:03:50] Vince Menzione: Very, very cool. Great to have you back again. And Veeam is, and Mark e sponsored the event as well. So really appreciate your support ultimate. Sir, uh, new role for you too, or fairly new. You’ve been around Microsoft. I’ll let you go through your history and [00:04:06] Pat Primavera: background. Sure, [00:04:06] Vince Menzione: sure. [00:04:07] Pat Primavera: Uh, what Vince didn’t share when he introduced me is he actually enjoys working with my wife better than working with me. [00:04:13] Pat Primavera: She, Kelly was an amazing, that’s leader. She was really great to work with. She’s doing great. She’s doing great. Uh, yeah, so Pat Primavera, uh, I’ve been with the company 16 years recently, came back to the ecosystem after doing some other things within Microsoft. I like to joke that I’ve completed my ecosystem Bingo card, where I’ve run distribution. [00:04:32] Pat Primavera: I’ve run the reseller channel. I’ve run OEM. I ran our hardware business, hardware business for a while too. I got to ISB and, and my bingo card is complete. Nice, nice. Uh, but listen, it’s, it’s, I’m super excited. This is right in the growth and heartbeat of the company. Uh, it’s where transformation’s happening with great partners like Veeam. [00:04:51] Pat Primavera: And so I, I wouldn’t want to be in any other place at Microsoft. And so there’s just a ton of opportunity for everybody in this room. Yeah. [00:04:57] Vince Menzione: And you work with some amazing friends of ultimate partner as well? Uh, yeah. Your leader is, was a podcast guest and was up on stage at one of our events. One of our first, yeah. [00:05:05] Vince Menzione: We, we [00:05:05] Pat Primavera: worked with some of the most strategic ISVs in the ecosystem and so, um, you know, I have a, a portfolio of a lot of the, the partners that are driving the application and infrastructure modernization out there happening. And so it’s, it’s just, it’s a great time to, to be in the ecosystem together. [00:05:21] Vince Menzione: So for those, I, I, you know, we, leaving out the audience, we’re, we’re gonna have a great conversation up here on stage, but I do wanna ask people like, how many of you actively working with Veeam or No, Veeam. [00:05:32] Vince Menzione: Uh, so show of hands. So a lot of, a lot of organizations here. That’s really terrific. And then also working with Microsoft. I’m just gonna take the, like a lot of hands there, I’m just assuming. Right. So that’s, I I just thought I also like Gipping and we we’re all gonna dance a little bit later too, so I hope everybody’s up for that. [00:05:47] Vince Menzione: So, uh, so great to have you both. I have a personal, like sit, you know, I worked with Veeam way back at, at a point when I was. Again, doing some consulting work and uh, it was an interesting time for Veeam. Veeam had been a top partner, Microsoft, um, and kind of fallen out of favor, I guess is probably the right term to use. [00:06:10] Vince Menzione: A few years. It was a, that was a way back period of time, but then had a lot of learnings from that experience. And I thought today we would share some of those learnings. And one of the things I, I remember having some early conversations with Microsoft about Veeam. Veeam has an incredible pedigree of selling, not, not only moving all their technology to the cloud. [00:06:30] Vince Menzione: ’cause originally it was on-prem and it was, it was in on boxes and all kinds of things. That was how, how backup and recovery was done, but also building out really a very vibrant channel. I, I don’t think I’ve seen many organizations quite candidly. That were as vibrant, building out the relationships, the level relationships. [00:06:51] Vince Menzione: I remember talking to one leader, one of the top resellers in the market that everybody would know, and that person said, Veeam is my favorite partner. Like hands down by far. And I’ve seen that type, so I thought maybe we’d spend a little bit of time there. Why did that grow first? And then I think there were a lot of lessons learned from that ex from like that time. [00:07:14] Vince Menzione: Like it always hurts. We all have to go through that process, right? We’re on top of the world. We get knocked down, knocked down a rung, and then we overcome and we, we achieve more. So maybe, I thought we’d start there. ’cause both of your perspectives on that. [00:07:28] Pat Primavera: Yeah. Listen, as we think about a lot of the topics that have come up today, I mean, you’ve been talking about it almost every session, which is around data and. [00:07:38] Pat Primavera: You start to get into not just data management, data security, cyber resilience. Yeah. Like it is mission critical. And so, you know, partnering with Veeam is absolutely huge for us because that’s the world of AgTech ai like that is core to what every customer needs to have a plan around. And so that’s where like partnering with them is just amazing because what we’re able to do is scale because of the channel aspect that you had mentioned. [00:08:06] Pat Primavera: Yeah. And so we think across our segments. So while as Erwin mentioned earlier, we have verticalized enterprise industries, we also have horizontal scale. And what we love just around the V model is how we can effectively do that across all fronts. Because speed, as everybody knows right now, matters. And so the pace at which we’re able to move out with our partnership has just been tremendous. [00:08:30] Pat Primavera: Yeah. So, um, you know, we’re seeing that growth, uh, jointly with Veeam. The engagement has never been better. Uh, and so she’ll highlight I think a little bit of the, it didn’t happen overnight. [00:08:40] Vince Menzione: Yeah, it didn’t happen overnight. No. Take us through it. [00:08:43] Erika Irby: Well, first of all, it’s kind of surreal for me to sit up here, right? [00:08:45] Erika Irby: Because back when I first started being the first time, you know, we could hardly get Microsoft to like talk to us, right? We would like beg them to like come to a meeting and, but part of our issue in the very beginning was that. Our connection to them was simply that we sat on Hyper-V, we, we just sat on their product and we didn’t really have a, a strong message other than, look, I promise we’re super cool and we are in the stack, and, and you know, partners love us, customers love us, but we didn’t have that, that solid of a story. [00:09:14] Erika Irby: And I do credit, you know, folks like you. S. Amazing people at Microsoft Veeam brought in some really solid leadership that knew that they had to work really hard to come up with a real story and to be very targeted about our solution plays and to, um, not only on the, the engineering side to be super integrated, but to have that field alignment to really get nitty gritty on like, this is how we’re gonna compensate. [00:09:41] Erika Irby: This is how we’re going to help, this is how we’re gonna drive this. You know, you had mentioned like falling outta favor and I think it was more about Veeam had to definitely grow up a little bit. Um, we started off honestly just at the edge of technology. I mean, Veeam has always been an innovative leader. [00:09:59] Erika Irby: If you read the book, crossing the Chasm, that is how Veeam. It follows that exact path. Yes. And, and Rap Mirror had had told we all had to read that book, by the way, when we first started. It’s a great book. Um, it is a great book and it, it really does talk about like those early adopters and we, we bet on that. [00:10:15] Erika Irby: And so we had all of the makings of being an incredible company, and by the way, we will hit $2 billion at the end of this year and we have a goal to hit 5 billion in three years. We are not messing around. That’s really, [00:10:26] Vince Menzione: that’s incredible. You really have taken up. But, [00:10:28] Erika Irby: but it is because of that, that we’re able to be an a, a true. [00:10:34] Erika Irby: Partner with Microsoft, we can help scale, we can, you know, drive these solutions into our market. And then, and really we have our own skin in the game, and then we’re providing our own value. I mean, obviously Microsoft is a behemoth, right? Yes. They, yes. They’re not gonna choose just anybody. And we take that seriously as a partner. [00:10:52] Vince Menzione: So, um, I, I don’t wanna put you on the spot, but I do recall there were some, there were some pitfalls I wanna make, like I’m, I’m only gonna bring ’em up because I think people need to understand it, like. Uh, in the beginning there was this approach where we’re just gonna put every deal into partner center and some of ’em may not be Microsoft deals and we’re just gonna hope they’re all gonna land, uh, you know, gonna make us look good. [00:11:15] Vince Menzione: ’cause we can get rewarded a certain way. That’s something you don’t do, by the way. And this was when Cracker, right? Oh yeah. So you’re the guy who runs the ISV business. So you could talk about like what to do, what not to do and then, uh, and then connecting the dots was a tough part. And there, maybe there weren’t tools then that there are, now we’re gonna have Jason Rook talk about marketplaces a little bit more. [00:11:36] Vince Menzione: Erwin talked about it a little bit this morning, but, um, you know, it wasn’t, there wasn’t this cohesion between those big resellers that love Veeam by the, that one in particular, if that comes to mind, and how a seller gets paid. Yeah. Like there was a disconnect. Yeah, there was a big disconnect. So it felt like Veeam was operating in its own silo by itself. [00:11:57] Vince Menzione: And hoping that putting stuff in partner center was gonna make them look good and the channel was operating differently down here. Like those three things weren’t connecting. Yeah. [00:12:08] Erika Irby: I, I, I, again, I think, you know, we had to mature and we had to, um, also rethink our own, I think strategy. You know, Veeam plays across multiple. [00:12:20] Erika Irby: Pieces of the market. We support storage partners, we compliment other security partners. We, um, you know, touch an ai like we’re, we have so many alliance partners. We have a slide that has all of our alliance partners, and it just looks like a mess because there’s, we’re like, oh yeah, we play with everybody, but I think we have a slide. [00:12:39] Vince Menzione: Don’t we have a slide? [00:12:39] Erika Irby: And, and it’s awesome, right? Like all of us. You know, kinda what you were talking about earlier about the, the idea of the channel is non-existent anymore, right? Like we’re, we’re all in this kind of universe of different entities and we all, you know, work together and orbit each other and compliment even, you know, frenemies. [00:12:54] Erika Irby: I mean, by the way, we have a lot of respect. Like, I know Cohesity here, Rubrik, we look at them like, how can we learn? How can we grow? You know, how can we be better? And, and that’s, you have to kind of adopt that and change. Our co-founder, he, he’s gone to start another company, but he used to say that we were, um, a drinking company with a software problem. [00:13:16] Erika Irby: And like that was kind of our mentality, which by the way, resellers that thought we were super fun. Yeah. We were freaking fun. [00:13:22] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I [00:13:22] Erika Irby: mean, super fun. I’ve seen [00:13:23] Vince Menzione: some of the things you do. It’s crazy. We were known [00:13:25] Erika Irby: for our veeam parties and things like that. Yeah. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Like we had to establish ourselves, but over time we also had to, you know, we wanna be taken seriously, then we have to be serious. [00:13:35] Erika Irby: Yep. [00:13:37] Pat Primavera: Yeah, I, I’d say especially as you get into where the rubber meets the road, and I’ll kind of dovetail this into to co-sell because I think this is what will be valuable for everybody here. ’cause everybody’s in different states of maturity. But the thing I loved about when I started to engage with Veeam, so I started in the spring and they cornered me at Von and were like. [00:13:57] Pat Primavera: Yeah, it’s not working. How does this work? And it was the perfect timing because yes, I just come from my old role, which I had the accountability of taking all of our commercial solution areas and all the product and solution plays that get built, and then how do you land that across all of our thousands of sellers across workloads in the field. [00:14:17] Pat Primavera: So that was my, that was my jam for the last couple years, is how does Microsoft do that at scale and consistency? Um, and so I was like. Okay. I know what to do. Um, and so it was great because they said it’s not working. We sat down at Beamon and we figured out what is our plan to go change and, and get to a world where we’re not talking about systems, we’re not talking about partner share, we’re talking about pragmatic ways that we’re gonna co-sell together and what does that look like? [00:14:45] Pat Primavera: And so there’s a couple key pillars that, that we anchored on that we gotta get right. Number one was just around engineering alignment and they have done a great job. Aligning with our engineers. Yep. Uh, and our engineering leadership, uh, that has to be in place, uh, as partners. And the reason is, is the business is moving so fast that having those hooks into engineering matters from a product roadmap and build with perspective. [00:15:11] Pat Primavera: Um, and so making sure those hooks were in place, number one. Um, and, and so that helps us around product strategy. The corporate strategy and where the partnership fits in. [00:15:21] Vince Menzione: And that wasn’t there before. [00:15:22] Pat Primavera: Right? The strategic partnership was, but the engineering piece had to get built. The [00:15:26] Vince Menzione: engineering piece had to be built. [00:15:27] Vince Menzione: Yes. Um, [00:15:27] Pat Primavera: and what’s great at, at Microsoft right now is now more than ever, I am seeing our engineering leadership lean into our partners as executive sponsors, as participating in, in actual working meetings, resolving issues. I’ve never seen the level of leader engagement that I’ve ever seen as I do today. [00:15:46] Pat Primavera: So that was number one. Number two was around GTM and sales play alignment. So one of the things that we talk about, and I see this with some partners, is, Hey, we’re working with your engineering team. I’m like, okay, that’s great. [00:15:59] Vince Menzione: Yeah, what? [00:16:00] Pat Primavera: That’s fantastic, but what are we gonna package up from a go to market and take and go sell together? [00:16:06] Pat Primavera: And so really getting specific around what are the actual plays we’re gonna go run. Yep. Because that’s the way our sellers think they think in terms of packaged plays. And so getting the partners to understand, this was where Veeam was like, okay, right? So we sat down, we started talking about Veeam Data Cloud, okay? [00:16:22] Pat Primavera: We broke it down by what’s the play? What’s the messaging and value prop to customers? Is there industry alignment that we need to prioritize around? And who are the sellers, right? Everybody says, oh, I need a Microsoft seller. Who are the sellers we’re gonna actually gonna go target? Ah, is it a security specialist? [00:16:40] Pat Primavera: Is it a AI business solution specialist? It is an account technology strategist. Yeah. Who’s the right role that we can go jointly co-sell with that’s actually going to make this work. And then we got into the co-sell activation piece, which is, okay, great. Don’t tell me you’re great at everything. Where are the pockets of strength that we’re gonna go after? [00:17:01] Pat Primavera: Yes. And we literally came up with a targeted set of accounts. It wasn’t a thousand accounts, it wasn’t 300 accounts, it was a smaller set of accounts that we targeted across several operating units. With strong sponsorship. And we went and went hard on those accounts and then we kind of came back as a team and said, what’s working well? [00:17:21] Pat Primavera: What’s not working well? Is the messaging resonating? Do we want to tune it? Um, and so that’s the type of work that we’re doing. Can tell. It’s very tactical, but that’s how you make it work, in co-sell. And so that’s what I try and guide people to is get really specific prioritize. And then tweak and tune so you can move fast. [00:17:41] Pat Primavera: And so they’ve just done a fantastic job. And we’re not saving month, you know, the talking to monthly business reviews, we’re literally meeting every Thursday. [00:17:51] Vince Menzione: Yes, yes. And it’s [00:17:52] Pat Primavera: a very tactical, we already have the strategy alignment. It’s a very tactical meeting where we’re tuning all the time. Uh, and I just, I appreciate that because we, we like to joke all the time, like my favorite two words are precision execution. [00:18:07] Pat Primavera: Yeah. Right. You do that really well. You focus, you win. And so we’ve been able to get the partnership to a point that that’s what we’re doing. [00:18:14] Vince Menzione: So, uh, um, I wanna hear your input too, but I just want to annotate this. Yeah. One second, because I’ve had, if I had a slide, it would be this one slide. What you did is you took the entire organization, you took the engineering teams on both sides of the company. [00:18:30] Vince Menzione: You took the go to market, the marketing organizations would traditionally just sell, sell through. Like they, they reach audiences, they don’t think about partners. You took the, you took the co-selling piece, so how to, how to work with Microsoft, so the alliances piece, and then you took the, probably you took the customer facing piece. [00:18:46] Vince Menzione: And then you probably put a layer, a leadership layer above that because you wanted to make sure all the executives on both sides were talking to each other, right? [00:18:54] Pat Primavera: That’s right. [00:18:55] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So it takes, it, it takes a village, right? [00:18:57] Pat Primavera: It it, it does. And the timing was great because, again, if you start to think about where Microsoft is at in terms of driving momentum in marketplace, but also our sellers and how they’re compensated now, like the time was now to go do that because we’re gonna get their attention and, and so having a very intentional plan that says. [00:19:16] Pat Primavera: Hey, in healthcare and life sciences, this is the play we’re gonna run. Here’s the 10 accounts we really care about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:19:23] Erika Irby: And uh, we started our relationship with Microsoft back in 2010, but we did not sign our five year agreement until 2024. Wow. And we also, earlier this year, Microsoft made an investment in Veeam to really fuel our innovation. [00:19:37] Erika Irby: Very cool. But one of the things that Veeam, I think has made abundantly clear, and it took a while for us to, again, target and hone in on this is our commitment to Azure. Yeah. And we. Realized, you know, hey, if, if we want to have this buy-in with Microsoft, we have to buy into them. We have to have the same goals and, you know, backup for Azure VDC for Azure, all these things are incredible, but we have to make sure it ties back to what their sellers are getting paid on. [00:20:03] Erika Irby: So that in the end, it, you know, it benefits us and, and that agreement definitely, you know, hammered that out. The weekly, you know, rumbles, wallows, it, it’s so critical to give that feedback right away. Now, I, I do wanna emphasize things are not perfect, right? Like, there’s still a lot of sausage making in the back. [00:20:19] Erika Irby: But, you know, you brought up the point about partners. One thing is Veeam is really trying to do is integrate our alliance strategy through our partners. Because at the end of the day, if they are not included. Then to your point, it’s all of us just kinda like spitting on a fire, right? Yeah. We’re not, you know, taking that direct approach and, uh, distribution is actually a huge point for us as well. [00:20:42] Erika Irby: They have everybody, everybody is at the distributor and leveraging that, that entity is kind of, that epicenter of the ecosystem is, I think, you know, a, a great way to have success because we’re all there and, and we can leverage their scale. [00:20:55] Vince Menzione: And what you said is super important, and people don’t realize this too. [00:20:58] Vince Menzione: I see this so many times in ISVs. The Alliance team sits over here and is stove piped? Yeah. From the sales team and the channel team. Sometimes they sit in a marketing function. Nothing wrong with being in a marketing function, but they’re stove pipe. They don’t talk to one another, and I see this continually. [00:21:15] Vince Menzione: There are probably a hundred ISVs either in the room or on on screen watching us today. They probably could say that that’s still the way they’re operating, [00:21:22] Pat Primavera: that that is one of the first questions I ask my team is when we have some of these meetings. Are the alliance folks and the cloud sales leaders in the same room. [00:21:30] Pat Primavera: Yeah. Important. And I ask that they be in the same room because ultimately we’re gonna come out of there with outcomes. And oftentimes those outcomes lead to A CRO that we’re asking for commitment from. Mm-hmm. And so we want to make sure we’re not having to leave our working meeting and then go do internal selling again. [00:21:47] Pat Primavera: It should be a joint plan that we’re gonna run. Yeah. [00:21:49] Vince Menzione: And I just wanna say one other thing about the five year commitment. You touched on really being important. But it wasn’t possible to even do that because you also had to re-engineer your product to get there. Right? And so then you moved it to the cloud. [00:22:01] Vince Menzione: And by you moving to the cloud, then you can make those commitments that got Microsoft excited in investing. Yeah, [00:22:06] Erika Irby: a absolutely. And you know what’s so funny is when I started at Veeam, the first thing I looked for when I opened my laptop was that copilot icon. Because you know, you talked earlier about eating your dog food, by the way, you can say drink your own champagne. [00:22:18] Erika Irby: That is, that is a, a better, um, saying for that. But. I’m glad you talked [00:22:22] Vince Menzione: about [00:22:22] Erika Irby: ai. [00:22:22] Vince Menzione: Let’s, let’s go into this a little. [00:22:24] Pat Primavera: Erica and I actually used Copilot last night. We were looking up some details around the market around, what was it, cyber? Cyber, cyber insurance. Mm-hmm. And some things around cyber insurance. [00:22:33] Pat Primavera: And so we actually, she and I were in my computer digging on copilot, so that [00:22:36] Vince Menzione: is cool. Let’s talk about AI though. Since you brought up ai. ’cause I think you’ve, you’ve infused it into your solutions and you’re driving against it now. [00:22:44] Erika Irby: Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, Veeam, again, cutting edge innovation. We know we, we really wanna make sure that we’re taking advantage of that. [00:22:50] Erika Irby: But one thing, um, I do wanna call out real quickly about the team, um, integration is on our, our VP of channels has a, a alliance leader underneath him. So she’s integrated into our channels. And I have Michael Bowie here with me today. He’s our, um, Alliance Marketing manager. Michael, stand [00:23:07] Vince Menzione: up over there so we can see you. [00:23:09] Erika Irby: Everyone talk to Michael today. Go talk to Michael [00:23:11] Vince Menzione: after. [00:23:11] Erika Irby: Um, I also have, um, some other folks here with me, George Kelly and Brian Morris as well. But, uh, alliances falls under me, so under our channel marketing. So my alignment is with our VP of channels and then everyone has like a direct counterpart. So we’re all, you know, not having 14 meetings to have one meeting, you know, we’re, we’re already on the same page. [00:23:29] Erika Irby: Um, but in terms of ai, yeah. One of the things I think also helps make our, our partnership good is that I kinda referred to this last night as our company Morals. We’re focused on security. You know, Microsoft leads in security and Veeam is absolutely one of the most secure focused companies. You know, we, we want to move into the future, but we wanna do this compliantly safely, you know, protecting that data, making sure that. [00:23:58] Erika Irby: Things are not getting out where they’re supposed to be. At Veeam, we have our own, sorry to copilot, but we call it Veeam, uh, GPT. It’s it a chat, GPT. So the folks will use this, but it is secure only, you know, for our data. Right? Um, so, and, and we have, uh, internal teams, you know, driving our AI usage, and then we also integrate into our, our products. [00:24:17] Erika Irby: So that insights and. Anything that, that, that customers are monitoring, using it for, it is providing, you know, all of that. And it fits so perfectly with Microsoft’s ai. Innovation and threat [00:24:27] Vince Menzione: protection is so important to Right, because you’re really on the front, the front end of that, the ransomware attacks and everything that hit, hit everybody these days. [00:24:35] Pat Primavera: Well, and she, she mentioned it’s really symbiotic. I mean, with us, because if you look at how we go to market, yes. Obviously we have security teams, we have teams that are gonna be focused on cloud and ai. But it’s a really niche specific conversation that you have to have with a customer. And so they are the experts. [00:24:56] Pat Primavera: You know, we obviously can carry a broad conversation, um, and some of our sellers, I mean, our cloud and AI sellers have to carry every workload. And so the fact that they can come in and help us and partner to jointly have that sales call to carry that really specific conversation. That they really lead from is, is just fantastic. [00:25:14] Pat Primavera: Yeah. And [00:25:14] Vince Menzione: you are a leader in this. You have a tool, it’s the data resilience, uh, tool. [00:25:19] Erika Irby: Yes. So take us through that. Thank you for bringing that up. I did wanna call out our, our, our Data Resilience maturity model. Yep. My CTA to you guys today is that that is an assessment tool that’s really designed for partners to leverage for their customers and it, John Jester, our CRO, he really talks about actually leveraging it for, um, opportunities beyond Veeam. [00:25:39] Erika Irby: It is an outstanding tool, but I would encourage everyone who is a partner in this room to leverage it for the. See what kind of resilience gaps that you may have, because if you have a gap, then your customers will have a gap. Yeah. And you know, Microsoft has the customer zero approach around copilot. We all had to use it. [00:25:57] Erika Irby: We, uh, really pushed our partners to use it. Your partners? Our partners did. It’s whatever. And with the DRMM, I really wanna encourage our partners to use that for themselves. Be that customer zero, because then you’ll create your own success story and when you go to your customer, you can demonstrate, this is how it made a difference for us, and this is how it’ll make a difference for you. [00:26:16] Erika Irby: And I guarantee it’ll open up opportunities. [00:26:18] Vince Menzione: Yeah, it’s fantastic. And it is, you know, ransomware, again, I come back to it because I remember all the attacks we had. Healthcare was a big market for attacks as well. So you talked about retiring Mac, uh, through this co-selling and alignment and incentives. [00:26:32] Vince Menzione: What are the most important elements for partners to succeed in this, in this motion with you? What do you see? [00:26:38] Pat Primavera: Yeah, I, listen, I’ll go back ’cause we’re, I know we’re short on time. Is those those pillars that I provided? Yeah. Right. Is going through the, the process of how are we doing in terms of engineering alignment. [00:26:48] Pat Primavera: As we start to think about that build with strategy as an organization on the roadmap, I start to think about go to market and, and sales play development. You know, where are we there? And then I think there’s the co-sell activation piece. And so each of those have very discrete things that you gotta do, right. [00:27:04] Pat Primavera: Uh, to get to a place where you’re actually ready to engage the field. Uh, yes. And data sharing and all the system stuff that we’ve talked about in the path. Yeah, that’ll happen to me. That’s just output. Yes. But all these other pillars you have to get right to be successful and get to the point where you’re sitting face to face. [00:27:21] Pat Primavera: Rep to rep talking about how you’re gonna go engage a customer. And so, um, that’s what I’d say there. Um, my call to action that I would say for the group, uh, ’cause I love how you just did that is the opportunity is awesome for this group to actually partner together. So one of the things that is in my priorities for this year is, yes, we work with Veeam. [00:27:41] Pat Primavera: I work with a lot of great partners, but the opportunity to actually go partner, to partner to partner. And find these solutions that work that eventually we can kind of bundle together and take to marketplace. That is the opportunity. And so I’d encourage everybody in this room to think through what are offerings or opportunities you have across the aisle from other people that are here that we can actually get together and go brainstorm on. [00:28:04] Pat Primavera: I’m working on several right now that actually several people in this room where we’re all kind of coming together. To actually go build some of those things. And so that’s the opportunity for us. The marketplaces are there now to support those scenarios. And that’s my ask I have of this room because again, I start to think about services capability. [00:28:21] Pat Primavera: The MSPs, we gotta accelerate migration from on-prem to cloud. There are, that’s a sweet spot for so many people in this room. [00:28:30] Vince Menzione: Yeah, that’s really great. And Eric, I know you have a lot of insights as well on, on how to work with Microsoft, the SEM process, but we are gonna have some, we’re running outta time and we are gonna have some other sessions that’ll be very specific to that task. [00:28:44] Vince Menzione: But I think what you called out your both of your call outs for this group, it’s just incredible. Yeah. And I want to thank you both the incredible leaders up on stage. So great to see you to be back. Thanks. Great. Great to have you Erica. So good to have you and and the Veeam team as well. [00:28:59] Erika Irby: Yep. [00:29:00] Vince Menzione: Thank you so [00:29:00] Erika Irby: much. [00:29:01] Vince Menzione: Thank you. Alright, thank you. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Partner. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate partner experience. [00:29:23] Vince Menzione: It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started as we’re taking this studio. And we’ll be hosting livestream and digital events here, including our January live stream, the Boca Winter Retreat, and more to come. [00:29:48] Vince Menzione: So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level. [00:30:00] I.

Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. AI agents are your next customers. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/  Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this critical discussion, Mike Levy from AWS and Jon Yoo from Sugar sit down with Vince Menzione to explore the seismic shifts occurring within the AWS Marketplace, focusing heavily on the recent launch of AI Agents and Tools. Mike Levy details AWS’s comprehensive strategy to provide not just off-the-shelf agents, but the foundational ‘ingredients’—like security, guardrails, and knowledge bases—via the marketplace to help enterprises become “agentic.” Jon Yoo provides the partner perspective, highlighting the immense but often misunderstood role of channel partners in marketplace revenue, and provocatively challenges the current state of AI ‘features,’ emphasizing that the future requires agents to truly understand a business’s tribal knowledge and processes, not just rules-based workflows. The conversation culminates with the two sharing best practices, including the AWS COSS (Characteristics of Successful Sellers) framework, to help ISVs and partners accelerate their growth and effectively monetize in this new, AI-driven cloud economy. Key Takeaways The AWS Marketplace is now offering a comprehensive suite of AI agents and tools, including agent development platforms and essential security ingredients. AWS is working across the AI stack, from underlying hardware like Inferentia chips to foundational services like Bedrock for accessing LLMs. The Marketplace organization at AWS is strategically integrated within the Partner Organization to build go-to-market channels and procurement systems. The growth of the private offer business and the inclusion of Channel Partner Private Offers (CPPOs) is fundamental to the Marketplace’s future strategy. Successful sellers on AWS Marketplace are guided by the COSS (Characteristics of Successful Sellers) framework, which has been shown to accelerate growth by 31 times. Partners new to the Marketplace should “start narrow” by proving their motion manually before investing in automation, focusing on a clear, simple value proposition. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags AWSMarketplace, AIagents, Bedrock, ISVstrategy, ChannelPartner, COSSframework, CloudMonetization, Sugarplatform, AmazonQ, AgentCore, PrivateOffers, LLMs, GenerativeAI, GoToMarket, CloudEcosystem Ultimate Partner is the independent community for technology leaders navigating the tectonic shifts in cloud, AI, marketplaces, and co-selling. Through live events, UPX membership, advisory, and the Ultimate Partner® podcast, we help organizations align with hyperscalers, accelerate growth, and achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Transcript [00:00:00] Michael Levy: Uh, if we just double click on, you know, what it, what is an AI agent? ’cause it’s probably important, then we kind of have a shared understanding of what that is. Um, there’s a number of, uh, call it ingredients to the recipe of an AI agent. [00:00:15] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you. [00:00:22] Vince Menzione: Achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner live at Caresoft Training Center in Reston, Virginia. Over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this episode brings you right to the edge of what’s next. [00:00:43] Vince Menzione: Let’s dive in. So I am thrilled to welcome. So the first time as a sponsor of Ultimate Partner, and also to be up on stage with me, an organization that I also had a, you know, I was at Microsoft, you have to realize the lineage of how these organizations all work together. Uh, this little company that was a, they were like a bookseller company, a little company. [00:01:10] Vince Menzione: And then they, uh, decided that they were gonna, they had all this computing horsepower and never, but wasn’t being used consistently. And what if we just like, share, you know, sell some, swipe a credit card and we’ll share some timeshare on it. Uh, this little company called AWS incredible and so I’m really privileged to have AWS join us as a sponsor this year. [00:01:32] Vince Menzione: Um, and just I think it gives the world a much more well-rounded view of what we’re seeing in our world of ecosystems as well. And I would love to invite to join me up on stage. Mike Levy from AWS Mike is nearby somewhere. Here he comes. Uh, so, so great to have you, Mike. Join us. Thank you so much for joining us. [00:01:54] Vince Menzione: Absolutely. Um, and then also we’re gonna have, we’re gonna have some really good conversation today. So I want to, you have the distinction of being the very first AWS guest and an ultimate partner event. Hopefully not the last It’s an honor. [00:02:05] Michael Levy: Yeah. First, uh, first of many, hopefully. [00:02:07] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Well, great to have you. [00:02:08] Vince Menzione: Uh, we got to meet recently and we’re, and, and we’re also gonna be joined by a partner, uh, in a little bit here. So, uh, John Yo is a good friend of ours and he is also gonna be up on, on with this as well. But I thought we’d spend a few minutes because you are up on stage this summer, in fact, and really carrying the message. [00:02:26] Vince Menzione: We be, we talk about marketplaces and it’s incredible world, world of mar marketplaces and AWS really led the, the fold on this, right? Because coming from the pedigree of retail and all the automation that AWS had. You were the first to market with marketplace, and you’ve also been an incredible innovator. [00:02:43] Vince Menzione: So I thought we spent a little time, I wanna give you a little time to talk about that, if you don’t mind. [00:02:47] Jon Yoo: Absolutely. [00:02:47] Vince Menzione: And I can stay up here with you or give you a couple minutes alone if you like. Yeah, we can have a seat. That’s fine. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let’s, [00:02:52] Michael Levy: let’s [00:02:52] Vince Menzione: sit down and talk. [00:02:53] Michael Levy: Happy to. Um, so yeah, so for those who don’t know me, Mike Levy from the AWS Marketplace Team, um, and as Vince was referring to this summer, we launched, uh, an extension of AWS marketplace. [00:03:04] Michael Levy: Which is AI agents and tools in marketplace. So first I wanna say thank you to, to Vince for having us as a sponsor, uh, and to the incredible community that you built here. It’s, thank you. It’s really super impressive. Thank you. And we’re very glad to be a part of it now. Um, and second, I want to thank all the partners in the room, a number of which were part of that launch of AI agents and tools in marketplace. [00:03:24] Michael Levy: And I think the big thing for us and importantly for our mutual customers is really launching a comprehensive strategy when we say AI agents and tools. We really mean AI agents and tools, because I think we all know in this market, many of our enterprise customers or even startup customers, you’re not just buying an a w you know, you’re not buying an AI agent off the shelf and just setting it free in your production environment. [00:03:47] Michael Levy: Um, and so it’s really the, the tools aspect that’s an important part of the launch for us, um, and really a comprehensive offering. Of kind of, regardless of where a company is on their Ag agent AI journey, the idea is that there’s something for them in marketplace that they can procure and use in, in their own business. [00:04:04] Vince Menzione: So tell us more about that. Take, take us down another level or, or step within that conversation. Yeah, so we’ll [00:04:09] Michael Levy: double click. So the, the launch was big and we’ve seen a lot of momentum since then. Uh, but we had over 900 listings in marketplace. Uh, and that really runs the gamut. So there are off the shelf AI agents that you can take. [00:04:22] Michael Levy: Procure, uh, and deploy through marketplace and through AWS. And there’s, uh, things in between, like agent development platforms, think Salesforce agent force, uh, LR writer, some of these newer companies that are really focusing on this space and how to help enterprises really transform and become agentic, um, or develop their own ai. [00:04:42] Michael Levy: And tons of services partners as well. So obviously tying it all together, really honing, you know, what is the agent strategy for your enterprise is really part and parcel with what a lot, a lot of our services partners are helping customers with. And so the listings that we have in marketplace, uh, and the solutions that we have and the partners that we’ve worked, been working with really kind of run the gamut. [00:05:03] Michael Levy: Um, and then tools. When I say tools, uh, if we just double click on, you know, what it, what is an AI agent? ’cause it’s probably important, then we kind of have a. Shared understanding of what that is. Um, there’s a number of, uh, call it ingredients to the recipe of an AI agent. Things like memory, things like security, things like observability, um, guardrails is a part of it. [00:05:25] Michael Levy: Um, MCP servers, if we’re, if we’re familiar with MCP. Uh, we can double click on that. That’s really just, it’s a common protocol of, uh, basically calling various tools. So an agent is nothing, uh, if it doesn’t have the right data sources, like a knowledge base, if it doesn’t have the right tools, the right capabilities to call and actually implement a, a plan. [00:05:48] Michael Levy: And so we have MCP servers, we have knowledge bases, we have guardrails, um, sort of. Wholly built AI agents and then all the ingredients to the recipe as well. If you’re an enterprise that’s looking to build your own AI agents as well. [00:06:00] Vince Menzione: So you’re working with partners that are building these agents. Is AWS building any of the agents as well, or are you enabling any Yeah, [00:06:06] Michael Levy: I, I think from, uh, from an agent perspective, AWS is kind of operating across the stack. [00:06:11] Michael Levy: Yeah. So we have AI agents, uh, like Kiro is a coding agent, Amazon Q you might be familiar with. Um, and then underlying infrastructure as well. Everything down to to, to the, you know, the hardware and traum chips. Um, to things like Bedrock, which is really the fundamental way that customers access multiple, uh, LLMs through Amazon. [00:06:32] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Yeah. And you sit in the market, so explain the organization for those who don’t know it. Right. I’m, you’re our first guest here from AWS and I think it kind of helps you sit in the marketplace organization, which is foundational to marketplace success, obviously. Yes. And it’s been a, i I mentioned this earlier, like you were fir first footed on marketplace in a big way. [00:06:51] Vince Menzione: So it’s a pretty significant size organization. [00:06:54] Michael Levy: Definitely. And, and just for context, so the marketplace organization, both product engineering, business development, we all sit within the partner organization. [00:07:02] Vince Menzione: Nice. That’s very, which is super important. [00:07:04] Michael Levy: And when I say partners, I mean ISVs and technology partners. [00:07:07] Michael Levy: I mean services partners, migration partners, consulting partners, everything, channel partners, resellers, et cetera. So we’re all part of one overall organization. Right. Um, which is really important because if we think of marketplace as building procurement. Systems for our customers. It’s also building go to market channels for our partners. [00:07:24] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:07:24] Michael Levy: Um, so I work very closely with our product team who’s building the feature roadmap, um, for our partners that are going to market on marketplace. And importantly for our customers that are using Marketplace really is their primary procurement vehicle. Um, for, for partner solutions, be they services, software data or AI agents. [00:07:42] Michael Levy: Yeah. [00:07:43] Vince Menzione: And that changed a couple years, maybe two years ago. Right. Because wasn’t it an engineering function marketplace? So, so [00:07:50] Michael Levy: there was a, I think one of many reorgs Yeah. Like 2, 3, 4 reorgs ago. Yeah. We all lose, lose track in a large organization. Um, but yes, it was intentional that marketplace was moved into the partner organization. [00:08:02] Michael Levy: Um, and the partner organization now is led, led by uba. Borno, if you’re familiar with her. Um, she leads partners and specialists. So, so specialists associated with our, our AWS service teams marketplace being one of them. [00:08:12] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So then, then those, those resources are available to support those partners in interacting with the marketplace organization as well as developing their own ip. [00:08:21] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So you [00:08:22] Michael Levy: can think of the partner organization as kind of the one entry point for, for you as a partner of AWS, um, whether that’s your partner manager, whether that’s the folks that are developing. Uh, you know, the super important programs like go to market funding, co-sell, co build, co-market. All the programming associated with each, um, is all within the partner organization. [00:08:41] Michael Levy: Very cool. Very cool. Anything [00:08:43] Vince Menzione: else about the announcements you’d like to share? [00:08:45] Michael Levy: Yeah, I think, uh, I’m interested to hear from a lot of the partners in this room, so I’m excited for this opportunity of you bringing the, the community together because we’ve been talking with a number of partners, both ISVs services partners, trying to get a feel for where they are in their age agent journey. [00:09:00] Michael Levy: Mm-hmm. I think what we’ve seen a lot of is some of the newer, maybe startup partners that are born and bred in the ag agentic space. Yeah. Have AI agents that are off the shelves, but then we have ISVs that. Have a SaaS platform and have for decades. And how are they sort of thinking about reinventing themselves? [00:09:18] Michael Levy: Yes. Um, you know, maybe they built an AI agent as a feature of the SaaS platform and I think that’s where we see it. We’re seeing it starting. Um, but how it evolves is how we’re, what we’re really curious about. Um, you know, is it sort of just a trial balloon where you’re putting ’em an ai AI agent ’cause everyone needs an AI agent? [00:09:35] Michael Levy: Or are you sort of fundamentally rethinking how you deploy your software, how you do your commercials? Um, things like that we’re, we’re really interested to, to talk through. [00:09:45] Vince Menzione: Yeah, I think we’re gonna be joined by somebody in a moment here. Absolutely. Who also knows a little bit about marketplace I’ve been told. [00:09:52] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:09:53] Michael Levy: Uh, just a minute on, on, on Sugar and John in particular. I think he’s really on the leading edge of, uh, partners that work with our partners to help them go to market in cloud marketplaces. Um, and the features that they’re developing together with our product team are really just making a, a really complete experience for our partners that go to Market on Marketplace. [00:10:13] Vince Menzione: So, uh, without further ado, then we won’t keep ’em long. Yeah. Hopefully he won’t mic up over there. So, John. John. Yo, how are you? Is it like [00:10:21] Michael Levy: a talk [00:10:22] Vince Menzione: show where I move over one seat or is that Um, I think, well, no, we’re gonna put John on the other side, I think, but also an incredible friend of mine as well, John. [00:10:30] Vince Menzione: So great to have. Wanna give you a hug for those? Uh, we do. So John has been, uh, he’s been a guest on a podcast. He’s been at our studios in Boca. We did a live stream together and a winter retreat event together. So great to see you again. Thank you for making the trip out from San Fran. [00:10:47] Jon Yoo: Thanks for having me. [00:10:48] Vince Menzione: Are you mic [00:10:48] Jon Yoo: there? Ah, there you go. It, it’s working now. All right. [00:10:51] Vince Menzione: So maybe a little introduction, uh, for those of that don’t know you, John. [00:10:55] Jon Yoo: Yeah. Uh, hello everyone. I’m John, co-founder, CEO of Sugar. Uh, you know, we automate workflows to help companies. Let’s transact and co-sell across cloud marketplaces. So we work super closely with AWS Microsoft as well. [00:11:09] Jon Yoo: Sorry. And, uh, we, you know, I think there’s a lot of interesting things around ai agent marketplaces, especially around. How it’s deployed, some of the adoption that’s happening. So excited to talk about that. [00:11:19] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Good. Well, I, we, we thought having you in the room as well, because a lot of what partners face in terms of implementation, getting onboarded and all those things, I think is a really great perspective here to have both of you up on stage and having, having a conversation. [00:11:34] Vince Menzione: So, um, it’s really evolved over the last couple years, Mike, right? I mean, incredibly, um. What is the strategy today versus what it was when it got started? I think it was 2016. That marketplace really just got started. [00:11:47] Michael Levy: It was more like 2012, was it that far back? Geez. Um, I think we’ve been part of probably many different, as you said, tectonic shifts. [00:11:56] Michael Levy: Yeah. Like the shift away from, you know, AMS and usage base where you can just sort of spin up a workload to now, you know, fully SaaS, uh, you know, software. The private offer business has also been a big evolution. Um, I think the evolution is really changing. Like where, where marketplace started was, you know, it workloads that you can spin up, um, almost like shadow it where, you know, developers could easily spin up a workload and it was very self-service focused. [00:12:26] Michael Levy: And then we really developed, uh, at, at the necessity of our customers and partners, this private offer business. So this negotiation at an enterprise level. For SAS software in particular, and that’s really exploded. And then from, uh, developed channel partner private offers as well. Um, and that, I think if we look at the strategy going forward, incorporating channel partners, uh, as you said, the multiple seats around the table. [00:12:49] Michael Levy: Yeah, that’s really a fundamental partner of the part of the marketplace strategy going forward is how are we talking to channel partners, dis IES resellers, et cetera, um, really to help serve our mutual customers through marketplace. [00:13:03] Vince Menzione: And John, you came to being as an organization just a few years ago. I feel like I met you when you just got started, but probably you were already at it for a couple years and fast [00:13:12] Michael Levy: accelerating. [00:13:13] Michael Levy: Well, fast [00:13:13] Vince Menzione: accelerating. Take us through what you find because I, I think it, organizations still struggle here. Like how do I, how do I become transactable? Right? Remember when this all started, it felt like brochureware originally, right? I mean, it wasn’t, but it was in many respects. And then how do I then. [00:13:31] Vince Menzione: Fulfill or actualize where I need to be to really support your organization. What do you, what do you see John, on your side? [00:13:36] Jon Yoo: Yeah, I mean, I think there’s two, uh, interesting thing that I, that I, I didn’t quite foresee when, when starting the company was like, uh, one, just the amount of PLG, you know, self-serve signup flows that go through. [00:13:50] Jon Yoo: Um, so some of our customers are like Snowflake and five Tran and a lot of people just spin up a cluster, for example. Um, and. That was very interesting for me to see of like, can we actually bring a consumer experience to B2B sales where, you know, the same way that I can go, uh, look at Egyptian cotton threat counts for my bedsheets and be able to one click purchase. [00:14:12] Jon Yoo: Yeah. Uh, you know, you start to see a lot of that. And the second piece of it is just how many channel partners are involved. Um, I mean, I’m from San Francisco. I live in the. Silicon Valley SaaS bubble. Yeah. I, I don’t know the channel world and you know, I know a lot of folks in this room are from the channel world, and it’s just been so like surprising just how prevalent it is in the enterprise software space. [00:14:36] Jon Yoo: Yes. And for marketplaces, like we have certain customers who are doing hundreds of millions of dollars and marketplace volume, and its majority channel partner driven. And I think that’s only gonna be, you know, there, there’s always a concern or kind of thought of, uh, Hey, is Marketplace going to Disin intermediate channel partners? [00:14:54] Jon Yoo: Um, or are they gonna be along for the ride? And I think is very clear that they’re gonna be along for the ride. Uh, there’s, you know, channel partner, private offers, but also in the age of AI where you need like a really. Tight knit implementation, understand tribal knowledge because intelligence is getting commoditized. [00:15:13] Jon Yoo: That channel partners are only gonna be way more prevalent than they’ve ever been. So pretty excited to, to lean into this space. Well, it feels [00:15:19] Vince Menzione: like AWS saw this early, right? In terms of enabling the channel partners to work with the ISVs you brought that, you brought that. Capabilities. Yeah, [00:15:27] Michael Levy: definitely. I think it was, it’s always been part of our partner business, obviously from A GSI migration strategy, all of that. [00:15:33] Michael Levy: But now it’s becoming fundamental to the marketplace business, which is really the default path to market for AWS partners, uh, and more and more how our customers are looking to, to procure, whether it’s the consumer experience that, that John was talking about, be able to kind of point and click. Um, but also the implementation after that is hugely important. [00:15:51] Michael Levy: Um, I would say before and after that. [00:15:54] Vince Menzione: What are you seeing? I’m, I’m kind of curious on the agentic piece too, because you have organizations that are traditional ISVs, but then they’re also building a agentic or, or agents like you talked about Salesforce. I can think of rattle of hundreds of names that are in this room or around, or community. [00:16:10] Vince Menzione: Do they, do they treat them? Do they bifurcate it and treat it separately? They do it together. How do they think through that process of, since you have a separate agent, AI. Capability. [00:16:20] Michael Levy: Yes. Uh, I think we’re seeing a mix. So I think we’re seeing some ISVs that are thinking about ag agentic as like a feature of their overall platform. [00:16:30] Michael Levy: And then we have others that are really kind of thinking big, as we say at Amazon on how they redevelop their entire platform. Yeah. So not just re-architecting some features on the roadmap, but how are they actually transforming their business? And what that looks like starts to change, especially when you think about commercials. [00:16:48] Michael Levy: Before it was, you know, usage based on-prem software, then it was SaaS based seat license. Now everybody’s talking about outcome-based pricing and how do you do that, um, from an agentic perspective. And so we have partners that are thinking about all aspects of that. And from a marketplace perspective, we want to be flexible enough. [00:17:06] Michael Levy: Um, both commercially so you can charge your customers the right way and the way that works for your business and then deploying, right? Yeah. We wanna get your software in the hands of customers more easily, more quickly, and reduce that time to value. What, [00:17:19] Vince Menzione: what are you finding from the monetization process? [00:17:21] Vince Menzione: ’cause you brought up a really interesting point ’cause people are still trying to figure through that. Right? [00:17:25] Michael Levy: I think they’re still trying to figure through that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think we’ve had some that are building and launching ag agentic listings. Like you can do an API based or an MCP server on marketplace and you can have that be contract based. [00:17:38] Michael Levy: Uh, well we just released now that you can have container offerings that are, uh, ag agentic and integrated with, uh, Amazon Bedrock Agent Core, and those are contract based or usage based. And so I think we’re seeing combinations of both of those things. Uh, in order to figure out how to reinvent the commercial model, [00:17:56] Vince Menzione: what are you seeing from your side, John, from your clients? [00:18:02] Jon Yoo: I, I’ll be a little bit, uh, maybe provocative is, is the best way. Put it, you know, some big [00:18:05] Vince Menzione: clients we won’t mention, by the way, I’m not [00:18:07] Jon Yoo: talking about our customer. Like when it customer, it snows outside one of your clients’ names starts to come to, but what, what, what I’m seeing in this space is, uh, I, I actually think a lot of these AI features or agents or whatever the heck you wanna call it from a marketing perspective. [00:18:21] Jon Yoo: Are a lot of crap out there. Um, there’s not a lot of differentiation. I think there’s, uh, it’s just a series of prompts and there’s some sort of return output, or they are like messaging workflows or like RP alike functionalities as, you know, agentic workflows when in fact it’s like really deterministic and rules-based, but they just put agent on top because it’s, yeah. [00:18:44] Jon Yoo: This agent is taking a bunch of actions. Oh, I mean, we, we used to do that. Earlier on, like two years ago before, you know, we actually started to develop these AI native functionalities. And I, I think what will be a telling, uh, kind of development is right now when you deploy an agent, you have to con configure the agent. [00:19:03] Jon Yoo: So specifically, uh, to, to set guardrails, to, to feed it the, the context, like the tribal knowledge of a, of a, of a business that may not be codified. But I think what will open the door on this piece is, um. The, the same way that a user can like look at a decision or like make a trade off decision. And a lot of it is based on what they know about those internal processes and teams and make that decision. [00:19:29] Jon Yoo: The agent should be able to make that decision without having like these rules based because they’ve, they’re able to, uh, understand all the historical processes and these travel knowledge, like speak, so, you know, so to speak. And so I think once that happens, we’ll be able to see a lot of these agents deployed in enterprise because now. [00:19:48] Jon Yoo: You’re not having to like configure like these six month POCs and, you know, set up the right evaluation, uh, heuristics almost. But you’re actually able to just like, to your point, like one click deploy this agent and it totally understands your, your tech stack, your, your, you know, SOPs for example, and be able to make these, you know, decisions independently. [00:20:09] Vince Menzione: We’ve talked about data. I dunno if you were gonna respond to, to John first. So, ’cause you also work with these organizations to make sure they’re enabled properly. How do you, how do you both think through this data conversation too? Because the agent relies on the data that’s resting that to access. Um, how do, how do you help them through that process to make sure that they’re, the data that they’re presenting is correct and, and usable. [00:20:34] Jon Yoo: Start. No, go for it. [00:20:38] Michael Levy: Uh, yeah. Yeah. I think it’s a, it’s a big part of data. Architecture’s a big part. Obviously there’s, from an AWS service perspective, making sure they’re architected correctly. And I think partners are a big part of that. Yeah. So whether that’s data transformation partners, data and analytics partners, services partners, that will help kind of prepare you for the next evolution of agentic ai. [00:20:58] Michael Levy: Like it does start with data. Um, and I think we’ve seen partners that sort of try to skip that stage and, uh, you know, falter or like. You know, you have an ai, it’s one thing to have an AI model hallucinate. It’s another to have an AI agent hallucinate because that thing can actually take action. It can do dangerous things. [00:21:15] Michael Levy: So it makes the underlying data structure super important. Uh, I think from a marketplace perspective, we also do have data providers in the marketplace. So when it comes to third party data, uh, that’s super important. Um, when you’re building an AI agent, making sure that has access to the right knowledge base. [00:21:30] Michael Levy: Um, so whether that’s internal knowledge or external knowledge. And then like anything with, like, anything with AWS security and governance is, is paramount. So making sure that it’s respecting all the right, uh, privileges. Um, there’s some building blocks that AWS released recently called Amazon Bedrock. [00:21:47] Michael Levy: Agent Core. Yes. You can think of that as just a series of. Call it Lego blocks to build and deploy agents, rock Agent Core at Rock, agent Core, that name that. Um, so if you’re building agents, uh, that is a very easy framework for you to use and deploy and go to production and to do so in a very secure and compliant manner, um, including data, data structures as well. [00:22:07] Michael Levy: I, [00:22:07] Vince Menzione: I keep thinking about your organization, the fact that the partner organization, the technical resources, and the marketplace, all sit in the same. Organization, do you go across, do you wind up like, I, I need, I need help here. So data, governance, security, all those things. Do you help bring those organizations together? [00:22:24] Michael Levy: We do, and we have specialists. Uh, so the partner organization is actually the partner and specialist organization. Yep. Um, so the bolt on is really some of the specialists data and I special, uh, like product specialists, uh, that focus on a lot of those, particularly gen ai, particularly agent ai. Um, and data and analytics is a huge focus for us. [00:22:42] Michael Levy: And so they help our customers and work with our partners to help our mutual customers understand what are the best AWS services to use? How do they get organized from a data perspective in order to then move to more agentic workflows? [00:22:56] Vince Menzione: So you help broker those conversations. Definitely help broker those relationships. [00:22:59] Vince Menzione: I always, always wonder if AI is helping with that, that process too. Does it also make recommendations? [00:23:04] Michael Levy: AI is helping with our partners in general, particularly when it comes to co-sell. Um, so we’re developing tools internally for our sales teams to use to automatically match partners to specific opportunities, uh, which is just a huge benefit to both. [00:23:18] Michael Levy: I guess all three legs of that, the AWS seller, the end customer, as well as our partners. Nice. Um, so that’s a big focus for us as well. [00:23:25] Vince Menzione: Also, you, John, on the AI side, you’ve been using AI since I met you. In fact, you were like an early implementer. [00:23:30] Jon Yoo: Uh, definitely for internal processes. And then we, we’ve been building like our own AI agents, uh, for the past, like year or so. [00:23:38] Jon Yoo: Um, yeah, I mean, getting access to clean well structured data is definitely very difficult. Um, there’s a lot of concerns around. Hey, what, what do you have access to within our Salesforce? Um, so yeah, I think two themes are emerging. One is there’s like a whole host of startups that are starting to figure out how do I like, kind of help structure the data so that it can be fed into an LLM securely. [00:24:02] Jon Yoo: Uh, that’s certainly one. The, the second piece is, uh, you know, I am, I’m sure CISOs are having like constant nightmares these days just at the, the level of surface area where, you know, these threat vectors can be. Can be introduced, but um, yeah, the quality of the data and how much of it I think is so important even for, as we think about our own agent, how do we feed it not just like, you know, CRM data or like NetSuite data for it to be able to take certain actions or for user to, to query the answer that our user ultimately wants. [00:24:35] Jon Yoo: But, uh, how can we actually read it, uh, internal processes, like if someone has questions around, Hey, at, at my company, right? This is the steps that you should take to create a private offer or here’s the governance. Um, and we want to be able to answer that specific by specific, um, because every company’s quite different. [00:24:55] Jon Yoo: Uh, and so, but, but, but the other piece of it is like, there, there seems to be this, uh, like platform wars, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does feel like that. Something, yeah. Like Gle, gleans a customer. They are, they have a kick butt product that everyone just loves using. You know, they integrate very deeply into a company’s ecosystem or like, of data and whatever. [00:25:18] Jon Yoo: And you know, there, there’s a big announcement about how Salesforce and, and Slack kind of cut off their access and now open AI starting to enter this like knowledge base and you know, kind of generalized agent. And so it’ll be really interesting to see who does the data belong to the customer or like this, you know, Salesforce for example, have the right to cut off access. [00:25:37] Jon Yoo: Yeah. Um, or is that ultimately up to. The, the company. [00:25:43] Vince Menzione: It’s funny ’cause that was part of the conversation earlier about CRM solutions, right? And people have legacy data platforms that are out there. The data’s there. Yeah. I don’t need that structured approach on my screen all the time and try and searching through it. [00:25:55] Vince Menzione: Right. The AI can do it for me. That’s a really interesting point. Do you have a perspective on that, Michael? [00:26:00] Michael Levy: No, I think, uh, I like the earlier point that Erwin made about, uh, you know, are you thinking about your SaaS platform in terms of like the next UI feature? Yeah. Or are you thinking about how to make your SaaS platform accessible to AI agents? [00:26:13] Michael Levy: Right. So if it’s AI agents that are going to be doing some of these workflows, some of these like more manual tasks. Is it, are the, is your platform able to communicate with them? Is your next buyer an AI agent? Or is your next buyer, you know, a a procurement human that’s sitting in a, in a, in a line of business? [00:26:30] Michael Levy: Yeah. Um, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a really good question. Good. I think a lot of ISVs have to try to answer that. [00:26:35] Vince Menzione: Yeah. It’s gonna be interesting. [00:26:36] Jon Yoo: I mean, the, the next conference is gonna be AI agents sitting up here, right? Yeah. Just a panel. Pretty much. I’ll, I’ll be [00:26:41] Vince Menzione: replaced. I’ll be on more break time, by the way. [00:26:43] Vince Menzione: Get that team more break time. Um. So I’d love Agents don’t need breaks. No, I know. That’s why if we have agents, I don’t have to be up here. We could just have little, little facsimile of me. So we’ve got it like three minutes left. So I think that like what I would wanna know if I’m sitting out in the audience. [00:27:01] Vince Menzione: It is like, how do what? Do the best do better? ’cause that’s what I want be, I wanna be the best. Right? So what are the best organizations that work with AWS’s Marketplace do better? And I, and having both of you here on stage is really great ’cause I have the vendor perspective and I have the company that helps hold these companies, get to the marketplace here. [00:27:21] Vince Menzione: I’d love to get both of your perspectives on this. [00:27:23] Michael Levy: Yeah, I, I think I can start. So what, what we’ve done is we’ve tried to distill some of, ’cause we get that question a lot. What does good look like? How do we, yeah. How do we do better? What does great look [00:27:31] Vince Menzione: like? Right? Yeah. What does great [00:27:32] Michael Levy: look like? And we distilled it into a model that we call cost or characteristics of successful sellers. [00:27:38] Michael Levy: Nice. Um, and there’s six pillars to cost and you can look them up. And I think what’s important is we kind of created a rubric for what it looks like to be good on marketplace and how to reach success. And we are, we’re mil, we like to say, we’re like minting. There’s a billionaires club. Of people who are doing over a billion dollars on, on marketplace, and I know we all wanna be there. [00:27:56] Michael Levy: Um, this isn’t like the keys to the castle, but it’s, it’s the next best thing. Um, and so we use that model to work with our partners. So if you’re, if you’re a partner of AWS or interested in becoming a partner, a of AWS to work with your partner manager on that model, um, and it’s, it’s fairly simple. Some of it’s very simple. [00:28:14] Michael Levy: It’s about sales alignment, it’s about sales enablement on marketplace. It’s about putting your best foot forward as far as product selection on marketplace, things like that. We should probably add a seventh pillar, which is maybe working with folks like John and Sugar and the team, um, to get to go to marketplace. [00:28:27] Michael Levy: But that’s really, uh, what we talk about. And I think the benefit there is we did an IDC study that folks that implement this cost framework, uh, basically accelerate 31 times faster than AWS sellers on marketplace that aren’t using the cost framework. So you’re talking about accelerating business and talking about doing more business and what good looks like. [00:28:45] Michael Levy: That’s really what we’re. What we’re focused on. [00:28:47] Vince Menzione: And so if people wanna find that study, [00:28:49] Michael Levy: honestly I did it to make sure it was out there. There’s blog posts. You Google AWS marketplace and cost, and you’ll see cost. KOSS, uh, C, oss CS characteristics [00:28:57] Vince Menzione: C say characteristics. Okay. Very good. [00:28:59] Jon Yoo: John? Um, my, my only like kind of top thing around working with AWS is uh, like start narrow. [00:29:07] Jon Yoo: I think everyone tries to over automate and they try to run before they’ve even proved that some motion works. Uh, within a small subset, you know, so do something manually at the beginning. Figure out what’s the right messaging that actually sticks and works. ’cause you probably got 20 other competitors that’s trying to pitch AWS and other hyperscalers the same thing. [00:29:27] Jon Yoo: And so providing a unique messaging that is very simple to understand. Kind of like a, if X then me, if y then, you know, whatever else I, I think is a type of simple heuristic. Makes it easy for AWS to partner with you. Um. And then three, once you have that you know, piece kind of really figured out, then automate right then, you know, you can kind of drive sales adoption and, uh. [00:29:51] Jon Yoo: You know, have your deal desk and rev ops and finance all align on the same piece. But until that, until that point when you have the engine working, start small, get that flywheel going. Yeah. All [00:30:01] Vince Menzione: set. Yeah. Billion dollar club, you mentioned it earlier. That was a big, that was a big announcement last year and Jay McBain, you know, is gonna be your tomorrow to talk to, talks about that. [00:30:10] Vince Menzione: There were five companies last year, five ISVs. Some announced it publicly, some didn’t. I think one of ’em is actually in the room that was not public about it. We won’t mention any names. Uh, and then there was a services partner, I think it was Presidio. I think they made an announcement. So where are we at? [00:30:25] Vince Menzione: Where are we now with the billion Do billion dollar club? [00:30:28] Michael Levy: We’re, we’re trying our hardest to mint new ones every day. Yeah. Yeah. As best as we can. But how [00:30:31] Vince Menzione: many, how many are we up to [00:30:33] Michael Levy: now? I don’t, I don’t know the number, especially those that are public. I think Salesforce maybe went public that they’re in the $2 billion club. [00:30:38] Michael Levy: Yeah. Um, it’s also, uh, I think the goal is driving as much revenue and we’ve seen so many of our partners. Implementing costs as a seller, but more importantly, just working with marketplaces in general to help drive sort of more deal, win more deals, bigger deals, faster deals, is kind of the goal. Um, and we’ve seen that, uh, work not just in kind of the traditional infrastructure space, but you think about. [00:31:03] Michael Levy: Uh, folks like Salesforce in the business application space, even industry vertical ISVs is really the next frontier. I work with many of them very directly, um, to help just crack, crack open the, the co-sell system. Fantastic. [00:31:14] Vince Menzione: So good to have you on stage. Thanks. And John, also so great to have you. Uh, one point I’ll say it’s, it is really great to see marketplace take this front and center. [00:31:23] Vince Menzione: Uh, I remember just, it was only a few short years ago where I would talk to some big ISVs, and I won’t mention some of ’em are actually in the room. And they’re like, why do, why do we need to do a marketplace? We have a channel or we have something else that we’re doing. We don’t need it. Right. And I think people miss the big point at that, that level. [00:31:40] Vince Menzione: So it’s great to see the Absolutely. The transformation. Michael, so good to have you. So great to have AWS John, you and Sugar, great friends of ours. Great and incredible organization. Uh, these guys will be around hopefully for the rest of the day, and if you want to grab them. Uh, some incredible insights today. [00:31:56] Vince Menzione: I appreciate you spending time with us. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for having us. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Partner. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. [00:32:16] Vince Menzione: We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate Partner experience. It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started as we’re taking this studio. [00:32:38] Vince Menzione: And we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here, including our January live stream, the Boca Winter Retreat, and more to come. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level.

AI is changing everything: Are you ready?  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. As we kick off Thanksgiving in the United States this week, I’m incredibly grateful for this exclusive interview with Craig Abod, President of Carahsoft, which reveals the mindset and unique market strategy that fueled the company’s astronomical growth, hitting over $22 billion in bookings. Craig discusses the crucial role of the channel in serving the government and public sectors, how Carahsoft built its foundation by partnering with emerging technology companies like Salesforce and Splunk before they were giants, and how they balance massive $30 million deals with tiny $30 orders. He also shares his vision for the next chapter, including expansion into a $10 billion hardware business and a focus on accelerating partner implementation services, alongside his perspective on the inevitable, fast-approaching ‘aha moment’ for AI transformation across all industries. Craig shared this journey as we kicked of Ultimate Partner LIVE. This was the second LIVE event we hosted this year and the fourth Ultimate Partner Event of 2025, including Winter Retreat, UP Live Spring, and our Executive Breakfast at Microsoft Ignite. Through our events and community, you have access to exclusive content, workshops, and strategies that help you achieve more and stay ahead of what’s next. The buzz around our community is simply astounding. We are building something I couldn’t even dream of when we started a simple podcast almost 9 years ago out of my spare bedroom. If you haven’t already, please consider joining our Ultimate Partner Community, where the most compelling leaders in the technology partnership world come to experience, share, learn, and grow. Thanks for being on this journey with us. — Vince Key Takeaways Carahsoft has grown by roughly $3 billion annually for the last three years, reaching over $22 billion in bookings. The company’s strategy involves centralizing vendor ecosystems to help partners and government customers find, acquire, and deploy technology successfully. Carahsoft established early success by partnering with emerging tech companies like Salesforce and VMware before they became major franchises. A key element of their philosophy is operational excellence, taking the same care of the smallest customers as the biggest ones. The company is focused on expanding into a $10 billion hardware market and growing its services/MSP capability, which currently processes $1.5 billion in implementation services. Craig Abod believes AI will lead to an “aha moment” in the next few years where the value of self-driving cars and automated systems will become undeniable. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags Carahsoft, Craig Abod, public sector, government IT, channel ecosystem, technology distribution, VMware franchise, Salesforce, Splunk, emerging tech, hyper-growth, AI adoption, self-driving cars, Max CPV, MSP, implementation services, deal registration, long tail work, verticalization, enterprise healthcare, education market, Google Ads, Ultimate Partnering, Menzione. https://youtu.be/5uhSY9BydrM Ultimate Partner is the independent community for technology leaders navigating the tectonic shifts in cloud, AI, marketplaces, and co-selling. Through live events, UPX membership, advisory, and the Ultimate Partner® podcast, we help organizations align with hyperscalers, accelerate growth, and achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Transcript [00:00:00] Craig Abod: We’re all gonna wake up and go, yeah, why are we driving our own cars? Why isn’t, you know, why isn’t there a self-driving car in every city, in every, in every parking lot? And we’re gonna have a, an aha moment in, um, 24 months, or 36 months, or 48 months, where we’re all like, why, why do I own this car that, that I have to drive, I have to drive myself. [00:00:18] Craig Abod: And you can apply that to, um, payroll systems and collection systems and bidding systems. There’s an odd moment where, Hey, do I deploy some of this AI today or do I wait just two months and see what’s out there? [00:00:35] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner, live at Caresoft Training Center in Reston, Virginia. Over two days, we gather top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. [00:00:57] Vince Menzione: If you weren’t in the room, this episode brings you right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in. I, I am, uh, incredibly privileged. Uh, in many respects I feel like. Like, I had to keep benching myself for just life in general and just, uh, the amazing opportunities that just happenstance come our way in, in so many forms and functions. [00:01:20] Vince Menzione: I, I’m, I wanna save the time with Craig when he comes up here, but, ’cause I, I don’t want to steal the thunder of the conversation, but what an incredible organization he’s built. I want to, I wanna just wanna say thank you. I said this a little bit earlier. The team of people that have just surrounded my team and supported us doing our event here has been incredible. [00:01:39] Vince Menzione: Like they don’t need to do this. They don’t need to make their facilities available to organizations like ours. They make them available to some of their top partners, some of which are in the room here today, are gonna be up on stage over the next two days. And, um, I talk about mindset and I will say without, I haven’t even talked to ’em about this, but I think that mindset really drives how organizations thrive. [00:02:02] Vince Menzione: And so hopefully you’ll see this demonstrated like all these principles that I talked about briefly. You’ll see this print, this, uh, demonstrated in different ways over the next couple of days just by some of the conversations that we’ll have in the room. So, uh, without further. I do, uh, Craig Abbo, I’d love to invite you to the stage here. [00:02:21] Vince Menzione: Uh, thank you sir. Thank you for having us. So Craig, just, uh, ’cause I mean there might be people in the room who don’t know you, but I know there are some people in the room that do maybe just a little bit your title and role at, at Caresoft And is it on [00:02:39] Craig Abod: guys? Thanks everybody for coming out. Um, uh. Vince mentioned the building. [00:02:46] Craig Abod: Um, uh, four years ago, uh, we said, Hey, we ought to, um, use this building for more than just, um, what it was being used for. And we started offering it to our vendors, uh, and reseller partners, uh, for big events and little events. And, um, so far this year we’ve had 40,000. Um, visitors in the building. Wow. For events like this, there’s a Coast Guard event going on downstairs. [00:03:15] Craig Abod: Um, two Saturdays ago we had a charity event. Uh, uh, in the building. Um, and it’s been, it’s been, it’s been really a good, um, privilege to be able to, to do this. We’re a little bit uniquely positioned to, um, uh, to loan the, to loan the space out to people. And, um, it’s been, it’s been fun. So, uh, where did we, where did we come from? [00:03:36] Craig Abod: Uh, we’re, we’re 21 years, uh, in business. Um, we should end this year. A little over 22, uh, billion dollars in, in bookings. Um, we’ve grown, uh, about $3 billion a year for the last three. The last three years. Um, we’re up, we’re up more this year than we were last year. Uh, a little bit. Uh, somebody said, in spite of all the turmoil that’s going on in the, in the public sector market, and maybe it’s a little bit because of all the turmoil, um, we’ve sort of centralized a lot of stuff and a lot of the vendor ecosystem, um, supports us. [00:04:15] Craig Abod: So 20 years ago, 21 years ago, we had a unique opportunity to start a business and, um, have developed it into, it’s funny, we run. We’re gonna switch to mic four. Okay. That’s good. That’s good. Um, and we’ve de developed it into a business that, um, helps our vendors and the, the channel routes to market ecosystem. [00:04:43] Craig Abod: Um, and our government customers, um, find. Technology, acquire technology and then successfully, um, deploy technology. And if you take those three things 20 years ago, what we found was there was a lot of activity from the manufacturers, um, helping TriNet find government customers that need needed their product. [00:05:10] Craig Abod: And there was a lot of work by the reseller community at the procurement office door. Um. Just trying to close a deal. But those two were really, really disconnected and, and we got in the market, um, with a sales and marketing kind of, uh, mindset into the market and found, yeah, if you do a lot of selling and marketing at the front end, you might not get the order at the back end. [00:05:33] Craig Abod: Yeah. And helped the vendor community sort of figure out that, um, deal reg was important and demand creation was important, but you gotta reward the right, um, the, the right partners. Um, and five or six or seven years ago. Um, an interesting phenomenon where a lot of partners were still in a direct mindset. [00:05:54] Craig Abod: Um, we started taking on a lot of small companies and a lot of emerging tech companies, and what we found was the VCs were telling them, Hey, if you don’t start to build out a channel today, you’re gonna be a, a really, really tough business. Um, a year or two from now when all your founder led sales and all the sales you can generate on your own. [00:06:14] Craig Abod: Um, when you’ve plateaued that if you don’t have a channel out there helping you sell and helping you, your customers deploy the technology, you’re gonna be flat. And all the VCs said, Hey, we don’t wanna invest in a company that’s gonna get to a hundred million and, and be stuck there. And, um, they, the, a lot of the VCs have embraced sort of, Hey, bring your products into Caresoft ’cause we can help you get into the, into the rest of the ecosystem. [00:06:37] Craig Abod: So a little bit about our beginning, a little bit about where we end up here today. [00:06:41] Vince Menzione: I, I find it fascinating ’cause I don’t know anyone that’s doing what you’re doing and uh, uh, kudos to you for doing it. But, you know, I talk about growth mindset, but you have a, maybe ’cause you, you do have a unique market. [00:06:53] Vince Menzione: You have kind of the, the government sector and, and, but you, you have expanded beyond that. Um, what, what, what got you started? Like you’ve been, you’ve been in DC your whole life, I think. Um, what was the spark? ’cause you were at other organizations before Carahsoft. What was the spark that. Got you started to do this versus what you were doing prior? [00:07:15] Vince Menzione: Well, um, [00:07:15] Craig Abod: you know, I’ll, I’ll go 20 years back, pat, before we started, I went to work for a guy named Denda Young, who Yeah. Started to sell into the government back when it wasn’t, wasn’t as big a market. Um, and he had two different businesses in a big integration business and a business distributing at the time, apple, uh, into the government. [00:07:34] Craig Abod: And, um, it was really a good first, uh, job. I was with him until he sold both his, his, his companies. And, um, you got to do a million different things and learn the business from the top down. And I’ve told this still, uh, uh, friends with him, I, I told him, Hey, I learned a lot about things to do and a lot about things not to do. [00:07:55] Craig Abod: Um, and then, uh, 21 years ago we had a, we had an opportunity to build this, um, ourselves and, and took the opportunity. [00:08:02] Vince Menzione: That explains quite a bit. I, I remember GTSI was the one company that, they were the behemoth, they were the biggest player out there at the time. Long time. Yeah. And that was, uh, incredible. [00:08:11] Vince Menzione: So now, now I understand that spark. Um, what were some of the ch, I mean, so we talked about like it’s, it seems like you’ve, it’s easy what you’ve done, but. It doesn’t feel like anything is easy when you’re growing a business, especially to $22 billion. I mean, everybody’s sitting in this room probably saying, well, help me get there. [00:08:28] Vince Menzione: Uh, I certainly want to know how to, how to get there, but what were some of the things, the obstacles you faced in the beginning that you had to overcome, and what do you think helped you get, get here? Yeah. I guess is what I would say. Yeah. [00:08:41] Craig Abod: So, um, I, I think there’s two, there’s two sides to it. When we first started, um. [00:08:48] Craig Abod: Uh, we, uh, went to a couple of the big vendors and they had zero use for us. They had, they had no need at all. Um, and thank God I was at, I was at one meeting with a big vendor who said, Craig, you could do all that sales and marketing, you could do all that stuff for us, but you will never, ever get an order. [00:09:07] Craig Abod: All our deals are big ELAs. You’ll never get in that, in that market. So we regrouped a little bit and we went and talked to a lot of little, um, emerging technology companies. And we built the business in the beginning around some emerging technologies that are today really, really big businesses. Um, I have, um, I have, uh, um, uh, a story about, um, our first trip to go talk to Salesforce. [00:09:35] Craig Abod: And Salesforce wasn’t the Salesforce we know today. Um, nobody was really interested in the cloud. Nobody in the government needed A-A-A-A-A-C-R-M. Um, and we, uh, we took Salesforce on, um, their IPO was $120 million, um, initial, um, uh, cash inflection from their, from their IPO. Um, we have a single customer today that buys a hundred bigger than $120 million deal today. [00:10:06] Craig Abod: Wow. Um, and we took on. VMware before VMware was VMware Today, it’s a $2 billion franchise with us. Um, all of the stuff we do for, for Broadcom, um, uh, Splunk is about a, a a billion dollars now, part of, um, part of Cisco. Cisco. Um, and when we took on Splunk, I, I sort of was like, guys, this is the, like, I don’t even understand what this word Splunk is. [00:10:31] Craig Abod: Why, who’s picking this? Who’s picking this vendor? So we had, we had some good fortune with, um, the little guys. And today our business is, hey, we take care of some really, really big guys in the market. We, we take care of AWS Azure, uh, Google. We have almost a billion dollar Google, um, business, and we still take care of, um, um, I’m gonna call it a thousand emerging, um, uh, technology companies that those VCs are bringing us, that our government customers are bringing us, that our channel. [00:11:02] Craig Abod: Uh, ecosystem. So it’s been, it’s been a, a tale of big and, and small, big vendors and, and small vendors. Um, we take care of big channel partners in the Leidos and GD and Northrop’s all the way down to little companies that are just getting started, and we’ve got a path in that that helps the, the, the little companies and, um, sort of big orders and small orders. [00:11:29] Craig Abod: One of the things that we are. Really, really proud of is, um, that hey, we take care of the smallest customers as same way we would take care of the biggest customers. Wow. And, um, half of our orders, so 120,000 orders, um, combined add up to less than 1% of our revenue. Um, now 1% of our orders. Account for half of our revenue and then 49%. [00:11:59] Craig Abod: 49%. And the message there is though, for our vendors, for the channel partners that we support, and for our government customers, hey, they still need to buy one copy of something and there’s gotta be somebody there that takes care of that. And we said, Hey, how do I, how does my customer trust me for their $30 million deal if they don’t trust me for their literally $30? [00:12:18] Craig Abod: Um, deal. And we’ve built a business around this operational excellence that, hey, we take care of the big guys. Really easy to understand how you take care of the big guys, hard to figure out how you take care of all those small, um, customers and small vendors and small, um, resellers, and do it at scale. [00:12:32] Craig Abod: And that’s been, um, the challenge, but also one of the big drivers in our [00:12:36] Vince Menzione: growth. That’s incredible. Did, did you feel like the small, those smaller organizations that were on a growth trajectory helped drive the hyperscalers to you? Because I, I assume the hyperscalers came later. Probably. Yeah. [00:12:49] Craig Abod: Yeah. So, um, um, building out, um, sort of ecosystems of partners. [00:12:57] Craig Abod: We, we kind of started to do that really consciously eight or nine years ago, and now have some significant, um, ecosystems around either customer segments or, um, technology segments. Um, you know, you, you talk about the ecosystem. Um, in marketplaces, um, if I, if I pick on, um, Salesforce one more time. Sure. We represent, um, about 120 of the Salesforce app exchange partners. [00:13:27] Craig Abod: And every Salesforce deal we do has, uh, every other Salesforce deal we do. So half our orders have at least one of those other add-on products that run and enable, and one of our biggest customers. Um, one of our biggest customers and one of Salesforce’s biggest customers. It might be Salesforce’s biggest customer, but I only see my orders. [00:13:48] Craig Abod: I don’t see all of all their orders. Um, uh, they buy, um, $150 million worth of Salesforce every year and they buy $20 million worth of all those little add-on products, and we think we’re taking really good care of those little guys. But the, the, that customer wouldn’t be getting the ROI on that system if they weren’t getting all those ecosystem partners. [00:14:09] Craig Abod: And then one of our sort of verticals that we support and, and the, around this, you know, sort of ecosystem mentality. Um, one of our verticals is healthcare and we’re doing close to a billion dollars in enterprise healthcare today. Um, plus government. Plus government healthcare. Wow. And we had a small, um, emerging healthcare company and we look at healthcare as both. [00:14:36] Craig Abod: The customer set as well as the technology set. So I sell into healthcare products that everybody buys, and I also sell into healthcare products that only healthcare buys. We had a small healthcare, um, VC funded company, and they came to us and they talked to us, explained their product. Everybody was super excited and the, and then the CEO said, but I’m not selling. [00:14:55] Craig Abod: I’m not gonna let you sign you up unless you really have us. Uh, a healthcare practice. And I went, wait, wait, hold it. We do, and we gave ’em our healthcare practice pitch. And it was that sort of moment where, hey, wait, these, these, um, ecosystems and verticals have really become, really, become important. And that translates into what we do with, with AWS. [00:15:14] Craig Abod: We run, we run 200 different vendors through marketplace Wow. Um, transactions in the last, in the last 12 months, um, we’re in the ice in the intelligence community marketplace. Um, we’re in their, we’re in their regular marketplace, so. Um, figuring out how customers take get best, ROI on those kind of investments been important. [00:15:33] Vince Menzione: And you’re in other verticals as well, right? You’re in the education market and other markets? Yeah. [00:15:39] Craig Abod: So, so federal, state and local education, both higher ed and K through K through 12. Yeah. Healthcare, the defense industrial base. And then we’re, we’re helping our vendor partners where they need us in commercial and enterprise. [00:15:54] Craig Abod: Um, um, we do a lot of, we call it long tail work. Where our vendors come to us and say, Hey, you do this really, really well for me in government. Can you help me with all my small orders in, um, in their enterprise and in their commercial, um, segments with, they’re not, they’re not doing, um, for lots of different reasons, not doing really, really well. [00:16:13] Craig Abod: They’re not, they’re not, um, um, tuned, tuned for those small orders. We have one partner that brought us, um, a big bucket of almost a shoebox full of, um. Uh, customers that didn’t renew over the last 24 months and said, here, you guys wanna take these, take these. Wow. Um, so a lot of those kind of things have, are pulling us into, um, enterprise and commercial markets. [00:16:35] Vince Menzione: I’d love to know the convert rate on those. [00:16:37] Craig Abod: Um, pretty high. I’ll tell you. Um, it was a $5 million bucket of business. We showed back up in 90 days with $2 million worth of business, and I was like, what’s our secret? What did we do? And the sales manager said, we called the customer and we got the customer a quote. [00:16:53] Craig Abod: Um, but it was, thank you, thank you. The manufacturer. The manufacturer was just not set up and skilled at calling hundreds and hundreds of 2000, 3000, 5,000 customers. But what they found is if you lose those little customers, those are the ones that grow into 50 K customers and the 50 K customers go into a million dollar orders. [00:17:14] Craig Abod: So you gotta take care of those little, um. Every tree started as a seed. Not every seed grows into a tree, but if you don’t take care of those seeds, you’re in trouble. Yeah, [00:17:24] Vince Menzione: that’s a great philosophy. So, you know, we talk about tectonic shifts. I mean, the world is cha rapidly changing. Um, I’d love to get your perspective, I mean, what you’ve seen in the 20 years of Caresoft and even bor before Caresoft to what we’re seeing now in terms of technology transformation. [00:17:41] Vince Menzione: And, you know, we’ll talk about ai, I’m sure AI is part of all the conversations here in the room as well. But what are you seeing in terms of, and how are you positioning. To lead in this, uh, time of transformation. [00:17:52] Craig Abod: Yeah, so I think we’re in an interesting, uh, clearly we’re in an interesting time. Um, there, there’s an old, uh, adage that technology changes faster than we think it will in the long term, but a lot slower than we think it will in the short term. [00:18:09] Craig Abod: And, um. We are in this mode of where, boy, everybody’s seeing all this great technology out there. Um, and I think the, everybody’s having a hard time, um, digesting it and their expectations that technology is gonna do something really, really good and really, really fast, um, is, is tremendously tremendous high. [00:18:29] Craig Abod: So we’re investing a lot in, um, Hey, how do we enable our partners better? And how do we enable our partners to go, enable their customers? And every day we’re having, I’ll call ’em forward deployed engineer conversations, but it’s a bigger and different topic than forward deployed, uh, engineers. Um, but hey, how do we get this technology into the right customers, um, and get them to get a quick ROI, um, I, I tell a story that I think is. [00:19:00] Craig Abod: Um, something we’re, uh, that I, I consider it sort of a not successful story for me. We had a really, really good partner that won a contract and he’s implementing an, uh, a system for a government agency and he’s explaining to me. Hey, I got this, um, thing and we’re building the system for the government and it’s really, really cool and it’s gonna do all this great stuff. [00:19:22] Craig Abod: And I go, but why? Why are you doing that? He goes, guys, we won this contract. Like this is the, this is the best day of our lives. And I said, no, but, but why are you doing that? He said, Craig, I don’t, don’t understand what you’re talking about. I go, you’re building the system that like eight other people have already built. [00:19:37] Craig Abod: Why don’t you just take something that’s already built into the government? And so that helping our government customers find technology, helping ’em acquire technology, and helping them. Deploy it successfully before they go hire. Uh, God bless ’em, a really good, really good partner, a really good integrator to go build it from scratch. [00:19:53] Craig Abod: And I think it, it’s a measure of the difficulty our customers are having, sorting through everything and getting, and getting to the right, getting to the right solution for themselves. [00:20:02] Vince Menzione: I also think that speaks volumes about trust. You know, we talk about most, most organizations, vendor partner, uh, being able to have that conversation, Craig. [00:20:13] Vince Menzione: Do you agree? I mean, it just seems like they’re, you’re trusted to have a conversation like that with them. [00:20:18] Craig Abod: Well, where we are in the market, right, we’re we sit firmly between the government, the partner ecosystem, and the vendor. And hey, it’s really easy for two of those two guys to talk and figure out that, oh wait, the problem here is that Caresoft didn’t do stuff. [00:20:33] Craig Abod: So we end up being the guys who, okay, the. The vendor needs something to get a deal done. The partner doesn’t have that capability and the government says, yeah, but I’m not placing the order unless I have that. And we’re end up being the guy sort of in the middle, sort of gladly pulling all those pieces together. [00:20:49] Craig Abod: Um, and trust is, is a, on all three sides is pretty important. [00:20:53] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it. Um, I kind of put you on the spot here about AI because you, you kind of alluded to this, but do we think we’re over pivoting too quickly or we we’re talking about it constantly, right? I mean, what, what do you, what are your, what’s your perspective is, is what I would ask about that. [00:21:09] Craig Abod: Um, so I, I, um, um, I don’t think we’re over pivoting and I think we’re all gonna wake up and, um, uh, I told somebody. We’re all gonna wake up and go, yeah, why are we driving our own cars? Why isn’t, you know, why isn’t there a self-driving car in every city, in every, in every parking lot? And we’re gonna have a, an aha moment in, um, 24 months, or 36 months, or 48 months, where we’re all like, why, why do I own this car that, that I have to drive, I have to drive myself. [00:21:39] Craig Abod: And you can apply that to, um, payroll systems and collection systems and bidding systems and, and, uh, uh, lots of, lots of different, um. Um, systems in the, in the government. Um, but I think that, um, there’s, there’s an odd moment where, Hey, do I deploy some of this AI today or do I wait just two months and see what’s out there, out there? [00:22:05] Craig Abod: Then yes, I, I tell people, Hey, the, what’s worse than graduating from college and having a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt? What’s worse is not graduating from college and still having a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt. And hey, if you de, if you pick up technology today and make a generational change on your technology and it’s the wrong one and you do it too soon, um, because because stuff’s changing so, so quickly, um, it’s, it’s, we’re, it’s gonna be, it’s, we’re in an interesting time and these decisions our customers are making are, are really important. [00:22:43] Vince Menzione: So 3 billion, you’ve added 3 billion to the top line each of the last three, four years. Is that what, what’s next? I mean, where, where do you take this? You, it, it seems like you’ve, i I would say lack of a better term, conquered the government market and maybe also moving down this road with verticalization. [00:23:02] Vince Menzione: What’s, what’s the next chapter look like for Caresoft? [00:23:05] Craig Abod: Yeah. So, um, uh, we do, um. We do a couple billion dollars in hardware. Um, and that hardware business for us, um, uh, is growing and growing significantly. Um, it’s a little bit, um, the conversations and workflows are different in hardware than it is in software. [00:23:29] Craig Abod: Um, and so I think I’ve got, I’ve got a, a $10 billion hardware business, um, that’s sitting at, at at 2 billion and we’re in the, um, the education. Market and we do a billion dollars in education. There’s probably a $10 billion market that we’re not, yeah, we’re not there yet. Um, and then our commercial, our commercial business is, is over a billion dollars. [00:23:52] Craig Abod: Um, and that’s a $10 billion, uh, that’s a $10 billion, um, market. And then one piece that underlays all that is, um, we, uh, support. A billion and a half dollars worth of implementation services that get done in the market, that go through us. And, um, every, uh, dollar of that with, with one kind of exception that involves some clearances. [00:24:19] Craig Abod: Um, 99% of that billion and a half dollars we go, we take and bring those deals to an implementation partner or an MSP or to the manufacturer. And, um, that building out that, um. S solution and services capability so that our partners can get better access to, um, uh, selling those services to the customer, and the customer gets faster. [00:24:43] Craig Abod: Deployment is something that we’re, we’re really, really focused on, and that that billion and a half dollars could be a. A, a three or four or $5 billion business if, if a few pieces fall into place. [00:24:53] Vince Menzione: That’s fascinating. ’cause we think the MSP market is ripe for transformation. We’re even have a session on MSPs today. [00:25:00] Vince Menzione: But these are mostly MSPs that have clearances, that have the capabilities and clearances, or No, [00:25:03] Craig Abod: it’s MSPs that deploy for state and local. They deploy for education, they deploy into defense industrial base. What we find is if we have a, a lead generation conversation with a customer and the next meeting we can pull in an MSP or implementation partner. [00:25:18] Craig Abod: That has implemented the same solution for another town or the same solution for another, another customer, the our probability of win goes from 20% to to 80 or 90%. And the speed it takes to get the deal done goes from a year down to six months because the customer’s comfortable that they’ve got the right partner who can, who can implement and has done it before. [00:25:38] Craig Abod: And the partners like us, ’cause hey, you’re bringing me into a customer that’s the exact right fit for them. [00:25:44] Vince Menzione: That’s fascinating. I. I don’t wanna make you blush or, uh, but I, I feel like you’re unique. I really do. I, I, I speak to many leaders in this industry and you, what you’ve done is incredibly unique, Craig. [00:25:58] Vince Menzione: And, um, I mean, just this incredible business you’ve built your philosophy, your mindset around it. I don’t hear this from most CEOs and presidents of organizations, so I just, I, I need to, I need to call that out. And for those of you, uh, I just wanna, I just wanna. Take a moment here, because I do think what Craig has done to this, this organization for our industry, our, our learnings that we all could take forward in terms of how we grow the business. [00:26:22] Vince Menzione: And we like, you know, we do this very rarely, we don’t do like a lot of awards. Uh, we do basically two awards a year. And Craig, I just, you know, I talked to the team before we came out here and we said, you know, the work that your team is doing is it, it’s demonstrated in. What we see, and then everyone we talk to, so many of your partners are in the room speaking at this event too. [00:26:44] Vince Menzione: We rattle off a bunch of names. I don’t wanna just call out one. But I’ve heard so many incredible stories about what Caresoft does and how it represents the partnership world that we wanted to rec recognize you as well. Uh, we do a leadership award, but we also wanted to do this year a separate partner award. [00:27:02] Vince Menzione: And so on behalf of Ultimate Partner on behalf of our community. I want to recognize you as our Partner of the Year award winner. Thank you. And we wanna wanna thank you for everything you do for our industry and that we, it’s, it’s small, but it’s mighty. I understand it’s pretty heavy here, but, uh, just maybe with, I think they’ll one to take a picture of, of, of this with you. [00:27:23] Vince Menzione: Um, and I just wanna thank you a, for inviting us to your beautiful facility B for like engulfing us with incredible support. Your team. Um, it’s just been incredible to work with and just being a, a voice of advocacy in this partnership world. That’s a, that’s a really great voice. It’s, it’s a voice of, of understanding reason about trust around collaboration. [00:27:50] Vince Menzione: I don’t see this at all, and we just really want to thank you for everything you do for this community. [00:27:54] Craig Abod: Vince, you know, thanks, Vince. Thanks, and we appreciate you guys doing this event here. Nothing better than having a room full of great people. Um, here. And, um, I appreciate the recognition on behalf of the whole, the whole company. [00:28:06] Craig Abod: So thank you. Thank you very [00:28:07] Vince Menzione: much, sir. Appreciate it. Thank, thank you. Wow. [00:28:15] Vince Menzione: Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Eye to Partnering. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate partner experience. It’s more than a community. [00:28:36] Vince Menzione: It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started as we’re taking this studio. And we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here, including our January live stream, the Boca Winter Retreat. [00:28:59] Vince Menzione: And more to come. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level.

AI is changing everything: Are you ready?  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. What a thrilling week hosting partner leaders at Ultimate Partner LIVE in Reston, VA at the Carahsoft Training Center. Even if you couldn’t be with us in person at the groundbreaking event, you can listen to the most profound sessions. In this exclusive interview, Erwin Visser, a key leader at Microsoft, discusses the company’s major organizational restructuring into Enterprise and SMEC (Small, Medium, and Corporate) divisions, and their massive, channel-led $600 billion bet on partner-led growth, with a core focus on AI and security. Visser outlines the “Frontier Firm” mindset—a commitment to being AI-first across customer experience, employee productivity (with Copilot saving users an estimated 34% of their time on boring tasks), business processes, and product innovation. He details Microsoft’s enormous investment in partner enablement, a new dedicated partner sales organization, and the urgent challenges of data compliance and software sprawl in the new age of AI agents. He concludes by sharing the three non-negotiable traits of a great partner, providing crucial guidance for anyone looking to navigate the tectonic shifts of the current business world. Through our events and community, you have access to exclusive content, workshops, and strategies that help you achieve more and stay ahead of what’s next. If you haven’t already, please consider joining our Ultimate Partner Community, where the most compelling leaders in the technology partnership. Thanks for being on this journey with us. Key Takeaways The three non-negotiable traits of a great partner are integrity in business, leveraging Microsoft’s investments, and possessing proven technical/sales ability to deliver solutions for customers.. Microsoft has restructured into two core divisions: Enterprise and SMEC (Small, Medium, and Corporate), with SMEC representing an estimated $600 billion market opportunity. The company has made its largest ever investment in partner training, financial incentives, and programs for the SMEC segment, viewing it as a major channel-led bet. A “Frontier Firm” must adopt an AI-first mindset, focusing on transforming customer experience, employee experience, business processes, and innovation. Early adoption of Copilot for employee experience is the fastest win, with one belief suggesting it saves employees 34% of their time on boring tasks. Microsoft has created a new Partner Sales Organization and an “outbound share” metric to ensure its sellers actively share opportunities and co-sell with partners in the SMEC space. https://youtu.be/xmUFSbk_IyQ I Ultimate Partner is the independent community for technology leaders navigating the tectonic shifts in cloud, AI, marketplaces, and co-selling. Through live events, UPX membership, advisory, and the Ultimate Partner® podcast, we help organizations align with hyperscalers, accelerate growth, and achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Key Tags: Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Transcript:: Transcript [00:00:00] Erwin Visser: I, I believe that when, uh, people start adopting copilot, they save 34% of their time. Yeah. Have, uh, and it’s, it’s the, and it’s the 34% that you don’t wanna do often. [00:00:15] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. [00:00:25] Vince Menzione: We just came off Ultimate partner live at Carahsoft Training Center in Reston, Virginia. Over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this episode brings you right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in. Uh, I also wanna, I wanna invite another friend up on stage here. [00:00:49] Vince Menzione: Uh, he’s been at many of our events. He’s been incredibly supportive of our ultimate partner. And, uh, as many of you know, uh, Microsoft has been a sponsor, has been, uh, may have been the title sponsor for this event and for many of our other events, uh, over the last few years. Uh, incredible support from that organization as well and what we do. [00:01:09] Vince Menzione: And, uh, when I picked up the phone and I said, Irwin, I know you got a really busy calendar this fall, but we really need to hear from you. And one of the things I love about doing these is that we’re gonna have a very intimate conversation. Around what’s going on at Microsoft. And I hear this, by the way, I hear this from a lot of you, like, eh, we’re figuring out our strategy. [00:01:29] Vince Menzione: We got it with company B, but we don’t have it with company A or A and B. And so, uh, we’re gonna have a really great conversation today about Microsoft, about the tectonic shifts that have been impacting. The, the world and how Microsoft sees the world. So with further ado, Erwin Ser, my incredible friend, also from Florida, by the way, [00:01:53] Erwin Visser: first of all, Vince, uh, uh, it’s great to have you, uh, on stage after you. [00:01:58] Erwin Visser: Thank you, uh, after your recovery, I think, uh, thank you. A lot of people were shocked seeing what happened to you, and it’s awesome to be here. And the pictures of your daughter. Uh, sweating. So, um, no, very happy that, uh, we have, uh, this event with, uh, with all our friends here. And, uh, thank you. I’ve had a [00:02:15] Vince Menzione: lot of reasons to continue going on. [00:02:17] Vince Menzione: Yes. Uh, including, uh, I’ll just share this for a second. ’cause I, I haven’t shared this on stage with many people, but um, as they were driving me in the ambulance, I yelled out to the guy, I, I don’t remember very much, but I remember yelling out, said, I’ll be okay, honey. I’ll be all right. And then when they got me to the hospital, my wife called my daughter who was getting married in eight weeks from that day. [00:02:37] Vince Menzione: And I, I’m yelling out in the background, Hey honey, I’m gonna be able to walk you down the aisle now, meanwhile, my foot was, was, was broken in two places and I was in a cast and I went from a wheelchair to Walker to crutches. Uh, but I got, I was able to get up and I was able to get through physical therapy and, and do that within a fairly short period of time. [00:02:58] Vince Menzione: So, yeah. Yeah. Amazing grit. [00:02:59] Erwin Visser: Thank [00:02:59] Vince Menzione: you. Amazing grit. Thank you. Thank you. And, uh, you’ve had some things as well, so we, we share ailments kind of getting all Yeah. Yeah. This is [00:03:07] Erwin Visser: probably the real reason we we’re doing this shit thing. Correct. You’ve had multiple hip [00:03:10] Vince Menzione: replacements as well. Exactly. And now he’s climbing mountains again. [00:03:13] Vince Menzione: It’s crazy. Oh, yeah. I, uh, I wanna stay [00:03:16] Erwin Visser: busy as long as I can. Yes. [00:03:17] Vince Menzione: And for those who don’t know, uh, Irwin is. Has one of the distinctions that very few people in our world have been. You climbed a very important mountain at one point, not a couple years ago. Yeah. Maybe just share that for a second. We started, [00:03:31] Erwin Visser: yeah, I was, uh, yeah, I was able to, uh, climb Everest, uh, two, uh, two years ago. [00:03:34] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Uh, some of it, yeah. It’s, uh, incredible. It’s, uh, uh. It’s hard always to describe Everest because it’s, it’s almost every superlative you can use. It’s like amazing. It’s traumatic. Uh, it’s hard. Uh, the hardest thing I ever did. And so any, any excess, it’s kind of what, uh, what Everest was. Well, you talk about it like it’s these Oh yeah. [00:03:56] Erwin Visser: I was over, over at Everest. [00:03:57] Vince Menzione: Last week. [00:03:59] Erwin Visser: Yeah. No, this, uh, it takes some preparation and, uh, yeah. You, you do learn, uh, to know your own boundaries and your thresholds when you do something like that. Yeah. And, and, uh, yeah. I know we, we have so many topics to, uh, to go through, but one of the reasons for me. To try to climb Everest. [00:04:18] Erwin Visser: Was, was also kind of curiosity, you know, it’s the, had the, I was always intrigued by seeing the, as a, as a young kid by seeing the movies, read the books. And as I always ask myself the question like, would I be able to do something like that? You know? And so the curiosity of finding out where your, where your own like, uh, boundaries are, uh, yeah. [00:04:40] Vince Menzione: And I don’t wanna go down a path here ’cause we have a lot to talk about today. Yes. But I just will ask you one question. Do you think going through the, that whole process, did that, has that prepared you for the business world? ’cause it’s changing rapidly. Today we talk about tectonic shifts. Uh, there’s even changes within your organization. [00:04:57] Vince Menzione: Do you think having like that fortitude and that strength that you develop around that helps you? [00:05:03] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think so. It’s, um, like, it’s, it’s hard sometimes to describe, but it’s, I, I think professionally I. But also in my personal life, you, you learn really not to sweat the little things anymore. [00:05:17] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:05:17] Erwin Visser: Super. And you, you kind of cave up like a lot of things that maybe would be frustrated in the past or irritated. I, I became much more patient, but also like an an a no ca like attitude, like really focused on. Things that are important. Yeah. And be able to really put aside the, the minded details. I [00:05:35] Vince Menzione: love that. [00:05:36] Vince Menzione: I love that. That’s mindset, that’s maniacal focus. That’s, yeah. All those things combined. So let’s talk about it. Right. Uh, beautiful. About having you, we’ve been on stage multiple times together and we had this conversation like, let’s not do this slide. Let’s just have a riff today. I mean, you know, elephant in the room. [00:05:54] Vince Menzione: There’s been a lot of changes at Microsoft the last several months, and if you, if you’re not navigating and understanding all the changes, they’re all good. Right. There’s been a, but there’s been a lot of shift. Uh, big AI spends like over $120 billion in chips and data centers, right? Um, and then organizational changes in a big way. [00:06:12] Vince Menzione: And we can go through those individually, but maybe I’ll just turn it over to you to maybe share some of what’s happened and what’s changed. [00:06:18] Erwin Visser: Yeah, yeah. Let, let me start with the organization ’cause I think it’s maybe most, uh, relevant for the people in the room here. Uh, and it’s, it’s, uh, there were a few different steps here, but I think. [00:06:28] Erwin Visser: At the, maybe the most, uh, important for our partners is that, that we, we kind of like, like we, we created two different like divisions or organizational units. Yeah. One really focused on enterprise and one focused on what we call the S-M-E-S-C markets, small, medium enterprise. And, and the, I’m, I’m part representing the S-M-E-S-C, uh, business here at, uh, Microsoft. [00:06:53] Erwin Visser: So the. The, for SME and C, the, it’s really a big bet on our partner and our partner channel. Yeah. And we we’re making significant investments, uh, in, uh, not just in, uh, in our partners financially, but also through incentives, through programs. We, uh, we we’re making the largest. Training investment ever at Microsoft this year. [00:07:15] Erwin Visser: Uh, in technical skills, in sales, skills of our partners and, and really getting very close with our channel partners around helping our small, medium enterprises, anything outside enterprise Yeah. To really, uh, transform with AI and security. And, and so, and that is, uh, where we, we, uh, Ralph Halter is the, the new president of, uh, of our organization. [00:07:38] Erwin Visser: And, and he is, it’s, it’s really a big bet on our, on our partners left to right. That’s where we, uh, are all super focused on. [00:07:46] Vince Menzione: And, uh, without having an org chart and doing slides here, but, um, for people that don’t know, by the way, Ralph Hap took over for, what was Kevin Pi role, correct? Because Kevin been on stage multiple of our events. [00:07:58] Vince Menzione: And also this S-M-E-N-C organization, small, medium enterprise and corporate. Represents. If I had took a pyramid and we looked at it, maybe the top 9,000 organizations would be enterprise. And then there’s this huge chunk. That’s why we talk about the acre diamonds. Yeah. And layering it in is really because partners need that reach to those customers. [00:08:18] Vince Menzione: They’re all significant companies, by the way, too. There are a lot of big enterprise organizations there. Yeah. And then just so you know, it’s. It internally, it’s known as the fourth region. So you have America’s, you have emea, you have apac, and then you have S, M, E, and C. People sometimes refer to it that way as well, right? [00:08:34] Erwin Visser: Yeah, yeah. That’s, that fourth region changed with the, the latest announcements. Okay. Allon being the CEO Oh, that’s right, yeah. Of the commercial business. So we, we now, uh, in our organization chart, and I, I’ll, I’ll, I will not go too deep in Microsoft. Uh, structures, but, uh, Deb Cup is, is leading our enterprise business. [00:08:53] Erwin Visser: Okay. Uh, and Rolf, uh, is leading our SMEC business. Oh, they did? And they are next to each other. Oh, very nice. [00:08:59] Vince Menzione: Very nice. And Deb ran the Americas business prior to that, correct? Yeah. That’s great. [00:09:03] Erwin Visser: Yeah. And so for America, say, if you think about the opportunity and so, uh. Uh, approximately, uh, uh, only the top 7,000 companies in Americas, they are enterprise. [00:09:14] Erwin Visser: So everything else, else we call s, m, E, and C. There’s a, a lot of large corporations in that. Everything else. Yeah. Uh, that’s why we also started to use the word enterprise and not like SMB because that’s. Companies don’t wanna be a small business like everybody has like an, uh, an aspiration. So we, uh, we, uh, if we look at the opportunity for, for us as Microsoft, those of our partners estimated, uh, $600 billion. [00:09:40] Erwin Visser: And I know that’s a huge number, but it’s, it’s kind of, it’s, it’s out there in opportunity in the next period to really with AI transformation. So it’s, uh, yeah, significant, uh, uh, market. [00:09:53] Vince Menzione: So I’m slipping, I’m skipping through your slides. Yes. You want, and we’re, but we’re gonna talk about this. So, uh, I’m glad you mentioned about Judson as well. [00:10:02] Vince Menzione: So Judson’s role has in increased significance as well. Now he is now the CEO of the commercial business. Is that correct? Yeah. Is that, yeah. And what does that mean and what, what, how does his role line up with Satya’s role? [00:10:16] Erwin Visser: Yeah, so I think it was. Probably the natural next step for, for Judson. Uh, you, he, he has been the architect for our sales organization for our go to market for the last years. [00:10:28] Erwin Visser: And, and this is the, the, the next. Like, I would say evolution, where also Akashi and his marketing organization is now reporting into Judson. He also, uh, uh, some other operational, uh, organizations and he kind of oversees our, our, uh, our commercial business now left to right. Uh, and so keeping such a probably more opportunity to, to think about the innovation Yeah. [00:10:51] Erwin Visser: And what it really means, not just for Microsoft to become Frontier. It’s, it’s, uh, one of the. Terms we have been using also around our, uh, our AI days, but also, uh, what it means for our partners and what it means for our customers. Yeah. At this, uh, this AI transformation, [00:11:07] Vince Menzione: we’re gonna talk, we’re gonna dig in on Frontier in a second. [00:11:10] Vince Menzione: I, I, by the way, I apologize. We’re gonna, you’re gonna see these slides later on from an, from Matt Berg who’s gonna be up on stage. So you’re not gonna miss some of this, and it’s all in the decks that we’ll share. But we wanna dig in on the conversation here, reference here. And the other thing I, I also think about. [00:11:25] Vince Menzione: Uh, frontier. One of the other changes that were made to the ISV organization, the Software Development Corporation Organization Yes. Yep. Was a, was an additional focus. On. This is where I think the Satya conversation comes in with the, uh, the LLMs, the chip manufacturers and sort of the startups that are very focused on ai. [00:11:46] Vince Menzione: Right. So that’s maybe an area where Satya is gonna spend more time. Yeah. Versus Judson on the core business, the commercial business. Is that what you Yeah, no, that’s [00:11:53] Erwin Visser: a hundred percent. Uh, and the, and I think this is always the ever, its, uh, so I’m, I’m aging myself now. I, uh, I started, uh, working, uh, uh, in it in the early nineties, or the middle nineties I should say. [00:12:06] Erwin Visser: And so the, so I was kind of still the tail of the PC revolution or the client server. And then we had internet and like we have a, we have seen a couple of those transformations and I, I think what’s. It, it always feels that we, um, overestimate the impact in the first two years and we underestimate Yes, the longer term impact and the changes in the markets. [00:12:31] Erwin Visser: So true. And, and so and so, like if you. If you would be an, a betting man in the nineties, and you would’ve put all your money on, say, companies that just came up there, like Google, uh, Amazon, uh, you, you probably would, would not be sitting here, but maybe living on the yacht in, uh, in the medi. But so do you, do you have the, and this will happen again in 15 years from now, there will be brands that will be top 50 companies in the world. [00:12:58] Erwin Visser: That currently don’t exist or are maybe in a startup phase? Yes. Uh, because AI is gonna create this, this transformation, and I, I think what makes Microsoft’s, uh, pretty unique is that we were able to like go through three or four of those transformations successfully. And, and so I think, uh, understanding what AI really means and what’s at it’s, it’s. [00:13:21] Erwin Visser: But I sometimes think it’s funny. It’s like we talk a lot about the AI transformation that is that what it means for our customers? I think as Microsoft even and, and with our partners, we should probably spend also some time around what AI transformation means for us. Uh, ’cause we also know that our business will be different in five years from now, 10 years from now. [00:13:40] Erwin Visser: Yes. But I think having that, like having that innovation mindset is gonna be very important for Microsoft and other companies in this market to really. So, so five the next, uh, 15 years successfully. Yeah. And [00:13:54] Vince Menzione: there’s a genesis story here for those who I, I, most people might know this, but I wanna point this out. [00:13:59] Vince Menzione: So chat GBT, November, 2022 comes out like outta nowhere. Yes. But what we didn’t realize was that Satya was in the room making a lot of these things happen five years earlier and leaned in in a big way. To chat, GBT, data centers, resources, all kinds of things, and leaned in with the company and also was the first one, I will say this, uh, even with AWS in the room and others, uh, leaned in, some of the other organizations were flatfooted. [00:14:29] Vince Menzione: Microsoft leaned in, in a big way with co-pilot and with other technologies before others were really advancing on ai. And so I think the natural progression of that is this frontier firm because what you’re, what you’re demon, what you’re saying. To each of us is we all need to lean in as well. Right. So take us through that. [00:14:47] Vince Menzione: What, what does it mean to be a frontier firm? [00:14:49] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Yeah. It’s the, a frontier firm is really to start thinking like AI first and, and, uh. Uh, think about your as a company, and that is a statement for you as a partner, but also for your customer. Like, what does it mean for like your most core businesses that you, that you drive as an organization? [00:15:11] Erwin Visser: And then, and you have to think through like your customer experience. Like what can ai, how can AI transform your customer experience, your employee experience, and how can you, uh, improve the productivity, uh, improve the work that your, and, and also the, the wellness of, of your employees, eh, and take, take out all that, all that, that freaking administrative work and, and use AI for people to really leverage their creativity and their. [00:15:38] Erwin Visser: Uh, their impacts where they, where they wanna spend their time, uh, business processes. Uh, I think there’s a huge opportunity for agents to start really automating business processes and workflows. Uh, the, it’s AI and, and, and agents are kind of like developed as a, as a technology for, uh, for that opportunity. [00:15:57] Erwin Visser: And, and last not, but not least, innovation. Like, how can you leverage your opportunity to really leverage AI into your data, into your customer information, to start innovating you yourself as a company, innovate your services, innovate your products, uh, yeah, your, uh, your added value in the market. And so Frontier is really around. [00:16:20] Erwin Visser: Having an AI first mindset in those, in those four parts of your business and, and try to lead with it. And I, and I think what’s the, the biggest, uh, uh, opportunity or challenge is for a lot of companies is that where, um, in the past we, we have seen kind of like business inno, business led innovation, and we have seen it led innovation. [00:16:47] Erwin Visser: Arguably clouds was, at least for a long part, was like an it led innovation. Yeah. Um, AI has to start with business innovation, and so making sure that the leadership of the organization has like an AI agenda and an AI strategy. And then creating the, the, the discipline and the knowledge across the organization. [00:17:11] Erwin Visser: That means business users, business leaders, uh, developers, it to really adapt it. But it, it, often what we see is that it’s really starts with the senior management to, uh, to really adopt ai Yeah. As an, [00:17:25] Vince Menzione: as a strategy. And what you’re saying is you use the term customer zero at Microsoft. I used to use the term eating your own dog. [00:17:31] Vince Menzione: Food. Right. That was kind of like a, not a politically correct term, but that’s what you’re saying is you need to internally. Embrace, commit and apply across your business first, and then you can then help other organizations transform. Is that what you’re Yeah, that’s what you’re saying [00:17:48] Erwin Visser: with it? Yes. Yes. [00:17:49] Erwin Visser: And, and for partners and we, um, we spend a lot of time with partners also helping them to adopt, co-pilot, uh, helping them to adopt AI because it’s, it’s hard to, uh, if you are a salesperson or a technical person. And, and you wanna talk to your customer about AI transformation, but you are not using AI daily yourself. [00:18:08] Erwin Visser: You’re probably not really representing that technology. Uh, well, and, and so we, uh, as in Microsoft, we did a lot of like early education. ’cause even in an organization like Microsoft where, where you assume that all the employees have an innovative mindset, otherwise, why would you. Start working there. [00:18:26] Erwin Visser: Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s, it took a little bit of like, uh, time for us ourselves to a hundred percent adopt co-pilot, make sure everybody start really leveraging agents and co-piloting their daily life. So I, I think that is, that discipline is, is super important. Uh, what, [00:18:43] Vince Menzione: what are you seeing both internally and externally from the best of the best? [00:18:48] Vince Menzione: Like what do you, what what, what have been the nuggets of success you’ve seen like early adopting? [00:18:53] Erwin Visser: It’s, um, it’s a great question. I, I think the, the nuggets are really at the, the first big win for a lot of companies is like the employee experience. That’s the easiest. And we, we, we can show you, uh, and probably, uh, all the Microsoft presenters today, tomorrow will show you the, the, the specific stats, but I, I believe that have, when uh, people start adopting copilot, they save 34% of their time. [00:19:19] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Uh, and it’s, it’s the, and it’s the 34% that you don’t wanna do often. Right. And it thinks that, that the, the boring tasks, you can automate that. And it, it makes people available for much more added value tasks. So the, the productivity that you create by just rolling out co-pilot or co-pilot chat and having people left use it is, is huge immediately. [00:19:42] Erwin Visser: Yeah. And then the, the second phase is really. Around, uh, workflow agents where we see success and, and this can be, yeah. And I, um, if you think about an agent, like a lot of the, the work that you do with copilot is kind of like interactive. It is prompted and where agents are gonna be proactive and so they can start like automating a workflow or automating and um, and conversation in an automated way. [00:20:09] Erwin Visser: And so that’s the often the second one. And then, and then the third one is really the, the, it, it, it’s, it’s a theme probably over the last five years, but, uh, the opportunity with data. Yeah. Uh, where, uh, and, and a lot of companies still have a lot of data on-prem, and this is probably the still a huge opportunity for partners to help customers with their data strategy. [00:20:31] Erwin Visser: But when, when we start, when customers start leveraging analytics and AI on top of their data, always magical things start, yeah. Uh, happening. Uh, [00:20:42] Vince Menzione: well, and you also bring up a really good point. Most that data states gotta be clean, it’s gotta be governed, it’s gotta be secure. So, and that’s where some of the partners in this room come in, because what you don’t wanna have happen is somebody doing something errantly. [00:20:57] Vince Menzione: Like going in and finding out the CEO’s compensation for the year because they asked Yes. They asked chat GBTA question that, and that data wasn’t secured. [00:21:06] Erwin Visser: Right? Yeah, yeah. You’re you’re totally right. Yeah. That’s, by the way, uh, our most asked question or the first, um, I would say the, the, the, the. The concern that customers have by running, uh, by using copilot or Jet GPT. [00:21:22] Erwin Visser: ’cause there’s a lot of like gray AI coming into companies and that’s why we think we have a great offer with, with copilot chat and copilot it, uh, MT 65 copilot because you, we, we have the controls for data compliance and data management. And so making sure that people don’t have access to the data Yeah. [00:21:40] Erwin Visser: That they should not be able to see. And uh, there were one or two stories early on that I think, uh, shocked a couple of business owners. And so we, we, uh, this is probably one of our leading stories and, uh, the leading story of a lot of our partners is to make sure that we first of all may have the data compliance, uh, in place. [00:21:59] Erwin Visser: Yeah. [00:21:59] Vince Menzione: And we’re gonna have some other partners talk through some of their capabilities and, but what are you, what is your organization doing today? To, to enable those organizations to be frontier firms and to be successful implementing copilot, implementing AI technologies, a agents and, and security and governance of data. [00:22:18] Erwin Visser: Yeah. It, it’s, uh, uh, if I, if I think about enabling partners, I always think in, in kind of three buckets. Uh, first of all is like. Um, helping partners to build solutions that they can, can resell. And so, and this is often is, uh, we help them with solution building, with technical training, sales training, marketing training. [00:22:40] Erwin Visser: So it’s kind of the enablement of the partner to be successful and haven’t differentiated value prop in the, in the. Place. The, the second one, uh, bucket for me is what we do around go to markets and, and for people that work with Microsoft, you know, we have a lot of like investments that we put in markets with our partners, and we have program investments for pre-sales, for post-sales. [00:23:03] Erwin Visser: For, uh, for marketing, uh, the partners can, uh, can benefit. Uh, we have, uh, incentives in markets. Uh, we, we do all kind of like different investments in our, in our top partners. So we, we wanna make sure that they have an, an end-to-end goal, to market to be successful. And then the third one is really co-sell. [00:23:22] Erwin Visser: And when we, we talk about co-sell, we, we thought we are, we’re doing a lot of co-sell at this moment with our channel partners and we, we have created a, a news organization structure. Uh, against that. Uh, but we also talk about marketplace co-sell as a huge opportunity and, and especially with the announcements, uh, lately. [00:23:41] Erwin Visser: Uh, and there’s, so this. Co-sell, co-marketing is, is how we really help partner help Talk about the new [00:23:48] Vince Menzione: organization. You mentioned the Manu a new organization. What, what was that one? [00:23:52] Erwin Visser: Yeah, it’s, it’s the, uh, the partner sales organization. Okay. Yeah. We invested, uh, worldwide and the partner sales team that is really, uh, closely aligned with, uh, with our top partners and, and helps them on top deals, works together on the top deals. [00:24:06] Erwin Visser: So really helping, uh, make sure that. Our opportunities are shared with partners because in, we are a hundred percent partner based in the, in our market, but also make sure that we help our partners close their, their largest deals with Microsoft sellers. And are [00:24:20] Vince Menzione: these partner sellers across all of the operating models, or is it just in the channel model? [00:24:26] Vince Menzione: Is it across the enterprise model? It’s a, in the channel model. It’s in the channel model. In the channel. So you’re helping some of these channel partners to be more successful by providing resources to them. That are Microsoft badged? [00:24:38] Erwin Visser: Yes. Correct. Okay, that makes sense. And then also giving partners like early insight in opportunities that we have recognized. [00:24:43] Erwin Visser: And so one of the, one of the metrics of our own sellers in SME and C is there, we, it’s a technical, like a little bit of details now, but we call it outbound share, is like, are you sharing those opportunities with partners and are we doing, uh, co-sell on those opportunities? That’s have one of the key metrics how we look at our own sales organization is how many of the opportunities are being shared. [00:25:07] Erwin Visser: ’cause we, uh, it’s, it’s the, we really wanna. Build out and work together with our partners around this opportunity. That’s a huge [00:25:14] Vince Menzione: op uh, component by the way. ’cause I, I think people might, might have missed that, that, that, that is new and that is overlaying and supporting the organization in a bigger way on partners, which is really incredible. [00:25:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah, it [00:25:26] Erwin Visser: was, uh, our largest investment in headcounts starting, and we, we started our fiscal year in July. And our largest investment in headcounts, uh, was this partner sales organization. Yeah. [00:25:36] Vince Menzione: So Nina Harding has been a guest on the podcast. She lives actually five miles away from me in Florida. Uh, we all live in Florida. [00:25:44] Vince Menzione: Uh, my [00:25:44] Erwin Visser: long-term plan is to move Microsoft headquarters to Florida. I think it makes sense at this moment. It’s like one by one. It’s, [00:25:51] Vince Menzione: it’s a long trip, by the way. It’s a long, it’s a long journey trip from Florida to Seattle. But let’s talk, talk to me about how your organization is working with her organization, which is much more enterprise partners, ISVs, GSIs, uh, but, and Ben also supporting the Americas organization. [00:26:08] Vince Menzione: How does that all work together? Like how do you guys coordinate? Yeah. Most people here are Americas, so I would assume that would be in Nina’s. [00:26:15] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Uh, geography. It’s a great question and, and I, I think that, you know, there’s have a, if, if you have full of Microsoft. You know that we have been going forward and backwards and we had a single partner organization and we had a split partner, partner organization between enterprise and non-enterprise. [00:26:32] Erwin Visser: And we, we can go historically. Yes. We went a few times left and right. It’s like a pendulum. I, I think there’s. There’s, uh, there’s clearly pros and cons on both. Yeah. Um, I think the, the, the pro in our current organization is split as a partner team is that we, we really are very close to our, the market and to our sales organization. [00:26:57] Erwin Visser: So we have that integration that we can deliver. That is harder when you, when you are one central team, the, the con. And, and we talked about it a lot, is that, and we have a lot of our partners and probably a lot of you sitting in this room that sell both in enterprise and in SMEC. And so how do we make sure that you have one partner experience at Microsoft? [00:27:18] Erwin Visser: Yes. And not two different organizations. And so, um, I’m, I’m pretty sure we’re not a hundred percent perfect here, but, uh, we, we working very closely with Nina’s team and Nina’s organization. Nice. Uh, to make sure that we, we, we operate still as one partner organization. And we have one very nice, so that you don’t feel that you get like, boxed in into a certain business as a partner. [00:27:44] Erwin Visser: And if you, if you, uh, encounter that, please give me or anybody else at Microsoft in the partner organization feedback because we really wanna make sure that we enable you and be successful across those boundaries. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, it’s a, it’s, uh, and you sat [00:27:58] Vince Menzione: in that organization prior to your new role, which is more of a global role now. [00:28:02] Vince Menzione: Yes. So you know both organizations very well as well. Yeah. Which is good. Yeah, I live both, [00:28:06] Erwin Visser: uh, both worlds multiple [00:28:07] Vince Menzione: times. Probably multiple times. Yeah. I am going to open it up for questions. Um, do we have mic? Thank you. Susan’s got a mic, so if there are anybody that has any questions, I thought, you know, I’ve been asking all the questions. [00:28:22] Vince Menzione: Yeah. We wanna open it up to this incredible group of people here. I’m sure people wanna know like the inside story about how do I work with Microsoft. Um, Susan’s got a mic if anybody wants, if anybody has any questions and wants to raise your hand. Not that we’re putting anybody on the spot right now because we Wow. [00:28:40] Vince Menzione: No questions. We must have, we must be pretty good. [00:28:42] Erwin Visser: No. [00:28:46] Erwin Visser: Oh, there’s a question. [00:28:47] Vince Menzione: Oh, there’s a question back here. Here we go. Good. Do you have any else? Altitude sickness. Did you have any altitude sickness? Yeah. Uh, [00:28:55] Erwin Visser: yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s hard not to have altitude sickness. Uh, I assume you talk about est not by Microsoft. I live in Florida, but this is not that high. [00:29:06] Erwin Visser: Yeah, yeah. The, yeah, the, the, the. So, uh, you spent six weeks, uh, we spent six weeks, I, not everybody, but we had bad weather in the base camp or above. And base camp is, uh, 17,000 and a half feet, and so 5 6500 meters for people, uh, that are in meters. And so the, you have 49% of oxygen there. So you, like, you, you kind of feel, uh, let me say that in nice English, uh, you, you kind of feel not a hundred percent every day like you are. [00:29:39] Erwin Visser: You, you have all kind of problems that, uh, altitudes, uh, uh, lack of oxygen creates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. [00:29:47] Vince Menzione: That’s incredible. And the fact that we’re able to do it too. ’cause the weather sometimes impacts people’s ability to go their way, right? Yeah. [00:29:52] Erwin Visser: You know, it, it’s, uh, I think you also have to be lucky. [00:29:55] Erwin Visser: Yeah. And the luck is, uh, I always think luck is often an underestimated part of life, but, uh, especially when you climb Everest, you, you have to be lucky. ’cause the, the best climber can be hit by an avalanche. And then, uh, and mediocre climber like me can just be lucky and walk through them. So, yeah. Yeah. [00:30:13] Vince Menzione: Did you lose anyone on your trek? Yes, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. I’m [00:30:17] Erwin Visser: sorry to hear that. That’s terrible. Yeah, I know that that’s the, that’s the traumatic part is that, um, and I don’t wanna, uh, this isn’t, this is an optimistic event, so I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna trade. It’s fascinating. I don’t wanna be, uh, uh, uh, start this, tell sad stories here, but you, you get very close to debt. [00:30:36] Erwin Visser: Because you see dead bodies, uh, and we have unfortunately a fatality in our own team. Um, and so you, you, you start really. Feeling that had, uh, I had, uh, and my wife will absolutely tell me, uh, I had PTSD when I came back, uh, certain levels. That feeling just from being so intense for a few weeks that coming home it was very hard for me to relax. [00:30:59] Erwin Visser: I, I couldn’t sleep. I had. Yeah, so it, it takes like two, three weeks to really settle back in the, yeah. Yeah. [00:31:05] Vince Menzione: That’s fascinating. Well, I think it’s the incredible challenge in overcoming the challenges that are important here, and I think you bring that forward into this conversation as well. So thank you. [00:31:13] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I think we have one more question. We have question if we have [00:31:15] Guest Question: time. Uh, Rob Lawrence from Microsoft. I actually have a comment, uh, because you guys were talking about the importance of the data state with, uh, with AI right now. And I just wanna say like, it’s even bigger than you’re talking about because with Agen ai, we’re gonna have. [00:31:33] Guest Question: AI executing processes inside of companies. So it’s not only about data leaks and privacy, but it’s also like, are we getting the right results and and are processes being performed completely correctly? So I think that the partner community has a huge opportunity around data estates and securing them and making them. [00:31:53] Guest Question: Secure, functional, um, but also that, so that they’re training and grounding AI correctly. So it was a really good point to bring up, and I just wanted to like highlight it for the people in the room. It’s like super, super important. [00:32:06] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Hey, thanks for emphasizing that. I a hundred percent agree. Yeah. [00:32:09] Erwin Visser: Wonderful. We have another question. Yeah. Yeah. [00:32:16] Guest Question: Good morning. [00:32:18] Vince Menzione: I think you’re on. Yeah. Good morning, [00:32:19] Guest Question: Marion Breeze from User Lane. Um, and I just to, to add to that, you talked about the data estate. What about the software estate? We see software sprawl with software applications and the opportunity to consolidate that for customers where they can do so much more now with Dynamics, um, and other Microsoft tools. [00:32:40] Guest Question: And what does that look like for consolidating software? [00:32:43] Erwin Visser: Yeah, that’s, that’s a great question. It’s, and the. So there clearly there’s an opportunity with, uh, with AI to, uh, to modernize your, your software infrastructure. And, um, and we, we invest a lot in our dynamics product, uh, to, to help customers innovate. [00:33:00] Erwin Visser: Uh, CRM, uh, ERP finance. Uh, so that is, it’s, it’s absolutely an, an opportunity. The, you, you, you may have seen some, uh, comments in the past about SaaS. Is that or other, uh, statements? Yes, and I, I, I was kind of, um, uh, thinking that through, eh, is that, um, I, I think that there, there will be an opportunity in the future. [00:33:26] Erwin Visser: Or in the, now I have to say future. The future is now the future. Okay. Uh, to start leveraging agents and build AI agents to, to extend the life of, uh, your transactional systems. Because in, in a world where as an, where less and less people are going to use the UI of the application, you, because you get abstracted through AI agents. [00:33:53] Erwin Visser: You don’t have to rebuild the transactional system. If you want new functionality, you build it into the agent and you kind of. Go around the transactional system. Um, so yeah, there is, there’s gonna be, I think customers will have a, a choice in the future. And do I wanna invest in a new CRM system or do I build AI agents that built out the experience in addition to the CRM system? [00:34:18] Erwin Visser: Uh, while I said that, and I, uh, I was reflecting on that and we, in the, in the nineties, we talked about the end of the mainframes. I read a stat like a week ago that still, I believe more than 60% of the top 500 companies still use a mainframe. Yeah. More or less. Great. So it’s, it’s, and so this is one of those where yes, the opportunity’s there, but this is a, a thing that will be distributed in change. [00:34:44] Erwin Visser: Yes. It’s not that everybody will. Stop buying CRM and go to agents [00:34:49] Vince Menzione: because the data’s already there. Why we replace it, right. It’s structured the data, laid it out as foundational, and then you let, then you attach [00:34:56] Erwin Visser: it a hundred percent. Yeah. So it, it’s, uh, yeah, we’re, but there’s, I think there’s gonna be more choice and more opportunity to, uh, to innovate with AI and, and think about, uh, the, the lifecycle of a transactional system in the future. [00:35:10] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Very great. Thank you. [00:35:14] Vince Menzione: We’re good. We’re off time. We’re good there. Last one, last, last one I’ve been told. Okay. [00:35:19] Erwin Visser: What does a great partner looks like to you? That’s, whoa, that’s a great question, by the way. Uh, how come I didn’t ask that? Yeah. What does a, I, I think, um, what does a great partner look to us? [00:35:34] Erwin Visser: I, I think probably I would say, uh, the first part is clarity and integrity. Heck, so I, I know that, uh, we have some partners and we love them that are dedicated to Microsoft, and we, we love those partners, but we also love our partners that have multiple businesses. I, I think the, the, the clarity and integrity around where we work together. [00:35:58] Erwin Visser: And where we don’t work together is very important. Yeah. Uh, so that, that is, uh, one aspect. Secondly, I think, uh, partners that are really leveraging our investments and make sure that they, they have, uh, their specializations. In our technology proven like, uh, understanding proven impact at our, uh, our customers, um, and partners that, that, uh, leverage the investments in the, in the go-to market that we put in the marketplace. [00:36:29] Erwin Visser: Those would be my top three, like integrity in how we do business. It’s still a people business. And so we, we need that integrity together, uh, leveraging our go-to market investments and really ensure that you have the, the re the, the technical and sales ability to, uh, dr. Like, uh, proven to deliver solutions for our customers. [00:36:52] Erwin Visser: Yeah, [00:36:53] Vince Menzione: I love that. I love that clarity is so important. Yeah, we’re, we will talk more about it after the break actually. Yeah. But guess what? We’re at break time. Awesome. I wanna, so I wanna thank you. You’re an incredible friend. You flew up for this, for this event. You’ve been on the road nonstop. And your support and your organization’s support of us is outstanding. [00:37:11] Vince Menzione: And I just want to thank you [00:37:12] Erwin Visser: from the bottom of my heart for your friendship and support. Ah, thank man. Yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate to be here. You and, um, [00:37:21] Erwin Visser: I, I, I may put you on the spot now, but uh, maybe as an idea for the next Ultimate Partner event, I spent 30 minutes on Everest because I see there’s some interest there. I would love, yeah, I would love for you to do a keynote on that. [00:37:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah, I would love that to be a keynote for our event. Absolutely. You’re on. [00:37:35] Vince Menzione: You’re on. Alright. Thank you Irwin. Appreciate, thank you so much. We can leave that here. Thank you, sir. Isn’t Irwin great? Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Eye to Partnering. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. [00:37:57] Vince Menzione: We created a unique place. UPX or ultimate partner experience, it’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started as we’re taking this studio, and we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here, including our January live stream. [00:38:25] Vince Menzione: The Boca Winter Retreat and more to come. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level.

Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. In this episode, Vince Menzione and Reis Barrie, CEO of Carve Partners, dive deep into the 12 most common pitfalls that can derail a successful Microsoft partnership. They discuss the misconception that Microsoft will simply send leads, the critical need for a dedicated partnership owner, and why a misalignment in sales compensation can be a recipe for disaster. The conversation also covers the importance of speaking Microsoft’s language, the proper way to leverage certifications and incentives, and the necessity of having a one-page plan. This is a must-listen for any organization looking to maximize its partnership with Microsoft by avoiding the mistakes that lead to stagnant growth and missed opportunities. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. https://youtu.be/p0mkz5C0JvU?si=RASwYNmZxHT0L_OH Key Takeaways: Microsoft acts as an amplifier for your efforts; you must be proactive and put in the work to see results. A Microsoft partnership requires a dedicated, full-time owner or team to manage its complexity. Misaligned sales compensation models can doom a partnership before it even begins by creating internal conflict. Partners must translate their value proposition into Microsoft’s language, focusing on shared priorities and seller incentives. Certifications and badges are a start, but their true value lies in leveraging the benefits and programs they unlock. A one-page plan is a critical tool for aligning internal teams and providing a simple, consumable reference for Microsoft sellers. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Join Us In Reston, Virginia, October 27-29th. As we enter the last four months of the calendar year, you are probably asking yourself, “What events should I attend this fall and why?” Many Partners and Leaders are trying to determine if the big events make the most sense and what they will learn. Many of these events are big and unyieldy, and while you may bump into some friends, you need to really ask yourself if they will help you achieve your greatest results – as a leader, as an organization, or as a partner. Our attendees tell us they get more accomplished in two full days than in most of the year at our events – they learn from Hyperscaler Leaders, Top Award Winning Partners, and the Masters. Learn from the best, meet the best, grow your business faster and further. Why Ultimate Partner is Unique An Ultimate Partner LIVE is like YOUR Masterclass. We begin with a view of “Where We Are Today” as the tectonic shifts are happening faster than ever before. Our first day sessions explore the advances in AI, Hyperscaler Growth, Marketplaces, Co-Selling, Ecosystem Led Growth, and more. These sessions are led from the leaders driving the discussions at Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, AvePoint Veeam Software, Carahsoft, Elastic and more. Bringing it All Together On Day Two, an Industry Analyst will bring it all together as our industry experts help you plot the future course – applying the learnings to maximize results. And, you’ll learn more from the Partner Technology firms, Partner Consultants, and others helping partners like you achieve more and walk away with over a million dollars worth of insights, learnings, and practical advice to apply to your business. In fact, we will have over 10 unique workshops at the fall event alone. The Executive Experience You will be in the room with other executives like you, or partner leaders looking to get to that level. Join us for a unique welcome reception and – if you’re fortunate – you’ll be joining our Executive Dinner. This event will feel more intimate than past Ultimate Partner LIVE settings. You’ll love the experience. Book your tickets today and get ready to join this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I look forward to hosting YOU this fall! Click HERE while time still lasts. Key Tags: Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Transcript:: REIS BARRIE AUDIO PODCAST [00:00:00] Reis Barrie: I’ve seen this really interesting trend, frankly, of lately, of people not only just not, not only going net neutral, but going. Uh, incentivizing it. Yeah. And so, absolutely. I think, you know, we’ve all been surrounded by a lot of these stats and, and facts about what partnerships drive, whether it’s, uh, access to more budget, access to more customers, uh, faster sales cycles, bigger deal sizes, all of these things. [00:00:23] Reis Barrie: Like, you hear these, you hear these outputs, and you start to think like, well, why wouldn’t I incentivize something that gives me that? [00:00:32] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, your host, and I’m thrilled to welcome a great friend and an expert in the world of partnering to this podcast. Reese Barry is the CEO of Carve Partners. He’s been on stage here in in Boca Raton at our events, and he’s gonna be joining us soon at the next Ultimate Partner Alive Reese. [00:00:55] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the podcast. [00:00:56] Reis Barrie: Yeah, it’s always great to be here. It’s so good to have you back. Super excited to, to, frankly, you mentioned the event. I’m, I’m stoked to be there. Uh, I can’t wait. [00:01:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah, so, and you’ve been supporting us since day one? Yeah. In fact, from the very, I think this is number seven. On the events that we’re doing now. [00:01:10] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So incredible time. Yeah. Great to have you back. Yeah, great to have you back here in the studio. You’ve been here a few times. This is not, you’re a familiar face here to our, i, i viewers, listeners. [00:01:19] Reis Barrie: I am. Yeah. It’s great to be here, frankly. Yeah. It’s, it’s, yeah. Awesome studio. I always, I always love coming down here. [00:01:25] Reis Barrie: It’s, uh. Pretty quick drive for me too, so, well, [00:01:27] Vince Menzione: we’re gonna have some more going on. We’ll talk about that at the end. We’ve got some more things coming up in January here in the studio. We’re gonna share with you all soon. But today we’ve got a really incredible topic. You’ve been doing quite a bit of posting lately, by the way, on your own. [00:01:41] Vince Menzione: I [00:01:41] Reis Barrie: have been, yeah. Some really great content. I made some commitments to myself and so we’re, uh, we’re, we’re full steam ahead. I love it. Uh, sharing as many insights as we can, getting as much knowledge of the ecosystem as we can. Yeah. So it’s, uh, yeah, I’m super excited [00:01:53] Vince Menzione: and you’ve got a tremendous amount of insight. [00:01:55] Vince Menzione: You work with some of the top bias vs some of the top SDCs, as we call them now, software development corporations. And today we’re gonna spend some time talking about, we, we’ve always talked about like what it takes to be the most successful. Mm-hmm. But today we’re gonna roll over on that and say. About pitfalls. [00:02:12] Vince Menzione: We’re gonna talk about you, you call it the 12 pitfalls to successfully partnering with Microsoft. [00:02:18] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:02:19] Vince Menzione: And so I thought we’d start here, right? This is a, a set of 12. We’ll take, we’ll take our listeners through this massive opportunity for them to drive the greatest results. So the first one you have is Microsoft sending us leads. [00:02:32] Vince Menzione: And this is something I’ve heard many times mm-hmm. From organizations, they kind of expect it. But why don’t you take us through why, why that’s a pitfall and why organizations misunderstand working with Microsoft. [00:02:44] Reis Barrie: Yeah, a hundred percent. So, and, and even just to back, back up a like a moment from there is I would say, people always ask me what to do and. [00:02:55] Reis Barrie: It’s just as easy if not easier to say like, oh, just don’t do these things. Yeah. And you’ll naturally gravitate towards the things you should be doing. I love it. I love it. And so I, the concept of, of what not to do is frankly, something that I, I resonates with me. I’m probably learning more, more what not to do than what to do. [00:03:11] Reis Barrie: Um, and so, yeah, starting with number, like starting with the first one you mentioned, just like that, that leads conversation. And so, oh man, this is. By far the most common conversation I have when I’m first yes. Jumping in or starting with a, starting with a particular someone on the, like who has dealt with Microsoft less or they’re earlier in kind of their partnership journey. [00:03:31] Reis Barrie: And it’s often this, this, uh, resetting of the frame of like, well, what’s the value of a Microsoft partnership? And they went into it for whatever reason, with the assumption of, Hey, I’m gonna, I’m gonna list on marketplace. And all of a sudden, you know, this windfall of, of deals is gonna, is gonna, is gonna come towards me. [00:03:50] Reis Barrie: Um, and most of these times these people I’m talking to are like maybe recently or part of I v’s. Success, uh, leveraging some of the great value, they can’t get there. And they got published, they got transactable and they kind of just like. I’d sit around and like, wait. Um, so bad. Yeah. It’s un it’s unfortunate, but we reset that frame and, and, and it’s not about, um, it’s not about getting leads on the front end. [00:04:15] Reis Barrie: I’m not saying you never get leads ’cause you, you actually, once you start, start the flywheel and start the momentum, like you do actually get these things. Um, but it’s not where you start. It’s like it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a, that’s a very mature, um, part of the partnership. And so I often just, um. Talk about, hey, we have to be proactive. [00:04:34] Reis Barrie: So we list doesn’t mean anything’s gonna happen from that listing. We have to start being proactive in terms of what we’re actually doing. Um, and then just resetting the frame of Microsoft is an amplifier, like they are, you know. I use a lot of different metaphors in this one ’cause, try to make it relatable, but like we’re even us sitting here today, we have microphones, right? [00:04:54] Reis Barrie: Yes. If I don’t talk into the microphone, nothing, nothing actually happens, right? That’s right. The Microsoft, so if, if Microsoft is the amplifier or the microphone in this case, like you have to put, put stuff into it to amplify our voice. Yep. Right? And so Microsoft, that’s a, it’s a great analogy because what we put into Microsoft, um, comes out into the ecosystem amplified. [00:05:15] Reis Barrie: Um, and so. Um, it’s really on that front end. It’s about putting, putting things in, showing that you can win, showing the value of, of you as a company. Um. Starting to partake in different programs and different benefits of being a, a partner that now that you’re transactable, um, and then you start to see a lot of the, kind of the flywheel start to spin and then more mature stages, you start to do like more fun things with account planning and lead, [00:05:42] Vince Menzione: lead gen. [00:05:42] Vince Menzione: I also think it’s like a lack of understanding around how Microsoft works, right? Yeah. I had there, somebody posted something on LinkedIn about Microsoft not giving. Their partner’s leads mm-hmm. A while ago and I was thinking about it and saying that’s not, that’s not the way they’re wired as an organization. [00:05:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah. As well. They co-selling is really, we’ll talk more about the totally opportunities around co-selling, but they’re not just flipping you leads. Mm-hmm. It’s not like a lot of companies treat. Partners like the channel. Mm-hmm. And they push things out their way. Yeah. And that’s not near, that’s not the way Microsoft operates. [00:06:14] Vince Menzione: I think it’s understanding like the core of how Microsoft sales organization operates as well, don’t you? [00:06:20] Reis Barrie: Yeah. A hundred. And even in partnerships in general, like the, the concept of like, I’m a partner, so I get leads, is like, it’s a very shallow partnership if like Exactly. If that’s the, if that’s the expectation. [00:06:30] Reis Barrie: Um. It’s like that’s a, it’s a, it’s an output, but it’s, it’s, it’s one of the many, many, many outputs, frankly. Exactly. [00:06:37] Vince Menzione: Um, totally. And it’s something that’s, yeah, I’ve, I’ve heard it many times. I’ve heard it up being on the inside. Mm-hmm. I’ve heard working with organizations when I was consulting with them as well. [00:06:47] Vince Menzione: Uh, it just seems, it just seems to be the biggest, one of the biggest misnomers there. A hundred percent. But I think one of the things too is, let’s talk about another pitfall is you often say partners succeed. They don’t succeed without a clear owner. Yeah. And this is another area too, where people just like, like, okay, we have a partnership with Microsoft, but nobody’s owning it. [00:07:08] Vince Menzione: Who should own the Microsoft partnership from day one in the organization? And why does it matter? [00:07:13] Reis Barrie: Yeah, that’s a, that’s another really common one that we get really. Um, and so if, even if you take, take a step back from who, who should own it? It’s the concept of having an owner. So yeah, so often I, like I go in and I, it’s this person’s third job, this person’s second job. [00:07:30] Reis Barrie: This person’s like the back burner thing that they do on, you know, when they’re, when they’re have extra time on Friday. Um, and that’s like, that’s the results that come out of it, right? Yes. It’s, it’s the third, fourth priority of, of multiple people. And so. That’s what kind of, it shows very clearly not only to your results, but also to Microsoft, frankly. [00:07:51] Reis Barrie: Um, and so the concept is having an owner of somebody who wakes up every day, and that their, their role is to move the partnership forward is something that, um, if you’re committing to this, this, um, you know, this, this partnership, which is a behemoth of a partnership. They’re a gigantic, massive company. [00:08:08] Reis Barrie: Um, there is huge returns to be had by partnering with them. But you don’t account for the complexity of it requiring like a dedicated owner. Yeah. Like with, there’s, there’s a, there’s a paradox that with, with, with high, uh, with high impact comes high complexity. Yes. And Microsoft partnerships are not, they’re not necessarily easy by any means, but done. [00:08:32] Reis Barrie: Right. Generate significant revenue [00:08:34] Vince Menzione: and it requires that I talk about maniacal focus is one of the principles. And really when you start, when you back up from it, you go, okay, I need my entire organization to be part of this, and that means I need to get the technical team involved, product team involved. [00:08:49] Vince Menzione: I need to get marketing involved. I need to get sales involved. I need to get the executive leadership of the organization and I need to align all of my organizations to all of Microsoft. In a way that’s gonna make for a complete partnership. Right. Hundred percent. I think to your point, that’s, that’s a full-time job. [00:09:05] Vince Menzione: Oh [00:09:06] Reis Barrie: yeah. [00:09:06] Vince Menzione: And maybe multiple people and Thenso and maybe multiple people in the organization. Yeah. And it’s why they need organizations like Carv in order to be successful doing it. Right? [00:09:13] Reis Barrie: Yeah. And so, I mean, yes, I agree with, that’s the last, the car statement for sure. But the, uh, the, and it kind of brings back to the, the original question, which is like, where does it sit? [00:09:23] Reis Barrie: And so. Um, we have these like really strategic alliance teams that sit, sit with partnership. Yes. And usually I see partnerships sitting somewhere under like the, um, the revenue, like the revenue organization, whether it’s the CRO or, uh, VP of sales type of type of, um, structure. But that’s, but it is a dedicated person and or team. [00:09:44] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Um, that is, is there to drive a, a partnership channel, partnership revenue. Um, and frankly, this person. Has to be, um, they’re a quarterback across Yeah. Every department. Every department. So again, we’re gonna, I think we’re gonna talk about finance here soon. We’re gonna talk about sales, marketing, operations, product. [00:10:04] Reis Barrie: Like they have to quarterback all of these different departments across organization. ’cause when partnership, like, uh, partnership is truly, um, getting all of those departments to. Uh, lean into the, the needs of the partnership. Yeah. And, and align, [00:10:19] Vince Menzione: right? Yeah. So one of the areas you were talking about, like aligning, you’re talking about VP of sales mm-hmm. [00:10:25] Vince Menzione: Is this whole area around compensation. [00:10:27] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:10:27] Vince Menzione: People miss, they misalign their compensation models as well. Yeah. I think that’s one of the other pitfalls that you see. [00:10:34] Reis Barrie: Yeah, totally. So, um, I, I would say that at a baseline it has to be net neutral. Absolutely net neutral. At least. And so if there’s any aspect of like working with Microsoft or any partner for that aspect. [00:10:47] Reis Barrie: Um, feels like a detriment or attacks to me as a salesperson. Like that is a recipe for failure. Yeah. Um, that’s one of the few, there’s very few things that I say like, do not start, like, do not start until this is solved. Yeah. That is like one of the foundational things. Like, I, I do not recommend starting a partnership until that aspect is solved, because unwinding that distaste for partnership in your, like in your sales organization is extremely difficult. [00:11:12] Reis Barrie: If you start on a bad, bad foot and then you’re trying to. Pivot to a, to a good foot, it’s very difficult. Or, or taking [00:11:17] Vince Menzione: the, the deals away from the sales reps and saying, well, these are Microsoft deals, so you’re not gonna get paid on these and we’ll have our partner people do them. I’ve seen that happen as well. [00:11:25] Vince Menzione: And that, that messes things up. It [00:11:26] Reis Barrie: just, yeah, it, it leaves a really bad taste in, in your organization around, around partnerships. And so, um, that’s one of my first like non-start, like one, a few non-starters I should say. [00:11:36] Vince Menzione: So get compensation, right. At least. So get it right. And then [00:11:39] Reis Barrie: I’ve seen this really interesting trend, frankly, of lately, of people. [00:11:42] Reis Barrie: Not only just not, not only going net neutral, but going. Uh, incentivizing it. Yeah. And so, absolutely. I think, you know, we’ve all been surrounded by a lot of these stats and, and facts about what partnerships drive, whether it’s, uh, access to more budget, access to more customers, uh, faster sales cycles, bigger deal sizes, all of these things. [00:12:02] Reis Barrie: Like, you hear these, you hear these outputs and you start to think like, well, why wouldn’t I incentivize something that gives me that? Exactly. Um, and I’m starting to see a lot of companies start to, yeah. Actually incentivize the marketplace transaction or incentivize the, uh, co-sell deal for their own reps as well, similar to how Microsoft incentivizes their reps. [00:12:19] Reis Barrie: Which [00:12:19] Vince Menzione: makes, makes perfect sense, especially when you’re jump starting a new, a new thing like marketplace. Mm-hmm. If you weren’t in marketplace before or it’s a new partnership. [00:12:27] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:12:27] Vince Menzione: Yeah. A hundred percent. So you mentioned another hidden area, a pitfall around finance. So could you dive in on that one for us? [00:12:36] Reis Barrie: So anytime we’re, anytime we’re jumping in to a, to a, to a supportive partnership, uh, with one of our clients, finance is the one we probably usually start with. Okay. Because they’re usually one of the harder stakeholders to, to, um, convince, to get aligned and convince. Um, but ultimately there’s like, there’s two main aspects that I’m trying to align with finance on. [00:12:58] Reis Barrie: Um, one is just the concept of private offers, right? Our customers are buying a different way. We’re receiving money in a different way. And so we’ve gotta make sure that we actually can receive that money and everything is like tied up so that that process is sound. Um, that’s like the less fun of the two. [00:13:14] Reis Barrie: So the more fun one is more related to, uh, incentives and benefits. And frankly, Microsoft pays their partners a lot of money. Yeah. Uh, when they align to Microsoft priorities. And it just so happens that Microsoft priorities often align with. Partners making money as well, selling their own solutions. So, um, biggest thing there is aligning with finance of, hey, when we earn these incentive dollars, they’re gonna come back to us. [00:13:39] Reis Barrie: We’re gonna reinvest in the partnership. Yeah. Um, and so, uh, frankly, we started working clients six months ago, or, or, or so, and, you know, across our entire portfolio, we’re in like the, the tens of millions in incentive dollars that we get from different various Microsoft incentives for our clients. And so this, that’s huge. [00:13:56] Reis Barrie: This, uh, huge numbers. Oh yeah. They’re huge numbers, especially this year. Um, yeah, some of the numbers that they’re throwing out there with, uh, these incentives are just, uh, crazy. I’ve never seen it. Um, and so they keep growing year over year, and I keep getting surprised year over year. Um, but with this particular client, we, uh, you know, we, we align with finance. [00:14:13] Reis Barrie: The money comes back to the partnership team and they. Uh, they paid for their Ignite sponsorship with that, which is a big bill for anyone who’s sponsored the night before. Um, they paid for their Ignite sponsorship with that funding. Um, they, they’re, they’re, there’s Reston. Yeah, I was gonna say people, people [00:14:32] Vince Menzione: use that, that funding. [00:14:33] Vince Menzione: They’ll be, they’ll be support the ultimate partner live event as they’ll, as there’ll be, there’ll be [00:14:36] Reis Barrie: resin sponsoring that. Um. And they, they, you know, obviously fund some of the work that we do for them and get a lot of Big R, big ROI on that. Yeah. And so the amount of. Um, you know, injecting the money back into the partnership just again pushes the flywheel back. [00:14:53] Reis Barrie: And so we wanna make sure we align with finance on both the, you know, they’re gonna receive money in a new way via like private offers or marketplace. And also they’re gonna start to see dollars come in from Microsoft. And we wanna make sure that that doesn’t just go to the bottom line. That it comes back to that flywheel. [00:15:07] Reis Barrie: You bring [00:15:08] Vince Menzione: up a really good point. First of all, the predictability of knowing it’s coming. Uh, always a factor too, ’cause like where did this money come from? What is it accountable to? And I’ve seen organizations put it on the bottom line. Mm-hmm. As opposed to attributing it to the right spot in the organization. [00:15:24] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And then reinvesting the money, as you say here. So I think it’s really important that organizations get that right. [00:15:29] Reis Barrie: Yeah. A hundred percent. Once it’s, once it’s at the bottom line, it’s very hard to get, like, it’s very hard to get it, get it back to the partnership team from that. So that proactive alignment just, uh, is a, is a must. [00:15:40] Vince Menzione: So this next one is near and dear to my heart as well because it’s about speaking Microsoft. That’s one of the pitfalls. Organizations don’t understand what sellers really want to hear. Yep. Right. And. We help them kind of get that training, that muscle. Yeah. Worked up in a way, but take us through that and what you see. [00:15:59] Reis Barrie: Yeah, so again, if you, anyone who follows me on LinkedIn or watched like my posts or my webinar, like almost all of my content is around this because, uh, yeah, I get, uh, I get the privilege to work with. Thousands of Microsoft sellers. Um, and, and there are [00:16:16] Vince Menzione: thousands, I think it’s 50,000 now. There’s tens of thousands. [00:16:19] Reis Barrie: And so I get to, I get the privilege to, I always understate numbers ’cause it’s hard for me to, no, no. It’s the amount, the amount of people that there are at this, at the company. Uh, and so I get the privilege to work with all these sellers. And then, and then, um, that means I get to hear the good, the good. [00:16:33] Reis Barrie: The good pitches. The bad pitches. Yeah. Uh, I get to hear a lot of these things. I get to hear what resonates and what, what doesn’t resonate. Um, and kind of pretty early on I kind of started identifying, hey, like these people are talking most about their product and I can see the, I can see the blank stairs on the seller’s faces. [00:16:50] Reis Barrie: ’cause, um, because their product is, the product is their language. And if there’s, that’s right. I think the latest number is half a million partners. And so if a seller can’t be expected to understand a half a million languages, no. Um, and so you have to be, you have to be that translator. And so you have to, you have to get it into their language. [00:17:06] Reis Barrie: And frankly, the partners that cut through the noise are the ones that do the best job at talking Microsoft. Yeah. [00:17:15] Vince Menzione: Translating to Microsoft, right? Yeah. [00:17:16] Reis Barrie: And so, and I’ll often say like, treat, like, just treat Microsoft like a customer. Treat your partners like customers, frankly. That’s right. Um, ’cause if we, if we, we would never dream of talking to, um, our customers in this like. [00:17:30] Reis Barrie: Internal jargon, technical language. We talk about, we resonate with, with what their needs are, right? And so we talk in their language. So it’s, it’s the same concept of Microsoft. They’re, they’re, you’re, you have to talk to them in their language. They understand what priority are you aligned to? How are you gonna influence their compensation? [00:17:47] Reis Barrie: Like, you know, how are you gonna make it easy? Uh. How is, how are you easy to work with, frankly? Like how are you [00:17:54] Vince Menzione: preparing for it as well? Right? Yeah. Because so many times these sellers are not well prepared. They don’t really understand, especially when you get to seller, to seller combat. And those sellers just really, they jump on a call and it’s like they’re winging it. [00:18:09] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:18:10] Vince Menzione: And they’re just going into their sales pitch. [00:18:12] Reis Barrie: Mm-hmm. [00:18:12] Vince Menzione: And they’re just expecting Microsoft to absorb it. Like a customer would absorb it. Yep. And then just take it and go, oh yeah, sure. Great. Mm-hmm. We can just go do this together. And. Being able to have that tangible conversation with Microsoft is so important. [00:18:25] Vince Menzione: A hundred percent. Yeah. [00:18:26] Reis Barrie: Just like you build scripts for your customers, like you, you have to build like what are your, you know, what are your, you know, your 10 go-to phrases of how we provide value to, to you. Like, have those, have those phrases just locked and loaded, ready to go? You, you jump on a call and it’s, and it’s, you know, this is how we as a partner or as your partner, um, provide value to you and make it easy to work with and this is what we need from you to, to be successful in this deal. [00:18:51] Vince Menzione: You almost want to create like a dictionary for your, for your partners. Oh yeah. Maybe you’ve already done some of that. We do, yeah. There you go. See, we do, whether it’s speaking call language, acronyms, whether it’s speaking language acronyms, or just the [00:19:02] Reis Barrie: translation of, of what, what programs they’re uh, involved in and what benefits. [00:19:07] Reis Barrie: They can do and how, how they’re aligned to their, to their priorities. Like, um, part of our like seller enablement and stuff that we, we do for our partners is, is really about I see. I [00:19:19] Vince Menzione: see an AI tool coming here somewhere. Oh, for sure. I’m sure. I’m sure. I’m sure there’s an AI [00:19:24] Reis Barrie: tool coming, uh, like a translate tool coming there for sure. [00:19:27] Reis Barrie: Microsoft translating. Yeah, I like it. [00:19:28] Vince Menzione: This next one is also another pitfall that I’ve seen quite a bit of. Um, it’s, it’s kind of like sitting back and bragging about your badges that you’ve got, your certifications. I’ll never forget, uh, doing some work way back, one of the big sis, big large si, uh, international si and all they talked about was their certs. [00:19:46] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Like that was gonna be a reason why it was gonna be compelling for Microsoft to just jump and give them all their business. Yeah. Take us through that one. [00:19:55] Reis Barrie: Yeah. So actually, so that’s, I. Just very timely, uh, because, um, there’s the, um, certified software designations Yeah. Which are in Microsoft years, very, very new. [00:20:07] Reis Barrie: Um, very new. I remember just a couple years now. So, and if you rewind, you can just hear how much they are talking about them and the importance of them. Yeah. Which to me tells me that there’s a bigger, there’s, there’s even a bigger plan than what they already unlock. Um, if they’re, if they’re putting this much emphasis behind. [00:20:24] Reis Barrie: Getting them. Um, and so it’s, it’s, it’s, again, it’s one of those things that like, it kind of goes back to the like, um. If you build it, you know, they’ll come type of thing. And that being a bit of a fallacy in the Microsoft, Microsoft land. And so, um, just getting the certification doesn’t really do a whole ton if you don’t leverage all the, the levers that it unlocks. [00:20:42] Reis Barrie: And so, uh, whether that’s tapping into different incentives and benefits, that’s like, I would say one of the primary pieces of getting the certification. So not just getting the certification, but actually taking advantage of all the things that it unlocks from a partnership benefits standpoint. Huge. Um, as well. [00:21:00] Reis Barrie: Um. There’s different programs that you get to get to get to tap into, which might be like a partner reported. A CR is probably the biggest one where I, I, I see so many partners get the certification and then not take advantage of partner reported a CR, which is like. Just another, another value to stack it, put in your value stack when you’re talking to a Microsoft. [00:21:18] Reis Barrie: Um, and, [00:21:19] Vince Menzione: and for those that don’t know, that’s prac. [00:21:21] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Pricker Prac. Yeah. Parker reported a CR. And so ultimately for like, for a SaaS solution where the a, the, the consumption lands on your tenant, this is the way to ensure that the Microsoft seller gets that long tail consumption as well, not just the upfront, up, upfront component. [00:21:35] Reis Barrie: So [00:21:35] Vince Menzione: super important to the Microsoft sellers. So you gotta be able to handle that. Yeah. Because otherwise they, you’re ignoring, you’re ignoring where they’re gonna make money. A [00:21:43] Reis Barrie: hundred percent. Yeah. Um, and honestly, the partner report a CR is, is, um, this year particularly, they’ve made it, um, of course with any new rollout, there’s some issues, so I’m not gonna de deny that there’s issues with it this year. [00:21:56] Reis Barrie: Yeah. But, um, but they’ve made it, they’ve made it a lot easier for partners to report. And so that just means that there’s a, there’s an expectation from sellers that, oh. We’re being told it’s easier, it’s part easier. Partners, uh, must be reporting more of it. And so if we’re, if we’re eligible to do it and we’re not doing the thing, like that’s, it’s not a good, it’s not a good story to tell when you have the opportunity to, to take part in it and make that part of your value stack. [00:22:19] Reis Barrie: It’s, it’s, it’s a really meaningful piece. Yeah. Um, and it gets you [00:22:23] Vince Menzione: a lot more attention from the sellers. It does. [00:22:25] Reis Barrie: Yeah. It does. And I’m not, I’m not gonna ignore the fact that it is, it is a, it is a badging, it is to an extent a badging too. And so. Um, you know, you have, uh, Jamie Bain on here a lot. Yeah. And he talks about all the different, like touch points that part that that customers go through before they, at 28 moments. [00:22:41] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:22:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:22:41] Reis Barrie: And before they, I’m one of those people I, I show up ready to buy because I’ve already done my 28, probably 50 moments. Exactly. Um, and so. It does provide some, like a, an element of social proof for certainty for customers too, as, as, as it is, it is also badging, uh, but it is so much more than that as well. [00:22:58] Reis Barrie: So I don’t wanna discount the fact that it, it does provide that, that social proof on their marketplace as well to [00:23:02] Vince Menzione: customers. It does, it does. So this next one, number seven, is really important as well, and people. They overlook it in many respects. And it’s actually having a plan. Yeah. And having a very concise plan. [00:23:13] Vince Menzione: You talk about having a one page plan. Take us through that as a pitfall and why organizations need to pay attention here. [00:23:20] Reis Barrie: So this is, there’s a simple, there’s a, there’s a, there’s two pieces to this. Um, the one page plan, um. I stress the importance of it. ’cause it seems, it, it, uh, it is, is, uh, achievable, very achievable than like, if you were to say, have a 30 page plan. [00:23:34] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Um, but it does two things. One, if you have a one page plan, it means you actually have a plan, uh, which is the first checkbox that you gotta, you gotta, you gotta have. And so it’s a, it’s a, it’s an easy way to just make sure that you do have a plan. You are working towards something. Um, you have, you have some goals. [00:23:52] Reis Barrie: You have it where you, where you align with their priorities outlined. Um. We’re actually working towards something. So that’s like foundation number one is just check the box, have a plan. Yeah. The second one is honestly like you meet so many different personas across, um, Microsoft, that, um, you really want to have this like, you know, often these, sometimes they’re called like battle cards or one page or whatever it might be, but you really want to have this piece that just like, is a highly consumable, simplified version of if you do have this. [00:24:22] Reis Barrie: Maybe you have this 30, 30 page partnership plan with Microsoft that’s, you know, really in depth and all these things, but you really want to have this simplified piece that you can just, whether it’s handout or remember back to and talk to. Yeah. Um, because you’re gonna, you’re gonna, you know. You’re gonna go to Ultimate Partners and you’re gonna meet all these people, you’re gonna go to all these places, you’re gonna see these people and you’re gonna want to have like, be able to quickly reference back to what are the things that I am working towards in my partnership with Microsoft, and how do we align and how do we sell together, and how are we better together and all these different things. [00:24:55] Reis Barrie: And so we consolidate it all in one page so that we have this essentially that what feels like an elevator pitch of, of our, yeah. Why are we partners? What are we working towards [00:25:04] Vince Menzione: together? I’ll, I’ll add another layer to that ’cause I did this way back in the day too, is like, it’s, it’s also, it’s your rallying point with your executive team. [00:25:13] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Yeah. When you give, do your, hopefully you’re getting in front of your executive team and doing a review on this is such an tangible, important part of your business. Totally. Uh, that you’re kind of, and, and you know, execs are not gonna sit, go through your 30 page plan, but you have that one pager. [00:25:28] Vince Menzione: And it identifies their area of the business as well. ’cause it’s gonna to have all the touch points in the business and what’s working and what’s not working. Yeah. And I think it’s super important you do that and you con concisely communicate with your executive team. [00:25:40] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:25:41] Vince Menzione: I I No more words ’cause you know, it’s perfectly said. [00:25:44] Vince Menzione: It’s ’cause it’s, it’s painful when it’s not working. It really is. It’s just painful. [00:25:49] Reis Barrie: It really is. Yeah. Um, yeah, the, the, that component and just. What are we working towards? Yeah. I always miss the people, like it’s a simple one, but it, it’s always missed. Like it’s just going through the motions without like, what are we working towards? [00:26:03] Vince Menzione: And I come back to, I come back to the internal victory all the time, Reese’s, because I’ve seen it so many times. And the CEO will say the right things. The, the executive team will say the right things. Mm-hmm. But. When you peel back, they’re not really, and when you’re talking about billion $2,000,000,008 billion companies, yeah. [00:26:21] Vince Menzione: There’s a lot more to carry in that relationship. Oh yeah. And you’ve gotta get everybody aligned the right way. It’s so important. Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. Good stuff. So, uh. You talked about partner center a little bit and about sharing referrals. Uh, you, you touched on this one a little bit, but this was number eight on your list of, uh, pitfalls. [00:26:41] Vince Menzione: Take us through this a little bit more too, because you were talking about a little bit about this. [00:26:46] Reis Barrie: Yeah. So when it comes to referral sharing, like this is the other topic that, yeah. Microsoft language and referral sharing. If you, if there was two things that I’d probably say a hundred times a month. [00:26:56] Reis Barrie: It’s, it’s, it’s these two. Um, and so. Yeah. Referral sharing is the foundation of most partnerships, but particularly for Microsoft partnerships, we’re like referral sharing back and forth. Yeah. Um, is just incredibly important. ’cause data is, like, data is essentially the foundation of this partnership. [00:27:14] Reis Barrie: Absolutely. And so, um. Not even getting to the point now where, like I’m saying like, you should be co-selling. You shouldn’t be co-selling, but just even if you’re not co-selling right now, like there’s a, there’s an option to share, share referrals that you’re not co-selling on. Maybe you’re not ready to share, like to actually co-sell. [00:27:29] Reis Barrie: You’re not mature. It’s not time yet, yet. Right. But just the act of getting referrals in into partner center is a huge. Has a huge impact on just showing Microsoft, like where are we penetrated? What customers are we talking to? Yeah. What industries are we, are we impacting? What’s the total, like, what’s the total, uh, area that we’re, that we’re, we’re working in? [00:27:50] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Uh, where, where are we strongest in terms of geography? Um, are we mostly this country? Are we most, are we global? Like it tells them there’s so many data, data touch points that it gives that if you either log nothing. Then they have no data to touch point off of, or they log or you log partial, then they have partial data and they’re assuming it’s full data, um, which is not good either. [00:28:12] Vince Menzione: I’ve seen people put too many in that were not even deals that they’re working with Microsoft on as well. [00:28:17] Reis Barrie: Yeah. That works against you. Yeah, it works That, yeah, that works against you as well. And so, um, there’s a, there’s just this, this need of, we need to log relevant, relevant referrals into partner center, um, because. [00:28:32] Reis Barrie: It’s how they make decisions. It’s how you show up on their scorecards, their dashboards. It’s how they make their decisions. And when they’re looking to, what partners are we gonna manage this year, they need, they need touch points and data, data to, to provide that. And so, so it’s [00:28:46] Vince Menzione: establishing your credibility with Microsoft as a hundred [00:28:49] Reis Barrie: percent. [00:28:50] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Um, and I’ll even, I could probably talk about this next piece all day, so I’ll just stay at service level, but, um. Microsoft is one of, if not the leading AI company in the world. Yeah. And like, if it’s, it’s, you know, there’s 28 touch points that Jamie Vain talks about. Like that’s, uh, I, I, I personally believe that that’s soon to be a lot of assessed by ai. [00:29:15] Reis Barrie: And so yes, if, if AI is looking at this, all of these different touch points and referrals happens to be one of those touch points, um. You want to show up? Well, yeah. [00:29:26] Vince Menzione: Um, you wanna show up really well? Really good point. So the next one, which we’re, we’re up to nine already, by the way. We’re almost, we’re almost through the list of 12. [00:29:35] Vince Menzione: So hopefully you’re watching Yeah. And listening and paying attention and rewinding. Yeah. Uh, this one is about treating all deals as co-sell deals. This one is interesting to me ’cause I think, I think people like over pivot in some respects towards co-selling. I think so too. Yeah. So tell us about that one. [00:29:51] Reis Barrie: It was super timely ’cause I just literally had a conversation yesterday with, uh. I, I won’t, I won’t end the company, but very, very large, very established, uh, organization. And as we were doing a workshop with them, and I, okay, like how many, you know, how many deals do you share? Why don’t we share about a, you know, I think it was about a thousand a year or something like that. [00:30:10] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Um, okay, great. Like what’s your, how many, how many of those are co-sell? Well, we actually, all of them, so. That’s a lot of deals to expect [00:30:19] Vince Menzione: to be co-sell. Super [00:30:20] Reis Barrie: fascinating. So one, like, I don’t even think they could take a thousand calls if they, if they had, if they, if they booked calls with every single seller, like a thousand calls, that’d be a lot. [00:30:28] Reis Barrie: Like, that’s a lot. I, I doubt they could even scale to that, that amount. Uh, so it’s, part of it is, can you scale to that? Another piece is like, where do you actually need help? Um, exactly. You know, they’ve been around for 50 years, like. Yeah, I, I have full confidence in this particular example. Like they, they can sell a lot of their solutions by themselves. [00:30:46] Reis Barrie: Yeah. They don’t need Microsoft at all. And so, but there are, there are three to five really valuable use cases where we, they really do truly need help on co-sell. And so when you, when you put everything as co-sell, but not, but you don’t actually need true help on everything, uh, it dilutes from the fact of where you actually do need help from. [00:31:04] Reis Barrie: And so, um, when we identify. When we come into some of these, some of these places who are sharing everything as co-sell, we wanna identify, okay, one, like what’s your capacity to actually to take calls? Because if I book, if I book 50 calls this week for you, like are you gonna be able to do it or not do it? [00:31:21] Reis Barrie: Um, and some people have giant, giant teams that can do it and some people just can’t. So what’s the actual capacity to do that? And that’ll dictate. How much we can actually, uh, look at. And so, and then we look at what are the three to five like use cases that are really high value for you to talk to a Microsoft seller where you have a really good, uh, case to talk to a Microsoft seller. [00:31:42] Reis Barrie: So, uh, we’re going there with actual, like, we need this type of support, not just going there and say, oh, I just, I want to, I wanna talk [00:31:48] Vince Menzione: about this customer. Um, and it, it makes the impact so much greater if you pick the 1, 2, 3, whatever the number is and where you really need help. [00:31:58] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:31:58] Vince Menzione: Totally. I need to reach the CIO. [00:32:00] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I need to have this conversation. I need Microsoft to really like lean in on, on our relationship. ’cause my competitors are in there as well. What, whatever that might be a hundred percent. But if you try to do that across a thousand deals, you’re not gonna get the support. Yeah. You’re just not gonna, it’s not gonna happen. [00:32:15] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:32:16] Reis Barrie: So we’re just, we’re trying to create like. As many positive experiences between the partner and the MI and Microsoft seller as I possibly can. And so, uh, there’s al it’s very rare that I’ve seen where someone can create, like truly needs that much value from Microsoft seller. And there’s a great, great cause for that. [00:32:33] Reis Barrie: So when we, when we narrow down, we actually create more positive experiences, actually come, it comes back to the lead situation, which create more positive experience of easy to work with, high value partner. Um. Then actually like, then you start to get into some interesting like account planning type stuff. [00:32:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Um, those are fun. Yeah, those are fun. They’re, so this next one, number 10, talks about rewards and incentives. And we, we, you were touching on this earlier about like, there’s so much more out there right now with Microsoft, but, and it could be rocket fuel, but not using them effectively, underusing them. [00:33:05] Vince Menzione: Where should partners start? [00:33:07] Reis Barrie: Yeah, so we, we’ve already, uh, we’ve already established the, uh. Don’t put it at the bottom line. Yeah, that’s the, that’s, that’s a bad one. That’s where you establish what not to do. Yeah. Uh, we’ve also established to tell finance it’s coming ’cause uh, probably one of the worst situations I ever had to try to work with a partner on is where they didn’t tell finance it was coming. [00:33:26] Reis Barrie: They don’t know it’s there. Uh, finance thought it was a mistake and sent it back to Microsoft. Oh. And so not good. Once you send it back to Microsoft, they’re not gonna, they’re not sending it back. It’s, it’s not gonna come back that easily. And so we’ve already established those with, those are two things that we wanna make sure we’re aligned on and not doing. [00:33:42] Reis Barrie: Um, but in terms of like what we, what we, what we are doing, um, anytime we can use it as a, uh, pre-sales or post-sales incentive to get a customer to either, uh, commit faster or buy more. Um, these are, these are good use cases. Um, anytime we can, uh, take it back in-house and, um, re uh, reinvest in the partnership. [00:34:07] Reis Barrie: That’s, those are good use cases. I’ve seen partners where they’ve actually used some of the funding to, um. You know, be like their, uh, actually their Quest customer swag bucket where they’ve sent, like, they keep, they kept customers on like a swag list and, and used all the incentive money from Microsoft to keep the, keep the funnel going of, of any co-sell deal. [00:34:27] Reis Barrie: Got got a particular like swag package. I love it. I love it. And so you can do some fun, you can do some fun stuff with it, but ultimately it comes back to. Um, how are, how are we reinvesting it? Either you can reinvest it into headcount, you can reinvest it into events, you can reinvest it into, uh, co-marketing or just marketing to generate leads. [00:34:44] Reis Barrie: People say Microsoft doesn’t gimme leads, uh, they give you a lot of money and you can use that money to get leads. That’s right. Um, and so, uh, the fundamentals come back to, um, how are we using it to. Move the flywheel faster and faster and faster because, um, reinvesting it back into the partnership. And, and there’s many ways you can do that. [00:35:07] Reis Barrie: Um. I’ve, I’ve seen that be the exponential growth that partners are like really looking for. [00:35:13] Vince Menzione: And you mentioned earlier, I’ll reiterate it now, that there’s a lot more money coming back to partners now than ever. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s actually, it is a factor by of 2, [00:35:24] Reis Barrie: 3, [00:35:24] Vince Menzione: 4. What do you think the factor is? [00:35:26] Reis Barrie: Um, so I would say the, um, this is a, you put me on the spot, so I’m gonna give you on the spot rough number. [00:35:34] Reis Barrie: I love it. So I would, I would give it like a. Uh, from numbers we’re seeing like we’re able to, to pull in probably three x the amount X that we did last year. Three [00:35:42] Vince Menzione: x. You’re that partners. Yeah. It’s time. It’s a lot, it’s time. [00:35:45] Reis Barrie: Um, but, but also get it right, its. It’s easier. Yeah. Um, in many aspects to, to acquire the, the funds ’cause it is getting, it is getting easier. [00:35:54] Reis Barrie: And then the bucket of funds is either like, uh, caps are getting raised or removed. Uh, new programs are getting added to either like where post-sales, maybe it was just a post-sales program before, now there’s a pre-sales component to it as well. Nice. Um, and, and just different aspects are getting, uh. [00:36:13] Reis Barrie: It’s getting easier to, it’s getting easier to pull it in. Um, and it’s getting into bank accounts faster. Yeah. Frankly, in many ways. [00:36:21] Vince Menzione: So we’re up to 11. I can’t [00:36:22] Reis Barrie: believe it. [00:36:23] Vince Menzione: Up to 11 already. We’re gonna go through ’em one more time at the end. Yeah. [00:36:26] Reis Barrie: Can’t believe it. This [00:36:27] Vince Menzione: one is, I wanna ask you that this one partners scale. [00:36:29] Vince Menzione: What’s the first thing that breaks. Ooh, usually operations. Operations usually. Um, [00:36:35] Reis Barrie: yeah, it’s usually operations. ’cause we’re like, um, yeah, we’re, we’re, it’s like a lot of pill folks are sales and marketing focused and so it’s, it’s a lot of times the operations, the piece that I see that, that get overlooked and so, yeah. [00:36:45] Reis Barrie: And it gets [00:36:46] Vince Menzione: overlooked sometimes early in the process too, right? It, they’re not maybe pulled in as quickly as they should be. [00:36:51] Reis Barrie: Yeah. It gets, um, I’ve seen too many partners, uh. Scale a bad process. Yeah. And so they have a really, like, they have a really, like a, a, a process that’s meant for, um, you know, five deals a month and then there’s scale to 50 deals a month, and they try to use the same process and that that just doesn’t work. [00:37:10] Reis Barrie: Um, ’cause it just amplifies all the flaws that the process had in the first place, um, with lack of process, uh, in the first place. And so, um, and frankly like the, that’s the, those are the foundations that everything gets built off of. And so this operational. Um, this operational backbone of how are we managing the partnership? [00:37:29] Reis Barrie: How are we making sure that we’re, you know, if there’s 30 things we have to look across over the course of the year, how do we make sure that we have rhythms built in the business where, you know, somebody is accountable and owning that component. Yeah. Um, how do we make sure that we have, um, the right. [00:37:45] Reis Barrie: Things built into our serum system to be able to pull, pull accurate data in terms of like what we actually want to co-sell on. Um, and so we wanna make sure we have all these kind of, these operational backbones and rhythms built so that when we do scale from five to 50 to a hundred to whatever the number may be, um, that the process can scale with us and it’s gonna evolve over time. [00:38:07] Reis Barrie: But ultimately, like. Uh, we wanna make sure that it’s, it’s a front of mind thing that we’re actually Yeah. Looking at. [00:38:13] Vince Menzione: So get rev ops involved early. [00:38:15] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:38:15] Vince Menzione: Rev ops is a huge component, a huge part. Getting, get ’em in, integrated into your process. Uh, c you mentioned CRM system. You’ve got a, you’ve got a. Kind of break your CRM solution to support the partner Yeah. [00:38:27] Vince Menzione: Org. And there’s a lot of that that needs to then go into partner center that you Yeah. You help organizations through, but you really gotta get that rev ops piece. Yeah. The s and, and two [00:38:36] Reis Barrie: factors too. Not only, uh, not deal, not only deal sharing, but also, uh, uh, private offer management as well. Yeah, exactly. [00:38:43] Reis Barrie: And so they have to, they have to be able to manage both. So such a big component. If you can, if you can sell a hundred deals and you can cost a hundred deals, that’s, that’s one thing. But if you can’t, if you, if you have no process to actually share the private offers, that’s a totally different problem. [00:38:56] Reis Barrie: Yeah. So we want to, we need to make sure we’re building both in parallel [00:38:59] Vince Menzione: and we’re not gonna get into the whole marketplace dynamics here, but it’s super important that you understand that these organizations are sometimes burning down their commitment, which means you need to get rev ops involved in that process so that they can properly burn down the commitments. [00:39:14] Vince Menzione: And attribute it and so on. So that’s part of the rev ops components of it as well. [00:39:19] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Yeah. And it just, the reading the stat, these 80% of enterprise companies are buying through, like through marketplaces right now. Yeah. And so this is like a, yeah. Um. It is quickly becoming a a, it is quickly becoming and will continue, I think, to become a customer preference in many, in many cases. [00:39:37] Reis Barrie: And so [00:39:38] Vince Menzione: I love it. ’cause two years ago nobody was talking about it. I know. We, we, we started talking about it at our events and trying to encourage organizations to go this route. So it’s so, it’s so great to see. It is really cool. It’s, yeah, it, [00:39:48] Reis Barrie: it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, we get to watch like kind of, uh, from a different perspective. [00:39:53] Reis Barrie: A, it’s crazy. A lot of people kind of jump in either midstream, but seeing, seeing how things play out over a period of, um, you know, multiple years. Yeah. Um, is always, it’s just an interesting perspective. So like. To look at things about. It’s ’cause we’re [00:40:04] Vince Menzione: on a rocket ship. It’s a crazy, crazy time in our industry and we are on a rocket ship. [00:40:09] Vince Menzione: So this last one is near and dear to my heart as well. Right. So you talk about the feedback loop, the communication loop, we always talk about communications almost being like the eighth principle of successful partnering. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We’ve talked about it. In fact, super important. One of the articles we wrote, it actually was in their communications being important. [00:40:25] Vince Menzione: What happens when partners fail to build good communication loops or feedback loops with Microsoft? [00:40:32] Reis Barrie: It just, uh, the quick answer is just they go, the partnership goes stagnant. Yeah. Um, goes to hell on am starts. Yeah, it does. It starts to stall out. Yeah. But like, uh, uh, it’s a funny, it’s a funny concept ’cause even the word partnership like implies deep communication, deep feedback loops, like working in, working in partnership with each other. [00:40:54] Reis Barrie: And so like, it’s, it’s naturally just implied in the term that we’re talking about. Um, but so many times I see, like, I just, I see the, uh. The partner who is like dying to become a managed partner, got like, got the PDM, did the whole thing, and then like now it’s, uh, you know, oh, I can’t make, I can’t make this call, I can’t make this call. [00:41:13] Reis Barrie: I can’t make this call. I’m just like, okay. Like that’s not good. This is, this is, this is the start of the end right here. Yeah. Because the moment you start to deprioritize, like the rhythms and the communication and the feedback loops, um. Things go south really fast because your ROB, [00:41:29] Vince Menzione: your rhythm of the business. [00:41:30] Vince Menzione: Yeah. By the way, if you, that’s a big Microsoft term. Huge one. Huge one. And I, you know, we, we’ve, we’ve talked about it before this, the whole idea about like having a very strong rhythm, rhythm of your business with Microsoft. Yeah. This is so critical to success. I talked about the Kumbaya meetings, right? [00:41:47] Vince Menzione: We’d have, we’d have these big meetings. PowerPoint slides, executives lining up on both sides of the table. Yep. We all like high five each other at the end. I’ve crickets. And then of those, and then crickets, nothing happens. That is su such a recipe for failure, as you say in number 12 here, not not having a feedback loop. [00:42:04] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Yeah. So no feedback loop and the rhythm of the business. I can’t, I can’t emphasize that enough because that’s [00:42:09] Vince Menzione: so what’s a good rhythm? Is it a monthly call? Is it. [00:42:12] Reis Barrie: Um, let’s see. It depends on who you can, who you can, who you can plug in with. But if you have a PDM, then weekly or biweekly, frankly, is, is a great, great cadence. [00:42:22] Reis Barrie: Um, talking through, um, pipeline incentives, uh, upcoming events. Upcoming what upcoming. Programmatic shifts and things like that, making sure we’re staying, uh, in pace. Um, some partners are part of different, like partner councils, which are great feedback loops as well, uh, to be able to influence whether that’s solution areas or marketplace or partner center. [00:42:43] Reis Barrie: And there’s different partner councils as well. So we can, if you can work your, say you work your way into one of those, like those are honestly great feedback loops, uh, as well. Um, but again, like it’s, uh, it’s a, um. You gotta show up. Yeah. Um, I love it. It’s, you gotta show up. I’ve, I, I harp on this because I see it, so I see it so often where you want it, like, partners wanted something so bad now that they, now that they have it, like it’s, it’s now we’re, we’re starting to get complacent in certain areas and it comes back kind of to that, uh, I think number two, which was having owner. [00:43:16] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Um, and so. I’ve also seen organizations where they have like an owner, but the owner also manages, you know, eight other partnerships within the company and, and can’t give enough time to this particular one. Or misses meetings ’cause it’s, you know, during a month or at events and, and, and different conferences and whatnot. [00:43:34] Reis Barrie: And you know, don’t talk to Microsoft for a month. It’s long time not talk to your partner. [00:43:39] Vince Menzione: Reese, this is so valuable. Again, I’m gonna tell you all, go back, rewind this. If you’re on YouTube, you just move that little bar back and hit play again. But it’s expecting Microsoft to send you leads. It’s no, that’s number one. [00:43:53] Vince Menzione: It’s no owner for Microsoft Partnership. Number two. Misaligning compensation models. Three. Finance isn’t ready. Number four, weak Microsoft specific messaging. Number five, certification as a logo. Number six. Mm-hmm. No one not having a one page partner Plan number seven, not sharing referrals in partner center. [00:44:12] Vince Menzione: Number eight. Not treating, uh, or treating all deals as co-sell deals. Number nine, underusing rewards and incentives. Number 10. Scaling without ops ready, being ops ready, number 11 and no feedback loop with Microsoft. Number 12. Yeah, Reese, you just hit the nail on the head, man. This is incredible. [00:44:31] Reis Barrie: Awesome. [00:44:31] Reis Barrie: It’s, yeah, all my passion. Yeah, so I love talking through these. I, I love talking through these and if [00:44:35] Vince Menzione: you’re lazy or if you really want to get. Deep in this come to our event October 27th through the 29th Reston, Virginia. It is not a public sector event, by the way. I just wanna be clear on this. ’cause a lot of people said, oh, you’re doing a public sector event? [00:44:49] Vince Menzione: No. Mm-hmm. Just, we picked the East Coast location being Washington, DC Yeah. Reese is gonna be doing an incredible workshop. Yeah. His workshops are usually sold out, standing room only. He’ll be, he’ll be on stage with us as well at this event. We’ve got some incredible leaders from Microsoft. We also have AWS in the room and some other organizations, some incredible partner sponsors, and also other sponsors, technology sponsors there. [00:45:15] Vince Menzione: I think there’s 23 sponsors actually for this event. Oh, that’s incredible. Yeah, it is incredible. And this will be another incredible event. We will be live streaming if you can’t make it, but we want you in the room. You’re gonna be elbow to elbow with leaders like Reese. You’re gonna learn from executives, from Microsoft, as well as other partners that have gotten it right, working with the tech giant. [00:45:34] Vince Menzione: But you’re gonna learn more and the immersion is incredible. I hear it all the time from our events. So we hope to see you in Reston, Virginia, October 27th to the 29th. Reese, so great to have you back here. [00:45:45] Reis Barrie: Yeah, so great to be here. I look forward to seeing, seeing you in Reston. Yes. Seeing everyone else in Reston as well. [00:45:50] Reis Barrie: Doing those workshops is like one of my favorite things, Frank. Yeah, it’s [00:45:53] Vince Menzione: gonna be awesome. And then we have some other things we’re gonna be talking about, uh, probably in Reston you’re gonna hear more about what’s gonna happen here in Boca. And we have a couple other things that are going on that we will share. [00:46:04] Vince Menzione: It’s kind of under the covers right now. So you gotta come, you gotta come see us all and you’ll learn firsthand what’s happening in the world of Ultimate partner. Thank you so much for watching, listening, and supporting the ultimate Guide to partnering. Thank you.

Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. In this powerful discussion, Vince Menzione shares his personal journey and the mission behind the Ultimate Partner movement. After a near-fatal accident, he gained a new perspective on the importance of community and the power of partnerships. Vince dives deep into the “tectonic shifts” reshaping our industry—from the rise of AI and cloud marketplaces to new buyer expectations. He introduces the seven Operating Principles of successful partnering, a framework designed to provide leaders with the clarity and conviction needed to thrive in a world of constant change. This is more than a podcast; it’s a movement built on the belief that success is never achieved alone and that together, leaders can achieve extraordinary outcomes. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k64CcIbLZNc Join Us In Reston, Virginia, October 27-29th. As we enter the last four months of the calendar year, you are probably asking yourself, “What events should I attend this fall and why?” Many Partners and Leaders are trying to determine if the big events make the most sense and what they will learn. Many of these events are big and unyieldy, and while you may bump into some friends, you need to really ask yourself if they will help you achieve your greatest results – as a leader, as an organization, or as a partner. Our attendees tell us they get more accomplished in two full days than in most of the year at our events – they learn from Hyperscaler Leaders, Top Award Winning Partners, and the Masters. Learn from the best, meet the best, grow your business faster and further. Why Ultimate Partner is Unique An Ultimate Partner LIVE is like YOUR Masterclass. We begin with a view of “Where We Are Today” as the tectonic shifts are happening faster than ever before. Our first day sessions explore the advances in AI, Hyperscaler Growth, Marketplaces, Co-Selling, Ecosystem Led Growth, and more. These sessions are led from the leaders driving the discussions at Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, AvePoint Veeam Software, Carahsoft, Elastic and more. Bringing it All Together On Day Two, an Industry Analyst will bring it all together as our industry experts help you plot the future course – applying the learnings to maximize results. And, you’ll learn more from the Partner Technology firms, Partner Consultants, and others helping partners like you achieve more and walk away with over a million dollars worth of insights, learnings, and practical advice to apply to your business. In fact, we will have over 10 unique workshops at the fall event alone. The Executive Experience You will be in the room with other executives like you, or partner leaders looking to get to that level. Join us for a unique welcome reception and – if you’re fortunate – you’ll be joining our Executive Dinner. This event will feel more intimate than past Ultimate Partner LIVE settings. You’ll love the experience. Don’t Miss this Early BIRD Opportunity – Ends in a Week This is your last chance to take advantage of a unique opportunity to sign up early and SAVE.> Next weekend, Early Bird Pricing Ends – and will NOT be available again. Also, our special Hyatt Regency Reston will only last for a short time. Book your tickets today and get ready to join this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I look forward to hosting YOU this fall! Click HERE while time still lasts. Vince Menzione, Microsoft, Ultimate Partner, The Ultimate Partner, business strategy, cloud marketplaces, AI transformation, partnership principles, technology leadership, organizational alignment, growth mindset, executive commitment, visionary leadership, scalable startups, resilient leadership, tectonic shifts, ecosystem growth, tech industry, B2B sales. Transcript: Ultimate Partner Promo 2025 [00:00:00] Vince Menzione: Welcome. I’m Vince Menon, and if you followed me, you know me as the host of The Ultimate Partner. Some of you have attended our events or maybe you’re part of our Growing Ultimate Partner community. But today I want to go deeper. I wanna share my journey, what’s happened earlier this year, and how my friends and team have rallied behind me and why I believe this movement we’re building together. [00:00:26] Vince Menzione: Is about to become bigger than ever because in this moment of massive change, these tectonic shifts, we talk about reshaping our industry and our lives. We need clarity, we need frameworks, and we need community more than ever, my journey began way before ultimate partner. I grew up in a family that taught me the power of resilience and trust. [00:00:50] Vince Menzione: I ran a small business while in college. Scaled startups from a few million dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars and later led a multi-billion dollar partner business at Microsoft. Through it all, I learned one powerful truth. Success is never built alone. It happens through partnerships. When I started Ultimate Partner nearly a decade ago, it was my way of amplifying those lessons. [00:01:19] Vince Menzione: To bring you the voices, insights, and stories of the leaders shaping our industry. Over 270 episodes later, it’s grown into a trusted platform, but more importantly, it’s grown into a movement. A community of leaders committed to helping each other achieve their greatest results, and then this year changed everything for me. [00:01:44] Vince Menzione: You see, a near fatal accident brought my life to a halt. Overnight. I went from building businesses and hosting events to fighting for recovery. In those difficult months, I was carried by my family, my team, and by so many of you friends and colleagues reaching out with encouragement, support, and belief. [00:02:07] Vince Menzione: It reminded me of something powerful. You see, this mission is bigger than me. Ultimate partner is about all of us. A collective of leaders, builders, and innovators navigating change together. That clarity gave me even more conviction to double down now on this work, because let’s face it, the world isn’t slowing down. [00:02:35] Vince Menzione: AI is transforming every business and redefining what’s possible. Cloud marketplaces are reshaping how customers buy and how we go to market. New buyer personas and new expectations are changing. The way we sell the ecosystem is no longer a nice to have. It’s the multiplier for growth. These are the tectonic shifts we talk about at Ultimate Partner and in times like this, leaders need frameworks, clarity, and a community they can trust. [00:03:09] Vince Menzione: That’s why I developed what I call the seven Operating principles of successful Partnering. These principles come from decades of experience, hundreds of conversations with leaders and the lived lessons of this community. Here’s what they are and how they guide everything we do at Ultimate Partner. You see, the first is a growth mindset. [00:03:32] Vince Menzione: In a world of change, curiosity and learning are the superpower. Winners embrace possibility. The second is executive commitment. Success requires leadership buy-in and organizational alignment. It doesn’t happen at the edges. The third is vision and value alignment. Great partnerships are built when leaders align on purpose, outcomes, and value creation, and once you’ve got that, you need the fourth maniacal focus. [00:04:04] Vince Menzione: The best results come when we prioritize, simplify, and concentrate energy on what matters most. Once you get to there, you need the fifth element, Brandon’s story. You see, your story is your magnet partners and customers rally around belief, credibility, and trust. And it’s the easiest way and the best way to sell with the hyperscalers. [00:04:29] Vince Menzione: And once you start to build that flywheel, you get to getting results. Number six, where outcomes are the currency of trust winning partners obsess over execution and measurable impact. And once you’ve gotten those first six, all right. And you’ve reached the pinnacle of success. What happens? Things change. [00:04:51] Vince Menzione: The world changes. We have tectonic shifts. We have organizations like Hyperscalers, like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon changing programs, changing priorities. And you need to change because change is your constant. Leaders must anticipate pivot and leverage change before it overwhelms them. These aren’t just abstract ideas. [00:05:14] Vince Menzione: This is the heartbeat of Ultimate Partner our live Ultimate Partner events, our community, and this movement. So what do we stand for? We stand for helping technology leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We do it through our podcast, bringing you the most relevant voices in technology. [00:05:36] Vince Menzione: We do it through our ultimate partner live events and events that we host here in our studio in Boca Raton, where leaders gather to align, learn, and connect, and we do it through our community where frameworks, best practices and experience sharing, create clarity and confidence. And we do it together because no single leader, no single company, can thrive in isolation any longer. [00:06:05] Vince Menzione: This is why I say ultimate partner is more than a podcast, more than an event. It’s a movement and it’s about to become bigger than ever because as these tectonic shifts accelerate, leaders who embrace growth, align on vision and commit to partnerships will be the ones who thrive. So I wanna say thank you, my family, my team, my friends, and this community for lifting me through this year. [00:06:34] Vince Menzione: And giving me more clarity and the path ahead. And I wanna invite you, join us, subscribe to the podcast, come to our live events, become part of this community because together we will achieve our greatest results through successful partnering. And yes, the best is yet to come.

Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. Join Peter Graber from Ingram Micro and Christine Mulcahy from ContentGen as they unveil a powerful synergy transforming the MSP and SMB landscape. Peter details Ingram Micro’s evolution from a traditional distributor to a “platform first, experience-driven company” with their Al-powered Xvantage platform, seamlessly integrating commerce, insights, automation, and enablement for multi-vendor, multi-solution environments. Christine then introduces ContentGen, an automated content development platform leveraging Al to drastically reduce the cost and complexity of content marketing for partners, enabling them to tell compelling “better together” stories and accelerate their go-to-market. This session highlights how these innovations are providing MSPs with simplified management and strategic growth, crucial for navigating the complex world of Al, hardware, and software solutions. https://youtu.be/MR2mGDnEbik Traditional distribution is evolving beyond logistics to focus on intelligence, integration, and enablement, driven by the increasing complexity of hybrid cloud, multi-vendor, and AI environments. Ingram Micro is transforming into a “platform first, experience-driven company” with its AI-powered Xvantage platform, designed to be a growth engine for partners by simplifying operations and accelerating market access. Xvantage unifies commerce, insights, automation, and enablement, allowing MSPs to manage subscriptions, hardware, SaaS, and services seamlessly in one intuitive interface, even integrating with their existing ERP/CRM systems. ContentGen provides an automated, AI-powered content development platform specifically for the partner channel, drastically reducing the cost and complexity of creating diverse marketing materials. Partners, particularly MSPs, need to tell differentiated stories for various audiences (customers, platform partners, resellers) requiring tailored content, which ContentGen helps to scale efficiently. The combined offering of Ingram’s Xvantage platform and ContentGen empowers MSPs with simplified management and strategic growth, enabling them to effectively deliver complex AI and multi-vendor solutions to the SMB market. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. As we enter the last four months of the calendar year, you are probably asking yourself, “What events should I attend this fall and why?” Many Partners and Leaders are trying to determine if the big events make the most sense and what they will learn. Many of these events are big and unyieldy, and while you may bump into some friends, you need to really ask yourself if they will help you achieve your greatest results – as a leader, as an organization, or as a partner. Our attendees tell us they get more accomplished in two full days than in most of the year at our events – they learn from Hyperscaler Leaders, Top Award Winning Partners, and the Masters. Learn from the best, meet the best, grow your business faster and further. Why Ultimate Partner is Unique An Ultimate Partner LIVE is like YOUR Masterclass. We begin with a view of “Where We Are Today” as the tectonic shifts are happening faster than ever before. Our first day sessions explore the advances in AI, Hyperscaler Growth, Marketplaces, Co-Selling, Ecosystem Led Growth, and more. These sessions are led from the leaders driving the discussions at Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, AvePoint Veeam Software, Carahsoft, Elastic and more. Bringing it All Together On Day Two, an Industry Analyst will bring it all together as our industry experts help you plot the future course – applying the learnings to maximize results. And, you’ll learn more from the Partner Technology firms, Partner Consultants, and others helping partners like you achieve more and walk away with over a million dollars worth of insights, learnings, and practical advice to apply to your business. In fact, we will have over 10 unique workshops at the fall event alone. The Executive Experience You will be in the room with other executives like you, or partner leaders looking to get to that level. Join us for a unique welcome reception and – if you’re fortunate – you’ll be joining our Executive Dinner. This event will feel more intimate than past Ultimate Partner LIVE settings. You’ll love the experience. Don’t Miss this Early BIRD Opportunity – Ends in a Week This is your last chance to take advantage of a unique opportunity to sign up early and SAVE.> Next weekend, Early Bird Pricing Ends – and will NOT be available again. Also, our special Hyatt Regency Reston will only last for a short time. Book your tickets today and get ready to join this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I look forward to hosting YOU this fall! Click HERE while time still lasts. . Key Tags: Ingram Micro, Content Gen, distribution evolution, MSPs, SMB market, AI platform, Advantage platform, ecosystem enablement, automated content, channel marketing, go-to-market strategy, strategic growth, digital transformation, cloud solutions, hardware-software integration, recurring revenue, partner profitability, AI agents, cybersecurity, hybrid cloud. Transcription: [00:00:00] Christine Mulcahy: Well, I’d say, you know, if you’re any type of partner in the ecosystem, buy into these platforms because they, there’s a lot of smart people building them and doing all the work for you so that you don’t have to figure that out as part of the rest of your biz dev strategy, and you can just focus on what you do. Well, [00:00:17] Vince Menzione: we believe this time is like no other. We, we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, [00:00:23] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together. Managed services will be one and a half times larger because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. [00:00:55] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner Live at Microsoft Redmond Campus. Our most powerful event yet. Over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this episode and interview features Peter Grabber from Ingram Micro and Christine Mulcahy from Content Gen for a lively discussion on the future of distribution. We take it right to the edge of what’s next. So let’s dive in now, and we’ve talked about this SMB moment. And the MSPs and this incredible opportunity area. This is where the fire hydrant is gonna come at us and the, and the power is coming at us really strict right now in terms of how we drive more success in our marketplaces. I am thrilled to invite on stage for the first time. Ingram Micro as both a speaker and a sponsor or event, and Peter Grabber is joining me for an in-depth conversation on what’s been going on in Ingram. We talked, we heard PAX eight yesterday, but Ingram has an incredible approach, has an incredible pedigree as a distributor and is really evolving their business as well. So I wanna welcome to the stage Peter Grabber. Thank you. Thank you for joining us, Peter. Thanks Vince. So good to have you join us. Thank you, sir. So, so great to have you on stage. Absolutely. Thank you. And supporting our event. Awesome. Awesome. Peter’s from Buffalo, New York. For those of you go Bills who might be part of the Bills mafia. Yes. Uh, they are my second favorite team after the Philadelphia Eagles. So, so great to have you. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. So, so great to have you join us. Um, some really exciting things happening in your organization. Uh, for, I, I want you to. Tell us about your role and maybe a little bit about Ingram. I don’t want to pre assume some things, even though I know about Martha and Bronson back in the day. Sure, sure, [00:02:57] Peter Graber: sure. Go ahead. Um, so Peter Grabber, I actually run our, uh, Cisco and our Microsoft practice at Ingram Micro. Plus a couple other hats that I wear as well. Um, but Ingram Micro is a global distributor. Obviously. We have a, a huge scale from a distribution standpoint, multi-vendor, multi solution service generated organization. And, um, we’re, we’re taking the leap into a platform company, which is something that I’ll, I’ll dig into a little bit. [00:03:21] Vince Menzione: Fantastic. Yeah, and I think the really important to note, because back in the day, distribution was a very different thing than it’s today, right? We used to think about credit. Availability of product. Right. And shipping and all those things. Sure. That were so important to be a distributor and why people use distributors back in the day. [00:03:38] Peter Graber: Absolutely. And now all that still is valid, but it’s being rolled up into a platform now. Yeah. That will be pretty seamless. [00:03:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I want, we wanna hear about that, right? Yeah, we want to talk about that. So let’s talk about this, we’ll call the future of distribution. Right. As we, we, we go back to the old days and we need a product delivered. We needed credit, we needed all those things to have distribution. What’s changed and what is the future of distribution from your perspective? [00:04:02] Peter Graber: Yeah. So, so thanks Vincent. That is, um, I, I think it’s a great topic. It’s interesting, especially over the last couple days when we’ve talked about how our industry is evolving. And distribution definitely needs to be part of that discussion. So no longer is distribution, just about logistics, like you said, or moving product from point A to point B. Um, it has necessary to evolve beyond that. Um, so the way that we look at the future of distribution is really, um, based on, um, intelligence integration and enablement. And that’s a huge shift for every player in, in, in our space, from CSPs to MSPs and every partner type. Um, the one thing that I’ll say, and we, we talked about over the last couple days too, and it’s obvious that, um, our industry is exploding in complexity. Yes. And it’s something we all know and it’s not slowing down. But if you think about everything we’re dealing with in terms of, um, hybrid cloud environments, um, uh, multiple subscription, uh, models. Managed services, cybersecurity, LA layers, multi-vendor environments across the ecosystem of product. [00:05:09] Vince Menzione: Ai, [00:05:10] Peter Graber: ai, ai, ai. Absolutely. And we have something called, um, customer expectations that we continue need to manage ’cause those continue to rise and evolve. Um. So we also know too, that our partners, especially MSPs, aren’t just sourcing product anymore. They are building customized, full scalable solutions across a multitude of vendors and services. When you add all of that together, that’s a lot to manage and scale. Yeah. So that’s where the transformation of Ingram comes in. So we are no longer distributor. We are a platform first, experience driven company. And what is driving or at the heart of that transformation is Advantage. Advantage is our, uh, AI powered. A digital experience platform. Interesting. And it’s more than just a, a portal. It is an intelligent interface that stitches together commerce, insights, automation, and enablement. [00:06:11] Vince Menzione: Wow. Um, so I, ’cause I was gonna say marketplace, but it’s more than just even a marketplace from that perspective, right? [00:06:17] Peter Graber: Absolutely. It’s a very intelligent interface that is, provides a simplified experience. Um, one platform to handle all of your business. So when we look at, at the, at the future of distribution, we look at it really in three stages. It’s, it’s about the platform, right? So moving out of the, um, the back office from a distribution model standpoint, it into the front office as a growth engine for our partners, um, by offering digital experience tools. Uh, second stage is, uh, AI and automation. Um, AI for intelligence to predict needs and, uh, automation to, uh, reduce friction and create a smarter, faster path to market. [00:07:01] Vince Menzione: Fascinating. [00:07:02] Peter Graber: And then the third piece is ecosystem enablement. It’s all about providing the new, that the full solution that’s going to produce business outcomes and not just focus on the product. Advantage is built for all of that. [00:07:14] Vince Menzione: So tell us, take me through ecosystem enablement. To me that’s taking multiple partners. Uh, on the path to the same customer. Is that, is that what it looks like? [00:07:22] Peter Graber: Um, you know, the way I would define ecosystem enablement is when you look at the product portfolio and bringing it all together under one platform. So when you look at the, the span of hardware services, sas, um, et cetera, being able to provide that in one unified platform seamlessly. Um, without any friction. Yeah. [00:07:44] Vince Menzione: And I think one of the things that dis distinguishes Ingram is sort of the pedigree of the business in that you’re not just software, you’re software and hardware, you’re all things to the customer. Correct. And if I think about MSPs, the old days was that we worried about boxes and cables and things like that, right? That’s what you delivered. Now in this new world of ai, you’re delivering agent ai, you’re delivering. Uh, cloud, you’re delivering all the different solutions from ISPs. So they’re coming to your portal, they’re coming to your solution set, and they’re able to deliver all that to their customers. Is that, is that what I’m, the way it’s coming about a hundred percent. Yeah. [00:08:19] Peter Graber: Seamless, um, easy path to provide operational efficiency, but also strategic growth. [00:08:26] Vince Menzione: Nice. And it is strategic in that you’re able to support that partner. And add anything they need to do for that customer, not just one point of the, of the spear. Yeah. [00:08:39] Peter Graber: So if you look at the dis, the traditional distri distribution MO model that you talked about in the beginning, a hundred percent, that’s not going away. Right? And you know, obviously there’s a lot of talk about the cloud and. Subscription models, recurring revenue. That’s right. That’s certainly important. But hardware’s not going away either. It’s not going [00:08:58] Vince Menzione: away. I still need servers on site. I still need other technologies that I’m utilizing. [00:09:03] Peter Graber: A hundred percent. So how do you create a platform that brings all of that together under one seamless, intuitive interface that removes the friction for our partners, and that’s what Advantage does. [00:09:13] Vince Menzione: It’s fascinating. Tell us a little bit about how Ingram is structured, like number of partners, like size of the organization. We didn’t get into the details. Just I think from a framing perspective for everybody, it’d be good to cover some of that. I mean, from [00:09:26] Peter Graber: a, from a global standpoint, I mean I obviously we’re a $50 billion plus organization, um, you know, serving servicing. Thousands of, of partners, all, all partner types, whether it’s an SMB, mid-market enterprise, um, CSPs, MSPs, um, et cetera, you name it. Um, we, we service that, uh, full portfolio. [00:09:50] Vince Menzione: Let’s, I, I wanna jo, dive in on the solution. I think we have a graphic here about Xan. I was thinking maybe we could talk about how it’s helping the market and how it’s unique, uh, and maybe differentiate it a little bit too. ’cause I think this is an opportunity to stand out in a big way. Sure. Uh, Ingram brings a set of skills and capabilities. As well as, uh, a portfolio of vendors that you help scale and bring to the market, the s and b market. I think about specifically of one that’s going through incredible growth. I look at the MSP myself and I go, there is a tremendous transformational moment. Now, I’ve been in many of these events. I’ve seen some of and met with some of these MSPs and they’re living in the past. There are organizations that maybe worked in Telco, worked in other markets, break fix. But the customer is not there anymore. The customer is on this transformational journey with agentic AI and layering multiple is V solutions in and pulling it all together for a customer. Right? So this is what you do. [00:10:53] Peter Graber: Absolutely. And you know, MSPs need help. To simplify things. Yeah. You know, and that, that’s what’s unique about the, about what we’re bringing and how we’re helping the market in very simple terms, in very, very powerful ways. Because advantage just simplifies everything, creates a faster path to market and accelerates growth. At the end of the day, you know what, what Advantage is really doing, it’s taking a, a very fragmented, messy, um. Slow manual process and modernizing it under one platform. [00:11:28] Vince Menzione: It’s fascinating. [00:11:28] Peter Graber: Um, you know, if you think about, um, the things that the MSPs have to deal with on a daily basis, um. And, and, and we, we’ve kind of talked about it in terms of, um, you know, managing renewals, um, putting multi configurations together, figuring out how to order ’em, produce ’em. And they’re oftentimes, our MSPs are doing it through multiple systems Yeah. And manual processes. Um. Advantage, simplifies all that under one platform. It’s very intuitive. Um, it offers recommendations, cross-sell, upsell opportunities to help them grow their business. Um. So to to, to answer your question, there’s uh, a lot of things that are happening with Advantage, um, especially when we look across the industry and what’s unique about Ingram Micro and what we bring to the market is, um, our size and our scale. [00:12:23] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:12:23] Peter Graber: And the fact that, um, we have, uh, the ability to have a global reach, a vast, vast product portfolio. And, um, the ability to, um. To bring that all together under one platform is pretty powerful. [00:12:39] Vince Menzione: Under one platform, $50 billion company. Correct. Yeah. So that, that, that alone sets you up. Oops. I’m sorry. I’m just popping up a couple of slides here. Um, yeah, so, uh, incredible opportunity for our, our partners that, oops, I’m one slide ahead. I’m, I’m moving quickly. There’s something’s happening. Either it’s going fast or I’m going slow. One or the other. Um, maybe it’s the end of the day type of thing. Yeah, that’s right. But yeah, just incredible opportunity for partners to take advantage of this. Uh, these are organizations that are fairly less complex. Let’s say some of these MSPs are smaller, although we’re starting to see this aggregation. We have MSPs that are now growing to billion dollar companies. But then the ability to serve this customer, this SMB market, in a very unique way, is the way I’m, I’m, I’m reading what you’re having to say. [00:13:24] Peter Graber: Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. You think about MSPs and, and we, we talked about it in terms of. Needing to simplify everything. And if you, we, we talked about the multiple, multiple systems that they use and, and many times, um, they have their own systems, whether they’re ERPs or CRMs and things like that. Uh, one of the things that is very unique about Advantage is you can actually plug it in to your. You don’t have to. An MSP doesn’t have to go outta their system to take advantage of all of the goodness of an AI powered model. Um, you can plug it into your ERP, you can plug it into your RM, RMM, um, et cetera. And. Everything’s at your [00:14:04] Vince Menzione: fingertips. It’ll be seamlessly integrated with your, your complete solutions inside, inside your organization. So these organizations struggle in many respects as well, right? So these are companies that are the precipice of growth in my perspective. They are, there’s a huge opportunity for them to grow. There’s a market, this SMB market is going to, we had the conversation with Alistair talking about, we call it this smec, which is enterprise and channel, but that gets to be in that SMB market is, is relatively small, but they’re still very complex and, and how they need to drive it. A lot of these organizations do struggle with how to go to market though. Right. And so we were gonna, we were asking Ashley, Christine Mulcahy to join us up on stage. Christine is the founder and CEO of Content Gen. And her company helps a lot of the partners in your ecosystem to be more successful, to have a stronger go to market. So I’m excited to welcome Christine Mulcahy to join us. And we’re gonna continue the conversation ’cause we haven’t really spent a lot of time. We talked about go to market from the Microsoft lens. We talked about how partners can do a lot of things, but we really haven’t. Touched on this really important subject, uh, what we need to do with these, uh, with these organizations. So it’s, uh, great to see you, my friend. [00:15:20] Christine Mulcahy: Great, thank you. [00:15:21] Vince Menzione: And, uh, why don’t you introduce yourself, Christine, and what content Gen is all about and what your organization does. [00:15:26] Christine Mulcahy: Sure. So I’m Christine Muli. I’m the founder and CEO of Content Gen, which is. An automated content development platform really focused on the partner channel. I’ve been working at Microsoft and in the channel for the last 23 years, um, developing go to market materials, doing a lot of the consulting that you see here, um, in the workshops in the afternoon about that joint value proposition, the better together story, and we recognize that there’s a. Massive need for content marketing. You know, partners get their stories, they get their solutions built, they put them in the marketplaces. They have kind of those three bare minimum pieces of content to get them listed and think, why aren’t the leads coming? And why aren’t I, are my leads seeing many ROI? Where’s my revenue? And the fact is that that’s just, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You have to be able to then tell your story and not just your two customer story, but your two partner story. And we’ve heard a lot about, um, marketplaces and all of the different, uh, partners in those marketplaces. You’ve got your platform partners, you’ve got your integration partners, your build with partners, and your reseller channel partners, and they all. Need something different from you. They, you’ve gotta align your messaging with the platform partners. And then you’ve got to tell a better together, you know, what makes us sticky? How could we go, uh, um, attack customer sales together, and then what’s the, you know, what’s in it for resellers? And you need different stories for each of them, and that requires a different set of content for each of them. And content is. Ridiculously expensive. Yeah. ’cause you need a dozen pieces of content to lead a buyer through a journey or a partner through a journey. And so, um, it’s fantastic that AI has come along, but you’re still, you know, if you’re just using Chad GPT to create content, you still have to create every single piece of content. And so content gen massively simplifies that process for partners and helps them create content together without all of the back and forth and rev cycles and what have you. And so I love the term you were talking about earlier, the, um, ecosystem enablement. Yeah. Somebody should trademark that because that’s what we need to do. We’ve gotta enable, you know, you’ve gotta tell your two customer story, you’ve gotta enable your partners, and then you’ve gotta enable your sellers to know how to sell your solution. Because that’s the magic of these ecosystems. Mm-hmm. Is that you can connect all those people, but until you tell them what, you can’t just say, here’s my two customer brochure. Go sell it. Right. They need to know why. What’s that value prop? [00:17:59] Vince Menzione: So how do you help partners work with organizations like Ingram and their solution and platform? [00:18:05] Christine Mulcahy: So we, you know, we have done all of our work in the Microsoft Partner channel in the past. Yes, yes. Um, but really, you know, the, this new platform at Ingram is fantastic because it’s not only a marketplace, but it’s connecting that partner to partner story and providing opportunities for partners to work together. So really, I mean, the tool can be used, content gen can be used by, um. Um, partners in channels where we can work with Ingram and say, okay, well what’s the services story that you want to put out there through your channel? Mm-hmm. And then we can build that into the tool and say, okay, so if you need proof points or you need, you know, industry trends, or you wanna really tell the story of your. Services, then the partners can go out, build their own content. It’s partner branded, it’s partner, you know, look and feel messaging led, and then they can pull in those, um, those messaging pieces so that they can align with their platform partner and tell the story. [00:19:05] Vince Menzione: Very fascinating. Fascinating. So, um, how should MSPs and Partners position derive success with Microsoft Ingram? How would you, how would you position them for success? [00:19:19] Christine Mulcahy: Well, I think that. The ecosystem is moving so fast and every time we turn around there’s a new solution popping up. Mm-hmm. And what I have learned, you know, I’ve been consulting on the channel for decades, but now on the opposite side as a partner, um, trying to navigate it, it’s a whole new world. And so I would say I’ve learned, you know, also being a software developer is very different from being a marketing consultant. Um, so I’ve learned that you’ve learned [00:19:47] Vince Menzione: that. Front end, [00:19:48] Christine Mulcahy: there’s a huge need. You know, we kind of talked about like Jay Mc, Bain’s concept of the seven partners that you need to work with. Yes. [00:19:54] Vince Menzione: The seven seats at the table we like to talk in about. Yeah. [00:19:58] Christine Mulcahy: And I, it just, I, I knew, but I didn’t know, I didn’t internalize it like I should have gone out and looked for help in the. In the ecosystem long before I ended up developing with the developer that I worked with. Right. Or, um, at the last Ultimate Partner event, I was sitting at a table with Cloud Atlas and Justin asked me, well, how did you, um, who helped you get listed in the marketplace? And I thought, well, we had to go figure it out ourselves. I didn’t, it didn’t even occur to me that there were partners that could have helped me with that, you know? So I’d say, you know, if you’re. Any type of partner in the ecosystem buy into these platforms because they, there’s a lot of smart people building them and doing all the work for you so that you don’t have to figure that out as part of the rest of your biz dev strategy. And you can just focus on what you do well. [00:20:43] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:20:43] Christine Mulcahy: It’ll change your life. [00:20:45] Vince Menzione: So we’ve got the best, like a better together story here. It feels like. I think so too, Peter. Yep. We’ve got this incredible platform that you’ve built that allows these MSPs to get into the s and b market more effectively. Mm-hmm. And there’s. Tens, hundreds of thousands of these organizations in the SMB market, right, that have certain size and scale. And then Christine, we’ve got your capabilities to help reach those, reach those audiences more effectively. [00:21:10] Peter Graber: Mm-hmm. [00:21:11] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:21:12] Peter Graber: I, you know, I, and I would say this too, is, um. You know, there, there’s two things you talk about enablement and things like that. You know, when you, when you break it down, it come, I, I think it comes down to two things for a, a partner is simplified management and, and strategic growth, smarter growth. And once you solve for those from a simplified management, taking the friction out of the business and helping them from an operational flow standpoint, and then if you can point them in the right direction with AI and insights and how they grow their business. Mm-hmm. Yes. Is those are the two biggest points. And then you bring enablement on top of that. Mm-hmm. In terms of continuing to grow their business from a, a, a product standpoint, a knowledge standpoint, um, understanding where to align their resources more effectively. Mm-hmm. Put marketing on top of that and that’s a, a very good recipe for success. [00:22:06] Vince Menzione: Sounds, sounds terrific. Actually. And I think this market opportunity is huge. Right now. Ingram is coming about at very differentiated. You’re, you’re providing all the tools and resources I need as an MSP to be successful both within your platform as well as the vendors supporting your platform. And then content gen is helping me go to market in more effective ways. [00:22:28] Christine Mulcahy: Yeah, and I think one of the other topics that I just had in the hallway conversation, um, was that, you know, content marketing is extremely expensive. Yeah. To create a campaign, you know, you’re spending $30,000 on your two customer campaign and then another 30 on your two partner, and then the messaging isn’t right. And you need to tweak it and you’ve gotta go. And agencies are expensive and we can’t afford that anymore, you know? There was just a Gartner, um, industry trends report the other day that said, by 2028, 70% of marketing budgets will be spent on offline events like this. [00:22:58] Intro: Interesting. Yeah. You know, but you [00:22:58] Christine Mulcahy: still have to have a digital presence. Yeah. You still have to have content to tell your story. They’re just not going to. Spend that much anymore. So you’ve gotta bring those costs down. And with a tool like Content Gen, you can create all that content and then you can ab test it. And if you wanna tweak it, you go and just modify it a little bit or clone that campaign and then change the messaging for the partner audience and just, you know, you can keep telling the story in different ways over and over again because you’ve got the content all there already in your platform. [00:23:28] Vince Menzione: Peter, where can partners in the room and other partners watching us learn more about your solution and how do they, how do they engage with you and the team? [00:23:38] Peter Graber: So I think most partners that have a relationship with Ingram know who their main points of contact are from a, from a sales perspective. Okay. Um. You know, I, I think the best way to learn more about that obviously is you can Google, you can look it up online, et cetera. Yeah. But I think the best way to do that is to contact your Ingram Micro Associates that you deal with on a daily basis, and they can walk you through not only what we’re doing from an advantage and platform standpoint, but all of the services that we’re bringing to market, all of the tools that we’re equipping our MSPs with to help them grow their market, um, more strategically. There is a boatload of information that we can download. I could probably spend a half a day talking about everything that we can bring to market from a standpoint. [00:24:23] Vince Menzione: Very cool. But we can Google all that information and get it. We can bing it too. ’cause we’re in a Microsoft facility. They still bing around. But How about from your side, Christine? I. [00:24:32] Christine Mulcahy: Uh, grab me in the hallway content gen.com. Uh, you can go take a, you can sign up for a free trial right now. Yeah. Um, there’s contact information on the website. We can do a demo and get, and you’re both [00:24:44] Vince Menzione: utilizing ai really. We talked about AI so much. Gentech ai, you’re both utilizing AI and Gentech AI to drive these solution sets mm-hmm. And make for a better experience for these partners, right. Ly. So you’re both doing that in a big way? Yes. Yes. Great. Yep. I want to thank you both. Uh, this has been incredible in terms of sharing the information. I think there’s an awareness about what you’re doing, what Ingram’s doing, what content Jen is doing, and we are about lunchtime and I know that people are like really dying to eat. It’s Friday afternoon, it’s been a long week, and I want to thank all the people for sticking around and spending some time. I want to thank you both for Absolutely. Thank you, spending time with us today. So thank you so much for being here. Thank. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Partner. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate partner experience where leaders come to learn from each other. It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge. With insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started. We’ve got big plans for you this summer as we’re taking this studio, and we’ll be hosting livestream and digital events here, and it’s all coming to you soon. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level. Join Peter Grabber from Ingram Micro and Christine Mulcahy from Content Gen as they unveil a powerful synergy transforming the MSP and SMB landscape. Peter details Ingram Micro’s evolution from a traditional distributor to a “platform first, experience-driven company” with their AI-powered Advantage platform, seamlessly integrating commerce, insights, automation, and enablement for multi-vendor, multi-solution environments. Christine then introduces Content Gen, an automated content development platform leveraging AI to drastically reduce the cost and complexity of content marketing for partners, enabling them to tell compelling “better together” stories and accelerate their go-to-market. This session highlights how these innovations are providing MSPs with simplified management and strategic growth, crucial for navigating the complex world of AI, hardware, and software solutions.

Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. Join Vince and Hayley McSpirit from PAX8 as they explore the immense opportunities within the Small and Medium Business (SMB) space, particularly through the lens of cloud marketplaces. This session delves into how PAX8 is disrupting the traditional channel by being a cloud-first organization , empowering MSPs and SMBs to rapidly adopt and leverage AI, often quicker than larger enterprises. Discover the evolving role of MSPs , the power of community-first approaches , and how marketplaces are becoming the critical platform for delivering comprehensive, integrated solutions to this underserved yet highly lucrative market. https://youtu.be/4lcMHcoiejE Key Takeaways The SMB market represents a significant and often underserved opportunity for cloud and AI adoption. PAX8 differentiates itself as a cloud-first marketplace, focusing on providing best-of-breed technology and a complete customer lifecycle for MSPs and SMBs. SMBs and MSPs are at the forefront of AI transformation, capable of adopting and transforming with AI much faster than larger enterprises. The traditional channel is evolving, with MSPs increasingly becoming software development companies (ISVs) and system integrators, driven by new tech opportunities. Community-first approaches and strong partner engagement are crucial for supporting MSPs in their growth and adoption of new technologies like AI agents. Marketplaces are becoming the primary vehicle for delivering integrated solutions and enabling new business models, including the reselling of AI agents by MSPs. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. . Key Tags: SMB market , MSPs , PAX8 , cloud marketplace , AI transformation , channel disruption , cloud-first , digital natives , software development companies , ISVs , community-first , customer lifecycle , agentic AI , business growth , technology adoption , partner ecosystem , Microsoft , innovation , procurement, cybersecurity, data security , unified solutions Transcription: [00:00:00] Hayley McSpirit: And as the new wave of AI as well has come in and, and we see MSPs and SMBs at the forefront of that, to be able to transform far quicker honestly than enterprises. And so we think that we are best placed to, to be doing that. [00:00:18] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, [00:00:24] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together. Managed services will be one and a half times larger because it is the customer buying behavior that has created a need for all of us to rethink our models. Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. [00:00:56] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner Live at Microsoft Redmond Campus, our most powerful event. Yet, over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room. This episode featuring Haley McSpirit, the SVP of Pax eight, brings us right to the edge of what’s next in the SMB segment. Let’s dive in. So this is gonna be an incredible session. We have, uh, the next half hour or so, you’ve heard me talk about this moment right now in the SMB space in a big way. We’ve talked about marketplaces, the marketplace moment. It’s continuing to evolve. You heard about, about the incredible investments you see. You know, it’s kind of the tip of the spear with Cy talking about it, but you also heard Sandy talk about this as well, just this incredible investment opportunity around marketplaces. There’s another area where marketplaces are having another significant impact, and this is in the SMB business, right? We thought about the s and i, I’ll just share, as a Microsoft executive, we didn’t quite know how to manage this SMB business when I was a, a partner leader GM at Microsoft, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s handled very well. But there are organizations that do an even more incredible job and there’s a huge opportunity in this MSP space. In fact, there’s gonna be a workshop on MSPs. Hopefully you’ll be able to attend that session. Uh, but we wanted to get the market leaders in the room and we were very fortunate to have PAX eight in the room. And Haley McSpirit is gonna join me up on stage really talking about the future. Of SMBs and this marketplace opportunity ahead of us. And for those of you who don’t know PAX eight, I’ll have Haley take us through it. But I’m, I’m delighted to invite ha Mc spirit to the stage. Great to have her here. She didn’t have to travel as far as some of us. Great to see you, my friend. Good to see you. Uh, you’re gonna be here and I’m gonna be on this side of you. Thank you. Uh, we got to work together at Microsoft, so it’s great to have you here. [00:03:04] Hayley McSpirit: Thank you for having me. [00:03:04] Vince Menzione: Um, you were in an incredibly innovative portion of Microsoft. I’ll tell you. You tell your story. Yeah. But, uh, we got to interact when I was, uh, after I left Microsoft, in fact, and was leading a large ISVs organization. So, so great to have you in the room. [00:03:19] Hayley McSpirit: Yeah. Thank you for having me, uh, [00:03:19] Vince Menzione: up on the live stream as well. Yeah. Uh, great opportunity for discussion today, so I’m so glad you could join us. [00:03:25] Hayley McSpirit: Thank you. Thank you for having me. So where would you like to start? [00:03:29] Vince Menzione: Um, you know, I’ve been talking about PAX eight. Mm-hmm. I, I do think that PAX eight leaned in, in a very significant way on the SMB market. Uh, how are you different than the rest of the channel, though? And it seems like the evolution of PAX eight is important here and how the company evolved and where, where it’s going. But, uh, you’re making waves in the market as well recently, and I think there’s some conversation we’ll have. Uh, we won’t trip any wires in this conversation, but, uh, let’s know that you’ve made a big noise in the market, which I think has been heard. Right. And, um, how does PAX eight see itself differently and what is the industry getting wrong about PAX eight? [00:04:08] Hayley McSpirit: Yeah, well, so yeah, let’s, let’s say we like to make some waves and, uh, we’ve recently launched. Some brand campaigns Yes. Out there. Um, to disrupt the market. We are really going back to our roots in terms of how we like to be a disruptor, how we like to have a big place. And um, actually I think also. Put focus on the SMB. Yes. So the SMB market is, um, an area which we thrive in, and which we see a huge opportunity. And so where we see a differentiator for us is we truly are a marketplace and we truly bring together what our partners, um, are looking for in terms of that best of breed technology and that complete customer lifecycle, which is the piece that I heard Nicole talk about earlier around how we really need to continue Dr. Driving that. Um, and I think, you know, PAX Eight’s different because we are a cloud first organization as well, so we’re very much focused on that. And as the new wave of AI as well has come in and, and we see MSPs and SMBs at the forefront of that to be able to transform far quicker honestly than enterprises. And so we think that we are best placed to, to be doing that as well. [00:05:20] Vince Menzione: Yeah. You mentioned first of all the cloud. Approach is incredibly significant. And we’ve had this conversation backstage. Uh, I’ve been to some of the events where some of the SMB market comes, uh, some of the MSP market comes to, and it really isn’t cloud first. It isn’t cloud significant. Mm-hmm. And I’ve been in the room speaking at some of these groups and some of these meetings where a lot of these organizations are kind of playing in the past. Right. And, um. It’s really great to see the embrace that Pax has had. And I’ve, I haven’t been to, I’m, I’m hoping to come to your event this June. Oh, I hope to see, yeah. I’m gonna be there. This, it’s a great event this June, but I’ve heard they’re really happening, so I thought maybe you could talk about that a little bit. It’s almost like a, I don’t wanna use the word cult ’cause that’s always misinterpreted. Yeah. But there is a very strong, uh, engagement with the, with the partners in, at your events. [00:06:06] Hayley McSpirit: Absolutely. So, um. I mean, it is a great event. I think that’s an opportunity to come together. And Community First has been such a driver for PAX eight around the MSPs out there and being able to support them in the enablement of their journey. Uh, and so we’ve, we’ve. Put a lot into that as a way of bringing partners together, help them understand where the market’s going. Um, we’ve talked, uh, you, I’ve heard our CEO Scott Chaison talk about the AgTech AI and the future and had some very bold statements last year on stage around ai, which actually has sort of moved forward very quickly and, and so interesting. A little bit more of a visionary in terms of seeing where it’s going. And I think that event is a way of us really. Starting off, it coincides a little bit with the end of the Microsoft fiscal year, beginning of the new ones, which is helpful as a big partner of ours, and we’re very grateful. And to be able to build that momentum into the next 12 months of supporting those partners through growth. I mean, it’s, a lot of the sessions are focused on academy and focused on how do we help them build their business, um, and think about how do they integrate other solutions, um, as they grow. So. Yeah, it’s a great opportunity. It’s a great place to, um, come and hang out and spend time and get to know people, but also an opportunity to learn. And one of the things that you may have seen or, or be aware of is we also launched last year our Voyager Alliances program, which is our way of helping partners see where they are on their journey. [00:07:40] Intro: Interesting. And [00:07:41] Hayley McSpirit: so that’s very much. Uh, helps, helps signify to the market and to our partners, how we can help them build their business and what’s available to them within the Pax PAX eight ecosystem of services and, and other things to take advantage of. [00:07:55] Vince Menzione: So, PAX Eight’s not been in the market for a hundred years. Uh, you came into a mature marketplace. Mm-hmm. Probably less than a decade, maybe a decade ago, [00:08:03] Hayley McSpirit: around about that. Yep. [00:08:05] Vince Menzione: And what has made PAX eight. Different, like, how does PAX eight think about the market differently? How, how, how have you, how’s your approach been different or unique? [00:08:13] Hayley McSpirit: Yeah. So, um. A distribution is an interesting word inside of the walls of Pax A. And we like to say that we are not distribution. Okay? We aren’t, we are a marketplace first. And uh, we have been very bold about how we position that in the market. Yes, and how we think about what we offer. And the reason why we see ourselves as differently is because we’re founded on a marketplace and a platform. So if you hear any of those, the terminology, and when we think about the marketplace, that is the true moment of where the e-commerce comes together with the fulfillment and the whole lifecycle of that from a licensing point of view, as well as product features and functions. But then the extensibility of our platform is where we really see the difference. So where we focus on the integration with third parties, where we are looking at. The enablement of what we call embedded marketplaces. So how do we help others come towards PAX eight and really, um, embrace the opportunity to enter into the SMB space, which for some is a little bit daunting or a little bit expensive. Um, if you’re looking at building out into the true S of SMB. And so that’s where we see ourselves as different to the market. Okay. And that we are thinking truly about that and then underpinning it with ai. [00:09:25] Vince Menzione: So the value you’re bringing to the partners software development. Companies mm-hmm. And the like that want to enter the space is you’re helping guide them into that SMB market. [00:09:34] Hayley McSpirit: Absolutely. I [00:09:35] Vince Menzione: look at, I look at some of the big ISVs that are in the room that have been, that’ll be talking at our event, and a lot of them don’t have a very strong SMB focus. [00:09:43] Hayley McSpirit: Yep. [00:09:43] Vince Menzione: So that’s where you come in. You help guide them through that process. [00:09:46] Hayley McSpirit: Yeah, we do. So there is sort of two ways of looking at it when we think about SMB and what PAX eight can offer. Yeah. One is, um, those partners as MSPs who want to serve the SMB on a, on a SMB size and stature themselves. So how do we help them continue to grow their business directly as our hero in this, in this story. But then when we look at those, um, software houses, software development houses, or. Companies or ISVs or digital natives. I think we’ve got lots of different words, but however we want to term it, um, and look at how they want to enter into the SMB market or perhaps we. We’ve configure how they think about the SMB market. We see ourselves in a pivotable spot because we understand we live and breathe it every day. I mean, where I would say is we, we serve the underserved in terms of that market segment. When I talk to Microsoft, they, they share that, you know, we are really thinking about SMB and I love Microsoft Daily. Um, but when I say, what’s SMB, they’re like. Well, a hundred seats and above, and I’m like, yeah, a hundred seats is, is still a little big when we think about our average customers. So there are lots of really small businesses out there. Um, and so what we’re, what we’re positioning is, um. Help us, uh, let us help you by being your SMB custodian. Let’s be your SMB as a service solution. How we can create either a modular approach that suits your business, um, or a complete package of, of service offerings that we can give to you, uh, that enables you to essentially. Park that SMB business outside of your day to day, um, and alleviate some of that overhead costs for yourselves, and then we would partner to run that. But [00:11:28] Vince Menzione: Interesting. You [00:11:29] Hayley McSpirit: know, you can take it different ways. [00:11:30] Vince Menzione: Yeah, no, I, it’s, it’s very, it’s fascinating to me, in fact, because, um. Nicole was on first this morning mm-hmm. Talking about this market, right. This small medium market and SM BSMB market. Mm-hmm. And that is, it is a rich opportunity area. It’s, and that, uh, most partners shy away from it because they don’t know how to address it. Mm-hmm. Or they try and address, address it with the wrong set of skills or the right, wrong set of investments. Mm-hmm. Like direct sellers. Mm-hmm. Going on a hundred. Person organizations mm-hmm. Are pretty small. So there’s some things you do within the organization to help drive that. Right. How do you, how do you, how do you address the, let’s talk about the SM SMBs themselves. Yeah. The, uh, let’s talk about them as a group of organizations. How do you think about the MSPs themselves? [00:12:15] Hayley McSpirit: The MSPs or the SMBs, or. Well, [00:12:17] Vince Menzione: let’s talk about MSPs. I’m sorry. Yeah, no, that’s okay. I was conflating the terminology here, but these are, these are organizations that are managed service providers. [00:12:25] Hayley McSpirit: That’s right. Yep. [00:12:26] Vince Menzione: And the, the kind of the growth of the SP market started with. The, the hardware business. Right. It was like, I have a laptop or I have like a 50 laptops and somebody needs to come service me. [00:12:37] Intro: Yep, [00:12:38] Vince Menzione: yep. And it was very old, old it, old school it mm-hmm. Is the way I would look at it. Mm-hmm. How do you think about that market today? [00:12:45] Hayley McSpirit: Yeah, so it’s an interesting one. Um, I actually heard the, the term, if you’ve heard some that boots slammers or like [00:12:51] Vince Menzione: boot slams. [00:12:52] Hayley McSpirit: I think it’s that car, but you know, like [00:12:53] Vince Menzione: it’s not this type of boot. Okay. No. Maybe I’m, maybe [00:12:56] Hayley McSpirit: it’s like my British isms coming out, but essentially, you know. The, the traveling salesman kind? Yeah, the original, uh, reseller. The, how do I just fix break, fix? What’s that? You know, going through and just servicing individual customers with, um, immediate support needs. Um, and then as you look now and the evolution of the MSP, it really is that complete services package. Yeah. Um, and we have some. Really fascinating conversations right now going on with some of our, um, MSPs who are coming to us and saying, look, AI agents, we, we get it. We’re on board. We wanna do it. Help. Help us create those. Mm-hmm. And help us resell those through your marketplace. Interesting, interesting. And how quickly can you do that Pax? Eight. And why are you not doing it now? Right. Like so, which we are, we’re starting, we are moving very quickly and we’ve created a, um, internal AI transformation office where we are research development creating. And how do we repackage that quickly and. Even faster, uh, so that we can provide that context. And also guidance for the MSPs because they’re, they look to us and say, well, you know, Microsoft and others, they’re out there talking about the world of ai. Um, help us become that. I mean, we truly believe, um, and a year ago I would’ve said, I don’t think I do believe, but now I do that some one day that there’ll be a completely autonomous. MSP that will not have, as an AI agent, that will not have people, it will just be running on its own. So I think interesting. I think we gotta be moving with the times, and I think that’s where the MSP evolution of that next generation of MSP is coming faster than ever. So [00:14:37] Vince Menzione: it makes sense. And it also from a scale perspective makes a tremendous amount of sense. We had Sandy and Pat up here a little bit earlier talking about Agen ai. Mm-hmm. Yep. And some of these ISVs and some of these organizations and. Also how ISVs and sis are emerging capabilities. Yep. In some respects, you, you replace that SI component, right? You take that ISV solution set. And layer it down to the MSP so they can deliver it to the customer. Is that what I understand? [00:15:02] Hayley McSpirit: Yeah. There’s that. I mean, I also think that the lines, the, the lines between distinction of partner types is blurring. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I think, I think that’s, no, but I think it’s, it’s interesting to see, I mean, when you, when you reference. Uh, the MSP now evolving. I actually think the MSP is becoming an ISV and is becoming a, a systems integrator. And they, they’re becoming all of these things because of the opportunity out there with what’s available in terms of the tech and also in terms of what the market’s asking. Um, and I think that SMBs, SMBs size of organization and MSPs serving the SB are the ones that are gonna be there first. Um, I think that you, you see copilot chat and we. We engage with co-pilot chat and we think it’s great. We’re, we’re customer zero on co-pilot, so we are all in. Very nice. Um, but the other component is we, we are seeing our MSPs actually move past chat because they’re like, yeah, well I don’t, I’m, I’m all in. Right. So I don’t need to start with the chat. Yeah. Whereas for the enterprise, that’s a little different. There’s a need to kind of bring that phased approach in because you’ve got a lot more investment to make. You’ve got a lot more processes to deal with. Yeah. So yeah, we’re kind of all in there. [00:16:15] Vince Menzione: So where’s it heading? I. So talk about the future [00:16:18] Hayley McSpirit: robots. No, I dunno. Where is it heading? Um, I mean, it might, uh, the, uh, you know, for us it’s how do we nail the, what is the value proposition of AI solutions for s SMBs and for Ms. P serving. The SMB and how quickly can we get there and how can we ensure that it is safe? And the secureness to that. I think there was a conversation earlier about the data and getting the data right. I mean, that’s our number one blocker out there. Um, making sure that data’s secure and data is right, so we can make it, make headway in that. But, um, we we’re, we’re very much in the, in the exciting space, so. [00:17:01] Vince Menzione: So, um, I know you’re gonna talk about this event that’s coming up in June, which I’m thrilled to join you at. Uh, tell us more about it and why the partners here and that are watching us on the livestream should join us. [00:17:14] Hayley McSpirit: Yeah, absolutely. So Beyond is our flagship event and uh, it’s taken place in Denver. The eighth through 10th. Um, we also have beyond, uh, in EA as well, which happens later on in the year, in the October timeframe. And this is our, I mean, it’s, it’s already 75% sold out, which is fabulous. Wow. That’s fantastic. We are just really excited to, to have such an amazing group of, uh, partners attend and, you know, signed up as soon as, as beyond was over last year. We have, um, over a hundred ISVs, our vendors, um, participating. We, um, really. We’ve brought in some amazing speakers, uh, in terms of industry speakers. [00:17:57] Vince Menzione: I’ve heard some names, some very interesting names. Yeah, Malcolm Gladwell was with us last [00:18:00] Hayley McSpirit: year and, um, some Olympians as well on stage, which is always wonderful. But then in terms of the topic and content, it’s, it is about bringing the community together. It is about talking about the trends and really how do we enable those MSPs, um, and what can they do to, to dig into the, into the data as well as. Be hands on. So there’s a lot of enablement sessions. It’s a great opportunity to really get a sense of what SMB communities are all about. Um, and it’s just, it’s just a really fun, I mean, I’ve been to, and I’m sure you have, I’ve been to a lot of Microsoft events, which are I have, which fabulous. Um, but I think we do it [00:18:38] Vince Menzione: better. Yeah. You’ve got some amazing speakers this year as well. Yeah. Got [00:18:41] Hayley McSpirit: some good speakers. [00:18:42] Vince Menzione: I don’t want to, I don’t want to tip my hat that I know about some of the names that’ll be there. [00:18:46] Hayley McSpirit: I know, but it’s perfect. It, [00:18:48] Vince Menzione: yeah. And then we also have our Ms. P event, uh, a session that’s going on this afternoon and tomorrow. So hopefully you’ll have a chance to jump in with some of our leaders. [00:18:55] Hayley McSpirit: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because [00:18:56] Vince Menzione: I do think there’s a huge opportunity for organizations to come on board in a bigger way. [00:19:00] Hayley McSpirit: I, [00:19:01] Vince Menzione: yeah, [00:19:01] Hayley McSpirit: would love those conversations. I mean, we are really seeing an interest with those, those enterprise ISVs that are just like, I would love to have a conversation about how I can enter this SMB space and we can do everything from design consulting to pre and post sale to customer lifecycle management. It’s, it’s. S the whole package, um, of that SMB as a service that we, we just would love to, you know, have more conversations, engage and, and also learn like what else are we seeing out there? What else can we learn from others? So. Yeah. [00:19:31] Vince Menzione: Well, we’re delighted to have you today. Thank you. Thank, hopefully you get some time to spend. I know there’s a lot of networking happening outside this room as well as inside this room, so hopefully we get to spend some time with our ultimate partner members here today. I’m [00:19:41] Hayley McSpirit: excited to do so. Yeah. Thank you for having me. So great to have [00:19:43] Vince Menzione: you, Hailey. [00:19:44] Hayley McSpirit: Yeah, [00:19:44] Vince Menzione: thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. So great to have you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Eye to Partnering. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy If you haven’t yet. Now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate Partner Experience where leaders come to learn from each other. It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, realtime education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started. We’ve got big plans for you this summer as we’re taking this studio, and we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here, and it’s all coming to you soon. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level.

Our First LiveStream From the Boca Studio Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. Join industry leaders Vince Menzione, Scott Sacket, Per Werngren, and Nabil Aitonumeziane as they discuss the evolution of MSPs, the critical role of AI readiness, the power of strategic partnerships within the Microsoft ecosystem, and the growing importance of co-selling and digital marketplaces. Learn actionable strategies for profitability, navigating new buying behaviors, and becoming an “ultimate MSP” by focusing on outcomes, building trust, and embracing community. https://youtu.be/Z9towXE6hfk?si=Gjy11ItjqSN8yxf_ Key Takeaways The MSP landscape is undergoing “tectonic shifts” driven by cloud adoption, AI integration, and evolving customer buying behaviors through marketplaces. Successful MSPs must evolve beyond the “break-fix” model to become strategic partners, focusing on business outcomes rather than just technology. AI presents significant opportunities for MSPs, but requires immediate adoption and internal training to avoid being left behind. Strategic partnerships, particularly within the Microsoft ecosystem, are crucial for MSP growth, emphasizing mutual value and trust. Standardizing offerings and specializing in specific technologies or solutions can significantly improve MSP profitability and success. Engaging with communities and peer groups like Ultimate Partner provides invaluable networking, learning, and collaboration opportunities for MSPs. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: MSP,Managed Services,AI,Artificial Intelligence,Microsoft ecosystem,cloud transformation,hyperscalers,marketplace,co-selling,partner strategy,Nabil Aitonumeziane,Scott Sacket,Per Werngren,Vince Menzione,AppPoint,FSI strategy,Ultimate Partner,channel growth,digital buying,data security,governance,copilot,agentic AI,recurring revenue,business model,profitability,trusted advisors,community building,IT business,technology evolution,strategic partnerships Transcript: [00:00:00] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We, we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, [00:00:08] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together. Managed services will be one and a half times larger because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. [00:00:42] Vince Menzione: Good morning. I’m Vince Manzione, the CEO of Ultimate partner, and the host of the Ultimate Partner Podcast. And I’m thrilled to be back in the studio here in Boca Raton. We have a lot of stories about Boca Raton. It is really the seminal point in the start of this ecosystem we all care about. It’s also where we host the Ultimate Eye to Partnering podcast where we host our events, and we’re gonna do our very first live stream here today. Uh, it’s designed for you to achieve incredible success as a partner. We’re working with hyperscalers like Microsoft. Our topic today is becoming the ultimate MSP. This is a topic that we care deeply about as, as our guests do as well. And each of my guests that are here today, I am so privileged to have members of our community, friends, uh, people that I truly appreciate and admire who are here now, who feel the same and are so passionate on this subject. I wanna invite them each to say, introduce themselves and say a couple words about why they believe this MSP moment is so unique and why it’s so relevant to all of us today. So s Scott, good to see you. [00:01:49] Scott Sacket: Great to see you. So exciting to be here alive, right? Gotta be careful. So for those who have, I’ve not met yet. My name is Scott Sackett and I’m the senior Vice President of Partner Strategy at AAV Point. And, um, I’ve been in the channel ecosystem now for over 25 years. I was a partner, of course, I’ve been at AAV point, leading channel now for many years, um, almost 20 years. And, um, this moment’s incredible, right? Um, you know, cloud really democratized what, what partners could do. And how to build up, um, and, and support many customers, small and large. And, and today, MSPs really are, um, the linchpin to how we build and, and, uh, manage it. So it’s an incredible moment for them and, and it’s only getting, uh, more important as things change and grow and evolve. So exciting times. [00:02:36] Vince Menzione: I love the linchpin comment ’cause it really holds it all together. I love that. And p Wgre, another great friend of ours, p uh, please take a moment and introduce yourself to our audience or all of our friends that are watching [00:02:47] Per Werngren: us today on the line. Yes, thank you, Ian. It is a privilege to be here. So I’m the CEO of Idex. We do AI and Azure operations. And why do I love MSPs? Well, I’ve been doing subscriptions all my life, and recurring revenue is such a beautiful thing because you start small, you sell a little bit. You sell more and you don’t lose what you have sold. You just keep on building and it all piles up. Beautiful business model. [00:03:16] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it. [00:03:19] Nabil Aitonumeziane: Right. Hi, great to see [00:03:20] Vince Menzione: you, my friend. [00:03:21] Nabil Aitonumeziane: Thanks for having me. I mean, it’s been, uh, amazing coming to Florida. To the Hot Florida. But, uh, I’m Nabil Ian. I’m the president of FSI strategy. We’re an MSP. Uh, we specialize in Microsoft. We’re a, uh, managed service provider, but, uh, we specialize a hundred percent in Microsoft, uh, technologies. So thanks for having Well, [00:03:41] Vince Menzione: and you are an MSP, right? Yes. We talk about this all the time and how you’ve evolved your company. You a case study. We are, but [00:03:48] Nabil Aitonumeziane: we are not Your traditional MSP, which is. Managed service provider. We are more of the modernization solution partner ’cause we are trying to, uh, live in the AI era. Yeah. World. So we had to change our name as well. How to help our customers, uh, move forward with this technology is moving very fast. So [00:04:10] Vince Menzione: I’m gonna frame that and we’ll go right into, I’m gonna, I have, I’m gonna hit you with the first question, but you know, we talk about this tectonic shifts. That we’ve seen in our world, in our lives, and we’ve been talking about transformation and ultimate partner for many years. It started back in my Microsoft days, 10 years leading the partner business for public sector and growing that organization during the clouds transformation. But we’ve been talking about a, a, the hyperscalers really at the center and really the, we talk about Boca, the fact that Bill Gates came down here in 1981 and signed an agreement with IBM really sparked this ecosystem. There’s over a half a million just in the Microsoft ecosystem of partners. Probably well over a million if you put Google Cloud and AWS and, and you look at that center of the universe and we’ll talk about that center and how there are now seven seats at the table. But then, you know, we talked about the last couple years, AI really became a thing. Chat, GBT started it all back in November, 2022. And now, you know, we’ve had this incredible transformation that we’re gonna talk about, why it’s so fundamental today. And why it’s even more important, and then also how marketplaces are so fundamental to success today that the buying behaviors have changed. The millennials, the new buying persona, and they buy from, they’re very comfortable in marketplaces. We’re all more comfortable now hitting our phone three times and having a box show up at the end of the day, right? We’re all used to digital buying and it’s becoming the buy. The buying process has changed dramatically. And the hyperscalers have all embraced this marketplace. But then what do you need? Fundamentally, in order to have success, you need to have engagements with those sellers. And that’s why co-selling is so critical and important. We’re gonna talk about that as also an important component. And then the hype. We talk about this ecosystem and why you can’t go alone. And then we, we’ve been around ultimate partner. We created ultimate partner. ’cause we recognize that success is all about coming together. And I talk about the seven seats at the table because the buying persona is May now making a decision about driving a solution. They’re not buying a one-off vendor solution. They’re creating a solution set, and they need multiple vendors to come together. And this conversation today is how MSPs need to embrace these tectonic shift. Nabeel, you’ve owned this successful MSP for many years. You said 25 years you’ve been in this business, which is incredible. Long [00:06:29] Nabil Aitonumeziane: time [00:06:29] Vince Menzione: you don’t even look old enough to have been No. Been doing this for 25 years. Tell us what successes look like for you and your organization and what has the change been like? Can you speak to the change that we’ve been seeing? [00:06:40] Nabil Aitonumeziane: So we have seen the big changes in the past 10 years when it comes to the MSP world. Uh, we went, I think all of us in the MSP world, we came all from the break and fix model. To all you can eat, which became kind of very hard to kind of manage. But, uh, the past 10 years I’ve seen the MSP world really growing very fast because seeing the, the big companies out there, uh, ISVs, who are also now providing MSP services because. All the big scalers, if you ask me, they are trying to cover it all. Yeah. Like, you know, take a customer from soup to nuts, help them with everything they need to do with technology. And that’s why we’re seeing more and more bigger player into the MSP uh, community these days. And it’s one of, I think, one of the fastest growing technology businesses out there. I mean, I’ve been in it for 25 years and the past 10 years I’ve seen. Tens of thousands of companies that have came out of nowhere. So it’s becoming the hot business in the IT world. So, uh, the big change also that I see, it’s the technology that’s moving very fast. And I feel like the MSPs who are moving as fast as the technology is moving, they’re gonna be succeed. They’re gonna succeed. But the ones who are waiting. Trying to figure out the whole AI era that we’re living in. Yeah, they’re gonna be left behind. Yes, because the train already has left the station. For the ai, it started, like you said earlier, November 20, 27, uh, 22, but co-pilot, it started for me, 2024 copilot came out of one of the, you know, AI technologies that came out there for Microsoft. It was not the biggest success out there, but now with agents, they are fixing all the little issues that they had because, yeah. Anyway, I think we’re gonna have time to discuss AI a little deeper. Yes. And what’s going on with it. But those are the difference that I see. It’s, uh, it do not move fast enough and getting the ai, you know, trained today, you’re gonna be left behind. As an MSPI, [00:08:55] Vince Menzione: I am in violent agreement with you. You know, Scott, you’ve been at AppPoint for many years. I’ve, I’ve known AppPoint for close to two decades. And you know, you start off in the big enterprises, right? Big organizations, big public sector organizations, all the big government agencies use AppPoint technology. What have you seen this shift now to, uh, to moving out beyond just the largest customers and how is AAV Point addressing that? [00:09:21] Scott Sacket: Yeah, so it’s, it’s an incredible journey. Right. We started as a SharePoint, ISV. Yep. Uh, doing things like migration and backup and governance. Um, and the world changed drastically while we’ve been in business. I mean, just past this past July, 24 years in business, publicly traded. Right. Uh, the last four years. Yep. Um. And what we saw evolve was cloud really changing the game for us. Um, on premise became Cloud. Cloud of course, grew from just SharePoint online for us to exchange online in OneDrive. And then Teams, oh my goodness, teams just blew up everything. And when we started thinking about how we continue to evolve, our business partners became such an important and critical piece to how we grow. Because what was really expensive and complex for an SMB organization 20 years ago, server Farm, right? Really expensive hardware all of a sudden became a really simple service to flip a switch and just to log in. And so as we were thinking about this ecosystem where SMB actually comprised of 50% ultimately of the market, how were we going to scale? Yes. How were we going to be able to bring benefit? To those types of customers, and when we really started digging into it, MSPs were not just important. They’re really the superhero. Yeah. Right. They are the ones who are keeping that entire segment going and, and building out technology and exposing technology to them that they never had before. Because they have that sort of level of competency and expertise that many s and b customers don’t have. That’s right. And so we started really heavily investing in the MSP space over the last 10 years and not just taking our enterprise products and, and just handing it to, to, you know, MSPs and saying, okay, go figure it out. But we repackaged the whole thing. We built it from the ground up. We built a platform that allows for scale and automation and service delivery. Which is just so unbelievably important as we move into this next era right. Of, of ai when you layer in security and governance. ’cause that’s what’s keeping people from actually realizing that vision. [00:11:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. You, you bring up some really great points. So I think back of the server being in the closet in the back of the room at the ss, the SMB organization and then this move to the cloud. This shift from the cloud started about eight, 10 years ago. Well, MM 365 drove Microsoft’s engagement, their Google Cloud as well. But then Azure took off in a big way in these organizations. They finally have started to realize the benefits and I feel almost feel like the MSP community was sitting behind doing break fix on computers while the customers were saying, we need to engage and we need to embrace all this. And then you start thinking about data because if you are gonna do things like ai, which is now. We talked about just the, the relevance of ai just the last couple years. You gotta get your data state right, and then if you’ve got data out there, you need to protect that data. And that’s where you, you know, you come in with all this set of tools. Right. So that point addresses all of [00:12:24] Scott Sacket: this. The, the move to AI is been so challenging for so many customers and partners. We have been building a lot of technology to help break down those barriers. That is by far the most requested and deployed service that we’re building for. Um, and we wanna solve that problem for our partners, right? Because we know once they get to AI, there’s so much goodness to unlock, right? And more productivity to unleash. [00:12:52] Vince Menzione: And you enable these MSPs, right? Oh yeah. ’cause you bring the tools, you bring the systems and tools. Uh, you take out some of the complexity for them, but then you make them the superheroes in front of those customers. [00:13:02] Scott Sacket: Absolutely. I mean, the whole idea is to get our partners to be at scale, to automate, to integrate with their existing technology right there. Yep. Their rs, you know, their PSAs, their RMMs Right. The existing, uh, infrastructure and, and to ultimately build a better business. Right. And to make them so valuable to their customers that the stickiness is, is, you know, obvious. [00:13:24] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Eric, you’ve been around. Partners for almost as long as I have, maybe even longer in some respects. I mean, you were the, you were the founder of Micro, the Microsoft partner ecosystem. It’s it’s association back in the day. And so you’ve seen this evolution up, up, close and personal, right? With, within the companies that you’ve run, you’ve been a serial entrepreneur, what are you starting to see and what, what are the characteristics that the MSP’s watching today and maybe watching this either live stream or. A recording of this, either on our YouTube channel or or on the podcast, what do they need to be doing differently? What are the characteristics that makes a successful or the ultimate MSP? [00:14:06] Per Werngren: So, that’s a good question. And I don’t know how many days we got to answer that question, but we’ll start now. Uh, [00:14:11] Vince Menzione: we’ll be here for a few days. So [00:14:13] Per Werngren: I would say that many MSPs, they give too much power to their technical people. Business decisions should be made by business people, and too many times technical people influence strategically important decisions that they should not have a say about. And that means that many MSPs, they have a product portfolio that is too broad, way too broad, and. [00:14:46] Vince Menzione: That’s broad for our American listeners today, right? [00:14:49] Per Werngren: I’m European and uh, that means that, um, uh, it is hard to entertain all the technologies that are involved. Yeah, I’m a big fan of Better Together. I want technologies to be integrated with each other because that saves cost and probably also give better outcomes for the customers and too many MSPs, they don’t dare standardize. Instead they customize a little, little bit too much. And when you customize well, then you kind of lose the ness of being an MSP. The last thing is probably that, um, when you have a product portfolio that is too wide, you will never become really good at all the offerings. Instead, it is better to look at what should you produce in-house? What can you produce in-house with good quality and good profitability? And then you find partners whose services that you resell. So this mix of, uh, creating your product portfolio and, uh, dare to kill your darlings. They’re to say no to producing everything in house. Try to become a little bit more narrow in what you do is one path to success and profitability is really bad among many MSPs. [00:16:13] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Because they’re trying to be all things to all people. [00:16:15] Per Werngren: Yes. If you try to be jack of all trades, well, you will never be successful. And, uh, that will hurt your profitability. That will also hurt the day when you want to exit your company. [00:16:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So let’s talk about, ’cause this is really a, it’s winning and successful as an MSB, but a lot of this is around the Microsoft ecosystem today. Neal’s organization, you would, what do you say? You eat, sleep, drink and bleed. Microsoft, is that it? Nabi, eat, [00:16:43] Nabil Aitonumeziane: sleep, breathe Microsoft. [00:16:45] Vince Menzione: Breathe Microsoft. So what are like the quick wins for the MSPs out there? What can they be doing? What are, what are the things you’ve done in the deal within your organization? We can talk, we can start top down with getting your organization right. Uh, I think P alluded to some of that as well. We can talk about like, engaging with the Microsoft Field organization, what, what, what seems to work. [00:17:07] Nabil Aitonumeziane: It may also start, but stop thinking like a service provider. Yeah. As an ms. Yeah. Alright. We are more of a, a strategic, you need to keep your mic up a little bit higher there. I’m getting, I’m sorry. Uh, that’s right. I dunno if you guys could hear me, but, uh, I feel like every MSP needs to stop thinking like a service provider and think more about the strategic partnership that they’re gonna build with the customers. We’re here to help customer. And then one thing I think Scott used talk about, it’s. The sellers, uh, in the MSP world or in the technology world, they need to start talking more about business and stop talking about technology. Yeah. Because we are dealing with C executives. [00:17:46] Vince Menzione: That’s right. [00:17:46] Nabil Aitonumeziane: They are thinking more about how can we help the business move forward and grow, and how can they do more with less? That’s why we need to have those con AI conversation. They’re more of business conversations than techno like technical conversation. You’re gonna confuse them. Because what we’re trying to do with the AI era, that’s why I think for all the MSPs out there, you need to get on ai. Now, yesterday, not today, yesterday, because our job now with our all our customers, we’re gonna help them navigate this whole AI era that we’re going through, all the confusions were out there, how can we help them? What are the solutions that we can build? And then have them repeatable with different customers, with their ai. But if you’re not in the AI world today. You need to be in it, otherwise you’re gonna be left behind because that’s how fast the MSP word is. Uh, moving. [00:18:42] Vince Menzione: Well, I’m gonna turn it over to you P but I just wanna, I want to kind of frame out a little bit like, ’cause we. You know, we talk about like, you need to be able to speak Microsoft if you’re working with Microsoft, right? So [00:18:52] Nabil Aitonumeziane: he said something earlier about Jack of all trade and master of none. This is how FSI, uh, about eight years ago decided to, uh, partner with one of the biggest partners in the world, Microsoft, for the reason we were tired of being Jack of Trade and master of none. We wanted to be good at one thing and be very good at it. So we went and we chose Microsoft. I always liked working with them, so we went with Microsoft. But it’s not about just Microsoft as a partner, choose your partners. Be very wise about how you choose your partners. ’cause the culture is also important when you working with a partner. Like I’ve worked with a point, which we have an amazing relationship. I work with Black Point, I work with Huntress, I work with Microsoft a lot. But the common things that we all have together, we are all Microsoft companies. Yeah. And the culture at FSI is Microsoft. So if I went to F Point, because F Point was also eating, breathing, sleeping. Microsoft as well. Yes. ’cause they started their business in 2001. They were a SharePoint company. So they know, they understand how Microsoft functions, whatever. But my point to you guys here. Having the right partner will help you succeed and move forward. So an ISV that you’re buying, uh, uh, services from or software from. Work with them, do marketing with them, do events with them. Uh, create things. I think this is something that we have lost. We don’t see that much anymore. We see a lot of ISVs in the conferences where they’re just over there. Selling? No. Do things together. Yes. To the community, to our customers. Yeah. For example, I’m working, I’m doing RO show with a point. I do the same thing with Microsoft where we get all our customers and our customers have also access to our ISV directly. So they know when I’m telling them, Hey, you need to buy that product I’m bringing. My partner to the discussion, they can talk with them and you know, so partnership is very important. [00:21:00] Vince Menzione: So you talked about a couple things. I’m gonna frame it and I want to turn it over to P ’cause he’s had some, he had raised his hand in a way. Uh, you talked about outcomes. So talk, start talking about the outcomes that you’re, we’re gonna help you achieve. And then you also, what I, what you implied is we bring value back to Microsoft. So this is like, how do I get a seller’s attention? And you might be in the SMB market, but they have a sales organization called Small Medium Enterprise and Channel Ssec is the new term. Not my favorite term, but, but they have taken Nicole Deen’s organization who spoke at our last event where you all were there. Um, and they’ve combined those organizations to help get the scale to the SMB market. But they have salespeople, they have sellers and specialists that support even these smaller customers. PI know you wanted to, to jump in with some thoughts on, on this, and how do you get yourself aligned better? With that Microsoft organization. [00:21:55] Per Werngren: So don’t ask what Microsoft can do for you, ask what you can do for Microsoft. Nice. [00:21:59] Per Werngren: We heard that before. It is important to understand that the Microsoft people, they have lot of things on their plate and so many emails are flowing in and there are 500,000 great partner in the world. Yes. [00:22:12] Per Werngren: So you need to make sure that you make it easy for them to understand what you bring to the table. And something that they love is when you communicate wins. Wins with clients. And the best, and you know, that you do it beautifully, is to take care of clients that are underserved. Clients that are kind of forgotten, do a great thing and communicate that with Microsoft. They love that. [00:22:39] Nabil Aitonumeziane: So one of the thing that Per was talking about, it’s uh, the way I work with Microsoft as an MSP, uh, specializing, like mostly in Microsoft, it’s, I work with the sellers. We have a plan together, so don’t go and knock at. A point, or Microsoft or whoever, uh, the, the partner is, and ask for handouts. You need to do some work. So what we do at FSI, we do, we run marketing campaigns for the sellers. Alright? We utilize our SDRs internally to make phone calls for debt accounts. With that, uh, ISV that we’re working with. So [00:23:14] Vince Menzione: you’re generating leads. So we [00:23:16] Nabil Aitonumeziane: are doing the work, we are doing the dirty work as well. We are not, we just, we’re trying to like, what I call it the three Ws, win, win, win. Not only Microsoft wins. Microsoft wins. FSI wins the customers power [00:23:28] Scott Sacket: of three. Power of three. [00:23:30] Nabil Aitonumeziane: Here we go. So it’s, uh, that’s what we’re doing. Like, so my point, don’t go to, uh, a partner. And expect them to just because you are buying a software from them, that they’re gonna be giving you referrals, whatever, do things with them, build a relationship with them. Partnership, I think is one of the most important thing for success for any MSP out there. You need to choose a partner wisely and work with them closely. So this is how it works. I mean, you have to build that. It’s, uh, you’re becoming one because, for example, I’m gonna go back to it again. F point, I’ll sell their stuff for the backup. It’s part of my onboarding. Every customer that we onboard, their backup is going straight to F point. So what? What the whole meaning of this. When FSI wins, F point wins. The customer wins. Yeah. And Microsoft, you have created And Microsoft. Yeah. And the trust. Trust, yes. And the whole, by the way, talking about partnerships, if there is no trust, there’s no partners, there’s no partnership. It’s the same thing. Like in a marriage. Yeah. No trust, no marriage. No trust, no partnership. It, I think it’s for me to succeed as an MSP today because of all the competition out there, you need to choose wisely your partner and partner with them and go all out. I mean, don’t go ask for handouts, do the dirty work, work with the partner. Come up with ideas, you know, be, be the person out there who’s gonna give them ideas to run the marketing campaign for their own customer. ’cause they’re gonna benefit from it. Yep. It’s not only FSI or whoever the MSB is [00:25:05] Per Werngren: and not the person that is being shown on a big screen on a cool, that’s right. [00:25:09] Vince Menzione: So I, I gotta turn to that because that point is, is genuinely probably one of the best at brand and story and getting and, and doing things that are not traditional. Like how do you kind of sit back and wait for things at Point has an incredible reputation for really making things happen. Like really like going out above and beyond. I want. I was hoping, Scott, you could talk a little bit about this as well. [00:25:34] Scott Sacket: Yeah, and I’ll, I’ll, you know, frame it in the lens of the Microsoft story as well. [00:25:38] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And partner of the year for like, seven, eight years, something like that. Maybe nine years running, something like that. Um, [00:25:43] Scott Sacket: hopefully more. Yes, yes. You know, as we go. But, um, you know, similar, similar to, to, uh, everyone, we spend a lot of time understanding Microsoft School. Right, what outcomes they’re looking for. Yeah. And, and we really do build our messaging, our, our stack, even our commercial bundles. Around those outcomes. Right? So, you know, our MSPs, our resellers, ultimately our partners, I mean, everybody, um, needs to understand sort of, you know, we’re revolving around the sun, right? Yes. Microsoft is sort of the center of that, that solar system. And we want to make sure that Microsoft wins, we win, our partner wins, right? That power of three story is really, really critical. Super [00:26:26] Vince Menzione: critical. [00:26:26] Scott Sacket: Um, and when we do that, this, it’s very simple to partner. It’s very simple. Right, because we understand that Microsoft wants everyone to get into co-pilot. Microsoft wants people leveraging AI workloads or, or, uh, Azure workloads and AI workloads. Certainly, yeah. Right. Um, this is what is very clearly written. I mean, we’re in, um, you know, in a new fiscal year, right. Microsoft new fiscal year. Yeah. We’re all kind of unpacking, uh, what the new program is. Right. It’s, it’s not always easy to figure it out. That’s right. Right. But there’s some obvious themes, right. Ai, Azure, right. Building workloads and, and technology on there. I mean, agents are starting to become really prevalent, right? And we have a story around even agents and governance. So there, there’s a lot there that, um, you know, we, we think about it in the, in the Microsoft lens, right? And how we deliver that ultimately to our partners, which empowers them to be successful. Which, ’cause that’s the key here. We can’t, you know, just sell, right? That’s right. We need to enable our partners with technology, with support co-marketing, as Nabil alluded to, right? Co-marketing is so important. Co-sell. Unbelievably important, right? Really important. It’s, it’s really finally, finally, co-sell is so hard, right? We build our whole team around, co-sell with partners. So it, it’s a, it’s a huge opportunity, but you have to think about it in, in sort of the lens of what Microsoft is trying to accomplish. [00:27:49] Vince Menzione: Let’s dive in a little bit on ai. We’ve kind of, we’ve skirted around it as a subject, but let, let’s talk about a couple things. First of all, Nvidia, $4 trillion market cap and growing, by the way, they just, they just got. Entry now into China in a big way. The Trump administration has approved them selling some of their better chips into China, so we’re gonna see this thing continuing to grow. Data center movement is huge. Power companies, utility companies are becoming huge now, by the way, because they’re, they’re downstream of this. Somebody’s gotta drive the power consumption. And we’re seeing big deals right in, in, in the Middle East. We’re seeing big deals here worldwide. Tons and tons of these data centers, big chips. Uh, Microsoft leaning in big with it, with chat, GPT and copilot, but you know, also more, more involvement here. And people are starting to see the benefit finally. Right? Because we talked about the early days, like people overestimated what you would see one year and they underestimate what they see in 10. And that’s what we saw with AI the first year was like, eh, it was underwhelming. And then the first couple years of selling copilot, eh, I didn’t see the results right. Well, now we’re getting to this point where now AG agentic is starting to get layered in. We’re starting to see Microsoft, in fact, creating a separate group for, for startups where they’re gonna be laying in, Jason Grey’s gonna be running this new initiative to go and embed AI into all these organizations. You’re starting to see more of that motion happening, and this means also, this is where the MSPs are gonna come in the, the layering in the, somebody’s gotta layer in all the agenda ai, all the AI across these platforms. And who is gonna do it? Let’s talk about ai. I know we, we all have points of view on it. I think we all are very passionate about it. I believe personally, five years our world is gonna be radically different than it is today because it’s happening so fast. We’re starting to see this hockey stick. What would you have to say to that, Scott? [00:29:40] Scott Sacket: Yeah. I mean, we think about AI in, in really multiple angles, right? We of course think about AI in what we can build into our own technology. Right. We wanna make our technology smarter and leverage best of, you know, breed technology. We think about AI and how we can build a better company. Right. Of course. Right. We’re an organization. Yeah. That wants to be more productive. That’s right. And we think about AI in how we can help our partners get their customers there. So we have like three different work streams when we think about ai and we’re leveraging all three, right? So we build technology that ultimately. Is smart and scales right, and is automated and, and comes up with, you know, suggestions and, and different ideas for the person using the technology ultimately to make the right decisions. Um, we think about AI readiness and security, right? The number one reason why people don don’t. Deploy copilot today is data security risk. Yeah. Right? And, and it’s a really public cloud. I mean, right. It’s a really, really important problem today, surfacing that risk. You know, are you oversharing? Um, you know, do you have proper governance on a, on a team, right? Yeah. All of those different complex issues. Um, and then once again, internally, we’re building agents, right? How do we get smarter? We have something called chat, A VPT, right? And we use that. I mean, I think Microsoft did a really nice, um, case study on us actually. Uh, about how we’re leveraging AI today internally. So we, we, we think AI is once again disrupting everything. It’s changing the way we think about business. I am, you know, just astonished to see what will become right in the next few years, of course. Um, but it, it’s layered everywhere, right? Everything we do should be thinking about, you know, prompts. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, that should be our first, you know, reflex, you know, reflexive ai, right? You know, first thing you think about is, well, how can I use AI to do. Task X, Y, Z. Yeah. Right. So it’s very interesting times. [00:31:33] Per Werngren: So we use, um, ai of course. Um, internally, we want to be a good customer, zero. And, uh, we use it, uh, to, um, make ourselves more efficient, more intelligent. We also use it, uh, when it comes to, uh, operating Azure, and we have our own service called AI Operations, which is about taking care of all these AI workloads and make sure that they run 24 7. That’s a beautiful service. So we live and brief. Ai, but looking outside, um, our company ID next, I think that MSPs in general need to think about how can they swing ai. Um, the low hanging fruit is, of course, using it internally, but then making sure that they are exploring if they can set up services. Subscription services that are based on AI and that leverage this momentous that we got in AI right now. So perhaps we are used to, uh, renting a car at the airport, Hertz rent a car. We, we might see Hertz rent an agent. So like, think about it because if you are not thinking about it, someone else will. [00:32:49] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Yeah. Very good point. Good [00:32:52] Nabil Aitonumeziane: point. Uh, per. But per just said it all, so, but uh, no, the way I look at it, uh, for us as an MSP, uh, when it comes to ai, first of all, we need to drink our own Kool-Aid. Yes. Alright. I think the same thing went with a lot of companies. They were promoting a lot of AI and they were not using it internally. Didn’t even know what it meant. So I feel like for us, uh, at FSI, we already, uh, we are using AI copilot in our help desk. We even moved our, uh. ConnectWise moved it to Dynamics where in the CRM we run our, uh, ticketing system through Dynamics. Uh, we run our sales through dynamics. We run our marketing through dynamics and all that. We have ai, uh, involved in it. I love it. And we are trying to change the culture internally with our people. It’s to push people to, uh, be using more AI because the reason why we are already helping customers. With ai, if we don’t know about ai, how are we gonna be helping someone else with ai? That’s right. [00:33:56] Nabil Aitonumeziane: So what per said, start thinking about it because ai, it’s exactly what happened when the internet came. What year did the internet, uh, uh, appeared? [00:34:07] Vince Menzione: Oh, it was in the nineties. Yeah, in the [00:34:09] Nabil Aitonumeziane: nineties. Yeah. It was the same thing. What’s happening right now. No one knew what was, what was going on, what’s happening, and so my only advice I will give to any MSP. Get on AI because if you don’t, someone else is gonna come and take it from you. Well, [00:34:25] Vince Menzione: you’re gonna [00:34:25] Nabil Aitonumeziane: fall back. Somebody else is gonna support your customers. With ai, [00:34:29] Vince Menzione: I feel like every day you wait, you’re falling a month or a year further behind. It’s happening. Absolutely. So rapidly now, [00:34:36] Scott Sacket: it took chat GPT two months to get to 100 million users. Yeah. That’s crazy, right? I mean, it took cloud Facebook years. To accomplish those things. Yeah. Imagine where we’ll be in a year. You cannot wait and the [00:34:49] Vince Menzione: hallucinations are dropping dramatically. The power and the the quality of the output is so much better than it was even just a few months ago. Go ahead. [00:34:58] Nabil Aitonumeziane: No, I was gonna say, uh, when it comes to ai, we have to learn it because we have to think about it ourselves as executives. It only be makes us better. Absolutely. It’s [00:35:10] Nabil Aitonumeziane: the same message we need to take to the leaders out there. Telling them ai, it’s only going to make you better. Make your business better, think faster. That’s why I’m telling all to all the MSPs out there, learn it, do research, start working on it, because actually, ai, believe it or not, for an MSP, is gonna open up a lot of opportunities. For example, security. Data cleanup, so all that. So you need to be part of this, uh, era. [00:35:39] Vince Menzione: I’m gonna put you on the spot a little bit, NABI. Sure. Because we’ve had this conversation for a while. We’ve been doing Ultimate Partner for years. The podcast, about two plus years ago, we started doing events. We did our first live stream and then our first in person. And we’ve continued down that route. We, one of the things I get from MSPs quite often is, I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what to do. Can you help me? What do you say to some of those MSPs to help them be more successful? [00:36:09] Nabil Aitonumeziane: So one of the biggest advice I will give over here, join a group. Like for example, I joined Ultimate Partner. That’s how, believe it or not, that’s how I’ve met Docs, Scott Pair, and those are the people who became part of my life, my Microsoft life. Yeah. Alright. But I had the exact same question few years back where to start because. For example, as uh, FSI, working with Microsoft, it’s not very easy to work with Microsoft. So I have to start somewhere, right? And my beginning, it all started, believe it or not, it was an ultimate partner in Dallas at Las Colinas. Yeah, when we’ve met the original [00:36:48] Vince Menzione: event, yeah. It was, I think one of the [00:36:50] Nabil Aitonumeziane: best, uh, shows ever and it just opened up my eyes to the Microsoft world because. I was never able to be, uh, anywhere near president of Microsoft or a C-level executive who is in the same room as you. And then you can ask the question or other partners who are just like you, who either they have 20 years of experience and they’re doing $10 billion, or they are five years and doing 5 million. But that’s what I met the people through Ultimate Partner. That’s what I started to meet the right people, the exact people that I needed to meet with Microsoft, for me to start working directly with Microsoft. So that’s what I was talking earlier. Partnership For me, uh, personally, as an MSP owner, it’s one of the most important thing. [00:37:37] Vince Menzione: And you’re not gonna find that surfing the web or going on a LinkedIn profile, right? No. You will [00:37:41] Nabil Aitonumeziane: not find this, these things you have, uh, to meet either the right group or the right people. Yeah, to put you in touch. And there is a lot of groups out there. Like I said, I was lucky enough, uh, to be in Dallas for the ultimate partner and I was, uh, privileged to meet with Kevin Piker at the time, which was a big deal. Was a president of Microsoft. Uh, but yeah, for me, that’s, uh, how we work. I think partnerships are very important. Yeah. And [00:38:08] Vince Menzione: then you met up with Ducks, Raymond Sa, who you knew from many years ago, but you hadn’t seen each other funny enough. [00:38:13] Nabil Aitonumeziane: Uh, the story with Ducks, I think I, uh, keep repeating that story over and over, but it was here in Boca about a year ago. Uh, went to breakfast with Ducks and Per was there, uh, docs opened up a laptop while we’re having breakfast. Like, oh, let me show you a product. We have no joke. Within five minutes I picked up the phone, called my office, I said. You need to see what this company has to offer. And believe it or not, it’s been a year, it’s been one of the best partnerships we’ve had because we also get a lot of support from our partner. So by the way, partnerships is two ways. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That’s why I was talking earlier when I said about Microsoft. For any MSPs out there, don’t go ask for hands out. So, you know. Do something for them. So they do something for you. It has to go both ways. [00:39:01] Vince Menzione: So I was at one of the, on one of the AF point calls just about a month or so ago, and they were talking, they were glowingly talking about your company and how much business you’ve generated for them. [00:39:11] Nabil Aitonumeziane: We actually have generated a lot of business things to, uh, our, uh, partner a point. Uh, and again, a point has been a big help for us when it comes to the whole AI era as well, because. It started all with copilot readiness, which was ai. And through that we got so much going on with helping our customer clean up the data, you know, uh, secure their data. Like all that is created projects for us. And it’s funny because AF Point kind of introduced us to AI and directly ’cause we were doing the copilot readiness. I love it. That’s how it all started. So [00:39:49] Scott Sacket: you’re gonna make me blush. Yeah, please don’t. I love that. I love to see that [00:39:53] Per Werngren: there. You’ve been talking about this. Yeah. A small thing that you said that I want to emphasize a little bit. You made a technical decision, which vendor should we go with? Which vendor’s? Technology. Yep. You made it as a business person, and that is often more successful than technical people making decisions that [00:40:13] Nabil Aitonumeziane: absolutely. Absolutely. I think decisions have to be made in as a business, not as technical. [00:40:19] Scott Sacket: Yes, but, but also, right. The product solves a really hard problem. Of course. That’s right. But what has taken the partnership to another level? Co-sell, co-marketing, personal relationships, advocacy. Yes. Right. That is sort of the difference between when you think about, do I take on a vendor, do I onboard a vendor, or you know, nah, not for me. Right. That’s the piece that separates, you know, many MSPs from Good to Great. [00:40:44] Nabil Aitonumeziane: And they feel like when it comes to vendor, you have to work with the vendor that you love. Yes. It’s like really, it’s like a marriage. ’cause don’t forget that you’re selling this product to your customer. That means you gotta be selling them something that you believe in. And that’s why when you said it’s the trust and that personal relationship with the vendor, because you know why, when you have a personal relationship. You can run ideas with them and they can run ideas with you as well because you are in it together. When you grow, they grow. Your customer grows. It’s everybody wins in here. So, [00:41:16] Vince Menzione: you know, we talk about the principles of success, but it starts at the to top with the growth mindset and the executive commitment, and you see the difference in organizations like a point that maybe some other organizations out there that maybe are not as. Little bit more reticent on the partnering side. Maybe not as, not as the trust is. What [00:41:33] Nabil Aitonumeziane: a good point, Vince. Honestly, it makes all the difference in the world that personal relationships and when you have C-level, uh, executives who are open to talk to any of their customers, whoever, like, that’s what I had my relationship with that point today, uh, I feel very comfortable. If there’s an issue, I’ll call because I have, I feel comfortable to say good or bad. ’cause we’re in it together. [00:41:56] Vince Menzione: Agree. I wanna stay on this topic of communities and a little bit of a call out to p who’s been around for me for several years. We, we started having conversations five during COVID about the fact that we really needed to do something here to bring, ’cause we had the people, we just needed to get them all in the same room back in those days. P So [00:42:15] Per Werngren: what happens when you bring people together is that you build trust. And when you have built trust, you start helping each other and that builds even more trust. And even if you’re not doing business together, you will influence each other’s business. You will help each other, and that’s good for the group. As a whole, and it’s also good for all individual members, but you need to have a mentality where you’re willing to share, where you’re willing to expose yourself and talk about what is not working well and get help from others. And that is the essence of a great community and ultimate partner has really become a wonderful community. Where the trust level is super high [00:42:59] Vince Menzione: because of people like each of you. And AV Point has come on as a big sponsor, a big supporter of our, of our events. I wanted to talk about this for a minute ’cause we are gonna only have a few minutes left. So unselfish, plug here a little bit. Right? So these gentlemen were just at our event in Redmond just a couple of months ago, right? May 1st and second. It seems like it was yesterday. In some regards. And, uh, you’ll be back again. October. We’re gonna be in Reston, Virginia, Washington DC area. Really the tech hub of the Washington DC Metro area, but also [00:43:28] Nabil Aitonumeziane: must attend. [00:43:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah, must attend. And that’ll be on the, we’ll start on the 27th of October with a beautiful reception. And then we have two full days of content at Csof, which at point is responsible for us hosting that event and co-sponsoring the event with us. And then we’re hoping to do something also around the Ignite Conference as well. So we’ve got a, we’ve got a rich fall coming up, and then we’ll be back in the studio in the winter. We’ve, we’ve all agreed that this is our favorite place to come in, like January and February. So we’re probably gonna do a couple of our, our live. And it’s, and [00:43:59] Nabil Aitonumeziane: it’s also, people need to know, I mean, for the MSP uh, community out there, it’s the place where you’re gonna come and learn everything. How to do business with Microsoft, by the way, at those events, this is what I’ve learned. Uh, how to work with Microsoft. It’s through building relationship with people who are coming to the Ultimate partner, uh, event. And this is the place to be. You have to come, there will be Microsoft people, there will be other ISVs who are gonna, uh, share stories with you, other sis who are like, just like you, who can tell you what works, what doesn’t work, you, you know, it’s kind of basically it’s a peer group. That’s why I love it. It’s, uh, I built new friends. [00:44:36] Vince Menzione: And we’ve had some mentors and we’ve had some of the other vendors come in like PAX eight and Ingram in the last event. So we’re starting to see, again, this ties into what App Point’s been doing already in getting, I, I call it the long tail, but it’s the, it takes you all through the mid-market, all the way down to the smallest customers. You need a mechanism to get there, and this is what we’re talking about now. And then even the large organizations need to become more like MSPs. So we’re hoping to get some of the resellers in the room because they, the ones that are successful, the ones that are building their own ms. MSP or they’re a requiring MSPs. We could talk about some of that as well if we had another hour today. But, [00:45:12] Per Werngren: and that blend is beautiful, that you have members that are coming from different corners of the industry and that makes, uh, good network o opportunities. Yeah. [00:45:22] Scott Sacket: Yeah. The, the partner ecosystem is changing rapidly. Um, everyone has to learn quickly how to do service delivery. Um, you know, you, you feel it when you understand, you know, licensing and margins and kind of where the world is going in AI as well. Um, and this is a really, a great community right, to start investing in, frankly, because it, it’s gonna help you on that journey. And I, I love to see, um, distributors and LSPs and all different sorts of partners that we know are doing great service delivery, right? They need to do it at scale, they need to be automated, right? And they need to do it profitably. Um, and this is really a great combination of vendors and other partners to, to kind of have that peer group and no group is greater from a peer to peer perspective than the MSP community. Yeah. I am always blown away with how well everyone works together. Yeah. Well, [00:46:12] Vince Menzione: thank you Scott for that. And I wanna just call out these gentlemen all flew in today just to be here in the studio. I’m just, I feel so privileged to have you as friends and supporters. You came in from New New York area, Stockholm, Sweden. Right. And the DC area as well. And all flew in today just to be here to help you, and I want to thank everyone. I know we’re basically at time right now. I want to thank all of our supporters, what an incredible community we’re building with, with you. Uh, I have a personal mission to help each of you achieve your greatest results. I’m very fortunate to be here and I, I, I don’t discount that in any way. So, uh, come to ultimate. The, the ultimate partner.com or ultimate Guide to Partnering, you’ll find us at the same, I’ll take you to the same website. Um, the event in rest, and the registration is opening either today or tomorrow. So you’ll be able to register. We’re gonna have, these gentlemen will be in the room again. Uh, we’ll have a deep conversation. We’re gonna have an MSP track. We’re gonna be growing that. We’ll have some of the other top ISVs in the room, some of the Microsoft leaders, some of the other leaders in the hyperscaler market will be in the room with us at this event. Helping, nurturing your growth. This is what it’s all about. We also bring the top partner tech companies in the room that support us. Companies like Sugar and Tackle and Work Span all come in and support our events. And then some of the top consulting companies are also in the room, the Carve partners, the the Bridge partners, uh, all of those organizations to help nurture your growth. And so one ticket, a couple of days of time, you’re gonna learn more in that period of time. You heard p talk about that. So come to the ultimate partner.com and then you can also watch us. You’ll wa you can watch this recording. Um, the edited version of this will be on our YouTube channel, ultimate partner.com or ultimate partner YouTube channel. You’ll find us there. And then if you wa would like to listen in your car or while you’re taking the kids to soccer or riding your bike or doing whatever exercise you’re doing, just you can watch this on Ulti, whatever. Wherever you listen to the Ultimate partner or the Ultimate Partner, you’ll find us. So I want to thank each of you. For your support, for being so supportive of this. Great, these great gentlemen, this part of this great community that we are building together, and, uh, we’ll hope to see you all in Reston, Virginia in just a few months. And thank you for joining us today. Thank you.

Microsoft’s America’s Partner Leader joins Ultimate Partner Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. Nina Harding, Microsoft’s partner leader for the Americas, joins host Vince Menzione to discuss the seismic shifts happening at the start of Microsoft’s fiscal year 2026. This isn’t just another discussion; it’s a deep dive into Microsoft’s renewed partner-centric strategy, the transformative power of AI, and the tactical steps partners need to take now to thrive. Nina reveals how partners are now “front and center” in Microsoft’s priorities, how a new industry-based structure is changing everything, and the crucial role of AI in boosting sales and innovation. She shares actionable insights on co-selling, the new “Frontier” mindset, and why being a “customer zero” for AI is no longer optional. This conversation provides a strategic roadmap for every partner looking to align with Microsoft’s vision for the future. Key Takeaways Partners are now one of Microsoft’s top three priorities, with a major focus on tighter integration with sales teams and a “partner-first” tone from leadership. Microsoft is moving to a 100% industry-based structure in the US, with new industries like oil and gas and gaming, to focus on solving customer problems with industry experts and partners. The new “SDC” (Software Development Company) term is more comprehensive and inclusive than the traditional ISV (Independent Software Vendor) term. AI is delivering a 10% increase in pipeline, a 23% higher close rate, and a 9% larger book of business in revenues for sales reps who use it consistently. The “Frontier” mindset is Microsoft’s new theme for FY26, emphasizing the exploration of possibilities with AI, moving beyond out-of-the-box functionality. The most critical advice for partners is to become “customer zero” for AI, differentiating themselves by articulating their value proposition and depth of expertise by industry. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Microsoft, Nina Harding, Vince Menzi, Ultimate Partner, partner strategy, fiscal year 26, FY26, AI, artificial intelligence, Copilot, Microsoft partners, co-sell motion, customer engagement methodology, CEM, industry-based, operating units, OUs, Total Addressable Markets, TAM, small medium enterprise, SMC, software development companies, SDCs, ISV, channel partners, account executive, AE, solution areas, Biz Apps, security, Azure, Microsoft field, America’s Partner Brief, APB, agentic AI, marketplace, digital transformation, Frontier, enablement, technical roles. Transcript: [00:00:00] Nina Harding: We’re finding such intense productivity. Um, for example, with our sales reps, the ones that are using AI consistently, we’re seeing, um, about a 10% increase in their pipeline. We’re seeing a 23% higher close rate and 9%, uh, larger book of business in actual revenues. [00:00:25] Vince Menzione: Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, the CEO of Ultimate partner and your host, and I am thrilled today to welcome Nina Harding, Microsoft’s partner leader for the America’s business. Nina, welcome to the studio here. [00:00:41] Nina Harding: Oh, thanks so much for having me. [00:00:42] Vince Menzione: So excited to have you. Was great. Many of you don’t know this, but Nina actually lives here in Florida. Yeah. We both live in Florida only. Yeah. We live [00:00:50] Nina Harding: pretty close to each other everywhere. Pretty close together. Yeah. What, three and a half miles, maybe? [00:00:54] Vince Menzione: Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. It’s crazy. Yeah. And this is our Boca studio. For those of you who haven’t been here yet, Nina’s gonna be here this, this winter. We’ll have you, we’ll have you on stage. [00:01:03] Nina Harding: Great. [00:01:03] Vince Menzione: In front of our partners, all of our partners that watch and listen to the Ultimate Partner, but so, so thrilled to have you join us today. We have such an amazing conversation to have today because. This is an important inflection point in Microsoft’s year, right? The beginning of fiscal year 2026. Yeah. For those of you looking at your calendars and watches. Uh, it’s 2025, but for Microsoft we’ve started fiscal year 26 and so, so many changes that are happening. So much excitement and enthusiasm around the new year. [00:01:33] Nina Harding: Absolutely. We have a lot [00:01:34] Vince Menzione: to cover today. [00:01:35] Nina Harding: Yeah, we do. Yeah, [00:01:35] Vince Menzione: we do. So I thought maybe we’d spend a minute on that, if you don’t mind. Sure. Maybe we’ll start there because there were a lot of announcements made. Sure. And, uh, Judson and Nicole and some others were on the on stage just about a week and a half ago talking him through the changes. Yeah. I thought maybe you could help lead us through some of the conversation Yeah. On what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. [00:01:56] Nina Harding: Right. Um, well, I think the. Biggest change I’ve seen is partner is front and center as one of the top three priorities at the company. [00:02:06] Vince Menzione: I’m so happy to see that. So [00:02:07] Nina Harding: that is really exciting. Yeah. So, uh, we had to start, as you mentioned, a couple weeks ago, and every single. Presentation every, some single executive was talking about our partners. Uh, when Judson normally has like a panel of customers up there. This time he had two partners in one customer. So I love that the tone is really, uh, forward on partners. The major changes that you’re seeing, uh, first is that we’re trying to bring the partners more into the core business. Uh, align them with the sales teams. So what that means is our channel partners are now sitting toe to toe, shoulder to shoulder with the um, sm. C and e folks, right? Yeah. Yep. So, um, what we hope with that is there’s even tighter integration. We get rid of some of that friction that might have been there, and we operate as one. I love that our partners really become that extension of our Salesforce, um, out, out there on the front lines, um, on the, on the other side. We have an opportunity in the enterprise to go even tighter and deeper with our services and what we’re now referring to as our SDC software development. SII [00:03:24] Vince Menzione: know, it’s I know, I know, I know. Good [00:03:26] Nina Harding: old, good old Sandy [00:03:27] Vince Menzione: Gupta and I had a conversation about this at our last event and, uh, it’s so hard it doesn’t roll off the tongue very easily. [00:03:33] Nina Harding: No, it doesn’t, but it’s actually much more inclusive. Yes. So, um, it’s funny, I had a conversation with an Nvidia and. They were the ones that kind of prompted even that opening with me of saying, Hey, we don’t see ourselves as an ISV. And they’re not, they’re not, right? They’re, and so SDC is much more comprehensive, but kind of going back to some of those changes, that’s, uh, that’s where we’re seeing even tighter integration and how that shows up. That shows up in the way. Um, we look at pipeline, how we do reporting, um, in each of the ou, um. Do you want me to talk about the OU as well? I do. Let’s [00:04:11] Vince Menzione: talk about, so just for people that don’t under, don’t understand our acronyms. Yeah. But, uh, so Small Medium Enterprise and corporate is Ssec. [00:04:18] Nina Harding: Yes. Is smec and [00:04:19] Vince Menzione: a lot of partners we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about where, what partners sit where. Sure. And then the OU are the operating units. Correct. Uh, they are. And what people don’t always realize about the way how Microsoft is structured, because you sit on a leadership team and you’ve got representatives that are very industry focused, right? Correct. Across various aspects of the business. They have their own vp, they have their own marketing organization, they have their own selling organization, and so on and so on. [00:04:43] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:04:44] Vince Menzione: So talk to us about that. That’s the operating units, [00:04:46] Nina Harding: right? So, um, we affectionately call them operating units, but they’re really, as Judson affectionately calls them tam capture units. Right. So, um, a country, uh, you could have a country, yep. Or, um, an aggregate of countries or you could have division of countries. They’re really based on the TAM capture opportunity. So in the United States and TAM being total [00:05:12] Vince Menzione: addressable market, correct? Most correct. Sorry. No, that’s right. Yes. [00:05:14] Nina Harding: Um, but for example, in the US. We have gone 100% industry based this year. I love it. It’s really, really exciting. Yeah. So we no longer have territories anywhere, and we’ve actually been able to introduce some new industries like oil and gas, right? So I’ve [00:05:31] Vince Menzione: seen that [00:05:31] Nina Harding: gaming, those are real industries that make a difference, uh, to everyone. And so what’s exciting about that? As the conversation is changing, we’re going further and further away around how do we position product to how are we really solving customer problems? And the conversation is all at that industry level, in that language with the experts from the industry helping to solve problems with the customer. And that’s where our partners come in too. [00:06:01] Vince Menzione: It makes such a big difference. And then the partners that are surrounding that, or that sales organization are ones that are laser focused on that specific industry, right? [00:06:09] Nina Harding: Absolutely. And that’s so critical. Um, I think today where our partners and even Microsoft sellers, we. Perhaps we’re comfortable positioning product or doing implementations, [00:06:22] Vince Menzione: selling that ea. [00:06:24] Nina Harding: Right, right. Um, now we’re moving into this kind of imagineering stage. Yes. Where we’re really, where we’ve talked about being the strategic advisor to, uh, a customer. Well, now it’s really here. Yeah. You have to speak their language, you have to understand their business problems, and then you have to help them also reimagine what the future looks like. [00:06:45] Vince Menzione: It’s so critical. Uh, we were the first industry in public sector when I was there, and we were the only ones who spoke a different language. And then the rest of the field organization was territories. And it was, you know, accounts were just split up. They had different sales reps. There was really no knowledge of what that customer did. And like you, like you’re saying here, I mean, it’s so, it’s so critical and important. [00:07:04] Nina Harding: Absolutely. Yeah. [00:07:05] Vince Menzione: So I wanna dive in a little bit on Ssec and the channel and how that integrates. So the OU relies on partners and co-selling is an incredible piece of what they do as well, right? [00:07:16] Nina Harding: Absolutely, absolutely. So, and [00:07:18] Vince Menzione: I know that you, you said that they’re paid a little bit differently. Before we started you were, you were talking about compensation packages. [00:07:23] Nina Harding: Yeah. So we’ve, we’ve really, uh, made an effort this year to make sure that for our enterprise partners, so in particular the services and the. SDCs, right? The ISVs, yeah. Um, that we have a really strong co-sell motion, right? So we’re focused on making sure that we’re understanding all the opportunities together. Uh, we’re looking at propensity maps and that we’re making those introductions at a deeper level from a compensation perspective, um, and even a review. The methodology and making it, um, part of the day-to-day rhythm of the business. As we refer to it as, yes, uh, Microsoft, um, means it even is in the way we do monthly business reviews, how we’re showing up, evaluating the business. What is the partner attach rate? Are we seeing a difference when a partner is attached at stage one versus stage two versus after the deal closes? Yeah. Um, are certain partners performing better? Is the size of a deal getting bigger because the partner is in there? Um, those are the things that we’re able to do now that we have much tighter integration with Microsoft’s SEM model. Yeah, [00:08:36] Vince Menzione: and that’s why I was, I, I knew you were alluding to the sem. Yeah. So a lot of people that have been to our events before. We’ve had, SEM has been repeatedly covered or talked about. [00:08:47] Nina Harding: Yeah, [00:08:47] Vince Menzione: so that’s Microsoft’s customer engagement methodology. [00:08:51] Nina Harding: Very good. [00:08:52] Vince Menzione: And, uh, and it, and what’s really, really terrific about this, this wasn’t there when I was at Microsoft, is really this. Structuring of this is, this is the steps you take in the sales process. These are the things you do. This is when partners get engaged in the process with you. Right, right. It helps the sellers better understand what the expectations and accountabilities look like. [00:09:13] Nina Harding: Yeah. Especially the accountabilities around the different roles. And that’s what I like, is that we’ve actually gone down to the role level and not only what their role is with the customer, but what is their role with the partner. Yeah. And then what role does the partner play at different stages? So the maturation of the model has really opened the aperture, I think, for the opportunity for partners to come in and make a material difference and be part. Of the engagement process. Yeah, [00:09:41] Vince Menzione: that’s so, so critical. And one of the things we do at our events and some of, in fact we’ll cover, we’ll have a co-selling workshop conversation here later this month. We’ll have a couple of experts come in, um, including Jen Weis, who’s one of the partner development managers, uh, well known. And then we have a lot of leaders that come in here to talk about this because partners don’t always, aren’t always aware. Of what their role is, right? Mm-hmm. And May and maybe the partner alliance manager, the leadership does, but within their own organizations, there’s some coaching that they need to do with their As as you’ve had to do with your organization. Yeah. They have to do with their organization as well to make sure that they’re showing up right when they have those conversations and meetings [00:10:21] Nina Harding: and actually in showing up. Right. One of the conversations I’m finding I’m having with a lot of partners, more than I’ve ever had is going back to some of the basics. Like, when was the last time as a partner that you looked at what your internal profile looks like? How are you showing up in our systems? Um, what are the areas of expertise that you have? What are the customer success stories that are associated with you? And I know that that all sounds very simplistic, but we’re also in the world of ai. Yes. And if we’re starting to put agents in front of all this information to help make recommendations to the field. And so I encourage our partners to go back and look at some of the plumbing, look at the basics. We’re going as far as in the Americas we’re introducing something called the A PB, the Americas Partner Brief. And I know it sounds crazy, A PB, [00:11:12] Vince Menzione: this is a new one for, for me. I know, I [00:11:13] Nina Harding: know. Um, it’s just, and what is it exactly? It’s just getting introduced. Um, it is a detailed, much longer profile on a partner, that act that can be built with. The partner, uh, that goes into their industry expertise more around, uh, their customer penetration and what they’ve done, uh, helping to understand the workloads that they really can make a material difference on. It’s not just about migration, but. What release of Oracle can you migrate to Azure? Yeah. That’s the level of detail that our field needs. And as a partner, you wanna differentiate yourself by these types of things. Yes. So these APBs allow us to have that much more detailed conversation about the value proposition and what differentiates each partner. And then in front of that. We have an agent, and so as a sales rep is out there, and maybe they’re in healthcare life sciences, maybe they’ve got an epic implementation, but now they can say, Hey. I, it’s an epic, uh, implementation on Azure and I need to understand which partners can do that migration. Nice. Um, which partners have built, agents have worked with, you know, any plethora of, um, solutions and ideally that’s what comes to bear. [00:12:28] Vince Menzione: So this is happening in partner center, I’m assuming, or is happening outside of partner. [00:12:32] Nina Harding: It is happening internally right now. Okay. Um, as a tool internally. So, so it’s [00:12:37] Vince Menzione: an AI tool. Yeah. We’re gonna talk a little bit more about the opportunity you’re around. [00:12:41] Nina Harding: No, we have not exposed it through partner center yet. This is [00:12:43] Vince Menzione: eating your, your own lunch here basically. Absolutely. [00:12:47] Nina Harding: Yeah. We, we need to be AI first and everything that we do. Um, and I, I have a. Ton of examples of around, around how it’s transformed the way I do business, how I even work with partners, how I prepare to work with partners, how I go to market, or how I even do performance reviews. Yeah, I mean, it’s really fun. That is amazing. Um, what it’s doing to. [00:13:10] Vince Menzione: And then what you’re saying is too, these partners need to show up in a certain way so that they can be identified. Right? You, you need to have the right articulation of what your value proposition looks like. [00:13:20] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm. [00:13:20] Vince Menzione: So that Microsoft can find you. This is, this is almost like SEO years ago with finding a search engines and things. [00:13:27] Nina Harding: Well, it also will highlight their designations and their special specializations, but those are used to really unlock. Access, right? Yes. Um, unlock access to different, uh, incentives or access to EI, right. Or access to the field. But it’s that next click down where the magic happens. And as we all know, there are quite a few people that can get to the designations, but they don’t necessarily have the magic sauce that your. Firm has. Yeah. Right. And that’s what we’re trying to do is make sure that we can help you illuminate that differentiation. [00:14:01] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And, and, and your sales teams are perfectly aligned with the customer and know exactly what the customer is asking for at different levels. Right? Absolutely. And I think a lot of people miss this too, of, I do want to jump in on, on some of this tectonic shift conversation mm-hmm. Because AI and some of the other areas, but I do think that people misunderstand, like, what does an account executive do? What does the sales team look like? Maybe you can just help us double click a little bit on that. I look at the account executive as almost like the quarterback. [00:14:30] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm. [00:14:31] Vince Menzione: And then they have solutions people that support them, right? Yeah. They, whether it’s ai, whether it’s cloud, whether it’s, uh, you know, office and, and other applications. How do you, how do, how should a partner think about engaging with that, that team? [00:14:47] Nina Harding: Well, there are a number, number of, uh, caveats to that. I’m just saying directly engage with that team, right? Yeah. Yes, exactly. The first. The first is, uh, I do recommend that partners, if you have a partner development manager, that you’re working with them on understanding and fine tuning. Your value proposition with regards to a particular opportunity. Um, when we introduce you into the account, it is very effective. And then we’re actually tracking it. And going back to that reporting I was telling you, it’s on the leaderboard, right? And so even leadership is paying attention to all of that. But as you’re looking at the account team, you’re absolutely right. We do have the ae, which is like the quarterback, right? Yeah. They’re responsible for the overall. Relationship. Um, but we now have, this year we’ve moved to just three solution areas. So yeah. Ah, is that ah, is that wonderful? Yes. [00:15:41] Vince Menzione: I’m relieved. [00:15:42] Nina Harding: I know. Well, I think everyone is. Yeah, right. Yeah. Um, so what [00:15:45] Vince Menzione: are they? [00:15:45] Nina Harding: Right? So, so we have, uh, Azure in ai, right? We have our biz apps. And then security. I love it. Pretty straightforward. Very straightforward, right? And then you, you put it all together there. Um, but what’s nice is that then you’ll have the, the specialist by those three different areas. And as a partner, you wanna understand where you fit across all of them, or one or two. Right. Um, and then we also have, um, our customer engagement, right? So they’re looking at the success of the customer and the implementation. Those are actually a really key person for a lot of our partners, in particular, our services partners. ’cause they often are right in their, um, uh, making the recommendations Yeah. On which partners to bring in to help make what we’re positioning real. [00:16:33] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So Azure and ai [00:16:36] Nina Harding: mm-hmm. [00:16:37] Vince Menzione: Which pretty self-evident business applications. Mm-hmm. We double click on that with me. ’cause we always thought talked about dynamics as kind of being its own separate thing, but this is also tying in the, the whole office suite and everything else into it as well. Right? [00:16:50] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:16:50] Vince Menzione: So there’s everything that’s customer facing. Yeah. Per, [00:16:53] Nina Harding: you know, your stuff. That’s good. Um, yes. We’re in this, uh, this world where you’re seeing the commingling and blurring of the lines Yes. Between productivity tools and actually your Yes. Traditional ERPs, CRMs, right? Um, and that is where we’re unlocking a lot of the magic. There’s a lot of momentum for us, um, right now, um, for our partners as well as, as a lot of the customers are saying, Hey, I want that blending. I want my, uh, end workers to be able to fluidly go between their experience in Outlook. And being in the ERP system. Yeah. Right. Um, I wanna be able to use co-pilots that go across, both generate the emails, uh, you’re, you’re a sales rep. I wanted to automatically send some of these emails or write the emails that then I can add to, uh, before I send it to my customer. We’re finding such intense productivity. Um, for example, with our sales reps, the ones that are using AI consistently. Consistently. So that top quar quarter, shall we say, like in everything that they do, we’re seeing, um, about a 10% increase in their pipeline. [00:18:09] Vince Menzione: Interesting. [00:18:10] Nina Harding: Yep. We’re seeing a 23% higher close rate. That’s interesting. That’s really, and 9%, uh, larger book of business in actual revenues. That’s pretty cool. [00:18:23] Vince Menzione: It’s very, well, it says as a seller it says, I need to get on board. [00:18:27] Nina Harding: You do. [00:18:27] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:18:28] Nina Harding: We all do. Yeah. Right. [00:18:29] Vince Menzione: So, well, let’s, let’s talk about that a little bit too. Yeah. Like ai, we can’t, you know, I’ve talked about the tectonic shifts, right? So we talk about how rapid change transformation has been going on for quite some time. We used to talk about the fact that COVID. Was it an accelerant four, five years ago? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But then this thing called chat, GBT happened. Then copilot happened like three years ago. Let’s call it three years now. And Oh, you’re [00:18:50] Nina Harding: being generous. It’s not that long get that. It’s, [00:18:52] Vince Menzione: it’s, no, it was November of 22. That’s of two. Yeah. [00:18:55] Nina Harding: When [00:18:55] Vince Menzione: chat GBT hit hit the market. [00:18:57] Nina Harding: Yeah. Yeah. [00:18:57] Vince Menzione: And then copilot. The spring afterwards. [00:19:00] Nina Harding: Right. [00:19:00] Vince Menzione: But this accelerant is happening so fast. In the beginning, we overestimated what we expected. The bill Gates comment like, we overestimate what’s gonna happen in the year. We underestimate what’s gonna happen in 10 years. We’re starting to see this hockey stick now. What would you say? [00:19:14] Nina Harding: Yeah, it’s incredible. Um, where we saw customers may be dipping their toe into things like copilot, right? Yeah. Um, now we’re seeing them double down and. Make it pervasive and available to everyone at the company. You’re starting to see it transform the way, uh, we’re setting up, uh, call centers. Yeah. The way HR is engaging, um, the way that we’re putting together sales proposals, it’s in every piece of the business. Now, finance, help me understand what, what are you seeing from my numbers? Gimme some intelligence so I look a little bit smarter. Right. Um, and you’ve [00:19:48] Vince Menzione: been talking about verticals. I think about financial services. I [00:19:52] Nina Harding: think about [00:19:52] Vince Menzione: healthcare. [00:19:53] Nina Harding: Oh, healthcare. Yeah. I mean, the [00:19:54] Vince Menzione: impact in healthcare is astounding. [00:19:56] Nina Harding: Oh, absolutely. Like the going to your doctor now you actually get to have a conversation with your doctor. Yeah. They have Dragon there, right? That’s right. That’s recording the conversation, putting it, putting it into, uh, the system. And I know with my, my doctor, I feel complete transformative relationship. It’s almost like we went back 25 years, but not. With today’s technology in healthcare [00:20:20] Vince Menzione: because now they have Epic or, or Cerner, whatever, whatever the application. But Epic is 90 per 80% of the market right now. Right? [00:20:27] Nina Harding: Yeah. You have [00:20:27] Vince Menzione: a great relationship with Epic as well. [00:20:29] Nina Harding: Absolutely. But what I love is, to your point about healthcare, um, we’re back to like actually caring for the patient. Not having to do all the data entry. [00:20:39] Vince Menzione: Oh, I used to hate it. The doctors just sitting there tapping away. It still happens. By the way, they’re not all using Dragon yet. Oh, that’s blue. They’ll, they’ll get there. We’ll, got some work to do. Partners. [00:20:47] Nina Harding: Let’s get ’em. [00:20:48] Vince Menzione: I’ll give you a list of some of my, my doctors. [00:20:51] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:20:51] Vince Menzione: But no, it’s fascinating. Um. Agentic ai. Yes. Right. So we layer, we talked mostly about the, the current use and copilot and other, and other uses. But this agentic AI really starts to change the game. [00:21:03] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm. [00:21:04] Vince Menzione: Because now applications start talking to one another, talks about this business applications that all spark start speaking to one another. Yeah. You work with organizations like ServiceNow, as an example, that have been really leaning in on agentic ai. Yeah. Hopefully they’ll be coming. Michael Park will be coming to the podcast here soon. [00:21:20] Nina Harding: Good. [00:21:20] Vince Menzione: He’s also a former microsofty, but um, just this whole agentic piece is really, what are you starting to see there? [00:21:27] Nina Harding: Oh, it’s exciting. Yeah. Um, it’s transformative. So let’s, let’s give a practical, everyday example, right? We’re all partners here, understanding in the partner world, I had someone on my team. In a matter of maybe two hours, build an agent that digested all the information around all our incentives worldwide. Oh [00:21:47] Vince Menzione: my gosh. [00:21:49] Nina Harding: And now you can just ask the agent a question on incentives. Can you believe that? I mean, that’s just a little basic, practical two hour project. What we’re seeing is agents are showing up to help our, our, you know, practical reasons around partners, help our our field find the right partner. Ask really interested, interesting, like kind of nuanced questions and be able to address that. Um, but it is allowing us to have autonomous and semi-autonomous. Workflows, right? Yeah. It’s, it’s really, uh, in incredible what we’re, uh, doing. I’m looking at every part of my business on where can I supplement to create a better experience for our partners or for my team. Using an agent. Yeah. So that they can focus on the value added work. Just like we were talking about healthcare. I want my doctor to talk to me. Yeah. I want him to have a conversation with me. Absolutely. I want my team to have conversations with the partners and explore what’s possible. Not trying to kind of look through the, the minutia detail. [00:22:55] Vince Menzione: Well sit there in partner center and trying to figure out how much business you’ve tracked this year. Oh yeah. They don’t have to do that any longer. [00:23:01] Nina Harding: No, we now have agents that can actually put all of the information together and distill it in one place. I so love it. And then even go out, you can ask it to go out and get market information. Yeah. Or think of new ideas and concepts. What haven’t I considered on doing with X, Y, Z partner? Yeah. [00:23:18] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about the organization a little bit more. Mm-hmm. I wanna double click on the fact that now you have this separate organization that’s very channel focused and your organization is enterprise partner focused. [00:23:28] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm. [00:23:28] Vince Menzione: Because the two do come together at certain points. Absolutely. Right. The, those channel partners. Selling first party, Microsoft’s first party products into those, uh, into those accounts, as well as selling those partners that you’re working with. So there’s this combination. I see a lot of it happening in the marketplace, right? I see this collaboration happening. What’s your point of view on marketplace and the collaboration with the partners that you work with? [00:23:52] Nina Harding: Yeah. I think, uh, marketplace is a very, very powerful co-sell, um, tool, right? Yeah. It, it, it allows, uh, in particular our software development companies and even services companies and then software development companies can bring in channels, channel partners as well. Yeah. But it allows you to reach out to our entire customer base, um, and have the ability to accelerate the sales. Yeah. And also help highlight what your offerings are. And tailor them. Uh, I think that’s, uh, really important. But getting back to kind of the concept of, of the small SME. And c and, uh, we don’t want to say [00:24:33] Vince Menzione: smec do, right? EPS well, I, it rolls off the tongue sometimes, but say, but those [00:24:38] Nina Harding: are internal organizations, right? And so we really don’t externalize it too much, right? For example, uh, when I do addresses to the America’s partners, it’s across all of, all of the different Absolutely. Areas. And our partners take an ISV, very few ISVs. Only sell into enterprise. Yeah. They’re really across all segments. So we work together and, uh, my tagline internally is that if partner people don’t know how to partner and do business across all sorts of areas that we’re in the wrong business. Exactly. So, um, I’m not, I’m not, so I’m excited about how it’s energizing and connecting with the sales organizations where it’s also. Uh, positioning our products to make sure that they’re segment specific and they’re addressing the needs of the customers in the segments. Uh, as well as that we have incentives that are really geared around the different behaviors that the partners are driving and the benefits that they’re driving for our customers, um, across multiple segments. So it allows us the fidelity to meet. Our customers and our partners where the value proposition is even more [00:25:46] Vince Menzione: effectively. And it makes, it makes perfect sense and you start thinking about the enterprise and how you’re driving across it, and then also against the ous. And then I, we like to talk, talk about the long tail, right? You start getting into even the mid-size market and then into the smaller accounts. [00:26:01] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm. [00:26:01] Vince Menzione: And, and all of the Microsoft toolkit. And the partners toolkit are coming into those customers. We just did a session here last week on MSPs. [00:26:09] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm. [00:26:09] Vince Menzione: Because that whole world is changing because they now need to be ready on Microsoft technologies and understand how to work more closely with Microsoft. ’cause it’s no longer the old days where they were turning the crank and worrying about a laptop computer. [00:26:22] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:26:22] Vince Menzione: They are really, they’re, they’re doing AI now. Yeah, they’re doing cloud in a big way [00:26:26] Nina Harding: and it’s a different, it’s a different model, right? Yeah. Um, we’re very quickly moving away from this transactional sales approach. Right? That’s right. And I don’t mean to simplify it to that extent, but yeah. The paradigm has shifted to, wow, you’re actually advising a customer on changing their business processes or, yeah. Or, uh, bending the curve on innovation or, uh, what, how do you have more intimacy with your customers? Um, or how do you make. The day in the life of an employee better. Right, exactly. Those are the, those are the conversations you need to be having and that’s very different. [00:27:04] Vince Menzione: Very different than the transactional, I want to sell you an EA or whatever the, whatever that conversation was. And that was the old model. [00:27:10] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:27:10] Vince Menzione: To your point, that’s how they need to think differently and operate differently. You’re starting to see some acquisitions happen, like some of your partners. Mm-hmm. Like Insight is a good example. [00:27:18] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:27:19] Vince Menzione: They’ve gone after organizations that did that. Exactly. That understood solution selling. And bringing the whole portfolio to a customer. Mm-hmm. And you’re starting to see more and more of that m and a activity happening in this market? Well, [00:27:30] Nina Harding: it’s critical. Um, it’s no longer go in and position and sell the solution the customer wants you to be. There through the duration to actually have the impact. [00:27:39] Vince Menzione: So critical. You know, it’s almost like Microsoft picks a theme every year. And this year for me, watching start and seeing Judson up there talking about Frontier for the first time. Yeah. Uh, I, I love it. Um, it’s not a novel concept, but I, I think the approach is like, we’re gonna lean in in a way that we haven’t before. Yeah. We’re gonna, we’re gonna. Appreciate partners and customers that also lean in on this frontier. Can you, can you take us through what frontier actually means? Yeah. So we’re [00:28:07] Nina Harding: talking, we’re, we’re really going hard on front the frontier company, right? Yeah. Um, and what that is, is it’s a mindset shift, right? Think about the frontier. That’s where the, it’s the world of the possible. The West, [00:28:21] Vince Menzione: I think about the west. The west, [00:28:22] Nina Harding: right? Um, but it, it’s really around making AI. Absolutely centric to the way ev everything you do. Yeah. Right. So it’s about the, um, the agenta computing, the use of copilot, um, even GitHub as you’re, you’re developing your solutions and it’s really thinking around what is the world a possibility versus being limited by. What functionality came outta the box. Right. In theory. Right. Um, so we’re really excited about it and we’re excited about bringing our partners along on the journey. The conversation is shifting. We’re talking about that all the time with customers. It’s just fundamentally, it’s, it’s about exploration of what we can do together. I love that. Um, as you’re looking at that, we need to almost have the ecosystem in our sellers and every company on the frontier of what is possible, uh, with AI and making sure that we’re as efficient as effective, creating the experiences that are optimal for our clients all the time. And then re-imagining how do you go about serving your customers differently? [00:29:37] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love Frontier. I’m, I’m ready to get my cowboy hat, Adam. Um, I wanted to spend a minute here, if you don’t mind. I have a favorite question I ask each of my guests. Sure. A little bit off the track of partners, but in a way it ties back into it. So Nina, you are hosting a dinner party and. It could be anywhere in the world. We were talking about Denmark earlier. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We’re talking about South Florida, talking about New York City. Mm-hmm. Another great location. Mm-hmm. We both, you lived there and I just came back from New York. [00:30:07] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:30:08] Vince Menzione: Um, you can invite any three guests to this dinner party. Mm. Your choice. Present, current, or past? Some people have even referred to the, in the future, somebody in the future that they would invite to this dinner party. [00:30:22] Nina Harding: Mm. [00:30:22] Vince Menzione: Whom would you invite and why? [00:30:26] Nina Harding: Ooh, that’s a good one. Um, first I’d invite my mom. Um, okay, so I. I lost her at 26, so she never knew me as an adult. So, um, and she was one, you were 26 at the time? I was 26. Uh, she was 54. Um, and uh, so it would be really interesting to know her as an adult and have an adult conversation around, uh, career family. Children, just the, the way the world works. Uh, she spoke seven languages and watching what’s happening in the, in, in the world today. She was definitely, um, a woman of the world. Uh, let’s see, who else would I, I’d actually invite my grandfather too, so I’m, I’m leaning in on family. I think I love the family [00:31:12] Vince Menzione: conversation. [00:31:12] Nina Harding: Um, the, the reason is I think. Family is so core to who I am. Um, it’s one of my most important values, uh, whether it’s my personal family or my work family. I treat them, um, with that kind of respect. But with my grandfather, the reason why I’d love to bring him into the conversation is, uh, he was in Denmark and very. Involved in World War ii and, uh, he, I found out he wouldn’t talk about it, um, very much about the resistance in Denmark. But, um, he helped with a lot of, uh, getting the Jews out of Denmark into Sweden on boats at night. Wow. And I’d love to have. A conversation now that I understand that. Yeah. About it. Yeah. Um, he was also, uh, involved in setting up the eu. He was on the, uh, tax board in Denmark. Uh, and so just to see things that I’m living and breathing in my world today to, to have conversations on what his thought process, he also did business in Burma. Oh my goodness. Right. And, uh, all over it was a Burma back in the day. Yeah, right. Exactly. And he adopted, uh, a boy from Burma who became my uncle. Wow. Uh, so just the things and the experiences that in today’s world, uh, I never had a chance to explore there. Um, and then in the future. Going back to family. Uh, I have two little boys, uh, four and 13 months. Oh boy. Can you believe that? Oh boy. I know. I crazy boy. Um, I would love to invite, um, their wife. [00:32:46] Vince Menzione: Oh, I love that. I love that because [00:32:48] Nina Harding: I would love for them at this dinner party to meet the previous generations and the roots, um, and have the exposure to the history, the, um, the multicultural nature of our family. Um, but. The reality is I’m also a little bit older. I don’t know if I’m gonna have the pleasure that you just had a few weeks ago. Oh, such a great with the weddings and I’m really looking forward, um, that I’d have a chance to really spend some meeting time with that. I match that though [00:33:15] Vince Menzione: as a young child to meet your future wife, like, and for you to meet their future wife at that point. [00:33:21] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm. [00:33:21] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. And time. [00:33:22] Nina Harding: It would be pretty cool. Yeah. [00:33:23] Vince Menzione: And so cool to have your mom back. [00:33:26] Nina Harding: Oh, [00:33:26] Vince Menzione: and um, and your granddad. My dad was, I lost my dad when I was in my twenties, so I understand that, like, that hole that you feel like you’ve gone many years without. [00:33:36] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:33:36] Vince Menzione: And he was also World War ii, so, uh, was part, was part of the occu, he was part of the D-Day invasion and the occupation and everything. So, but [00:33:45] Nina Harding: yeah. [00:33:45] Vince Menzione: But that whole generation was so different. They were so quiet about. There, time spent there. [00:33:50] Nina Harding: Very, very, and I think, um, in today’s world, I, I would love to get to some of those core values and those decision and, um, points and what guided them. Yeah. Um, those truths. So cool. That are part of your core. [00:34:04] Vince Menzione: I always like to ask this question. It sets us up, uh, as we finish the conversation today. All of our amazing partners that are watching and listening today. Yeah. [00:34:11] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:34:12] Vince Menzione: Nina. We’ve got a big year ahead, right? A lot of, a lot of incredible things. Um, Microsoft, in my opinion, has built the most incredible ecosystem, the largest ecosystem by far, and has done the most work here. And I think a lot of organizations, I, I tend to go on sometimes with LinkedIn with people, and they really don’t understand how Microsoft operates, which is why we do what we do. We try to help. Them to better, uh, establish relationships and engage and co-sell and mark marketplace and the like with you and your team, what would you say to them now about what they need to start doing as we get into the, because it’s still the summer here, at least a, a [00:34:50] Nina Harding: few Hey, we’re, we’re, we’re way into Q1 here, right? So it’s [00:34:53] Vince Menzione: Q1. We’re, we’re kicking, we’re kicking into the year in big time. Yeah. What if these partners need to do better, differently? How should they be thinking about fiscal year 26? [00:35:03] Nina Harding: Yeah, well, you’re, you’re hearing it in almost every question you’ve asked. AI is central to everything we’re doing, so, um, get on board, learn. Um, we know that it can be scary in the beginning there, um, there could be some hesitancy from people, um, and. Uh, I really encourage you, we have so much training, uh, but the most important thing is to become customer zero and to embrace that technology. With yourself and then with your, your colleagues and at your company. So, so important because how are you gonna position, how are you gonna evolve with your customers if you don’t inherently know? Yeah. Um, I often recommend to people just start with something that’s personal. Yeah. So I’m Danish. Uh, Danish, uh, at birthdays and weddings and celebrations. You write an a song in honor of the bride and groom where? The birthday. Birthday. Oh, how cool [00:35:59] Vince Menzione: that is. [00:35:59] Nina Harding: And, uh, oh gosh. I would sw sweat having to put these songs together to rubber ducky or, oh, Susanna, I, I can go now in to copilot and it can write me a song in 30 seconds. I mean, it’s awesome. So just start with something that. Doesn’t feel scary. Then very quickly it’ll move to performance reviews. It can, it can move to how you prepare for a customer engagement or a partner engagement. Uh, it can help you innovate on ideas or market opportunities, help you look around corners. So that’s the number one thing. Yeah. [00:36:34] Vince Menzione: And customer zero. People don’t all understand that. That’s Microsoft’s terminology. We used to say eating your own dog. Food, food, food. Right? Yeah. Which we don’t use the term dog food any longer, but essentially like use the technology that you’re selling. [00:36:46] Nina Harding: Absolutely. Absolutely. So that’s the number one thing. Um, because you have to evolve with it. Or unfortunately, I don’t know what that market is gonna look like for you three, five years from now. [00:37:01] Vince Menzione: And you, the leading indicators will. Show us that you need to be on board. You need to be staying trained every day on top of this because it means that your pipeline, your sales, everything is going to be impacted by that. [00:37:12] Nina Harding: Yeah. Uh, the second thing that I also encourage for partners is in this world where, um, everyone wants to do everything. I think the power of differentiating yourself and creating your value proposition is so important. What that means is your value proposition on. Success you’ve had with customers, making sure that that’s tangible in stories and videos, whatever. Um, making sure that you understand by industry what your value proposition is and your depth of expertise. If you’re doing everything right, you know that expression in your peanut buttering peanut butter, you’re probably not showing up as doing something great that. From a field perspective. So that differentiation is really, really important. [00:37:56] Vince Menzione: I’ve worked with some of the large, but when I was doing consulting work back in the day before we started up the, the events and podcast, um, these organizations wouldn’t understand how to engage at the OU level. Mm-hmm. And they didn’t speak the language going into the meetings. Mm-hmm. They’d have, they’d have a healthcare conversation the same as a financial services [00:38:14] Nina Harding: company. Yeah. You can’t do that anymore. Yeah. And these were [00:38:15] Vince Menzione: large ISVs. These are multi-billion dollar organizations that don’t understand that. [00:38:19] Nina Harding: Yeah. Well, and, and that’s what you’re seeing at Microsoft. Uh, in the US we’re a hundred percent verticalized, right? All industry based with Canada, Latin America, but even within the countries you click down one level, it’s verticalized. Yes. So, um, the power of that differentiation and the application to a customer. Pain point, uh, trends by industry Absolutely critical. So, [00:38:47] Vince Menzione: so critical. [00:38:47] Nina Harding: Um, and then the [00:38:48] Vince Menzione: differentiation, I’m sorry, you mean, but like getting, getting people’s attention, right. You need to be able to show up in a way that people understand what your value looks like. [00:38:57] Nina Harding: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You can’t do everything, but you do these things really, really well. [00:39:02] Vince Menzione: Really well. [00:39:03] Nina Harding: You want something to pop in the, in, in the, in the mind of the sellers when they hear, yeah. X, y, Z scenario. Right? Absolutely. Um, so that’s, that’s really critical. Uh, I enablement. Um, it is, we are, we are evolving so quickly. If you did training six months ago on ai, I hate to break it to you, it’s a new world. It’s old ready, right? It’s old. So make it, make it part of like your Friday mornings or your Friday afternoons. Make learning. An experience. It’s part of your routine. It’s something fun. Do it with your colleagues. Share top 10 best tips and tricks. You need to really embrace the enablement piece, um, more so than I think we’ve ever needed to before. [00:39:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And being technical in that regard too. Being, being on top of that. Technical expertise is so critical. Yes. You’ve put more resources there as well. Right. You’ve, you’ve lined up more resources for enablement. [00:39:59] Nina Harding: Absolutely. You’ll see that in our field sales organization, we shifted where our. Resources are. So, um, it was in the news, right? We made some, uh, big changes, uh, in early July, but we also are hiring up in other places. Yes. So it wasn’t a net deficit, it’s actually an increase in technical roles. Yeah. Um, so we’re seeing it speaks [00:40:21] Vince Menzione: to too, as AI has proliferated, uh, our world and our, our movements. Um, we, certain roles are not as important anymore. The roles that are important are the ones that are more specific to executing performance, which are more technical in nature and enablement. So it makes, this makes perfect sense. [00:40:39] Nina Harding: Yeah. For example, in uh, the US we have, what, 350 open roles right now for, um, solution engineers. Nice. Nice. So what you’re seeing is this shift and for our partners, I encourage you to look at where the conversation is going. Um, but what happens is, is that you have to be able to translate between the technology and the business. Yes. And that is what’s so critical right now. Um, I would of course always say, make sure you’re looking at things like your designations and, um, making sure that you’re on top of the incentives and how those are all growing and shifting. There has been a tremendous amount of investment made into partners this year. Very nice. Um, and then, um, outside, outside of that, I think, let’s have fun. Let’s have fun. Let’s go. Let’s go solve some real. Problems together. Yeah. Let’s innovate together. Let’s collaborate. It’s in the conversation that I’m finding the magic now. It’s not just in the routine kind of kind of map and play of of, of, um, mapping an AE to an AE on a deal. It’s actually in the exploration of what’s possible. Yeah. [00:41:53] Vince Menzione: And what’s possible is amazing. We have an incredible year ahead. Yeah. Yeah. And we would love to have you come join us. We’re gonna have a busy. Fall and winter year. So for those of our. Viewers and listeners who haven’t heard it yet, we just opened up our registration for our rest and event. Washington DC area is always a popular spot, October 27th through the 29th. Great. We’ve got an open invitation for you to come. Great keynote for us. Great. Uh, we’ll be doing something around Ignite. We don’t know exactly what that looks like. TBD and then this winter we’re gonna be back here. I’ll hopefully be joining you in January Yeah. With, with what you’ll be doing. But then we’ll have some things going on here as well. [00:42:33] Nina Harding: Great. So [00:42:33] Vince Menzione: I’d love to have you back here in the studio. [00:42:34] Nina Harding: Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity. It’s wonderful to you. It’s so great to make, have [00:42:38] Vince Menzione: you make the trip today and be with us. Yeah. So great to have you with our partners that are watching a lot of, a lot of which you listen, some, we’re starting to get more YouTube now. More people are watching us. But, uh, so great to have you here today. So thank you so much for being here. [00:42:52] Nina Harding: Absolutely. Thank you. [00:42:53] Vince Menzione: Thank you, Nina. Thank you for watching and listening to this episode of The Ultimate Partner. We’re [email protected] or Ultimate Partner.com where you can find all information about our community ultimate partner experience, as well as our live events. And we’ve got a busy fall plan for you where we’re hosting our live event in Reston, Virginia, in the Washington DC area. On October 27th to the 29th, we’re gonna have an amazing list of speakers and people there in the room. So great way to continue learning how to become the ultimate partner and stay tuned ’cause we’ve got more ahead that we’ll be announcing that the fall continues, uh, possibly another event in the fall, as well as being back here in the Boca Studio this winter. So thank you again for watching and supporting us.

with Leigh Ann Campbell, Ultimate Partner Community Member Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. In this insightful episode of The Ultimate Partner, host Vince Menzione welcomes Leigh Ann Campbell, CEO of Rev Alliances and a seasoned expert in building successful Microsoft partnerships. Leigh Ann shares her remarkable journey, including her pivotal role in transforming Quest into Microsoft’s number one co-sell partner worldwide. They delve into the critical elements of effective partnering, introducing Leigh Ann’s powerful “FAME” framework: Focus, Audience, Message, and Execution (now “E-squared” with Enablement). The conversation uncovers practical strategies for navigating the complexities of the Microsoft ecosystem, emphasizing the importance of sales enablement for your own team, understanding Microsoft’s internal scorecards, and aligning partnership goals with your CRO’s revenue objectives. Leigh Ann provides valuable advice on focusing your approach, crafting the right message for the right Microsoft audience, and executing with precision. She also shares her vision for the future of Rev Alliances, including the exciting integration of AI to scale her proven methodologies and help even more partners achieve their greatest results. Key Takeaways: Sales enablement for your own sales team is crucial for scaling your Microsoft partnership beyond the alliance team. Understanding the tectonic shifts in customer buying behavior is essential for rethinking partnership models. Data quality and a shared purpose between your company and Microsoft are fundamental for a strong partnership. Leigh Ann Campbell’s FAME framework (Focus, Audience, Message, Execution/Enablement) provides a practical roadmap for partnership success. It’s vital to understand Microsoft sellers’ scorecards and how they are measured to align your efforts. Engaging your CRO and aligning partnership KPIs with sales goals is critical for company-wide buy-in and success. Focusing your efforts on a specific area of success within Microsoft and then expanding is more effective than trying to do everything at once. Building trust and making it easy to work with your company are key to successful engagement with Microsoft sellers. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain insider knowledge from industry leaders shaping tomorrow’s digital world. Tune in now for an inspiring conversation that could redefine your business strategy! Keywords: Microsoft partnership, co-sell, sales enablement, partner program, ISV, SI, Rev Alliances, Leigh Ann Campbell, Vince Menzione, Ultimate Partner, FAME framework, focus, audience, message, execution, enablement, Microsoft sellers, channel partners, partner strategy, alliance management, tech partnerships, B2B partnerships, software partnerships, cloud partnerships, Azure, Microsoft Marketplace, partner center, co-selling with Microsoft, achieving partner success, partner growth, revenue generation, pipeline development, Microsoft ecosystem, navigating Microsoft, partner of the year, product integration, AI in partnerships https://youtu.be/LcvmtORAV6E If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. . https://youtu.be/s33fltuizEo Leigh Ann Campbell Audio Episode [00:00:00] Leigh Ann Campbell: Sales enablement, uh, not of Microsoft Sellers. This is your sellers. Ah, because it doesn’t, it doesn’t do you any good if the only group within your company who understands Microsoft are the, is the alliance team, right? Because that doesn’t scale. You need your sales people out there doing co-sell with their peers at Microsoft. [00:00:23] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, [00:00:28] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together, managed services will be one and a half times larger [00:00:34] Vince Menzione: because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models [00:00:41] Intro: until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized, and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. [00:00:47] Intro: Can you figure out first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. [00:01:00] Vince Menzione: Welcome to, or welcome back to the Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you. [00:01:08] Vince Menzione: Achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And today I have for you a leader who’s helped organizations drive their greatest results as Pinnacle Partners working with Microsoft. I. Leanne Campbell was a leader that led one of the largest ISVs to the top partner status working with Microsoft. [00:01:26] Vince Menzione: And today she leads her own company as CEO of Rev Alliances, and I’m privileged to have her join us today here in Boca Raton. Leanne, [00:01:35] Leigh Ann Campbell: welcome to Boca. Thank you so much for having me. [00:01:37] Vince Menzione: I’m excited to have you. You know, you and I have known each other for several years. Yep. And when I first met you, you were leading one of the largest partnerships working with Microsoft. [00:01:46] Vince Menzione: I thought we’d spent some time talking about your career journey and how you got to this point in your career. [00:01:51] Leigh Ann Campbell: Absolutely. So I was born and raised in Silicon Valley, so uh, just kind of worked out that tech was where I wanted to be and where I landed. So I have spent over 25 years. Wow. You’re too young to be 25. [00:02:06] Leigh Ann Campbell: You started 10 years [00:02:08] Vince Menzione: old, I’m sure. Yes. [00:02:09] Leigh Ann Campbell: Uh, working in all types of companies within Silicon Valley. Right. So I’ve done the startup thing, I’ve done the.com thing, like we’ve talked about. Yes. And you know, later in my career I had a great opportunity to lead sales and alliances for companies like PeopleSoft and HPE. [00:02:26] Leigh Ann Campbell: So Very cool. I feel like I’ve seen it all. I bet you [00:02:30] Vince Menzione: have. So tell us about, ’cause the journey to Quest and. My introduction to you was when you were actually leading the alliance strategy for Quest. Mm-hmm. And at that point had taken the organization to the pinnacle working with Microsoft. And I thought maybe you could take us through what that was like, what you, uh, found when you got there, and then how you led the organization into that journey. [00:02:52] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yeah, thank you. So when I got there, quest had already been around for quite some time. I think they were founded in the late eighties, early nineties. Right. So their claim to fame with Microsoft was their ability to migrate Office 365. Right. So fast forward to when I joined in 2019 ish, they were somewhat struggling to figure out the better together story now that Microsoft had moved on to cloud. [00:03:20] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yep. Right. So my team and I had the opportunity to kind of rebuild that partnership and so we really started. Looking at what mattered to Microsoft, what mattered to Quest, and figure out how we can get best of both worlds. And so, gosh, four years later, we built Quest into the number one co-sell partner worldwide. [00:03:42] Vince Menzione: Wow. That was amazing. And I knew Quest from back in my Microsoft days. And they had gone through several lights, I would say. [00:03:49] Intro: Yep. [00:03:49] Vince Menzione: They were a private company. Then they became part of Dell. Mm-hmm. And they became private again, or I don’t remember the, the, the path exactly. You came, when you came there, they really weren’t relevant in the Microsoft ecosystem. [00:04:02] Vince Menzione: So how did you get them there? Like was there any, any learnings or We’re gonna talk a little bit more about what you do today with partners. Yeah. Is there any specific learnings from that experience that you’ve moved forward with? [00:04:11] Leigh Ann Campbell: Oh my gosh, so many. Uh, I would say overall the value that Quest brought to the table was they really had a wide variety of solutions to help customers, right? [00:04:22] Leigh Ann Campbell: So. They touched all areas of Microsoft except for dynamics. So the message that we were bringing to the Microsoft sellers were, we can do it all. Like just pick, we’ve got 25 solutions in the marketplace. Yeah. And 25 co-sell approved products. Just pick ’cause we can be your one-stop shop. And I thought, wow, they’re gonna be banging down my door. [00:04:44] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yep. For all these opportunities, when in reality nobody needs everything. They have a very specific need. Right? And so we went through several years of kind of rebuilding our messaging to make it be more focused to figure out who within Microsoft would. Care about that. Get compensated on it. Right. And so that we could build a joint go to market strategy. [00:05:06] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Very cool. [00:05:07] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yeah. [00:05:07] Vince Menzione: And then you left to go on your own and you started Rev Alliances. Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about Rev Alliances. [00:05:12] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yeah, so Rev Alliances really came out after we made it to the top with Microsoft as their number one partner for co-sell. We had won partner of the year rewards, right? [00:05:23] Leigh Ann Campbell: I felt like, wow, we’ve, we’ve really done this. I had a lot of friends and colleagues back in Silicon Valley who were saying, Hey, what were your best practices? What did you do? Could you help me? And I thought, wow, this feels like the logical next step. So, so I made that move and have been helping partners for about two years now. [00:05:43] Vince Menzione: Very cool. And you work with both ISVs, independent software vendors, which by the way, we’re now calling software companies. After my conversation with Jason Gravy, they’re redefining the category. Then you also work with SI organizations. Yep. Can you elaborate on how you’re helping these companies achieve more? [00:06:00] Leigh Ann Campbell: Absolutely. So my learnings from my time at Quest as well as all the other organizations I’ve had the chance to work with, I developed a methodology called Fame, fame, fame. Right. And it’s, it’s a, it’s a great song too, but it is a great song. I will, I will not sing it for you. Nor will I, um, and fame is based on what I saw, you know, at my time with Quest. [00:06:24] Leigh Ann Campbell: But what I’ve also seen across all size organizations, everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame. Yes. Whether it’s your CEO being on stage with Satya Nadella, or your sales executives actually engaging with their peers at a large partner like Microsoft to drive sales, or your salespeople getting. If their phone calls returned. [00:06:45] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yeah. From sellers wanting to drive business together. Right. It’s difficult. Yeah. So everyone wants that 15 minutes or hopefully more with your partner. And so at my time with Quest, I figured out how to really simplify this whole process of how do you build a partnership and get it to market and drive revenue. [00:07:03] Leigh Ann Campbell: Pipeline faster. And so that’s, that’s really what FAME is. And Okay. I wanna know, you’re gonna have to tease this out for me. I will. I would love to. There’s an acronym that stands for something. Yes. So FAME stands for focus, audience Message and Execution. Okay. And so you drill down into each one. But I think focus is, is obviously Yeah. [00:07:25] Leigh Ann Campbell: A hard place to start. ’cause again, if people think I can do it all or they think. I’m a global company, so I wanna touch every continent with my solution. My recommendation is start small. Build your brand with, you know, that sales play or that sales audience or that industry or that location. Okay. And then expand from there. [00:07:48] Leigh Ann Campbell: Got it. [00:07:48] Vince Menzione: And, [00:07:48] Leigh Ann Campbell: and that’s what [00:07:49] Vince Menzione: we had to do. The focus means different things to me. Yeah. Sometimes it’s clarity, like yeah, this is clarity. Like what is the specific thing you wanna go achieve? Yeah. And then I always talk about maniacal focus. Mm-hmm. Which is another execution level of focus, right. Where just the attention to detail mm-hmm. [00:08:04] Vince Menzione: On the execution. But what you’re saying here is. You wanna take and focus in an area where you believe intuitively you can be very successful land That first is what you understand it. Yes. And then build from there [00:08:16] Leigh Ann Campbell: ab. Absolutely. Or, or start where somewhere where you already are successful. Right. [00:08:21] Leigh Ann Campbell: Because it’s, it’s easy to do the win wires. It’s easy to share your success and get people excited about working with you when you’ve already got the demonstrated success. [00:08:30] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Yeah. And then what do you, when you’re working with an organization, how do you help ’em get to that point on focus? [00:08:36] Leigh Ann Campbell: You know, I dive deep into their area of expertise. [00:08:41] Leigh Ann Campbell: We look a lot at, at sales, past sales to see, you know, is there an area, is there an industry where you have strength? Um, and we kind of start with that as well as their product focus, obviously, because Microsoft has individual product groups as well. Right? And so if your product drives a ton of Azure. [00:09:01] Leigh Ann Campbell: Let’s go focus with on my next one, which is audience. Let’s go focus your message on the Azure audience, the Azure sellers at Microsoft. So that’s step two is the audience message. Message is, is tricky. You would think it, you know, customers, my partners think we’ve got a whole marketing department, we’ve got great messaging. [00:09:23] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yes. But is your messaging to your end customer or is it to a Microsoft seller? Ah, to really understand your better together story [00:09:30] Vince Menzione: and what should it be? [00:09:31] Leigh Ann Campbell: It should be your better together story. Better, right? It should be, here’s how I can help the customer and here’s how I can help you, how I can help you land and expand in your business, you know, with the partner. [00:09:44] Leigh Ann Campbell: Let’s go back to audience [00:09:45] Vince Menzione: for a second. Yep. Um, because I, I remember a slide that you’ve shared when we’ve done presentations together and, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s very interesting ’cause I think a lot of people don’t recognize this piece. In that it’s not one person at Microsoft. Right, right. And that’s where you try to get to with the, with the audience component, if I’m not mistaken. [00:10:03] Vince Menzione: Right? Absolutely. Um, and that, I think that’s where I think a lot of partnerships fail in that I’ve got a relationship with somebody and that’s where I’m gonna be successful. Something more about how you help them kind of navigate Microsoft. [00:10:16] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a tough one. Yeah. I mean, everyone knows Microsoft is one of the largest companies in the world and it’s, it’s really complicated to navigate. [00:10:25] Leigh Ann Campbell: And you know, my first question is always, what’s your scorecard? You know, how are you measured? What does success look like for you as a seller at Microsoft? Because once I understand that, then I can figure out, are you the right person to be working with on this opportunity or not? And I can’t tell you how many times people skip that question. [00:10:45] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yes. And they think, oh, I’ve got a resource. I’ve got somebody who I can talk to at Microsoft, unfortunately, then will get paid on what you’re, you know. Focused on, yeah. Makes it hard. [00:10:56] Vince Menzione: And then also the account executive is not necessarily the only seat at the table with the customer. Absolutely. In fact, in many cases they’re the least frequent seat at the table and there’s a whole team. [00:11:07] Vince Menzione: They’re like the quarterback. Right. And there’s an entire team. There’s a front line and there’s, you know, there’s the whole team is there. Yes. Supporting them. So how do you help them with that component? ’cause that’s also the, a very complex Yep. I think it’s hard for. Other organizations, ISVs and sis alike. [00:11:22] Vince Menzione: Yep. To figure out that PO component of it, [00:11:25] Leigh Ann Campbell: the ae. Everyone thinks the account executive, I just need to get to the account executive, and they’re at that 50,000 foot level, like you said, the quarterback to make sure that their customer needs are being met from a bunch of different specialists. Right. And so when I was at Quest. [00:11:42] Leigh Ann Campbell: We saw, I mean, we sold into large enterprises who had 15 to 20 different sellers. Yeah. Specialists. Across the board. You have Azure specialist, a modern work specialist. The time you had a data and AI specialist. Right. Business applications. Business applica part of the business. Yes. Yes. And so that’s part of the exercise with focus at the very beginning, right. [00:12:04] Leigh Ann Campbell: Is okay, so let’s figure out where your product fits within Microsoft, and then we can dive deep into the right audience and then the connection. Magically happens and people wanna talk to you because you’re speaking their language. [00:12:16] Vince Menzione: So let’s talk about the E in fame. [00:12:18] Leigh Ann Campbell: Okay. E stands, I, I’ve changed it up a bit now. [00:12:22] Leigh Ann Campbell: It’s E squared. E squared. E squared, yes. [00:12:24] Vince Menzione: So it’s fame square, [00:12:26] Leigh Ann Campbell: sort of. Yes. The e, uh, stands for enablement. Okay. Sales enablement. Uh, not of Microsoft Sellers. This is your sellers. Ah, because it doesn’t. It doesn’t do you any good if the only group within your company who understands Microsoft are the, is the Alliance team, right? [00:12:45] Leigh Ann Campbell: Because that doesn’t scale. You need your salespeople out there doing co-sell with their peers at Microsoft. And so enablement is really teaching your sellers how to speak Microsoft, Microsoft 1 0 1. How are they organized? How to prepare for a account planning session with a rep. Uh. The hardest part is helping them understand, to bring an ask with them. [00:13:10] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yes. You’d be surprised how many reps, you know, they get in a room and then the Microsoft seller says, what can I do to help? And they’re like, nothing. I, I’m good. It’s, it’s, no, you need to bring an ask. And so that’s so, so enablement. And then the second part is execution. Okay. And so back to your maniacal focus. [00:13:28] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yeah. That’s here on execution. It’s showing up every day, prepared to have those conversations With Microsoft, it’s. Partner center. Right. There’s a lot being talked about with partner center and Marketplace and it’s a lot. I mean, it’s not for the faint of heart. For [00:13:43] Vince Menzione: sure. Let’s peel back on this a little bit because we’ve both been in the room with these partners. [00:13:49] Vince Menzione: Uh, I went back inside to an ISB for two years. Mm-hmm. And I got to see how difficult it was to get people to understand how to work with Microsoft. [00:13:56] Leigh Ann Campbell: Right. [00:13:57] Vince Menzione: So what do you do there? I know you, I know you had to do it at Quest and now you’ve done it with other organizations, alliances. It is often that the sales team just doesn’t understand, right. [00:14:07] Vince Menzione: Right. What, what their role is here mm-hmm. And their expectations. So I want to, I want to kind of peel back a little bit on the expectation piece. [00:14:15] Leigh Ann Campbell: I think that’s a really good point In my experience, uh, your fastest path to success with your Microsoft partnership is having buy-in from your CRO. Yeah. The CRO if, if you can align. [00:14:29] Leigh Ann Campbell: Your KPIs or your goals and objectives to your CROs sales goals. He or she will be your best friend and your biggest advocate and really drive that message along with you to their sellers, right? Versus if you’re the alliance team saying, here’s something else you need to do and remember, and another group of people I’m gonna help you build trust with. [00:14:52] Leigh Ann Campbell: That’s, that’s a tough road, right? But if it starts with you and the CRO, uh, you know. You’re gonna be successful. [00:14:59] Vince Menzione: So how do you set expectations accordingly with the CRO? Because some of them just don’t get it. [00:15:05] Leigh Ann Campbell: Uh, well, you have to speak their language. Yeah. Which is sales, pipeline and revenue. Yeah. So you start with that, right? [00:15:10] Leigh Ann Campbell: You talk about Microsoft being, you know, in 99% of every account you’re ccro is gonna want to break into. I would start there. I would talk about Microsoft’s ability to influence. Opportunities, which I think it’s overlooked a lot, right? Yes. CROs are saying, I want net new opportunities. Net new logos and pipeline. [00:15:32] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yes, that’s all good, that’s all good. But Microsoft can actually help influence an opportunity for you in a couple different ways. One would be, uh, you know, one-to-one seller prep for an opportunity you could be talking about. You know, they could help you understand the procurement process and some challenges you might face and really just help you. [00:15:54] Leigh Ann Campbell: What other partners are in there that you should be working with, things like that, that you might not know. Right. That’s right. They have situational awareness of the whole customer. [00:16:00] Vince Menzione: Absolutely. From there, the seven Cs at the table we like to talk about. [00:16:03] Leigh Ann Campbell: Exactly. Right. So I think you mentioned setting expectations. [00:16:07] Leigh Ann Campbell: I think if you work with your CRO and help them understand the value that Microsoft can actually bring, which is again, its influence, it’s potentially down the road, net new opportunities, but Right. You have to crawl before you walk or run. Right. [00:16:22] Vince Menzione: I love that piece. And then also, um, you were talking about like some of the thing ways that they help, I mean, I’ve actually seen an account executive go into an account where the customer wanted to go in a different direction and they’ve, they’ve leaned the customer into your direction. [00:16:38] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Because they felt like you were the better solution if you built these relationships. Right. You talk. [00:16:42] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yeah. And it’s all about building trust. And the, the fastest way to do that with a Microsoft seller is to, a, make it easy. Right. Be a partner that’s easy to work with, um, be able to speak their language. [00:16:56] Leigh Ann Campbell: Again, that’s why the enablement piece is so important for the seller. Um, and execute and follow through. [00:17:02] Vince Menzione: You talked about scorecard and I think that’s an overlooked area as well because, uh, partners show up and they’re like, I got the best solution. I’ve got the most technologically, uh, efficient people. [00:17:12] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Um, the best price. Like they come in with, especially sis do this, I remember with some of the big sis that I worked with. They just didn’t understand that scorecard component. Mm-hmm. With the, the win Right. For the Microsoft side. Right. Maybe we could spend a few moments on that with us. [00:17:26] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yeah. So all this, we talked about the complexity of the Microsoft sales organization, and so each team, as you know, has a different scorecard. [00:17:35] Leigh Ann Campbell: They’re measured on different, different things right within the account, and so being able to understand that and align yourself. Uh, to that scorecard is ultimately gonna help be a win-win for you and the Microsoft rep. Uh, but it’s also helpful to know if you’re not aligned, right? Because then you’re not wasting your time. [00:17:54] Vince Menzione: So, let’s talk about some of your clients and the work that you’ve been doing at Rev Alliances. How about an example for our viewers and listeners today of how you’ve helped an organization get to that next level? I like to talk about achieving your greatest results. Yeah, because it’s, it’s, it’s measurably different for every organization to say. [00:18:12] Vince Menzione: Growth of 30% or we’re gonna drive X number of dollars in net new revenue and so on. Right. Give us an example of some of the work that you’ve done. [00:18:20] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yeah, so I, one that comes to mind is a very large enterprise data company. Um, and this is slightly different than what we’ve been talking about with sales, where they were, they had a co-sell rhythm with Microsoft, and, and it was going relatively well. [00:18:36] Leigh Ann Campbell: But what they really wanted was some deeper product integration. That’s really where they felt like that was the next step for them. Interesting. And while they had contacts, they were just struggling to get anything to move forward. Right. And so they brought me in. We kind of revisited fame with them and you know, I think we spent the most time on focus because their data platform really plugged into a lot of different areas within Microsoft. [00:19:01] Leigh Ann Campbell: So we said, let’s hone the focus Right on. What Microsoft really is driving right now, and let’s reach out to the team and try to drive that message together. So, so we worked on that. We did quite a bit of product integration. We also continued to show support through co-sell. There was a, obviously a ton of co-sell engagement, marketplace, all of that. [00:19:25] Leigh Ann Campbell: But at the end of about six months, we had this partner on stage with Microsoft at Ignite. Announcing their new product integration. [00:19:35] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Yeah. And you’re outta work with a different set of, uh, people or even organizations at Microsoft in this case, right? Yes. You’re not just working with the field sales organization, [00:19:43] Leigh Ann Campbell: right? [00:19:44] Vince Menzione: You’re working with the product group. [00:19:45] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yep. [00:19:45] Vince Menzione: What do you, do you find that that’s easier or harder? [00:19:49] Leigh Ann Campbell: Gosh, it’s just different. Yeah. I, I don’t know if it’s easier or harder, but, but what I have learned is that. Don’t assume that because you’re talking to one part of Microsoft, that the other part of Microsoft knows what’s happen happening. [00:20:04] Leigh Ann Campbell: Oh. Or about the goodness that you’re driving. Right. [00:20:06] Vince Menzione: Listen, listen here carefully to those who are watching us today, because this is something I see so often. Oh, we, uh, Microsoft loves us. Mm-hmm. They told us they wanna work with us, right. And they want us to, and then you find out that the people that you were talking to have are totally disconnected from the organization that really matters, that are facing the customer, right. [00:20:26] Leigh Ann Campbell: It happens. And I mean, it happens in all large organizations. It’s not unique to Microsoft. And I think, you know, everyone’s got their priorities and their focus and the product team wants to build the best product with the best integration they can. Yes. And, and that’s what they’re gonna go focus on. So, yeah. [00:20:42] Vince Menzione: So, you know, we’ve, I keep talking about this time of tectonic shifts. We talk about the world has changing rapidly. It’s just amazing. Right? We were living in, uh, 2025 and. I, I fa I go back to October when we did our last event and now to today. And so much has changed even since then. Right? Right. We are in a time new, new administration. [00:21:03] Vince Menzione: We’ve talking about acceleration of change with technology and ai, but even in the last month or two, uh, new administration, uh, Stargate, huge investments in ai. Big changes in the tech landscape. We had the, I call it the deep seek moment now. Like everybody, the world got disrupted. Nvidia lost like an incredible amount of, I think it was $600 billion of value in one day. [00:21:27] Vince Menzione: In one day. It was crazy. And now we’ve almost forgotten about that moment. Right. And you know, kind of anticipating where the next moment’s been. Yep. How are you helping the organizations you work with navigate through the change? [00:21:40] Leigh Ann Campbell: Gosh, there, there’s plenty of it. I would say. Fame. I, you know, just to go back to fame, I would say it keeps you grounded, right? [00:21:50] Leigh Ann Campbell: Because you can build a business plan, you can, you can really understand your path forward with Microsoft, specifically with this framework. And so it’s easy to chase the next shiny thing, right? Or, you know, whatever’s on the horizon. But you, you need to stay focused so that you can show success and then go from there. [00:22:12] Leigh Ann Campbell: Right? So I, I do feel like I spend a lot of time pulling my customers back, right? Keeping, reminding them, remember we agreed on this focus area, and they’re like, that’s right, that’s right. So I, I would say, you know, fame really helps me do that. [00:22:26] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it. Bring it back to the point, right? Bring ’em back to where the most important matters are. [00:22:32] Vince Menzione: You have to drive and have, and have the framework around it. So there’s some predictability through the change, right? So you’ve been part of our community. Uh, we talked a little bit about this, like I’ve known you for several years now. When we first started up, ultimate Partner, we did the Mastermind. [00:22:45] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Partnered on that, right? That was the first time I got to see you up on stage and talking about fame, which has been incredible. You’ve been part of our ultimate partner experience community. So, so excited to have you along on the journey. We’ve done some work together over the years. Uh, I know this, but I, I think for our audience, I would love for them to hear from you. [00:23:03] Vince Menzione: What makes Rev Alliances unique. The value you bring to them that is different, I believe, than what a lot of other organizations, consulting organizations or co-selling organizations do different. [00:23:15] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yeah. Thank you. And thank you for, for including me in Ultimate Partner and this, this journey has really been fun. [00:23:22] Leigh Ann Campbell: We’re having fun. It’s very fun. Yeah, so I would say experience is really what’s unique about me and Rev Alliances. So unlike I would say some competitors out there. I’ve personally never worked at Microsoft, which you might think is a, is a negative. I see it as a positive because I had to figure out Microsoft from the outside. [00:23:45] Leigh Ann Campbell: Right. I had to figure out how to break down barriers and how to gain access to places that I couldn’t otherwise. Right? Sure. So. Five plus years of experience kind of hitting my head against the wall, right is, is now, you know, it shows up in fame and it shows up every time I work with a client, so, so my company, rev Alliances, the name Rev kind of plays on. [00:24:11] Leigh Ann Campbell: Uh, revenue. Right. And also kind of [00:24:14] Vince Menzione: important, [00:24:14] Leigh Ann Campbell: kind of important, but also what I think is unique about Rev is that we help customers get there faster. I help my partners get to revenue, get to pipeline faster. Right. And I do that because of that experience that I’ve had. [00:24:28] Vince Menzione: And that’s something that’s a term too, that the CRO. [00:24:31] Vince Menzione: Implicitly understands. Right, right. Because they wanna get to Rev, they wanna get to revenue faster. [00:24:36] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yes. [00:24:37] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Yes. I love that name and I love the branding. [00:24:39] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yeah. Thank you. [00:24:40] Vince Menzione: It’s so cool. So, um, what’s, what’s on the horizon? Like, we have a lot of great things we’re gonna be doing together. You’re gonna be doing more work with us in the community, sharing some more of your knowledges with our, with our Ultimate Partner experience community. [00:24:54] Vince Menzione: But where do you see Rev Alliances in five years? [00:24:57] Leigh Ann Campbell: That’s a great question. Uh, I am. Like a lot of people, I’m thinking about AI and I’m wondering how can I use that right. To really serve more clients? Because right now, a one-to-one engagement, while it’s my favorite thing to do, it doesn’t scale. Right. [00:25:15] Leigh Ann Campbell: Right. To 15, 20, 50 clients at a time. And so I’m in the works right now, uh, to apply AI to my FAME framework. Very cool. So that, yeah, so that. You know, uh, with maybe a lighter touch, I can help more partners, more efficiently, um, as well as, you know, engage one-on-one as needed. So, I’m, I’m excited to roll out something soon. [00:25:40] Leigh Ann Campbell: Very cool. Yeah. [00:25:41] Vince Menzione: So we’re gonna switch to the rapid fire. [00:25:44] Leigh Ann Campbell: Okay. [00:25:44] Vince Menzione: We’re testing this new area out for us, and I, I wanna ask you a few questions that I think might be, I love it. Talk a little bit more about like the, the, the world that you live in and how you got to this point. Okay. So. What book has influenced you the most? [00:25:58] Vince Menzione: Liam, [00:26:00] Leigh Ann Campbell: I most recently read Atomic Habits and that one. Really? James Cleary? Yes. That one. You know, it’s, it’s not often that I, uh, I don’t read, uh, that I would read something nonfiction cover to cover. I. I couldn’t put it down and, you know, the whole idea of habit stacking has, has really helped me kind of, uh, especially as I’ve built out Rev Alliances. [00:26:22] Vince Menzione: Very cool. And what did you get, like from the habit stacking? Was there anything specifically that it helped you improve on? [00:26:27] Leigh Ann Campbell: Absolutely. So as an entrepreneur, right, there’s a lot of things I love to do and there’s a lot of things I don’t love to do, like back office, things that, you know, you don’t really think about when you’re launching business. [00:26:38] Leigh Ann Campbell: And so it’s kind of taught me how to avoid. Procrastinating on those things, right? By stacking something that I love to do with something that I don’t love to do. [00:26:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah, so what’s one habit you can’t live without? [00:26:51] Leigh Ann Campbell: I would say my morning coffee outside on my patio, so rain or shine. Seriously, for the past eight to nine years, I have to have my first cup of coffee outside and I might be wearing like a down jacket or you know, it might be raining. [00:27:06] Leigh Ann Campbell: It doesn’t matter because it’s just that chance to breathe in the new day. Um, you know, and just start the day with, with a positive, fresh look, outlook, you know what I mean? A fresh outlook in life. [00:27:20] Vince Menzione: So is there a mantra that inspires you? Is there something that inspires you? [00:27:25] Leigh Ann Campbell: There is, and I actually recite it when I’m having my coffee every morning. [00:27:29] Leigh Ann Campbell: Um, and so it’s be present, take action, and have fun. Wow. Those are my. Present, [00:27:36] Vince Menzione: take action. [00:27:37] Leigh Ann Campbell: Have fun. Fun. And the have fun part is probably the most important part because, you know, we’re so wrapped up in our to-do lists and you know, overachieving and all those things. And at the end of the day, I mean, life is short. [00:27:48] Leigh Ann Campbell: You need to have fun, [00:27:50] Vince Menzione: which is hardest in the three [00:27:53] Leigh Ann Campbell: for me personally. Um. I would say taking action sometimes is hard. And, and I say that because, you know, we tend to overthink. Mm-hmm. Right. Or, uh, we let trying to be perfect, get in the way of actually executing. Yeah. Right. So, so that’s something I’m working on this year. [00:28:13] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yeah. [00:28:14] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Yeah. So what does mastery mean to you? You know, we’ve had Michael Dravet on the podcast finding Mastery, and what does mastery mean to you? [00:28:24] Leigh Ann Campbell: Mastery to me means simplification. Okay. Right. There’s a saying, you know, if you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough. [00:28:34] Leigh Ann Campbell: Very cool. Right. And I think that’s what I bring to the table for my clients, for my experiences. Right. There’s so much you could do with Microsoft, literally. I mean, there’s new programs every day. I mean, they do so much for their partners. Yeah. Um. If you simplify things right, and if you stay true to your focus, focus, [00:28:57] Vince Menzione: yes. [00:28:58] Leigh Ann Campbell: Uh, you can really simplify and streamline and get to that revenue target, get to your pipeline, get to your 15 minutes of fame on stage with Satya, you can get there so much faster. But you have to, you have to be clear and keep it simple. And I think if you can do that, then you can master [00:29:17] Vince Menzione: anything. So good. [00:29:18] Vince Menzione: So good. So I have a favorite question, can I to ask almost every guest. You’re hosting a dinner party and, um, you can host this dinner party anywhere in the world. We could talk about locations. In fact, maybe Boca may be a good location, but you can invite any three guests from the present or the past to this amazing dinner party. [00:29:37] Vince Menzione: Whom would you invite, Leanne and why? [00:29:40] Leigh Ann Campbell: Gosh, only three. [00:29:42] Vince Menzione: Well, yeah. Well we can, we can talk about changing the rules. [00:29:45] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yeah. Okay. We’ll stick with’s, focus on this. We Okay. Fair. I’ll pick three. Um, okay. This is gonna be a crazy donor party. Okay. Right. So first of all, it needs to be in Hawaii. You like party, like just who knows? [00:29:59] Leigh Ann Campbell: Who knows. But Hawaii for sure. Okay. Right. My favorite place [00:30:02] Vince Menzione: in the world. You spent some time there. I [00:30:03] Leigh Ann Campbell: have. Um, so, okay, so number one, it’s Tommy Lasorda. Oh wow. Tommy Lasorda was the general manager for the Dodgers, and I am a huge Dodger fan and I have been my whole life. Yep. So I’ve heard he’s quite a character. [00:30:17] Leigh Ann Campbell: I did get a chance to meet him once. Did you? Yep. Very cool. Yep. And love him and would just love to talk to him about his management style, and I’m sure he has some crazy stories as well. Yeah, and [00:30:27] Vince Menzione: he’s a, [00:30:28] Leigh Ann Campbell: yeah. Yep. So he is number one. Number two. I am, I’m leaning toward Princess Diane. Okay. I just, you know, she’s so full of grace. [00:30:36] Leigh Ann Campbell: She was a wonderful, uh, mother human, you know, did so much for people. Would love, love to hear from her. And then the last one, you’re gonna laugh, uh, I’m gonna say Eddie Van Halen. Eddie Van. Yeah. Eddie Van Halen. Wow. Yes, yes. I’m a, I’m a huge eighties rock fan. Okay. And, um, hair and everything. Yeah, sure. [00:30:57] Leigh Ann Campbell: Absolutely. And, and he, you know, obviously he’s, he’s amazing tourist, amazing. And I would, you know, he could be the. The musical entertainment for the night. Oh my goodness. [00:31:08] Vince Menzione: What a great group. Yeah. I’m gonna have to come along and bring dessert, a beverage. Please, please. So Tommy Lasorda, I got to see the Yankees and the Dodgers play. [00:31:16] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. When I was young growing up. Yeah. In the New York area and got to see Tommy Lasorda. Yeah. From a distance. Mm-hmm. In the dugout. But, uh, wow. Wasn’t a grit. He always bled Dodger blue. I’m remember read that was his famous saying. Yes. Yes. A passionate human being. Yes. Lady die, of course. Uh, just, you know what an incredible human and Eddie Van Halen like. [00:31:37] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I’m rocking it out. I love that music. [00:31:40] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yeah, me too. [00:31:41] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Yep. It has been such a pleasure studying time with you today. I’m so glad. Thank you, Boca. Me too. All the way from San Francisco. It’s, yep. A long trip and we do appreciate you doing that. And for our listeners and viewers, maybe some. Advice for them on how they can optimize for success as we really dive in to 2025. [00:32:01] Leigh Ann Campbell: Well, if you’re not working with Microsoft, uh. I definitely would, would recommend looking into that, especially if your product supports any of the Microsoft platforms. Uh, and then going forward, I have to go back to fame. Obviously, stay focused on your strength. Right. Don’t chase too many shiny objects. [00:32:19] Leigh Ann Campbell: Yeah. Uh, and you will be successful. And I will say if your, if your viewers out there, uh, would like to contact me, rev alliances.com or uh, on LinkedIn is, is a great way to connect with me and I would. I’d love to help. And you’re Leon Leanne Campbell on [00:32:34] Vince Menzione: LinkedIn as well? Yes. Are you the only Leanne Campbell? [00:32:38] Vince Menzione: Uh, of course. Okay. Congrats. Wonderful. So I wanna thank you. I wanna thank Leanne, I wanna thank you for joining us today. Thanks for wanting. I wanna thank all our viewers and listeners for following along on our path and our journey to help you achieve more. And if you haven’t done so, are ready, please subscribe to our podcast. [00:32:54] Vince Menzione: If you’re following on Apple or Spotify, you can hit the subscribe button. And we could also follow us on our new YouTube channel. And getting more subscribers to YouTube also helps us get more views and helps us get more amazing guests like Leanne to join us. I want to thank you for following and listening to this episode of The Ultimate Partner, and you could also follow along by joining us on our website. [00:33:16] Vince Menzione: There you’ll find information about our events, every episode of the podcast, and you can subscribe to our free newsletter. So join us by coming to the ultimate partner.com. I.

Recorded Live at Ultimate Partner LIVE in Redmond, WA Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. Join Alistair Butler, Jennifer Weis, and Steve Hale in a deep dive into Microsoft’s Small, Medium, and Corporate (SME&C) business – aptly called the “Acre of Diamonds.” This session unveils how Microsoft’s intentional decision to establish SMEC as its fourth and fastest-growing region, now a $72 billion business, creates unparalleled opportunities for partners. Learn about the MCEM framework, a common methodology for solution selling, and how partners can strategically align their sales organizations, leverage Microsoft’s investments, and build a “win formula” to unlock immense customer value and profitability in this high-growth segment. Key Takeaways: Microsoft’s SME&C (Small, Medium Enterprise and Channel) business is now its fourth and fastest-growing region, representing a $72 billion opportunity for partners. This dedicated SME&C region brings unprecedented consistency, dependability, and investment that did not previously exist across Microsoft’s geographies. Partners must align their sales organizations with SME&C’s customer segmentation and internal structure (ATU, STU pods) to gain engagement from Microsoft sellers. Leveraging Microsoft’s funding and investments, particularly for driving Azure consumption and specific customer workloads, is a critical strategy for partners. The MCEM framework provides a consistent methodology and language for solution selling, enabling partners to fast-track their go-to-market and collaborate effectively with Microsoft sellers. Success in SME&C requires partners to have executive buy-in, build a clear “win formula,” and focus on delivering end-to-end customer lifecycle services, as Microsoft relies heavily on partners for stages like “realize value” and “manage and optimize”. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. https://youtu.be/a8jwaqWFNAA Key Tags: Microsoft partners, Acre of Diamonds, SME&C, mid-market, channel business, MCEM, Microsoft investments, partner programs, solution selling, Azure consumption, customer value, win formula, executive buy-in, sales alignment, territory planning, ATU, STU, ecosystem multiplier, partner profitability, co-sell, services revenue. . https://youtu.be/s33fltuizEo Key Tags: Microsoft, Lori Borg, Microsoft Partner, Go-to-Market, Technical Agility, Organizational Agility, AI, Agentic AI, Ecosystem, Partnerships, Growth Mindset, Digital Transformation, Business Strategy, Innovation, Technology, Microsoft Americas, Channel Partners, Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Customer Success, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Cloud, Satya Nadella, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Change Management, Business Growth, Co-selling, Solution Areas, Digital Marketing, Cloud Computing, Microsoft Programs, Partner Hub, Future of Work, Tech Trends. Transcription: Transcription: [00:00:00] Jennifer Weis: My recommendation to a partner is if you wanna get serious in this space, go figure out what solution you’re gonna go sell. Build your wind formula, set how many goals you’re gonna do, and then build a territory plan. [00:00:14] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, [00:00:20] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together. Managed services will be one and a half times larger because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. [00:00:52] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner Live at Microsoft Redmond Campus. Our most powerful event yet over two days. We gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this episode featuring Alistair Butler and Jen Weiss of Microsoft and Steve Hale, a partner from suse, brings us to the conversation of the acre of diamonds and how to achieve your greatest results. Working with Microsoft, it’ll bring us to the edge of what’s next. So let’s dive in now. So I’m excited to help lead this conversation with you all. And this is, has a very unique theme. It’s called Acre of Diamonds, and anybody who knows who about acre of Diamonds, it’s actually a fairly common term. It was a thesis. Russell Conwell who created Temple University in Philadelphia, which has become an outstandingly successful university system, wrote this thesis about your acre of diamonds. And I’ve been talking about how Microsoft, especially its S-M-C-E-N-C business, its small, medium enterprise and channel business, that mid-market is really your acre of diamonds. ’cause so many partners tried to focus in on the very top at the tip, tip of the top. And we talked about that. Yesterday, Nicole and I had that conversation about like focusing in this area. So I’m thrilled to welcome on stage. Alistair, Jennifer and Steve, thank you for joining us. Come on out. Come on out. Woohoo. We got some, a kickass team here. Jennifer, so great to see you. I heard [00:02:36] Jennifer Weis: that introduction. I’m a little, I’m [00:02:38] Vince Menzione: sorry. Whoops. I’m dropping things. I’m gonna grab it for you. [00:02:41] Jennifer Weis: Where to go. [00:02:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I didn’t want to get. You know, start attaching. Thanks. Good to see Alison. I don’t think I can live up to that side. See my friend introduction. Oh, we know. We all kind of know that. So, um, we’ve got an incredible panel conversation today and I really wanted to spend some time with each of you. I thought we’d take a moment just from a context perspective, have you intro, because I did a little bit of an introduction, but I didn’t do it justice, to have each of you introduce yourselves. Your roles in your organizations, and then we can talk about like, how do we take advantage of this business opportunity. So Steve, [00:03:13] Steve Hale: we’ll start with you since great to see you, Vince. Great to see you, sir. Well, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for the invitation. I appreciate it. Real. Uh, quick background. I think I’ve worked in four different buildings around campus here, over my, my career. But, uh, you know, right now I run, uh, software, uh, partnerships at suse. So it’s a really a pleasure to be here with all of you. So great to have you in the room. Alistair. [00:03:35] Alistair Butler: Thank you for the opportunity. Lovely to be here, Vince. So good morning everybody. My name’s Alistair Butler. I run our, um, mid-market West business here in our SME and C [00:03:47] Vince Menzione: business. Right. And you, and you’re even struggling with that we call SMC. I know, I know. We, [00:03:52] Alistair Butler: we, we, on the day it happened, we are, we EC now, but uh, we’ve moved a little bit past that. There was intentionality for it. Yeah, of course. Our mid-market customers, um, you know, we really wanted the enterprise piece in that small, medium enterprise and channels [00:04:08] Vince Menzione: and just to find that. Mar the, the, the scope that you have. ’cause it’s a very significant, you talk about it very casually. Yes. Like you have a lot of customers in that market. Yeah. [00:04:17] Alistair Butler: So, um, I think many of you would understand, um, Microsoft’s regions and SME and C as its fourth Yep. Uh, region. That’s a $72 billion business in, of its own right. Um, you can do the math on roughly what that’s going to be in the us. Um, but for me, I have, um. Um, small, medium, uh, corporate customers or enterprises. 5,000 of those through the western part of the us [00:04:41] Vince Menzione: Yes. That’s a very significant number. Absolutely. 5,000 just in the us in the western us. [00:04:47] Alistair Butler: Yeah. And then I have a peer, uh, Noman Act who has a similar sized business on the east, and then we have a Canadian team in the Latin team and a team. [00:04:54] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And after Jen, I’m gonna ask you a que another question about how your team is organized as well. Sure. But Jen, kick ass, by the way, I do know I’ve known you for many years. Um, you have an excellent reputation from partners about the work that you do in helping organizations, and I got to see up on stage yesterday as well. So, [00:05:13] Jennifer Weis: yeah. Well, thank you for having me. Here I am. My role today is I’m actually A PDM in our global SI organization, but I heard Vince mention some of my history and you talked to Lori this morning and you talked to Alyssa this morning and you’re asking the number of years, and I started counting back and I’m like, I’ve been in the Microsoft ecosystem for. 30 years, so, and we were just joking right? Outta school? Yeah, we were just joking behind back there. I said I was a Microsoft partner when I received a fax to put an internet email. For a company with Microsoft Mail, an exchange for, oh, beta was just coming out. So I’ve been, I’ve been in the Microsoft ecosystem since then and uh, I’ve worked for small sis, I’ve worked for medium size sis working on that. SMC or back then, I don’t remember. It was. Called SMB, I think we know it’s something else. And then I heard you mention CDW as the director of software sales at CDW. And that’s where kind of the conversation today will come in from what I did at CDW to take it from a, you know, 200 million to a billion dollar, you know, Microsoft business there just a number of years. And then went to an ISV. So I got the ISV part of it, a partner to partner part of it. Now I sitting here representing kind of the Microsoft PDM, but a lot of the stuff I do now is all the stuff that I did when I was a partner and how I learned to be agile and really evaluate every year what’s Microsoft doing and how am I gonna have to change the business and change it really quick to drive results. [00:06:48] Vince Menzione: And the work is that you do is very in instructional to organizations like Steve’s. About how to align for success. So I think it’ll be a little bit of a cross conversation here. You bet. But Alistair, I want to spend a moment here a little bit more of a double click. So first of all, 5,000 organizations is fairly significant. Yes. For any of you who don’t know, there’s probably about 11,000 enterprise organizations at the very, very top of the pyramid. Maybe even less than that today. ’cause it, you know, down. So you’ve got a number almost equal to that, just in the Western United States. Yes. And then you have sellers, you have leaders, you have, uh, managers or leaders underneath you as well. Yes. Talk about how your organization is structured a little bit for the, for the partner. Yes. [00:07:32] Alistair Butler: Very, very happy to. So one of the things that, uh, within Microsoft and end caps that the way we try to run the business, of course, is with consistency. So just like, um, leaders in the strategic parts of our business where they have an account team unit, an A TU, um, and then those are supported by our stews. Our, um, uh, specialist technical units we’re exactly the same. We’re exactly the same. So we have an a TU layer, and then we have our stews in the Azure space and biz apps and in modern work and, uh, and security. So, you know, there’s a number of layers to that, to, to get to that, uh, amount of reach or so. But I think one of the things that I would stress as to, um, where we are at now as a company, it was a very intentional decision, um, by Satya and, and, and Amy to, um. Create SME and C as it is now. Yes. This was a decision 18 months ago into Microsoft’s fourth. Region prior to and forever and a day, we were actually part of the geographic regions. That’s right. We would roll up to them, but, um, it’s now Microsoft’s largest region at $72 billion. It’s also, its fastest growing region at $72 billion. So, um, for any of you who have been around us for a while or worked with big companies, when a decision like that is made, it’s. Big. Yeah. All of a sudden we are not sharing resources with strategics. We have our own teams, uh, with uh, GPS, with um, our SE and O teams marketing. And that will take time to mature and of itself. But with the new leader that we have, um, we’re very much elevating, uh, the investment into, into, into the segment. And, uh, that should be opportunity for all of us. [00:09:28] Vince Menzione: And I just wanna differentiate for those who are watching and, and paying attention today. ’cause I, you bring up some interesting points. If you’ve been around Microsoft long enough as I have it, we, it was sort of a, we didn’t pay enough attention. We didn’t have the right rigor and we didn’t have consistency because every region, every geography, every industry, in fact, public sector being one of the industries would treat that part of the market differently. And we didn’t put the right level of investments depending on where the investments got laid across the business. By creating that fourth region, you created a level of consistency, dependability about execution structure, organizational structure, investments that did not exist in Microsoft. And that’s why to me, it has become an acre of retirements, [00:10:13] Alistair Butler: um, completely and. Um, to su to suggest that, you know, our success will, um, come with the partner community as part of that segment is a gross understatement. Yes. Everything that we are, uh, building, um, in our programs, in our M stem phases, in our training and enablement, um, is now going very much through a part lens. And, you know, that’s why it’s so wonderful to be chatting to a few folks here today [00:10:40] Vince Menzione: and. Just a few years ago. In fact, when it was first stood up, it wasn’t getting the same level of attention from the partners. It’s one of the reasons why we have you here. Yes. Uh, and it also wasn’t, um, set up in a way, or the commitment wasn’t quite there. I remember it was about a few years ago, first conversations I had with then the leader of the organization who was Kevin Piker about doubling down. Like it was the first like foot in the ground saying, we are gonna double down now we’re gonna bring partners in. Uh, you mentioned that having the scale of the organization, but you also have, I will say, I’ll suggest, uh. Your organization is structured so that you have maybe, uh, more accounts per rep Yes. Than when you get up to the very largest enterprises account. So I might have Coca-Cola and that’s my only account, but when I get into, which is very, a very significant organization’s, what you call small medium. Enterprise. They’re still very big companies and most companies, they are enterprise big enterprises [00:11:36] Alistair Butler: in other technology companies. Completely. It just speaks to Microsoft’s reach and brand and, you know, what’s over a $200 billion business today. But yeah, so look, the, at the higher strategics, you know, that’s a one to five type ratio in accounts. Then we get into majors growth. Um, that might be anything from five to. To 20. And then it’s our, then it’s our segment that comes in. We top out at 50, 60 accounts per rep, but it’s in that a TU and stew model, which we actually run, um, in pretty thoughtfully designed pods. So small teams are really hunting in those pods with their partners, um, with their partners. And, uh, um, the ability to reach the customers with that is with those partners. [00:12:22] Vince Menzione: I wanna dive in a little bit and I’m going to ask the perspective from the partners in the room. Steve, you and then also get Jennifer’s perspective as a partner development manager. How do you engage, how do you find the engagement? What, what, what is, what is the type of engagement you do? What, what are best practices you can share with our community here? [00:12:40] Steve Hale: Yeah. It’s, it’s a great question. I think, um, if, if I’m sitting in the audience and I, I don’t, I don’t know. What your size and scale is. If you’re a smaller consulting partner or you, you’re a part of a, a larger, you know, technology company, an ISV or who, whomever, the way I look at it is sort of the so what factor, like what we know that we have a huge ecosystem to be able to tap into with Microsoft. And so, you know, at the end of the day, how do we do it? How do we do that in a way that’s gonna help us drive solution selling? So, um, we were talking a little bit earlier. When, um, so I, when I did this at Microsoft, I just remember bomber would, would, he would pound his hand on the, on the conference room table, and he said, the field is always right unless proven wrong. So the business units were already saying, Hey, we’re gonna build these solutions. We’re gonna have this stuff, we’re gonna go to market. Yeah. And he would come in and pound his fist and say, the, the field is always right unless proven wrong. And so what he meant by that, where we’re. You know, preparing for the midyear reviews, right, with the 90 slide deck. And then the, you know, six point font was all about like, how are we gonna drive customer solution value? And that was the part that I loved about it. Right? That’s where. If you think about the history, you’re talking about a TU and the whole design of what happened back in Tailwind and all of that, um, what it was all about was making sure that we have a solution oriented selling mechanism that is integrated with partner solutions. And that’s the part that that’s beautiful about it. Microsoft has always been true to that part of it. And if you think about. The strategy of it is very different than, let’s say, I mean, not to, um, you know, say one is better than the other, but like an Oracle model or whatever, where it was a very direct selling motion at Microsoft. What, what bomber did was, which was cool, I. Was he peeled off a little bit of services margin out of the consulting business and fed it into the ecosystem part of it to help develop ISVs and and integrator partners. We were talking a little bit earlier about, you know, your, your history at Biby and, and you know. That is what it’s all about, is like if you really are in the ecosystem selling business, which Microsoft is, that’s great. Okay. Prove it and then show us that you, you, you have an alignment to that model in terms of how you do investment and help the businesses grow, and that literally becomes the ecosystem multiplier. So what [00:15:12] Vince Menzione: instruction would you have for the partners in the room and those watching us on livestream? How, how to engage with [00:15:18] Steve Hale: Alistair’s organization? Very self, selfishly, I would say figure out how to use their money. [00:15:23] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:15:24] Steve Hale: Very cool. I mean, to, to be fair, right? Yeah. And, and the reason why I say that is because there, there, if you look at the consumption model that we, that. We want to drive with Azure, right? You want to try and figure out, like, how do you tap into that part of it to be able to drive those? Um, look, at the end of the day, the way I think about it, when I talk to my sales teams, it’s all about the workloads. It’s about what is driving the customer investment? Where is the money coming from? Where is the Vander Gold for, I don’t care if it’s a, a huge, you know, Coca-Cola or all the way down to a, a smaller, uh, a smaller company that’s trying to. Innovate. They want to innovate. They need partnerships that are gonna help ’em go drive this. This is stuff that I did with, um, after I left Microsoft. I was with Bridge Partners here as a consulting firm that’s, that’s, uh, uh, very near and dear to my heart. But, you know, it’s going from a massive company down into, um, a, a consulting organization that’s always thinking about customer value and solutions. So that would be. You, you know, I mean, figure out how to tap into the wealth of Microsoft, but also at the same time be very, very focused on the workloads and the customer solution value. I mean, how do you get [00:16:39] Vince Menzione: relevant? Jen, I want to come to you because I know you spent a lot of time with organizations and, and their lack of relevancy, their lack of engagement models, and I know there’s some points you want to share on that as [00:16:51] Jennifer Weis: well. It, well, it, it. Builds on what you both were saying and and using Microsoft’s money. And to be blunt, so when you mentioned Biby, I was at BUR for years. Biby was acquired by CDW, then I was at CDW, then I went for startup ISV. But that was exactly it. We would sit down every year, first off being relevant as a partner. No offense, it’s not about the partner’s model and what the partner does. If you wanna be relevant to Microsoft. You have to do it the Microsoft Way. Mm-hmm. So every year we knew changes were coming. Microsoft is not simple. It’s complicated, but at the end of the day, it’s not. If you just take that ego out of the way and you say, okay, Microsoft’s gonna come out in the June timeframe and they’re gonna come out with their incentives and investments, and that’s how their sales reps are compensated. So every year I sit down with that plan. And I would go through it and I would say, okay, how am I going to make money? Yeah. Off this plan? And how am am I going to model our win formula to be able to go after you said the solution areas, how am I gonna do that? And I’ll put a plan together. And then I, I think it was Lori Alyssa said, then I go to the executive board and say, okay, I plan to bring in, you know, you gave me a quota of whatever million in profit, right? This is how I’m gonna make a million in profit, but. I’m gonna need to make these three changes. Do I have your buy-in? And every year they’re like, go for it. And we did it, and I would deliver. And then the next year I’m like, okay, here we go again. But if you go into it with the attitude of it is what it is, yes, you can influence changes for future years, but you’re not gonna change it that year. Yeah. So you just accept what it is. And then you build a strategy to maximize the heck out of it and earn, I mean, Microsoft, we, we, when we were at Burbank, they were our biggest customer because we used their funding, but we used it and delivered results and delivered results and delivered results. And so we even went to Microsoft many times and said, I think we can do it better, but we’re gonna need investment from you. You [00:19:02] Steve Hale: bet. [00:19:02] Jennifer Weis: Right? And we wanna bring this program and they’d go. Okay. You did it last year, so go ahead, do it again. So that’s how we built a great strong Microsoft practice in consulting. Then we brought it over to CDW and then we brought it to the licensing piece of it, and we just build kind of a program sales, and there’s really three elements to that. The first element is, uh, someone was mentioning it, the maniacal focus, right? Yeah. The first element is everybody on your team has to know what you’re actually doing. Our goal is to drive x. And this is how we’re gonna do it. We built a win formula. Well, you have to have this marketing funnel. Then from this marketing funnel, you then deliver this and train your sales reps on this. And you just, you build that whole win formula from your account based marketing to your hero offer. And you go through those pieces of it, and then you just turn around and deliver. But you needed that. You needed the executive buy-in, so you had to have from top down if it’s just alliance driven. And it was mentioned this morning. It, it doesn’t work. [00:20:05] Vince Menzione: It doesn’t work. [00:20:06] Jennifer Weis: And so you, that’s what we did is we, and we did it really quick and really agile and we just repeated that motion and created that flywheel. [00:20:13] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And that’s what we did. You got the executive commitment within your organization, right? I got the executive [00:20:17] Jennifer Weis: commitment within the organization. So we’re doing that with partners now. We worked on a majors motion, 15 partners. We walked in, it’s like half the partners got it and they’re like, yep, we’re gonna adopt it. And they’re. Crushing it just in the last two, you know, two months. Some of the other partners are still trying to decide what solution, and so they’re a little bit farther behind. So that’s my recommendation. Build a plan, get executive buy-in. Then build your win formula with all the roles aligned and then just go deliver. But you make it easy and you make it simple. [00:20:51] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And you mentioned all the roles. This is with the Alyssa conversation earlier, right? Engineering go to market, co-selling, your alliance team, your executive team at the executive level to executive [00:21:01] Steve Hale: level. Yeah. What, what I, what I loved about what, um, Alyssa said earlier was, uh, you’ve gotta have the technology piece of it. Yeah. Like once you, if you have that, then you’re good to go. And then the co-selling motion, right? Yeah. Which is what. They’re really, that’s gonna be the next question. That’s where we’re gonna roll into. But I, I loved her point of view on that. And I think it’s like, how do we, how do we connect with the, with the machinery that is happening at Microsoft, it is creates this scale. And how do we do that in a way that’s gonna be profitable for all of us and help our customers? So, Alistair, [00:21:33] Vince Menzione: thousands of sellers, right? Mm-hmm. Within the organization. How do I get their attention? Right? I, I’m one of 165,000 partners in the Americas. Lori Borg mentioned earlier. Yes. So how, I mean, that’s an incredible number of partners. Tapping on the door, on your door. [00:21:48] Alistair Butler: It’s a quest. It’s a question I get a lot and, uh, we still okay on Mike? You can, yeah. Yeah, we’re good. You’re good, you’re good. Um, so it’s a question I get a lot and, um, it’s easier to answer now that we are specifically a fourth region, if you’re serious about that. Customer segment, you really need to think, um, through firstly making sure your sales organization has some dedication to that customer segment. Um, you know, just speaking very openly, if my, uh, sellers are engaged with a partner and you know, the first time they’re together and they have an open discussion, okay, so how do you look at us? And they’ve got seven strategic accounts and four. They turn off straight away. Yeah. Right. Because they’re trying to, my sellers are trying to engage really with anything from two to five partners to run their scale business. Yeah. Okay. So a lot of that’s regionally based. A lot of that, of course, is still into its relationships and connectivity and rhythms that are running in the business. But if you’re serious about wanting to grow with us and SME and C business, really think about segmenting your own sales teams, um, for that. That’s, that, that’s number one. Um. And I can give a very brief example of we had a, we had A-A-G-S-I, huge player. You would all know them. Um, came to, uh, myself, uh, last summer. Um, we’re making plans for six months away. Um, we’re actually going to double down, um, our Kevin Ster and, and create a, uh, a mid-market segment. What’s your advice? I showed them my a TU structure, if you align to that. When you’re ready and you can demonstrate the right skill base and understanding of M Em. I’ll make all the introductions. Ah, M em. Yes. The executive team listened to that. They came back three months later and they showed us the plan and they were activated across my sales team within six weeks. Yeah. [00:23:51] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:23:52] Alistair Butler: It can be done now. There’s an intention to that and I think maybe just the final piece, um, here, Vince, to your go have an opinion. There is in the segment enough white space for all of us have an opinion on what the solution areas that you have, skills and expertise in sustainable, um, and the industries where you have presence. It’s a really difficult thing sometimes for a partner, and I’ve been around partners since the mid nineties to actually be declarative. But when you share that opinion and your value proposition. The connection into the sales team is so much faster. It happens at the first meeting versus folks finding out at the third or fourth, and I’ve just wasted, you know, two months of starting to, it’s much, much better to be cleaner and clearer. Um, all of our growth, um, is in the middle part of our mail even. And, uh, we, Microsoft partner to help us go Microsoft account list, by the way. Absolutely. Now for [00:24:52] Vince Menzione: those who don’t know it, yep. You mentioned M em, I’d like to double click on SEM a little bit. For those who don’t know M em, we’ve actually had speakers talk about M EM specifically on stage. Great. It’s a great topic, but I think we should double click and I think with amongst the three of you, you probably have different perspective on here, but I think I’ll, I want to get all three of your perspectives on M EM and how to engage as a partner to drive msem. [00:25:16] Steve Hale: So at the end of the day, it’s a framework, it’s a methodology to be able to help us be able to, I think, strategically and tactically sell better. Right? So, I mean, we got all the acronyms in the world. Um, at the end of the day, I think it comes down to how do we have a connected fabric in terms of how we do solution selling together and how we deliver. Um, you know, that value and messaging, I, I was, um. It was funny, I was at a, uh, a dinner and a customer came over. It was a partner dinner, and the customer came over and they said, and I’m not gonna say who the partners were, but um, the customer came over and said, Hey, are you guys actually working together? Like we were having a conversation with the technology company and, and, and the customer said to us. I love that about you guys. I love that you’re actually sitting down and talking about technology working together to help us deliver value in my organization. You know, so m sem and, and you’re, you’re the expert on it. It, it’s a framework. It’s a methodology. That’s great. How does it help us? How does, how do we make it real? And how does it deliver customer solution value? Yeah. In my, my opinion. Double click on me. [00:26:31] Jennifer Weis: Yeah. Well, well, with M Sem, I was talking earlier about the wind formula. [00:26:35] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:26:36] Jennifer Weis: The, and, and you mentioned the, the funding programs and different things. Yeah. So within M Sem, there are the five stages. But within each stage there’s specific guidance given to the sellers on this is the ha halo conversation you have, this is the hero offer you pitch, and the hero offer usually comes with funding to deliver something. So, and there’s even, I think [00:26:58] Vince Menzione: we actually have a slide that might help us along here actually. So let’s go. There’s [00:27:01] Jennifer Weis: even campaigns in a box. [00:27:03] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:27:04] Jennifer Weis: Right? That you and marketing materials. I was shocked when I started to work with some of the partners, even some of my own, but the partners that weren’t mine, and I would ask, do you know what M SEM is to their sales teams? And the sales teams are like. No. Yeah. And I’m like, okay. And then I would say, show me your strategy, you know, wind formula for how you’re going to land this. And they’re like, well, here’s our offer. Here’s the technical capabilities. And that’s not a strategy, that’s a, that’s a technical solution. So we would go through the wind formula that you see there. We would go through and say, well, what are you doing at each stage? But there’s, there’s a link on this slide too. I said, Microsoft has this built already. You just need to go get the material and make it your own. Right. Go get the campaign in a box. Go get the, the, the halo conversations and material. Go get the hero offer. Just make it your own. And so we help optimize that. They have a strategy and then it’s like, now we just go land this with your sellers. Yeah. And that’s you. You gotta build that formula to be able to land it. And if you follow the Microsoft methodology, then when you go in and talk to. You know your sellers, it’s really easy because you’re talking the same language. You have the ability to collaborate and sit down at the table together ’cause you’re talking the same thing. And it, it gives the, the partners the ability to, to fast track going to market, but then make it their own. Yeah. [00:28:28] Vince Menzione: And Alistair, this is very deliberate at Microsoft. When, when, when I was a Microsoft gm, we didn’t have this No. Everybody followed their own methodology. You have a common language Yes. That you’re, when you, when you’re having reviews, funnel reviews, any business reviews in your business, you’re talking through this right. [00:28:44] Alistair Butler: Absolutely. So M CAPS is a hundred thousand people organization that is wired to this. [00:28:49] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:28:50] Alistair Butler: And you know, it’s been around a few years, uh, a few years now, but the commitment to it, and I suspect the longevity will, will continue because it really has given so much more clarity and understanding of our own business. As to how competitive we are, um, uh, what the customer experience is. Dare I even say, what’s the profitability profile for our partners in that? And yes, we live by this for any operational review. It is so important that your sales teams have an appreciation of this. Yes, they don’t need depth, but they need an appreciation. But you must have at least one person. Or at least a small team, really understanding the programs, how you leverage the dollars, the timings, the announcements to actually filter all of that into your sales team. That is a, that is a critical point as to doing, doing business with us, really. But yes, for anything that we’re doing on our pipelines and looking at program activations and, and anything that you might imagine on a sales dashboard, um, uh, finds its way back, uh, back to this. [00:30:00] Vince Menzione: Steve, when your sellers, you’re working with your organization and your sellers, how are you implementing em to help them be successful working with Microsoft? [00:30:08] Steve Hale: You know, I think at the end of the day, what, when, when we talk about leveraging our, our partnership and our center of gravity with a partnership like Microsoft, at the end of the day, like what, you know, and I’m not trying to get into like product specific stuff, but. It. What we’re, what we want to do is make sure that our delivery of what we’re trying to focus on, we, we talked about this earlier, which is be be really clear about what we’re going to do, and also be clear about what we’re not gonna do. Yeah, because otherwise we can just be random and we can, you know, say we’re gonna do all these things, but, but, and we’re trying to conquer the world. And that’s why Microsoft did the segmentation in the first place, right? That’s right. And that’s where, that’s right. Trying to get very focused. So if you think about, I mean the orig, the original a TU piece, they used to call it the atomic, uh, unit. And so it became the account team unit, all of that stuff. And now it’s being implemented and they’re doing it for a reason. And, and, and ER’s point is like. Are we gonna focus on mid-market customers or, you know, be dedicated to that. Be clear about what you’re gonna do and be really clear about what you’re not gonna do and prioritize. [00:31:19] Alistair Butler: There’s, um, there’s a, um, little piece here to add as well, particularly for the partner community, for the segment that I’m part of. Yes. Um, different to our strategics who have. Um, the CSUs in stages four and five. You’ll see ladies and gentlemen, realize value and manage and optimize. We have a lot of Microsoft people around, around those, those don’t exist in our, that’s right segment in SM, E and C, we are fully committed to that being partner. A partner delivered. Uh, and lifecycle delivered with your services. Right. So where we coach our sales teams much more in recent years is the connectivity into the partner base such that we are getting actually an understanding of your services. I. And when we’re together in the customer, um, that’s a really positive thing. Yeah. And, um, many, many changes have happened in a very short period of time, uh, that we’re really positive about lots of energy going into it. And, uh, even in our CSP program that plays very, uh, cloud solution partner program that plays very prevalently here. Um, good, uh, profitability and margin for our partners in that aspect. [00:32:32] Vince Menzione: That comes back to the IDC study that we talked about yesterday. And was it $8.65 of services revenue for partners for every dollar of Microsoft. Yes. Commitment. And I think the point you’re making too is there’s, you don’t have this massive consulting services organization. You really need the partners in the room here to drive that. [00:32:51] Alistair Butler: We do. And there was even an organizational announcement where. Um, folks in our global, um, solution partner teams even joined us. So we’re now one organization. Yes. Obviously that cements the, uh, commitment to [00:33:03] Vince Menzione: that part of our strategy. That’s right. So Nicole’s organization absolutely is part of you, same organization that you sit in now. So it’s really intertwined the partners into the business. Anything else we should add? Yeah, [00:33:14] Jennifer Weis: well I was just gonna add, and I talked about it yesterday in the breakout session, if you attended, is the other thing that I’m doing with partners that is coaching them on how to do account planning. Yeah. And you, we were helping them to understand that Microsoft and the enterprise builds these four segments in their account plan, but in the SM. E and C, it just doesn’t roll off the tongue. [00:33:35] Vince Menzione: That’s why they’re using smack. That sounds [00:33:38] Jennifer Weis: terrible. Uh, you build a territory plan and you mentioned another partner that came to you guys and said, we are, we’re gonna invest in this. So my recommendation to a partner is, if you wanna get serious in this space, go figure out what solution you’re gonna go sell. Build your win formula set how many goals you’re gonna do. And then build a territory plan, you know, so that you can come to the teams and say, I’m going after this market or this industry. I have a target list of a hundred accounts. My goal is to close 20 deals. And this is how I am su structuring, accountability and ownership within me, my partner organization. And we’ll align with you on the, the first, the blue stages on there. And then once we’re done with that, then we go deliver the. Purple stages because there’s no CSU. Yeah. So it’s, it’s not complicated. It’s complicated to learn how to put it together, but once you know how to put these things together, it’s [00:34:34] Alistair Butler: not complicated. And then my, my best sellers working with their three to five partners on their territory plans are doing exactly what, yeah, Steve was suggesting where there’s clear delineation on who’s on first, who’s on second. Within that, under a common. Under a common language, it’s, it is designed well. It is designed simply. Um, and the partners where we do it the best with, we just fly. I love [00:35:02] Steve Hale: it. I love it. Yeah. The, the, the, the cool thing about Microsoft is that they will get super, super complex about everything, but then they generally will boil it back up into something that’s executable. And that’s what I love about it. I mean, they wrote the book on co-sell. They did. And so like Howie. You talk about M and all the acronyms and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, they really know what they’re doing. And if you tap into that method and go along with the acronyms and figure out how the machinery works, it’s a great ecosystem be to be a part of it really is. [00:35:35] Vince Menzione: Well, we are up on time. We promised everybody a break. Um, hopefully you’ll all be around if for networking for a little while. I know Jen was leading a session yesterday. There’s a lot of great knowledge in the room here on how to engage with Microsoft. How be more successful driving your business. And if you haven’t, we haven’t. We actually have a double click on M Sem. As a video that’s in our ultimate partner. If you got Ultimate Partner website on YouTube or even the ultimate partner.com and go through our sift through our search on sem, you’re gonna find some in great, some great instruction on what SEM is and how to engage with sem. So, and I know we could, we could spend hours on SEM here and we have some great experts who can take you through this. So I want to thank each of you got great conversation today for our partners. This is, this is how you need to engage this. This is where the acre of diamonds is for each of you. So I want to thank you all for being part of this conversation. Thank you. You, you. Thank you. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Partner. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place. UPX or ultimate partner experience where leaders come to learn from each other. It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started. We’ve got big plans for you this summer as we’re taking this studio, and we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here. And it’s all coming to you soon. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level.

Recorded Live at Ultimate Partner LIVE in Redmond, WA Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. This was a fan favorite as I was joined by former Microsoft executive and current Elastic leader, Alyssa Fitzpatrick, as she reveals the strategies behind achieving pinnacle success as a Microsoft partner. Learn how Elastic consistently earns “Partner of the Year” awards by prioritizing technology innovation, fostering deep engineering alignment, and ensuring maniacal focus across all functional teams. Alyssa shares invaluable insights on gaining executive buy-in, establishing clear communication “swim lanes,” and leveraging data to drive impactful decisions. Discover the importance of consistent engagement, human relationships in partnering, and why adaptability is the new IQ in today’s rapidly changing market. Key Takeaways: Achieving “ultimate partner” status requires a deep understanding of how to congruently apply principles across all aspects of the business. Executive commitment is paramount; the entire leadership team must be on board and actively driving the alliance strategy. Aligning functional teams (build, go-to-market, sell) with their Microsoft counterparts through dedicated points of contact ensures effective feedback and execution. Leading with technology and embedding innovation is the “secret sauce” for winning partnerships, going beyond traditional co-selling to integrate roadmaps and push for new functionalities. Resource allocation must align with strategic focus; sometimes trade-offs are necessary to maintain intensity on critical hyperscaler relationships. Data-driven decision-making and continuous analysis of performance are crucial for adaptability and predicting market shifts, allowing leaders to defend and explain their strategies to leadership. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership, this is your community. At Ultimate Partner®, we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. https://youtu.be/DgzjeaUiYM8?si=fScjJ-a3QaZlMMh0 Key Tags: .Microsoft partner, Elastic, ultimate partner, partner of the year, cloud go-to-market, alliance strategy, executive commitment, technology innovation, engineering alignment, co-selling, go-to-market, influence strategy, partner resources, adaptability, data-driven decisions, human relationships, BRS, QBR, EBC, channel leadership. https://youtu.be/s33fltuizEo Transcription: [00:00:00] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Adaptability is that has become really the most important thing that any leader needs to do in this, this world that we’re in. Um, it’s no longer one, two year roadmaps. It’s three months. [00:00:16] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, [00:00:22] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together. Managed services will be one and a half times larger [00:00:28] Vince Menzione: because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. [00:00:34] Intro: Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. [00:00:54] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner Live at Microsoft Redmond Campus. Our most powerful event yet. Over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this fireside chat with Eissa Fitzpatrick, the partner leader for Elastic, an award-winning partner, brings us right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in. So we always talk about like the pinnacle of success, like how do you get to be the top Microsoft partner? And that’s one that we aspire to is where we came up with the term ultimate partner. ’cause an ultimate partner is a partner that she’s their greatest results. They understand how to be part of that 0.001 point. Percent, you’re not in that 99, 9 per percent. And I saw that quite a bit when I was at Microsoft. I got to see the one per the 1% that knew how to, how to operate in a, in a, in a congruent way. They knew, knew how to apply all these principles in order to be successful. So we wanted to have, as our next guest, an organization and a leader that’s been driving that. In fact, this is also somebody who’s former Microsoft who’s gonna be joining us and having a conversation about. How do you get to be partner of the year? How do you get to the pinnacle of success as an organization? And so I’m thrilled to invite, and I think she’s in the back ready, uh, Alyssa Fitzpatrick, I don’t know if anyone knows Alyssa. Alyssa was at Microsoft for many years. She was in the global partner organization. Uh, she’s now running Elastic, which if, if you, if you haven’t been keeping up, like who are the top partners, especially in the marketplace world, elastic is at the very pinnacle of success across the entire ecosystem. Of partners and cloud go to market. And so I’m so thrilled to have her spend some time with us talking about how do you get to that level? How do you become the most successful partner out there? How do you become a pinnacle partner? And so Alyssa, so great to see you, my friend. That’s great to meet. Thank you. Great to see you. Thank you. Great to see you. We were comparing scars the other day. Yes. I had, um, we both had accidents within the last month or two, right? Yes. Yes. Your, yours is much better. You look much better. Mine. Mine was a little bit easier [00:03:13] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: than the getting hit by a car. I, uh, I did it all to myself. Um. When you have low blood pressure, there is a you swoon sometimes, and if you don’t get yourself to a place where you’re stable, you can fall over and the heaviest part of your body is your head. So I broke my fall. Right there. So it was three weeks ago. I’m healing pretty well, but I had a couple of black eyes for two weeks, which was really wasn’t Turn the camera on, I’ll tell you that. But um, but yeah, I was, [00:03:43] Vince Menzione: I wasn’t turning the camera on either, so. Well, it so great to see you. Thank you, dad. So great to have you. Yeah, we’re in, we, we brought the event up to you. [00:03:50] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Yes, you did. We did. I love it. Yeah. Yep. [00:03:53] Vince Menzione: And I wanna sit, I wanna sit down with you and have some conversation’s today. Let do, let’s do, uh, it’s so great to have you. I mentioned the fact that you spent many years at Microsoft. That’s how we first met you were at Microsoft. [00:04:03] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Yep. [00:04:03] Vince Menzione: I knew. I knew even back in that day. You were in the sailing. You were a big sailor. Yeah, [00:04:07] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: I did. But you didn’t grow up in [00:04:08] Vince Menzione: the Pacific Northwest. No. Yeah. So tell us more about your background. I grew up in [00:04:11] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Colorado, actually in Boulder, Colorado. Nice. Beautiful town [00:04:14] Vince Menzione: and, uh, [00:04:16] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: kind of, it was a small town in the seventies. Very, very small town, very different. Um, but I did come to University of Washington for school, but I quickly left because I was only up here for the school year, never spent a summer. Oh, and if any of you have ever experienced a summer in Seattle, that’s why, you know, we live here and I didn’t until 30 years later. When I came back to work for Microsoft and I was like, how did I not know this? I got to work in all these other places. I lived in San Francisco, I lived in London, I lived in New York. Um, finally came back here and, uh, it, it’s outstanding. [00:04:54] Vince Menzione: Summers are beautiful here. Yes, absolutely gorgeous. [00:04:56] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: It is, it’s amazing. And I, yes, I love boating and I’ve taken my passion for sailing, which I’ve been sailing for about 35 years, and I’ve transitioned that into cruisers. Um, there’s a lot that you can accomplish up here and up into Canada and just, it’s the most beautiful boating place in the world. So I love it. [00:05:16] Vince Menzione: I love it. And you know, we had Lori Borg gun just before you. Mm-hmm. Spent 26 years in the Microsoft ecosystem at a partner. You, I know you’ve had several. Points before you got to Microsoft, but you went from being a Microsoft executive. I want you to talk about what you did at Microsoft and then you went back, you went back out now and leading a top award-winning partner. So take us through a little bit of that. Yeah, [00:05:36] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: it’s, it’s actually been a lot of fun. Yeah. Um, and, and I will, you know, kind of caveat it, that you don’t have to come from Microsoft to have a successful partnership. Um, because it was already happening before I got there. It was, it was already in line. And so, um, I can’t take credit. For the, the Partner of the Year awards because I joined Elastic a year ago. And, um, and that motion was already happening and, and what the, what I see is, um. A company that made commitments and followed through on them and was very, very focused in, uh, making the partnership itself work. And so it doesn’t mean that because I’ve got a background at Microsoft that that was the recipe. Um, it really is understanding all of the programs and the opportunities that your partner provides, and then tapping into that, um, being on the Microsoft side, it, I got to see. Who are the partners that were tapping into our programs and how are they working for them? And taking the feedback of, well, this is gonna work if we do it this way. We need to drop the threshold here, or we need to do that. And I learned a lot about how my partners. Worked, transacted, engaged, marketed cosal, and, and that really gave me a different perspective because when I came into Elastic, I, I understood the ecosystem in a way that I, I hadn’t before Microsoft. And so it. Really made it clear how do we go to market as elastic together with our ecosystem because our technology powers, um, all the ISVs out there as well. So we’re, we’re all, we wanna partner with everybody. Um, and so when I look at what I learned at Microsoft and the power of the engines that they build, that we can tap into the partners that do. Are the partners that win. And so that, that really is it. It’s as simple as that. It’s understanding what’s available and then tapping into it. And when it doesn’t work for you, feed it back. Give that feedback so that they can modify because. Coming from Microsoft, I knew I wanted programs that worked for my partners. Interesting. And if it wasn’t, then I wanted the feedback so I could modify. And that’s really important to not just ride along and go, well, it doesn’t really work, so I’m not tapping into it. Mm-hmm. Figure out how to make something work for you or go and give that feedback so that you could say, Hey, what if we did it this way? Yeah. Microsoft will listen. Our partners will listen. We all want to win together. [00:08:10] Vince Menzione: How do you give the feedback in a way that’s both deliberate and diplomatic? [00:08:15] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: So, um, I’ll take a page from what Lori just said, the. Go to market build with go to market, sell with. It’s, um, it’s probably been the mantra here for almost 10 years now. Yeah. And, um, if that is not your mantra in the way that you’re running your partnerships, um, with Microsoft, I strongly recommend that you, you adopt that. Um, and it works for everybody else. And so that’s what’s the nice part about it is every partnership that we run at Elastic, we look at what is the build piece. Where’s the innovation coming from? What’s the solution that we’re trying to build for our customers? The how do we market that? How do we tell the world about what we built together, what we have, and then the sell? How do we empower our sellers to understand how to work together? And so making sure you, you really have that spectrum and, and you’re working that, and then decide what works for you. Yeah. And, and to bring that feedback in, you’re gonna have, you, you need to have points of contact for each one of those, um, those swim lanes and working with [00:09:15] Vince Menzione: those functional, functional areas that I like to refer to as Yeah. You’re working with [00:09:17] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Microsoft. Yeah. And that’s where you give the feedback. [00:09:19] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:09:20] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: If it’s a build, you give it to the build team. If it’s go to market, let’s take the marketing team and show them what we need to do. So it’s really important that you land the feedback in the right place so it can be, um, taken in and then addressed. Um, otherwise it, it tends to float around without, um, [00:09:36] Vince Menzione: yeah. You bring up a really great point, but, well, you brought up a couple, several good points I wanna make sure I want to highlight. First of all, you talked about executive commitment and that’s super critical to success. Like if your executive team is not on board and helping to drive the the alliance strategy all up. You’re gonna lose. Um, but you talked about the, the swim lanes and making sure that you, you’re aligned by role. And one of the things we’ve encouraged organizations to do over the years is not just have one person who’s responsible for the alliance mm-hmm. But to embed leadership from your organization with leadership. At the Microsoft partner leadership level. So your build team and their build team are aligned. Your go-to market and their go-to market are aligned, your co-selling, their co-sell are aligned, and any other areas, right? There are other functional areas that are gonna align with your business. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Is that how elastic Exactly? Yeah. [00:10:26] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: And, and it’s very empowering for the teams because the marketing team, they, they, they work incredibly well together and the rest of us are like, oh, what are they doing over there? Alright, that’s great. And then I get in, you know, information from what’s happening on the build. And you know, we, at every single Microsoft conference or, or any of our partner conferences, we try to release. Um, do press releases on new functionality and that’s coinciding exactly with roadmaps. And so we really wanna make sure that the build team, all they’re thinking about is how do we innovate together and make sure that everything that we’re doing from our roadmap and their roadmap are aligned. Marketing, empower them to go and find those opportunities and drive it. And then the cell team as well, it having each team have a connection versus one person trying to work the, the entire, um, agenda. It really does empower the team and make it agile, quick and innovative at, at the very, um, source. [00:11:24] Vince Menzione: And let’s dive in on executive commitment. ’cause all those things are, all those teams are reporting into a C-suite leader. Mm-hmm. Right. Generally the CEO of the organization or or other role, how do you drive that and how do you drive the communication from your level of role within the organization driving partnerships and strategy there? How are you then communicating with that leadership team and how are you sprinkling in the priorities that you need to drive into the business? [00:11:48] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: You know, I think that’s probably the. Biggest challenge for, um, individuals in the, um, the global channel leader role is getting the buy-in from our executives and getting them to understand the opportunity to the magnitude that, that we see. And they’re very numbers oriented. Yeah. And so it’s a challenge. It’s a, it’s tough to really go in and get the leadership to understand what the opportunity is, because a lot of times it is. Belief, you know, build it, they will come. Well, we do have proof for that. And there are partnerships out there that you can point to and say, look at somebody our size, our scale, and what they’ve done by doing X, Y, Z. So I think the best way to sell your story is to look in the industry at peer group successes or even bring in and, and I know this sounds crazy, but bring an analyst in because. Your leadership, hearing it from you is one thing, but when they hear it from someone else, there is a different impact. And I’ve, I’ve recognized that as I’ve been trying within Elastic to, uh, modify and move our focus going to my senior executive team. By myself is less effective than going to my senior executive team when I bring in outside data or even an outside consultant. Yeah. To really prove the story. And it doesn’t mean that there’s not credibility with me. It’s, there’s so many ways to do partnering. That is your way, the best way. And so trying to find that right recipe for your company, it is important to do the research. Do your homework, make sure you’ve got a financially driven plan, that you have, a metric that your leadership can say, okay, I believe in that metric when it goes up or down. That’s what I’m gonna hold you to. That is really important. Otherwise, you’re asking your leadership to, um, you know, really believe in something that may or may not happen. You’ve gotta prove the story. [00:13:52] Vince Menzione: So what’s the secret sauce? What, I mean, you, you’ve given a lot of it, but Right. But partner, the year status, multiple years. Right? This is, uh, you’ve, you’ve just been awarded again, some of the other cloud, uh mm-hmm. Hyperscalers as well. What is the secret sauce within Alaska? Elastic that helps you become partner of the year? Like what, what do you think it is? [00:14:12] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Well, I actually think, um. Lori nailed it with technical intensity and I do remember when, you know, when Satya said that is the most important thing for Microsoft and our partner ecosystem. What I’ve seen, the way that Elastic engages with our partners is technology first, and that is something that’s different. I’ve been in. Partnering for 35 years, and the early days of partnering was all about co-selling, and it was all about how do we line up our sellers? How do we engage ’em, spiff ’em, do whatever we can do to have a meet in the market. Well, that doesn’t work anymore if you don’t have the technology. Innovation. And so it really does come down to leading with your technology first and embedding your tech in, uh, Microsoft or vice versa, somehow making it hook in and understanding what are the release cycles, where, what is the next innovation and. Until you get deep in, you may not hear what those roadmaps are. And so you’ve gotta build those relationships so that you can become part of the fabric that is doing the innovation. And then you’re actually. Driving Microsofting. So what I’m seeing now is the way that Elastic and Microsoft work is we have these innovation sessions regularly where we look at our technology and we, we compare roadmaps. Yeah. And as we do that, we’re affecting each other’s maps. Um, we ask for functionality in, um, the marketplace. It took a few months, but we pushed and pushed and pushed, and it’s something that we really needed so that we could do multi-year transactions with our partners. Um, they responded and we worked together and, and we made it happen. And so I think the secret is, I. Lead with your technology and make sure that it is something that can really work and hunt with the partnerships that you’re trying to build and then wrap the relationship around that, that’s where you start. Um, and I do think that that is the secret sauce that has made Elastic very successful, is we are fearless in going into the engineering organizations and, and really asking for more. Um. I love it. I come from an open source background, um, at, at Elastic, and it is fearless. It’s like, Hey, let’s build here. Let’s do that. Let’s do this. And it is, um, so it’s a very, it’s fascinating, um, exciting time to watch this happen, but when you think about the partner world. It has changed so much, and yes, co-selling is very important, but if you don’t have the nucleus of technology and innovation together, it, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling out there. [00:16:53] Vince Menzione: So I’m hearing tech intensity, I’m hearing engineering. I’m, I’m seeing, I’m visualizing your engineers in the room with the Microsoft engineers in the room, having very, very deep conversations about product alignment. Mm-hmm. [00:17:05] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: And fit. [00:17:06] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. And, and re-engineering the technologies on both sides. [00:17:09] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: And I think that to get to that point, to be in the room is, it’s important to, to push, to have the conversations, but then do what you say you’re gonna do. Deliver on time, deliver those features and that functionality that you both agree to. And that’s what really proofs it out. [00:17:29] Vince Menzione: You’re speaking my language. I talk about this all the time. Like I would sit in those rooms with the PowerPoint slides. We’d have great meetings, we’d have great alignment. We’d, we’d set goals with one another. We we’re all high fiving each other at the end of the meeting saying, we’re gonna achieve incredible success this year. And then crickets. Yes. We never hear back from them. And it comes back to that maniacal focus. People miss the maniacal focus part of this. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. And it sounds like you’re doing all that, right? Your engineering teams are maniacally focused, working with Microsoft. You’re driving the go-to market strategy. You’re driving the co-sell strategy across the organization. Yep. [00:18:03] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Yep. It. [00:18:03] Vince Menzione: It’s quite a bit. What would you say from a, like a resourcing perspective, how do organizations need to think about their resourcing for a successful partnership like yours? [00:18:12] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: You know, that’s a, that’s a really interesting question because that is probably the biggest challenge that we, we all face every day is, that’s right. Our, our teams are never big enough. Um. When I came into Elastic, I, I was astounded because the partner organization, um, is of size. Um, but for the size of company that we are, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty lean. But the hyperscaler element of our partner organization is about 15% of the org all up. And so there was a clear decision made, and this is before I showed up, that the hyperscaler relationships were king. They were the top, top dogs. We’re going to make sure we get that right. And so that actually for three years, it was that maniacal focus, which did make other partnerships suffer, right? Because we just didn’t have the resources. But that was a choice, and those are the choices that you have to make. Sometimes you can’t do it all. And right now I’m making trade-offs where I’m like, this year. I’m not gonna be able to do that because I’ve gotta get this right and this is going to stay healthy and this is gonna stay strong. And so it is trade-offs. But I would say that if you want to go. Part of the hoop and you really wanna make Microsoft or a hyperscaler relationship work or any partnership, it is focus and intensity around that and putting the resources where your focus is. And that should align all the way up to the the board. Because if they are, let’s make this work and you move your resources and say, look, another part of the partner organization may suffer as a result. That’s understood. Yes, as long as you communicate and you’re clear with that. But I would say that resourcing, um, making sure that you’ve got, you know, the right leadership that’s connecting at the leader level and running those BRS and QBR and making sure that you constantly have, um, you know, an EBC every six months that keeps the executives together and has that rhythm of the business. That’s really important. So you’ve gotta have that executive leadership and that alignment. But then you’ve gotta have folks in the field that are helping your sellers really work the deals. Um, it’s not easy. I mean, it’s not just hit a button and get it done. And so we, we do have to help our sellers get it across the line and drive a marketplace first mentality. In our company. And so it, it is, um, resourcing I think is, is critical to make sure you got the top and the field resources. We have a whole team on marketing and we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t be where we’re at right now without the, um, the incredible focus from marketing and engineering. [00:20:53] Vince Menzione: And I think I heard you say getting your executives aligned at the top. By the way, the upstairs of this building is the EBC, it’s the executive briefing center for Microsoft. I’m sure you use this quite a bit for some of those meetings. What do you find is like the secret sauce or the sweet spot getting the, your executives in, the Microsoft executives at that level aligned? Is there some level of engagement? Executive sponsorship. How do you, how do you do some of those things? Well, [00:21:18] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: so you do need to have executive sponsorship. That’s important. Um, and then you choose where that comes from. Does that come from the partner team? Does that come from engineering? Does that come from marketing? ’cause that sponsorship can come from different parts of the organization and, um, and that, that’s important ’cause that really does kind of give you that north star of what you’re doing. But then, um, in order to make those, those. Consistent meetings, those qbr, those brs successful, you do need commitment from your leadership. And so when we have an EBC or even A QBR, my. My CEO will fly up. My CRO will fly up. We bring everyone here to show the commitment, and we do that twice a year. So Microsoft knows we’re gonna come in. Yeah, we spend an entire day together and, um, there is an entire, um, afternoon of engineering and then they say. Been off and the engineers go in another room and I don’t even know what they talk about. But, um, but we do bring everyone together and it creates the relationship, it creates the consistency and the understanding. ’cause when your CRO hears directly from the top brass at Microsoft about what they’re doing Yeah. He’s motivated. Yeah. And so it is important to not just have ’em dial in on Zoom or teams or whatever, get ’em here. Get them in the room. That’s when it really, the magic does happen. It is human relationships that we do that partnering. I, I’ve been 35 years in partnering and, and my kids ask me what I do and I say, I built human relationships. Yeah. Um, where they weren’t before. And, and then we create business out of that. That’s what it is. But it starts with the human relationships first. And, and so get your leaders here. It makes a difference. It really does. And [00:22:59] Vince Menzione: demonstrating that your leaders are willing to make the commitment to come here. Mm-hmm. And engage with the other executives in the room is critical. Yep. It also takes a lot of the pressure off of you as a leader of the partnership organization to not have to have the, be the intermediary to the conversation about like, we’re not driving the right results on co-selling with our C-R-C-R-O. To have the CRO kind of put in the hot seat in a way. Yep. Right. Yep. It’s okay. It’s okay to have that conversation with the other aligned executives on the other side of that. Mm-hmm. And I think that’s part of your secret sauce. [00:23:31] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Mm-hmm. Yeah. As as long as everyone’s in the know as well, when you hit those roadblocks, which you will hit, having your leadership understand what’s happening in the relationship not only helps you get over those roadblock, it helps. You not get as much and you know, you don’t get on fire as much. Right. You’re not gonna get shot at because now you know, like your leader knows Okay, they can’t transact that way. We have to do it this way. Yeah. And so you’re not in the middle going, wait, wait, wait, let me explain all this stuff to you. They’re in the know. And that’s so helpful to, you know, the, the velocity of the business. [00:24:08] Vince Menzione: So we talk about embracing change. We talk about adaptability. We’ve used the term adaptability quotient, in fact. Mm-hmm. Like that’s, that’s the new iq. And EQ is the aq. Right. It’s, it’s something you really need to lean in on. Right? Yeah. How are you leaning in now? You, you’re sitting here as a. And you work with the others as well, but you’re sitting here with Microsoft being a very significant part of your business, knowing that in a couple of months as things are gonna change, right? We’re at the end of 25. Moving into 26, what are you doing from an adaptability perspective within your own organization and how are you also, uh, how are you in tuned with Microsoft on some of this now so that you are able to get the feedback loop going in a way that you’re thinking about your planning and process. Mm-hmm. [00:24:51] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Um. Adaptability is that has become really the most important thing that any leader needs to do in this, this world that we’re in. Um, it’s no longer one, two year roadmaps. It’s three months and the fourth month something could pop that you didn’t know about. And, and, and. It could derail your strategy. So you, you, you’re constantly adapting. You’re constantly watching. You have to do your homework more than you’ve ever had to do your homework because your homework changes every day. And so, um, being adaptable to what’s happening in the market, but also looking at your performance, looking at how is your relationship actually working and starting to be your own data science scientist and figure out, well, when this happens. And these two things come together, that’s a great opportunity. Or really start analyzing how does the business happen? Where is it good? Where is it suffering? Where can I actually close some of those gaps? And, and looking across the business. At a, a regular cycle. So you’re seeing, um, we used to, we, we called it a correction of error. I don’t know if they still do at Microsoft, but whenever there was something that was kind of going off the rails, we would have a COE, a correction of error. And it was kind of like whack-a-mole. Like whenever something came up, we were like, oh, everyone would jump on it, fix that problem. Something else would pop up over here. That’s the same thing that happens in our world, but we’ve got to be agile in looking at not only knowing those are coming, but predicting them and looking at our business and saying, okay, I’ve seen this, this play out before and I think we’re heading into this kind of, um, gully or whatever it is, moving the boat, getting back on track. And so I do think it is really important as leaders of our organization to know our data, to know what’s happening and really. Wallow in it and, and watch, because the market is changing so quickly, our data is going to tell us a lot of the things that we may are pontificate about and try to give excuses or reasons. Yeah. Focusing in the data is going to help you make Dr. Data driven decisions, but also give you the confidence and the credibility. As to why you did that. And so I really think agility does come from, um, being able to adapt to changes in the market, but doing it in a smart way, in a way that you can defend and explain to your leadership. [00:27:24] Vince Menzione: So that’s your advice for the partners in the room is what I’m gathering, right? It’s that you really need to pay attention to your data. Your data will tell you where you need to go as an organization. [00:27:33] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: I, I, you know, you can get data to tell any story, like everybody knows that. But reading your data and looking at trends and using what you know, you’re in these roles for a reason, using what you know to make those decisions and powering it with what you’re seeing in front of you and how the, the business is actually transacting and actually, um, you know, moving through the cycles. [00:27:57] Vince Menzione: I wanna spend a moment on influence strategy though. Okay. We really, we’ve talked about a lot and I think we’ve covered a lot, and I hope people are getting a lot of great nuggets here today about aligning your business, getting your executive team involved, getting everybody in the right room. Mm-hmm. Doing it on a regular basis. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. How do you think about your influence strategy, like as the leader coming into the organization? Like you said, all about a year enrolled. Mm-hmm. You can’t take all the credit, but you’ve been driving obviously more success on partner of the year award. Um, what is your influence strategy? How do you think about your influence strategy with the. Both your leadership team as well as the Microsoft Leadership team. [00:28:33] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: So, um, I, I do actually think about that quite a lot because, um, I came into role a year ago and we were, you know, it always feels like it’s in a state of emergency. Um, I came in, there were nine different organizations all rolling into different leaders that there had been no one in the channel, um, chief. Uh, had had a channel, no one had been in this role for two and a half, three years. Wow. So it was a little bit, you know, wild out there. Yeah. Um, I had 42 different compensation plans across a team of under 142 comp. [00:29:07] Vince Menzione: You sound like Microsoft with 42 compensation plans. And [00:29:09] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: I’m like, what are these people doing? What? Everyone’s doing something different. Right. So. I had to really bring things together so I had an influence story, so I had a place to start because I really wanted to go to my leadership and say. We’ve gotta bring this together. We’ve gotta be a cohesive team. We’ve gotta have a culture of our own and, and something that we’re striving for. Everyone has a different goal. We need a North star for our organization. Yeah. And so my influence journey started with. I gotta get a number that matters. Yeah. Like what’s gonna matter to my leadership and what’s gonna matter today. That number that I landed on, which was, uh, you know, a specific revenue target, um, will change. And it’s a specific revenue target. ’cause it’s not all of revenue. It’s a kind of revenue that I’m, I’m saying this is most important, this is what we’re gonna go after and I’m gonna fix this. Next year might be a different one, but right now I’m laser focused on showing. Progress and showing improvement and bringing the organization together and everyone rowing the same direction. Um, I’m down to six compensation plans guys, so [00:30:20] Vince Menzione: Very cool. [00:30:21] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Yes, I know. Thank you. That was a lot of, it took a year to get us kind of organized, but now the teams. Understand what they do, and they can cross pollinate, they can work across the regions and actually share best practices. And so my influence strategy started there, which is let’s create a unified structure and then I can start to prove what we’re capable of. Yeah. The part that. Tends to get lost is you need an influence strategy across the entire organization. Because partnering is building a company inside of a company. It is, it truly is. When I love that, when I, when I talk to my CEOI say, we have sellers. And what we do with our own sellers is we compensate them to do the things we want them to do. We give them marketing so they can get demand gen. We give them compliance, we give them, uh, Salesforce, we give them a portal to work in, um, you know, uh. All the things that they need. So we have to do the same thing for our partners, but we don’t get to pay them. To do what we want them to do. So we have to create an incredibly attractive partner program and value for our partners to wanna work with us, and it has to be compliant. They need a portal. They need sales and marketing. They need demand gen. They need everything that we’re offering our entire internal organization. We need that for partner. And don’t let me forget engineering, right? We’ve gotta have engineering as well because our partners push us to do better. And so it is like building a company inside of a company. So your influence strategy cannot stop with sales and it cannot stop with the CMO and the chief product officer. You’ve gotta get into the services team, you’ve gotta get into legal, you’ve gotta get into the IT department because if you don’t have it working for you, your stuff’s gonna be at the. Bottom of the list, right? So your influence has to go all the way across the organization. I love this. I love this. It’s exhausting too. [00:32:20] Vince Menzione: Well, and we could, I mean, I’d like, I’d love to, I know we’re short on time, but, uh, you, I think what you said too is you develop a strong point of view as well. Like you came in and you had to go solve for some real. Nagging issues mm-hmm. Within the organization. And then you develop a strong point of view that you bring into those other organizations. Yep. Because you’re the one beating the drum every day. Yes, yes. Yeah. So you, you gotta come at it with a very consistent theme. [00:32:46] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: And I think the consistency is critical because I, um. I, I’ll, I’ll give you a fail fast. Um, it wasn’t as fast as I’d like it to have been, but uh, when I came in we had a bunch of metrics that we would put up and say, okay, these are our partner numbers. And I started watching my sales team and, you know, they kind of just started tuning out and I’m like, what is going on? Like. What, what’s wrong with my data? Why? Why don’t they like this? And I got closer and closer where I was like, okay, and here is the source revenue. Here’s the deals brought by partners. Here’s the deals we’re co-selling. Here’s the deals that are going into marketplace. And they started to finally clue in and they’re like, well, that number’s not right, or That doesn’t work for me. And I finally got them to wake up and I was reporting partner data. That my partner team deemed important, but my selling team didn’t care at all. Hmm. So make sure your data, your whatever you’re reporting against, lines up to the way that sales reports theirs, because if you’re looking at different slices, you’re gonna lose the audience. I love it. So [00:33:57] Vince Menzione: many great nuggets. It’s really important. So many great nuggets because I did lose the audience, but I got ’em [00:34:01] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: back. But [00:34:02] Vince Menzione: yeah, that was a, that was a surprise for me. But the course correction is important. I know we’re running up on time now, but I think just to the point there is you come into these organizations, the team is already set up line a different way that what they’re reporting is not relevant. And you have, that’s where you have to come in with that very strong point of view. Yep. And go fix it. Yeah. [00:34:20] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: And ask yourself, is this right? Yep. I didn’t do that until it, it was too late. Not late, but it obviously has worked. E so [00:34:28] Vince Menzione: well, I want to thank you. Yeah. This has been a really great tutorial, I think a great instructional, um, we’re gonna, we’re gonna play this again. It’ll probably be on the podcast because I think most of us as leaders in organizations, we miss this. We miss all. How do you get to that pinnacle? Mm-hmm. And there’s so many things you need to do in an organization to drive this level of success that an elastic will drive. Mm-hmm. Within a Microsoft or within the hyperscale community. Yep. So, so thrilled to have you join us. Thank you. Today. You, this was wonderful. Thank, I really enjoyed it. Thank you. So [00:34:56] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: it’s my favorite talk topic to talk about. I love [00:34:57] Vince Menzione: it. I’ll you back again. Thank you all. All right. Well, thank you Alyssa. That was fantastic. Thank you. What a great conversation. Thank you for joining us this morning. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Partner. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate Partner Experience where leaders come to learn from each other. It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started. We’ve got big plans for you this summer as we’re taking this studio, and we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here, and it’s all coming to you soon. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level.

Recorded Live at Ultimate Partner LIVE in Redmond, WA Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. Join us for an insightful conversation with Lori Borg, Vice President of Microsoft America’s Go-to-Market, as she shares her incredible journey from Microsoft partner to a key executive at Microsoft. Dive deep into the critical importance of organizational and technical agility in today’s rapidly changing tech landscape, especially within the Microsoft ecosystem. Lori emphasizes the need for technical intensity, urging partners to not only adopt the latest Microsoft technologies, including agentic AI, but also to apply them internally to drive innovation and efficiency. Discover the magic that happens when you strategically build with, sell with, and market with Microsoft, and gain valuable insights on how to foster a culture of growth and adaptability within your own organization to become the ultimate Microsoft partner. We’re curating the very best of these moments—fireside chats, expert panels, and executive insights—so you can stay ahead of the curve and fully aligned to where Microsoft and the industry are heading. And this is just the beginning.More sessions. More voices. More of what you need to know. If you’re not yet part of the UPX Community, now’s the time to join us. Access exclusive content, events, and strategies that keep you in front of what’s next. Thanks for being on this journey with us.— Vince Key Takeaways Agility—both organizational and technical—is essential for Microsoft partners to adapt to rapid changes in the tech landscape. Partners should actively adopt and apply technical intensity, leveraging new technologies like agentic AI internally to drive innovation and efficiency. True success for Microsoft partners lies in strategically integrating efforts to build with, sell with, and market with Microsoft. A strong culture of agility, fostered from the top down, is crucial for organizations to remain competitive and adaptable. When introducing new initiatives, it’s vital to not only generate energy but also provide clear clarity on practical implementation steps. Microsoft is committed to simplifying partner engagement and enhancing clarity in its processes, keeping partners at the core of its strategy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDYnyj3IAXg If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. https://youtu.be/s33fltuizEo Key Tags: Microsoft, Lori Borg, Microsoft Partner, Go-to-Market, Technical Agility, Organizational Agility, AI, Agentic AI, Ecosystem, Partnerships, Growth Mindset, Digital Transformation, Business Strategy, Innovation, Technology, Microsoft Americas, Channel Partners, Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Customer Success, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Cloud, Satya Nadella, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Change Management, Business Growth, Co-selling, Solution Areas, Digital Marketing, Cloud Computing, Microsoft Programs, Partner Hub, Future of Work, Tech Trends. Transcription: Lori Borg  [00:00:00] Lori Borg: I think we talk so much about ai. We talk so much about how it’s changing everything and the opportunity in front of us, but we really need to hold the mirror up. Yeah, I do as well. And go, what am I doing to make sure I’m using it for myself? Yes. And I’m encouraging and supporting my teams to be using it as well. [00:00:21] Intro: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, all the hyperscalers in the world. If you add them all together. Managed services will be one and a half times larger because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. [00:00:59] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner Live at Microsoft Redmond Campus, our most powerful event. Yet, over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room. This episode featuring Lori Borg, Microsoft’s new Vice President for Go to Market, kicks us off for day two and brings us right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in. I have an incredible privilege this morning. Um, we, we wanna have the conversation about embracing change, and I could think of no one better to come on stage with me today than someone who’s been around the Microsoft ecosystem and around the community of partnerships her entire career. In fact, and we will talk a little bit about it. I want, I wanna save some of the conversation for her. She recently joined Microsoft like a hundred days ago, became a vice president at Microsoft. So she went from being one of you all, like one of us in the, in the ultimate partner world that we live in to now being an exec at Microsoft and shaping a very important part of Microsoft’s business. You see, if you know anything about how Microsoft is organized, you have the global roles and Nicole’s organization drives it at. The global level. But when you get into the Americas, which is where you all sit, whether you’re in Canada, Latin America, or the United States, there’s an America’s business that’s very deliberate, very focused on driving success. And within that business, a very, very strong component of that business is go to market. It’s marketing. Because as you know, being around Microsoft, all the engines, all the support, all the investments that make partners successful, that go to market strategy is critically important. So I am thrilled to invite my friend, we’ve known each other for many years around the partner ecosystem. I can’t wait for her to spend some time with us this morning talking about embracing change. Laurie Borg is the vice president of Microsoft America’s go to market for the. Global partner community. That’s a mouthful. A lot of acronyms out there. Lori, I’d love to have you up on stage. Come on up. Come up. So good to see you. Good. So good to see you, my friend. So good to meet here. We got to be together. We, we were together just a little, was it a month ago? It seems like a hundred years ago. Of course, before a lot has changed. Before I sit down, I have to [00:03:24] Lori Borg: say who noticed? The ultimate partner pillows the amazing attention to detail. I love it. [00:03:30] Vince Menzione: Thank you. [00:03:30] Lori Borg: Yes. I’ve got a whole [00:03:32] Vince Menzione: collection of them in my house, by the way. But, uh, we, we will give you a ch we’ll give you a challenge coin and an ultimate partner pillow if you sign up today. How’s that? [00:03:40] Lori Borg: Perfect. [00:03:41] Vince Menzione: And a hat. So, and a hat. Absolutely. You got a hat ab Absolutely. For being here. So thanks for having you. So great to be here with you. Yeah. So great to be here. Um, and I, I just wanna spend a moment talking about your journey. ’cause it’s been incredible. You’ve had an incredible career in the, in the ecosystem that we know and love. [00:03:57] Lori Borg: Yes. [00:03:58] Vince Menzione: And, and now you jumped and you came over to the other side. I did. So I want to, let’s, let’s talk about it. I did tell, take us through it. [00:04:03] Lori Borg: I, I, I would love to ask before I jump into it. I’ve been in the Microsoft ecosystem for 26 years, so it’s been a minute. Um, and I have some of my peers on my team now at Microsoft celebrating 15, 20, 25 years at Microsoft. And we do a lot to celebrate them inside of Microsoft. Amazing. What I’m curious of, is anybody in the room? Have you been in the Mark, Microsoft partner ecosystem? Like 20 plus years. Can you raise your hand? Yes. What about 25 plus years? Keep your hands up. There’s several of you. 30 years, anybody? 30 years. Yeah. A few of you, Jeff. Yeah. Good. Well, I wanna do celebrate all those people. Absolutely. Yeah. Congratulations. Because we celebrate, we celebrate inside of Microsoft. So, um, thank you for choosing Microsoft and for being so committed to the Microsoft ecosystem. Okay with that, a little bit about my journey. So yeah, let’s [00:04:52] Vince Menzione: talk about you like, yeah, [00:04:54] Lori Borg: so my journey, I started in the late nineties actually, with a training company. Wow. So back in the CPLS Ctech days. Yeah. And that’s how I got into the business. I started in, in sales and sales leadership, but I really had a passion to run a company and to be an i, a entrepreneurial spirit, wanted to build a business. Uh, so when I had my first kiddo, I used that as the opportunity to step back from what I was doing and take that big jump. Very cool. And start a Microsoft partner company. Where’d that [00:05:24] Vince Menzione: entrepreneurial edge come from? Was there, was it in your DNA? Was it, I will tell [00:05:28] Lori Borg: you, my first little business was when I was 12 and I started teaching piano. Okay, nice. Very nice. So it very much was in my DNA. It’s DNA. Yeah. Yeah. It’s DNA, um, which I’m sure a lot of you have that same DNA as well since you’re sitting here and partners. And tell us about the first company [00:05:42] Vince Menzione: that you started. [00:05:43] Lori Borg: Yeah, so, uh, the company was a systems integrator designed to help software development teams improve how they built software. We were actually Microsoft’s first DevOps partner, first gold DevOps partner, so helped shape what that competency looked like back in the day. Um, and I ran that business for 10 years. It was a great, great. Company loved it and had the opportunity to, all through the [00:06:07] Vince Menzione: s right. All through the s [00:06:08] Lori Borg: Yeah. Had the opportunity to sell, uh, the company to another larger firm that was one of Microsoft’s largest Azure partners at the time. And I, uh, was a partner there and stayed on to help build that business and then sell it again to one of Microsoft’s largest global companies. Yeah. One of [00:06:28] Vince Menzione: the largest GSIs. [00:06:29] Lori Borg: Yeah. One of the largest GSIs. Um. So then I, you know, that was a, that took a, that took about 13, 14 years out of my career doing kind of that whole sequence of events. Uh, and then I had the opportunity to join a biz apps partner and help build the Azure business. And um, and that was incredible. And then now I’m here at Microsoft. [00:06:49] Vince Menzione: Unbelievable. Yeah. [00:06:50] Lori Borg: So from small to big and everything in between. [00:06:52] Vince Menzione: So what did you learn along the journey like that you can share with this audience and. People watching today also on livestream. Yeah. About embracing change, about like how do you think about working with Microsoft as your largest vendor or partner? [00:07:04] Lori Borg: Yeah. [00:07:05] Vince Menzione: And then how did you do it? Like what did you have to do? [00:07:08] Lori Borg: I think a couple of things that come to mind right away for me are around agility. Uh, I talk a lot about the importance of agility from two different lenses. One is organizational agility and the other is technical agility. Um, and it’s fairly self-explanatory, just. By the words in themselves. But when we think about the combination of making sure that your organization is organizationally agile, that you are structured in a way where you can pivot when you need to pivot. Mm-hmm. When you’re tied to a Microsoft funding program and the funding dries up and you need to quick go do something different. Yes. Or Microsoft rolls out a new solution area or new competency requirements and you need to be able to pivot. So. Structuring the business in a way that you have that culture where you are organizationally agile is key. The other side of that coin though, is having that technical agility. Interesting. Um, I think it sometimes is easy for us to sit back and not stay on top of that technical intensity that we all need to make sure that we’re. Always learning. We’re in the business of technology. [00:08:12] Intro: Yeah. [00:08:13] Lori Borg: Um, and so making sure that you’re creating a culture of technical agility as well as that organizational agility, I think is, is really critical for Microsoft partners to stay front and center and to stay kind of leading edge with all of the change. [00:08:27] Vince Menzione: How do you think about agility when you’re in the boardroom, when you’re running an organization like that, what do you do to stay agile? Like I know that you have like listening mechanisms, but how do you think through it? [00:08:38] Lori Borg: Oh, that’s a good question. I think, um, you know, in the boardroom and speaking at the executive level, I think a lot of it does again, come back to creating that culture of agility and it. It does need to be created from the top down. Mm-hmm. Um, because it impacts how you invest the horizons that you’re planning things on, the rigor and discipline that you put around processes and activities that you’re doing so that you can move quickly if you need to. Um, so I think a lot of it comes down to. Comes down to making sure that you have the right framework and mechanisms in place to be able to move and to ensure and motivate that everyone on the teams are inspired and want to lean in and learn and stay competitive technically. [00:09:25] Vince Menzione: So critical there. To your point, like people talk about fail fast, right? Yes. Fail fast. That’s the term. Fail is used. SAT is used many times. Yeah. In terms of having a growth mindset, like you’ve gotta be able to accept failure. [00:09:36] Lori Borg: Yeah. [00:09:37] Vince Menzione: And embrace it. [00:09:38] Lori Borg: Yeah. [00:09:38] Vince Menzione: Uh, and it’s okay. [00:09:39] Lori Borg: And avoid the analysis paralysis. Yeah. Like no analysis paralysis, fail fast and iterate quickly. Yeah. [00:09:45] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Yeah. Very cool. [00:09:47] Lori Borg: Yeah. [00:09:47] Vince Menzione: So, um, what is the opportunity for our partners today? Like we talked about the fact that they’ve gotta look at embracing change so much is happening. [00:09:54] Lori Borg: Yeah, [00:09:55] Vince Menzione: I’d love to talk more about the business and all the changes. [00:09:57] Lori Borg: Yeah. I [00:09:57] Vince Menzione: know some of them are still kind of like nestled here. We can’t bring everything up to market, but what are you seeing and what, what do partner, how do partners, what do you, what have been your experiences so far in the first a hundred days? Oh gosh. Working with these partners and what would you say to them now? [00:10:11] Lori Borg: Yep. [00:10:12] Vince Menzione: About what we need to go do better and differently. [00:10:15] Lori Borg: Alright, so I’m gonna get on my soapbox a little bit on the topic of technical intensity. Uh, some of my, some of my team who might be watching, we hear, we talk about it a lot, and Satya, I think coined the phrase technical intensity. I remember watching him talk about it for the first time at, I believe in Ignite in maybe 2018, somewhere around that time. And the concept of technical intensity really is twofold. Part of it is being. Intentional about using and staying up with the latest and greatest Microsoft technology. So that’s part of it. But the other part of it is using that technology to really create something special and unique. Unique IP, baking it into your services and offerings. And I think for. All of us at a very personal level, as well as leading our teams. And in our organizations, it’s critical to have technical intensity at the heart of what we’re doing. Um, I will just say very personally, I, I’m certainly not a technologist and I need to kind of push myself every day to go, okay, how could this be done differently? How could this be done better? I’m gonna carve out. 20 minutes or two hours on the weekends to go learn about a new thing so that I can show up better and stronger for myself and for my team. And I think we talk so much about ai, we talk so much about how it’s changing everything and the opportunity in front of us. But we really need to hold the mirror up. Yeah, I do as well. And go, what am I doing to make sure I’m using it for myself? Yes. And I’m encouraging and supporting my teams to be using it as well. I think that’s one of the biggest things as we think about looking into Microsoft’s new fiscal year, there’s so much opportunity with ai. But we can spend all day talking about how are we gonna build it into our offerings and roll it out to our customers. Yeah. But what are we doing inside of our own houses? So good to, to build agents and to use Agen ai, to not just enable ourselves to do things better, faster, cheaper, but to do things differently. [00:12:18] Vince Menzione: And I think we’re at a cusp of a moment here with Agen ai. Right. We talked about AI now for, it’s going back to 22, 23. Yep. When it first hit chat, EBT, and then copilot, but. We kind of, you know, we sat back a little bit because we were getting criticized because the CFO wasn’t seeing the benefit. They weren’t seeing the 30% drop in, in cost out of their business from it. [00:12:39] Lori Borg: Yeah. [00:12:40] Vince Menzione: Uh, we expected too much too soon. [00:12:42] Lori Borg: Yeah. [00:12:42] Vince Menzione: Uh, I, I feel like we’re at a moment now where things are gonna really accelerate and a lot of conversation yesterday with Nvidia and Sandy Gupta talking about AG agentic ai. Good. I think we have more conversation today with partners. Good. Talking about how they’re applying AG agentic AI into their businesses. Yeah. Cutting costs. [00:12:57] Lori Borg: Yeah. [00:12:57] Vince Menzione: Improving efficiencies and, and, uh. Creating better outcomes. [00:13:00] Lori Borg: Good. That’s good. Yeah. I mean, I think so much of it again, is what are you doing inside of your own businesses? Yeah. With your sales org, your marketing org, your engineering teams, your product teams, uh, and making sure that from the top down you have champions driving that change in momentum for internal technical intensity, as well as what do you bring to market? What and how are you creating those differentiators? What, what I [00:13:24] Vince Menzione: heard you say too is we need to like look in the mirror. Right. Yeah. That was your exact words. Literally [00:13:28] Lori Borg: those, yeah. Yeah. [00:13:29] Vince Menzione: And we need to apply it. Like we can’t just sit on the sidelines and kind of watch it go by ’cause it’s happening so fast, right? Yeah. It’s gonna, we’re gonna be, we’re here and it’s gonna be there. I. Before a day goes by. [00:13:39] Lori Borg: Yeah. And I think we can’t just sit in our companies and expect that our customers are going to adopt it and tell our customers why it’s so great and how to adopt it when we’re not adopting it ourselves. So I think it starts in our own houses, if you will. [00:13:53] Intro: Yes. [00:13:54] Lori Borg: Um, and that’s how we create energy around it because when we can see, oh my gosh, we built an agent that’s able to do this thing for me that we never were able to do before. We get excited about it and our customers will see that excitement and energy. You know? Yeah. So I think it starts with us. Well, and [00:14:10] Vince Menzione: you were leading a company that was a leader in Azure. Yep. And migrations and all of that. Yeah. And brought it to a large GSI where you had to basically change, you had to, [00:14:19] Intro: yeah. There was a [00:14:19] Vince Menzione: lot of change management. A lot. Bringing that organization lot Yeah. To to the same level that you were before. Yeah. What do you do internally now at Microsoft on helping them? Look in the mirror. I guess, how do, what do you, is there like a set of instructions we need to think about for our companies? Like what do we, what do we need to go do with our organizations to get them to that next level? [00:14:39] Lori Borg: Yeah, that’s a really good question. Um, I, I think Satya, going back to Satya again, uh, a couple of things that he has talked about a lot over the years is creating energy and driving clarity. Uh, that is a lot of where it comes from honestly. Vince I think is just being able to identify even the motion or the movement around technical intensity inside of my organization and our broader America’s team looking at how can we get everyone excited about, yeah. The impact that technical intensity will drive. So it’s creating the energy, but then it’s also creating clarity on what does that actually mean. Uh, we can talk a lot about it, but practically speaking, what should I go do as an employee or as a leader or as an executive? To go myself be technically intense. Yes. And also encourage my teams to do the same thing. [00:15:31] Vince Menzione: And your business is traditionally marketing. [00:15:33] Lori Borg: Yeah. Go to [00:15:33] Vince Menzione: market, which generally is not as technically intense. Right. I. [00:15:38] Lori Borg: Yes, but well, some might argue, yeah, [00:15:41] Vince Menzione: it has changed over the years. It has that from [00:15:42] Lori Borg: a go to market perspective, we should be the beacon Yes, absolutely. Of technical intensity because it’s, it’s creating clarity and it’s, uh, creativity, it’ss content scale engagement. You know, [00:15:56] Vince Menzione: and the technology has changed rapidly. Right. I go back to, back in the old days of marketing, we didn’t even know what the outcomes were. [00:16:02] Lori Borg: Yeah. [00:16:02] Vince Menzione: And then we layered in Marketo and Iqua and some of those technologies. Now marketing is really the science, the data science. [00:16:08] Lori Borg: Absolutely. It’s, it is the art, the perfect art and science of, yeah. I love of a great go to market strategy. [00:16:14] Vince Menzione: So for everyone watching us today, everybody watching on the live stream and the recordings of this, what are the three things that you think. Like, we’re going into this moment and I, I think when we get to our October event, uh, so much will have changed already. Yes. Like we’ll be ready for that next iteration. Yeah. But during this moment, between now and then, what should the organizations, the partners in the room that wanna be the ultimate partner, how do they move forward and what should they do in this next quarter? [00:16:41] Lori Borg: Yeah. In [00:16:41] Vince Menzione: their own businesses. [00:16:42] Lori Borg: Alright. Uh, well first you heard the technical intensity message, so just that kind of overarches everything else, I think from my perspective is making sure that you’re creating a culture and you’re holding up the mirror personally on what you’re doing. Um, but if I were to say, what are those three things, the three things I always come back to are, what are you doing to build with, sell with and market with Microsoft? Mm. And. I have been in so many different organizations and have worked with so many different Microsoft partner companies over the years that are really strong at one or two of those things. Yes, I am a firm believer that where the magic happens is when those three things come together. So as an organization, if you are in the marketing side of the business, make sure that you’re looking across sales and engineering or delivery. If you’re in the sales, do the same engineering do the same? Um, it’s not enough. To just be great at selling with Microsoft. It’s not enough to just be great at building solutions that are landing in the marketplace, that are showing up well there. And it’s not enough to just be marketing. Yeah. Using the Microsoft resources and kind of snapping in with Microsoft. Right. I think when the magic happens is when those three things happen. So my feedback or advice would be for partners is you’re starting to get kind of towards the end of Microsoft fiscal year and planning towards the new. Take a couple of steps back and evaluate inside of your organizations, do I have a clear leader or clear strategy around how are we gonna approach selling with marketing, with and building with Microsoft, and how can I make sure those three strategies and or leaders are coming together like a. Like a braid. [00:18:23] Vince Menzione: So important. You, you touched on the three of the biggest areas and I’ll, I’ll just comment back. ’cause I’ve, I’ve worked across a lot of these organizations over the years. Yeah. The 99.99% do not get that. And those three organizations, generally the engineering or product organization, the marketing organization, the sales organization, let alone the partner organization that’s managing the relationship, they don’t talk to one another. I know they don’t do a good job. And I think to your point, you’ve gotta get good at all three of those sets of disciplines. You need to have internal communication. Yeah. And then the way you show up with Microsoft and in a way that you’re demonstrating this is the, this is how we’re addressing each of these areas. And to your point, like how do, how do I get better at the flywheel? Yeah. On each of these, right. That’s it. That’s right. [00:19:07] Lori Borg: Yep. [00:19:07] Vince Menzione: And I’m sure you did this because you led a top company. [00:19:10] Lori Borg: Well, and this is, uh, for a couple of my roles over the years, my title was Chief Growth Officer, and we kind of came up with that many years ago. It wasn’t very common the first time. I, I, uh, put that on my business card, if you will. And what it really was for me at the core is how are you looking across all three of those areas in a way that’s strategically designed to drive growth? Um, but they all do need to be interconnected. Yeah. [00:19:37] Vince Menzione: So let’s talk, I, I double cook a little bit on the role because I don’t know if every partner in the room or watching really understands that what is, what your, how your organization is focused. Yep. What is the value you bring and work with partners to drive? ’cause it does drive a lot on the demand side, but also drives into the co-selling, which we spent a lot of time on yesterday. But tell, take us through that a little [00:20:00] Lori Borg: bit. Yeah, sure. Great. Um, I loved how you introduced. To the role as it relates to our worldwide organization. And then we have the Americas team. And my role and the teams in my organization specifically are our go-to market strategy leaders and teams who are working with partners. Sometimes one-on-one, one to many helping land scaled type motions with a lot of partners. Uh, and so what might be helpful is for me to just take a couple of steps back and start by mentioning there are 165,000 ish partners in the Americas. So there’s a lot of partners in the Americas, so of course my team is not. Large enough to personally spend all 65,000 spend time with all 165,000 partners. Um, [00:20:49] Intro: yeah, [00:20:50] Lori Borg: so we work really hard to be strategic and thoughtful about how can we create. Energy and programs and leverage the great assets that worldwide is building and try to scale those so those 165,000 partners can snap into what matters most to them. Mm-hmm. Or what will be helpful resources for them from a sales enablement, marketing, technical enablement, um, leveraging different programs and getting involved with different channels and so forth. Yeah. [00:21:20] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And then you align partners to solution plays. I know that’s a big. Big factor of the, the business. Yep. And then I also know you do a lot on co-selling. Yeah. Like your, your teams are really responsible. We do, uh, getting the, you know, literally taking the. Yeah. Microsoft side and the partner side and getting them in a room to having a meaningful conversation about co-selling. [00:21:39] Lori Borg: That’s exactly right. I think, uh, the America’s team in the Americas is where the rubber hits the road. [00:21:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:21:44] Lori Borg: So Exactly. So, uh, that’s where, that’s where the, the magic happens on the ground with the Microsoft sellers and with our partners and the partner sellers working with customers. [00:21:53] Vince Menzione: And I don’t know if everybody realizes if you’ve been inside Microsoft, as I have in New York, uh, you realize how global an organization it is. Yes. Uh, you go to a Microsoft event and we, people were in their company colors and like 220 subsidiaries and all that, and then, but Microsoft Americas is more than 45% of the overall business at Microsoft. [00:22:14] Lori Borg: Yes, it is. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a big part of the overall business’s, and I will say one thing as a partner, I think I work. A long time with a lot of different people at Microsoft and once or twice I had the impression of do they not talk to each other once or twice? Only once or twice, and I understand now because it’s complicated and big and there’s a lot of different people touching. The same partner ecosystems and communities. And so we do our best to create clarity and simplify. And I think a lot of the changes that you heard Nicole talk about yesterday and what you’ll see coming as we get closer and closer to the end of fiscal is really Microsoft taking some big, bold steps towards how can we even better clarify and simplify how our partners are working with us, making it easier. And it’s hard, it’s complicated, it’s hard, you know it, it’s complicated to do it. [00:23:08] Vince Menzione: We had some sessions yesterday, workshops going on, and we talk about Brandon’s story being so important. Yes. Yeah. Because I’m a Microsoft seller and I’ve got thousands of partners beating on my door. Literally want meetings with me. Yeah. And why? Why are you different? Like why are you relevant to me? Right. Yeah. So I know that your team spends a lot of time on this. Yeah. But. It is, it is a critical piece to these organizations. They need to stand out, they need to differentiate, they need to add value, they need to understand how to align. We talked about MA little bit. Yeah. And we’ll talk, talk about M again today. But I do think that that’s, there’s an incredible set of skills from top partners and we’ll have some of them up on stage here as well today to talk through it. But, uh, just incredible things. Um, yeah, so. I’m just thrilled to have you on stage with us today. [00:23:51] Lori Borg: That’s great To be here. Um, [00:23:53] Vince Menzione: we could spend the entire day, you and I talking about the I know the business. I know I, there’s a lot of things IW wanna ask you, but I know we’re at the end of fiscal year. [00:24:01] Lori Borg: Yep. [00:24:01] Vince Menzione: And I know there’s a lot of change coming. There’s m Mcap START program is only another month and a half, two months away. I away. I know. We’ll be [00:24:07] Lori Borg: here before we know it. Yeah. Yeah. [00:24:09] Vince Menzione: Anything you could signal to this audience that you can say in public that won’t get you in too much trouble. [00:24:13] Lori Borg: Here’s what I will signal very clearly. I am very excited and optimistic, and this is not a scripted message from Lori. I’m very excited and optimistic about what’s to come. Nice again, some of what we’ve seen already is Microsoft taking some great big steps towards adding clarity and simplification to get closer to our customers and make it easier for us to partner with our partners. So we’re, we’re gonna, we’re gonna continue to, I love it. Strive towards that. I can’t [00:24:40] Vince Menzione: wait to see some of the announce. Been, I can hear, hear more from you. I and [00:24:43] Lori Borg: partners at the center of it. Man. Center of it, man. I, I love it. Love. Yeah. Partners at the center of it. Yeah. [00:24:48] Vince Menzione: So, um, so good to have you here today. It’s [00:24:51] Lori Borg: great to be here. I thank you so much. I would, I would [00:24:53] Vince Menzione: probably wanna open it up to questions, but we are not set up to do that. But if people wanna reach out and they have questions, what’s the best way that they can communicate with your team? [00:25:01] Lori Borg: Hmm. That’s a good question. You, you can always ping me on LinkedIn and you can connect with me there. Absolutely. Uh, connecting with my team, one of the things I will get a give a plug for is our partner hub, our America’s partner hub. Very nice. So if you’re not already connected there, be sure to connect there. That’s where we, uh, post a lot of, uh, upcoming activities and resources and so forth. So be sure that you’re connected there. [00:25:25] Vince Menzione: Very good. [00:25:26] Lori Borg: Yeah. [00:25:26] Vince Menzione: Partner hub. [00:25:27] Lori Borg: Thank you. Thank you [00:25:28] Vince Menzione: so much, Lori. I really appreciate you coming. You bet. This morning starting us off. [00:25:32] Lori Borg: Yes, you bet. Getting [00:25:33] Vince Menzione: us moving in the right direction too. And so great to have you. [00:25:35] Lori Borg: Thank you. So good to spend time with you. Should you sink the pillow with me? [00:25:38] Vince Menzione: Absolutely. Anytime. You can take a, well, we’ll send it. Uh, team, we need to send a pillow, Lori’s address, home address, please. All right. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you so much, Lori. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Partner. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate Partner Experience where leaders come to learn from each other. It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, realtime education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started. We’ve got big plans for you this summer as we’re taking this studio, and we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here, and it’s all coming to you soon. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level.

Recorded Live at Ultimate Partner LIVE in Redmond, WA Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. Join industry leaders John Janke of Tackle.io and Shane Wilson of Cohesity as they delve into the transformative power of cloud marketplaces. This engaging discussion explores the evolution of marketplace adoption, from its early pioneering days to its current status as a multi-billion dollar opportunity. Discover how buyer behavior is shifting, the increasing importance of channel partners, and the strategies that winning ISVs are employing to achieve unprecedented scale in the cloud go-to-market. We’re curating the very best of these moments—fireside chats, expert panels, and executive insights—so you can stay ahead of the curve and fully aligned to where Microsoft and the industry are heading. And this is just the beginning.More sessions. More voices. More of what you need to know. If you’re not yet part of the UPX Community, now’s the time to join us. Access exclusive content, events, and strategies that keep you in front of what’s next. Thanks for being on this journey with us.— Vince https://youtu.be/kydm0sEq6ac?si=XbuyStK3opiB-i6e KEY TAKEAWAYS: The cloud marketplace has evolved from a niche concept to a multi-billion dollar ecosystem, with projections to reach $100 billion by 2026. Buyer behavior is shifting, with a significant increase in buyers utilizing cloud marketplaces for procurement across all software and partner types. The role of channel partners is becoming increasingly critical, with marketplace strategies shifting from ISVs to channel partners who own the buyer relationship. Successful ISVs are integrating marketplace and co-sell motions into a unified company-wide cloud go-to-market strategy, encompassing sales, product, rev ops, and marketing. The concept of “storefront evolution” is emerging, where buyers discover products in new places beyond traditional marketplaces, leading to more specific solutions and bundles. Consistency in strategy, execution, and celebrating wins is paramount for navigating the evolving cloud marketplace landscape and achieving long-term success. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. https://youtu.be/s33fltuizEo Key Tags: Cloud go-to-market, cloud marketplace, ISV, channel partners, co-selling, procurement, software sales, digital transformation, B2B software, multi-party offers, ecosystem, strategic partnerships, revenue growth, sales motion, alliances, rev ops, marketplace operations, product-led growth, SMB, enterprise, storefronts, cyber resiliency, Microsoft partnership, NetApp, Amazon, CrowdStrike, Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, Wiz, PAX8, Ingram Micro. Transcript: [00:00:00] John Janke: Another big, and this I think trend will be next year. It’s happening right now, but it’s still really early, is this idea of evolution of storefront. So if you want to change buyer behavior, you have to meet buyers where they show up. [00:00:14] Intro: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together, managed services will be one and a half times larger [00:00:26] Vince Menzione: because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models [00:00:33] Intro: until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized, and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. [00:00:52] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you. Achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner Live at Microsoft’s Redmond campus, our most powerful event. Yet, over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this episode on marketplaces featuring John Yanke, the CEO of Tackle. And Shane Wilson from Cohesity brings us right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in and we’re gonna have some other leaders in the room to talk about marketplace. Uh, in fact, we’re very pri privileged to have both. I. As sponsors, but also really partners in driving the success working with the Marketplace organization. Some of the top organizations that understand Marketplace better than anyone, they’ve been at it the longest. I’m privileged to have John Yanke, the who’s been a great friend, a great supporter of Ultimate Partner, the CEO of Tackle io, and Shane Wilson from Cohesity, who’s also been around this partner partnering, co-selling. Marketplace world that we, we know and love so much. So great to see you again my friend. Good to you. Great to see you, Shane. James, how you doing? Thank you. Good to have you both on stage today. So is the world to have you make the trip and to support us. Good to be here. So great to have Cy on stage too, right? So I know you’ve been around, uh, John, you’ve been around this marketplace thing. We’ve been calling it the marketplace moment for some time. Shane, I know you as well from the ISV side, so I thought maybe we take a moment to have you both introduce yourselves. Maybe just spend a moment. I did a little bit, babe. Didn’t do it justice. Maybe a little bit of your background and Sure. And what you all do and, and why you’re here today. [00:02:36] John Janke: Uh, hey everybody, great to see so many friends, familiar faces. Uh, Vince, thank you for all the work putting this event on. I think it’s, uh, tremendous to be able to focus on Microsoft and everything they have going on. So, I’m John Yanke. I’m CEO of Tackle. I’ve been with Tackle since the beginning. We started the company in 2016 with the idea that the clouds would change the way that software was sold and marketplace represented the initiation point of that. That was long before. Really anyone was buying that way. Anyone was selling that way. We were working with some of the 2016 and there were some really early adopters who kind of saw the world the same way and were struggling to figure it out, and we just happened to be able to meet some of those large partners back then and help them find a way to. Launch their businesses and not only launch, but sell and sell repeatedly and then integrate that selling motion into their system. So, uh, I’m a lifelong se. I grew up in se, which is like my default persona. So if you encounter me like either at a customer or at an event, I tend to be just super curious. I call myself a nerdy cloud go to market guy, which kind of route goes back to my se heritage and uh, I mean tackle. We really live to serve the ecosystem and, you know, support not only ics, ICS channel partners as as the marketplace moments. I think it’s been a lot of moments, a lot of moments, you know, the time series of moments is, uh, interesting to see how it’s evolved. But, uh, it’s, it’s not just for ISVs. It’s really all partner types will go to market this new way, and it’s not just about one partner. Working with Microsoft, it’ll be about all the different partners and how they come together and how solutions get integrated together and just how we make that whole process easier. And AI is like obviously dramatically increasing the quantity of software. So yeah. [00:04:26] Vince Menzione: And I have some questions for you as well about what you’ve seen along the way. So we. I know, I know you’ve done some research on this, but super, super. I do wanna give Shane a moment to talk about his background and why he’s up here on stage as well. ’cause you’ve been at this a long time, Mike. We’ve known each other for a number of years. [00:04:39] Shane Wilson: Yeah. Thanks Vince. It’s, uh, nice to see you in town. I’m glad you’re doing, you’re doing well. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. [00:04:44] Vince Menzione: It’s, uh, getting much better. Much better. [00:04:45] Shane Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. So, Shane Wilson, for those who I haven’t had the chance to meet yet, uh, I run, um, Cohesity’s Cloud, cloud business, and, um. Yeah, like John, I’ve been at this for kind of since the beginning of the marketplace, co-sell, sell with, you know, motion, call it like 13 years ago maybe. Um, you know, I got my start sort of working with Clouds, ISVs at NetApp actually. And, um, I was just chatting with John backstage about this, but we were trying to figure out how to put NetApp into the cloud with Amazon and with Microsoft and, and everybody really. Um, and that was more of a, a build with motion of how we’re gonna partner with. Ias PAs and do something new in the market that’s meaningful for customers and for partners. And um, but since then, co-selling marketplace has become a major motion. Right. And so I’ve spent my time post that at a bunch of ISVs, as small as, um, you know, a 50 person, 40 mil, a CB company, um, up to up to, you know, 10,000 plus. I was gonna say some of the largest [00:05:42] Vince Menzione: up there as well. Yeah, yeah. [00:05:43] Shane Wilson: Yeah. So I’ve been fortunate to work with a lot of, uh, great partners and, you know, had the experience of. Trying things and failing and then trying things and winning huge multiple partner of the year awards and all that with the different clouds. And with Microsoft in particular, I’m really passionate about, um, the partnership potential and really the, uh, the selling potential in the field because Microsoft has such a leadership position when it comes to co-selling, engaging with, with ISVs and all partner types, and really helping people evolve how software is bond sold. So. Well, [00:06:14] Vince Menzione: so great to have both of your perspectives and expertise, John. So 2016, like marketplace wasn’t even a thing, in my opinion. Right? It was just really, you, you, you clipped it right at the very beginning. You started off early. Uh, I wanna talk to you about like what you’ve seen, and I know that you spent an inordinate amount of time on the. Understanding what’s going on in the marketplace. And I come to you every year and ask like, what’s happening? What’s changing? I know you, you’ll have, we’ll talk a little bit more about your event that’s coming up. I’d love to get your perspective. We’ve talked about this a hundred billion dollar moment that was, that is, uh, still playing for 2026. Uh, a lot of, uh, ingestion, I would say a lot of organizations getting past that 1 billion Mark. Love to get your perspective on what you’re seeing right now in the marketplace and, and what partners in this room and others need to understand and how they need to embrace it differently. [00:07:03] John Janke: Yeah, it’s been, I mean, it’s been really interesting. We started in 2019 to write research on cloud. Back then it was just marketplace cloud go to market as a term wasn’t pioneered yet. Uh, and we did that because no analysts were covering the space. Yeah. And you know, back then the thing we would hear from partners was like, how big is this thing? Like how like are people selling? Is buyer behavior changing? Are partners thinking about this? And we really tried to. Think about what research we could do that would just help. At that time, mostly ISVs build their justification to create these routes to market. And, uh, we’ve done that. We published the state of cloud Go to market report every year. It’s a really fun research report. People are like, oh, who do you have? Write that. I mean, it’s my co-founders and I write it. Uh, we, we create the survey. We listen to our customers and what they wanna talk about. So if you ever are like, Hey, we’d really love to hear about these trends, please tell me ’cause we’ll, uh, weave them into state of cloud, go to market. And back then it was. Very little dollars were flowing like we were, this was probably, we were in maybe hundreds of millions of dollars were flowing through the cloud marketplaces back in 19. Um, and we played it forward just based upon a lot of different research and, and you start to think about the trillion dollars of B2B software sold, let alone the other trillion dollars of. B2B software sold to the SMB, which is different. Uh, all of that starting to migrate to the cloud. Similar to how infrastructure, like you think back to 2006 or 2007 when the primitives of cloud were created, people are like under, you said the underestimate overestimate in two years, underestimate in 10 years like that, that was kind of the scenario. With, with marketplace back then. Um, and I think a couple years later, we built this a hundred billion dollar prediction for 2026, and it was bold at the time and a lot of people were like, that’s crazy. But when you go back to that $2 trillion of software, it’s really only 5% of software migrating to the clouds and all data points signal that that’s coming through. And there were a handful. Of linchpin moments to enable that volume of dollar shift to start to happen. And I think for a lot of years it was the pioneers who were creating this new movement. And I put Shane in that pioneer category, uh, both with small and medium and large companies pushing the envelope. Uh, like changed the way that you sold along the way and your company sold? Uh, it, it was that pioneer moment, but along the way, that pioneer moment led to larger companies acknowledging the shift and starting to say, wow, something’s happening here. Uh, and as those larger companies started to. Embrace the shift that led to even larger companies and, and I think the thing for me over the last two years, we’ve seen this huge shift from this is not just about cloud technical categories. This is a change in procurement and it’s across all software and partner types. Yeah. So, and there were some big moments. I remember like thinking back in 2018, what would be. A, a, a bellwether moment for the industry. It’s like when the largest software companies in the world start to sell this way. And CrowdStrike was a long time customer tackle. Yeah. We worked with them and they were always the one who kind of set the standard and then someone like Salesforce shows up and Workday shows up and ServiceNow shows up and you’re like, whoa, something’s changing. Uh, not only are they. Monstrous companies with huge ecosystems and large go-to-market systems, but they saw this movement as a way to continue to grow. Yeah. And they were business applications. They weren’t like security, DevOps, storage, infrastructure, so that business applications, large companies showing up. And then I think the multi. Partner, like the evolution of channel has been a huge, and we’ve talked about this consistently over the last few years, but it’s still like the, the quantity of dollars now flowing through channel, with marketplace is, it’s huge. Is staggering. It’s growing faster than direct, which I think is a, a big thing. Um. And it’s still early. Like I think it’s like there are, there are, and there was a recent, a channel partner recently announced they processed a billion dollars through Marketplace, which was I think the first time a partner talked about that the same way a lot of software companies do. And it wasn’t [00:11:15] Vince Menzione: the largest reseller partner out there that did it, right. It was a company that was a little bit smaller, but a little bit more agile and nimble in terms of the way approach to it. So [00:11:23] John Janke: that, that’s a, a second part. And then the third part is like we’ve, buyers do not. Buy on marketplace, which may sound a little controversial, if you’re not really close to this market, it’s, it’s still more of a fulfillment vehicle. Um, that behavior is starting to change and it’s the intersection of everyone’s trying to figure out what is their PayGo product-led growth strategy to complement their traditional selling motion, and then how do they, if cloud. Marketplace has become a component of their system. How do they not only have their like enterprise motion aligned to it, but their kind of user discoverable free trial, PayGo style motion. So that’s been like last year it had started mostly with startups. That is trickling into all companies are thinking about, yeah. This, which I, I do think signals buyer behavior change. I mean, we’ve seen 400% increase in buyers over the last couple of years. So massive number of buyer increase, and that’s wide across the distribution of buyers. So unpacked a lot of data there. Yeah. Uh. Yeah. Happy to dive in deeper as we go. Yeah. And you’re, you [00:12:30] Vince Menzione: know, tackle’s gonna be leading a workshop after, after the main sessions on stage here, so there’ll be some great opportunities to get face-to-face with you and your leadership team. Yeah. [00:12:38] John Janke: Shout out to Colton and Rebecca, who are probably in the audience, who are two practitioners on our team who support large ISVs as they go on this journey. So this will not be me talking about high level. Uh, kind of industry stuff. It will truly be the people who help partners figure this out leading that workshop. [00:12:55] Vince Menzione: Well, there’s still a lot of high level, but I want to give Shane an opportunity here. ’cause you’ve been at the forefront of this marketplace opportunity and, and done it at many organizations that were at the early days of doing it, right? Like kind of a Yeah. The pioneers, I guess, for lack of a better term. Yeah. [00:13:09] Shane Wilson: We, we failed in many ways and one in many ways. And I, I do wanna pick up on the, the partner, uh, reseller, billion dollar milestone too, because, um. When I, I was familiar with this partner, uh, from a couple years ago when they first made their billion dollar commit. Uh, at the time, I think it’s when it was actually Amazon, but when they made their, their billion dollar commit, um, it was the first time I’d really heard about a channel partner, um, going deep right with that. And I was like, really? A billion. You could do it. You got some big contracts and, uh, you know, it was a multi-year commit and they actually hit it faster than than expected. So they, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s probably the first and the biggest, but also they got there faster than they were, they were, um, expecting to, it just speaks to the, not just the volume, but the velocity right behind it all. Um, and then, yeah, from an is SV perspective, uh, yeah. I think if you wind back the clock, I even six, seven years ago, right? Uh, you know, ISVs, were just trying to figure out how to do their first, uh. Yeah. Their first deals, right? Yeah. How to start cashing that cloud, GTM, check how to cash in on the Mac. Uh, that was even before the Mac was, was as big as it is. Um, but I remember doing our, our very first marketplace deal at, uh, it was a, a startup mid-size ISV. And, uh, this is before we were actually working closely with, with tackle, uh, and, uh. It was hard. Yeah. We were, we were literally taking customer demand who wanted to buy software, uh, you know, on the marketplace. Yeah. And trying to figure out how to get it done. So working with engineering and PM to get things listed like a day before we needed to close the deal. And it was one of the largest, um, retailers, uh, in the, in the us. And, uh, so we got it done. It was very challenging and that was the early, early days. But you fast forward to, to the last 3, 4, 5 years and, and yeah. What, what I’ve seen is, um, ISVs that actually. Didn’t have any real meaningful engagement with clouds. Um, start to connect the sales motion, and not just for marketplace, but for co-sell, right? And doing it with, uh, with tackle and core. And, and there’s some history there, like getting, getting sellers connected early stage Yes. Start to get leverage. And there’s so much to unpack behind that, but that, that’s such a meaningful motion where, you know, I took ISVs from essentially zero impact, zero lift with, uh, cloud providers to 500 mil a CV impact annually, right? Getting walked into accounts. By the hundreds every quarter. Right. Um, now it takes, takes work. Um, there’s a lot of things you gotta do from a company buy-in perspective to get there, but, um, yeah, there’s a lot of upside and that’s, that, that’s sort of the ISV story. And then I think what’s more interesting now beyond ISVs is the partner element to it, because where I see the future opportunity is actually with partners doing NPO, uh, together. And so I think that’s more exciting for everyone across different segments and across different, uh, reseller. And even Disney communities. Right. We’ll see how the, the, you know, that, that market evolve. Well, you bring up an [00:15:57] Vince Menzione: interesting point too, because in the very early days, it was really just the largest ISVs that had their own direct selling organizations. They would utilize a core solution or tackle solution together, and they would do face-to-face coverage with the partner sellers and, but that’s not necessarily where the customer buys. And so there were these resellers and we could mention all of their names. A lot of them are here at our event, a lot of ’em are watching today. Uh, that would go after that market. And you would, you would have this tug, this tug of war going on too, like a customer. You’d be educating the customer saying, Hey, you could, you could burn down against your Mac agreement, you, your Microsoft commitment. Uh, and then the, you have a seller on the other side trying to sell a different way because they get paid a different way. So you had this. This tug of war that was going on back in the days and that those seem to be going by the wayside. You, you heard Cyril on earlier right in this conversation saying, we’re gonna do away with that challenge that we have today. We’re gonna get out ahead of it. And John, you saw, you know, you talked about this, uh, you talked about this moment. I guess you’re right, we’re in a series of moments. I think we’re at the next moment, in fact, beginning of the next moment. Um, what, what else in perspective that you wanna share here with regards to. You know, we talked about some of the largest ISVs and some of the smaller ISVs, both you and Shane, probably this conversation here in terms of, uh, uh, you know, the balance of ISVs selling in larger ones can do their own and then channel partners. What, what does that balance look like? [00:17:20] John Janke: Yeah, I mean, maybe, um, pros and cons with success is there’s a lot more competition for attention. Like, uh, cloud sellers have a lot in their bag already. Yeah. Uh, so if you’re a small ISV and you’re showing up, uh, you have to compete with not only the core things that they care about, but all the other ISVs who’ve established precedent with success in the market. Um, so I think. You know, and then there’s, even in the Microsoft world, there’s the managed versus unmanaged, and That’s right. Like your perspective as a partner as to how do you approach Microsoft when you operate in those two camps and they’re different and, and it really does just come down to work. There’s ways to be successful. The playbooks are slightly different. Uh, you probably, if you’re smaller, have to do more work to stand out and you have to be really thoughtful. About the work that you do and when you do it. Um, and a lot of times I, ’cause I, I think there’s still this misnomer in, you know, having been at this closing in on 10 years, it, it’s surprising to me sometimes that people are like, if I list people don’t just buy. Like, I thought that’s the way these marketplace things works, field of dreams. I, I would love for that be true. It’s still not true. Um, but if. If you can refactor that to be like, that’s the starting point in the journey and not the destination, and then what work do you have to do to go build your brand? Help your early customers. ’cause there’s a clear and compelling value prop that you can use independently to go help your customers. That then allows you to show up with the clouds and be like, Hey, I’ve got something to say and the something I have to say is good for you and it’s good for our joint customers and it’s good for me, and why can’t we just do more of that? Yeah. So I think that like. You gotta own it. If you’re small and you gotta put the work in. And if you’re big, you really have to understand like the what works and how to scale it. Where do you focus? ’cause there’s so much, Shane and I were talking backstage about all the, there’s a lot you can take on, uh, at any given time and really like what is the best layer of the go-to-market stack to focus on? A lot of people try to figure out. Like especially large companies, how do I do the bigger deals? How do I tap into the big customers? That seems like the easiest spot to spin the dials. And then how do I layer channel in? If I can add channel to that, then I can maybe double that. And then how do I think about international? How do I think about product-led growth, like SMB? There’s all these different layers of the stack, but you have to prioritize ’em based upon what’s important to you and what’s gonna have the biggest impact for the cloud partner, uh, and not try to do everything at once. [00:19:54] Shane Wilson: Yeah. And I think from a, from a small ISV perspective, um, marketplace sort of is the channel, right? So, and historically they were like, if you’re a small SaaS company, yeah. I just want to get scale at this thing. I wanna list, list and, and sell. Right? Um, so sometimes that’s a more of a challenge for, it’s, it’s an opportunity for the isv, but it’s more of a challenge for say, the partner community at large, right? Yeah. But if you get into this mid-market or enterprise ISV space, the winning opportunity is very clear. Um, you, I think you and I were talking a couple days ago, John, about, okay, the first wave of CrowdStrike hitting a bill was, hey, doing a lot of direct business. But guess what? They’ve accelerated even more and faster by pushing everything. The channel partners and you look across the ecosystem of. The ISVs winning or not, are not doing it in this direct model. They’re doing it in conjunction with channel partners. So, um, so when I look at the segment on a smaller ISV, yeah, you can get scale, uh, through the marketplace and that’s essential. You get relevance with, uh, the cloud sellers as well from Microsoft. But you know, if you’re really looking to go from say, a hundred mil to a billion or more, right? This is where, hey, all this business is channel first and channel best, right? Yeah. And that’s, I think the, the future together. [00:21:01] John Janke: I mean, you, you had an interesting comment where you’re like, is the marketplace. A channel or not, right? Yeah. And I think to some people it is. To some people it is. I’d be like, it’d be interesting just for you to share some of that perspective. ’cause I think there’s probably a wide range of points of view in the audience. Well, there is, [00:21:16] Shane Wilson: and even internally per ISVI think there’s, uh, dialogue around is this direct or not direct. And, um, I’ve started to use language, which is like one tier versus two tier. Um, because. The reality is, um, I’ve been using direct so far today, but I, I like to use one tier and two tier because at least then it, it gets everyone internal to a company. It helps you get buy-in from stakeholders that matter, whether that’s legal or finance or operations, sales, right? You go across the stack of getting company buy-in to go do it. It’s helpful to progress the dialogue if you start talking about one tier and what that means on a per region basis. Mm-hmm. Like one tier in the US maybe it’s not that hard, but if I’m an ISV trying to scale and trying to go. Across Europe or a PJ, uh, basically outside the us Yeah. One tier is hard, right? It is. And so you, you absolutely need the channel partners in there to, to scale the thing. Um, and uh, so yeah, for me, like I said, it’s, it’s a partner game. And, uh, yeah, I, that’s what I try and promote with all of my ISVs to think about being world class is like. Never, never cutting avar out of a deal. Always gr putting a growth plan together with them. And that’s, that’s where you get the, well, it’s multi, well, it’s presumptuous too. We think, [00:22:25] Vince Menzione: like we own the customer, whether it’s us or the, you know, we’re the gateway, the mark marketplace becomes the gateway to the Microsoft seller. Yeah. But neither of you own the customer. The customer makes his own buying decision. And that might be on the third party. That’s why the multi-party offers come into play here. Right. [00:22:38] John Janke: And I, I think that this, some of these signals when you think about what’s happening, yeah. The last three years, the ISV has owned the channel strategy for Marketplace and really kind of pioneered Who are the partners I work with? Yes. Help them figure it out. That’s gonna flip like in the next year or two. That’s right. Where the channel partner will actually own the marketplace strategy for the buyer. Where they own the buyer. That’s right. Which is a change. And I, I, I was talking to someone on Shane’s team and she was like, I spend a lot of time educating our channel partners on how to work this way, which is again, further signal they’re, they’re learning to work in this new way. So some have punched through, the early adopters have punched through and been like, this is a material new business for us. But I think that’s gonna be for all the ISVs in the room, that’s gonna be a shift for all of us where we somewhat relinquish control to be like, okay, you got it. Now what? What target are you gonna drive and we’re gonna manage that differently. [00:23:33] Vince Menzione: And what and what I hear from ISVs, the largest ISVs, in fact, is that they need help building out their channel strategies. Some of them are here, in fact, for those conversations, because it is a multi-party solution that is being offered, the customer is making a decision, not just on the one solution. They’re thinking about a complete solution set, right? If we were talking about data and ai, we’ll have data and AI up here. Next we’ll talk about governance. We talk about all the components of data and ai. It’s not just one vendor that’s coming in to solve for that. Shane, I want to get your perspective on some of that. [00:24:02] Shane Wilson: Yeah, I think multi-partner is huge, right? I, I, uh, I think it’s a little early, but I’m intrigued by the potential, um, of having a couple different ISV segments wrapped into, um. Uh, you know, a multi, multi-party offer, right? That a channel partner can put together. And it, it’s already happening to a degree. I don’t think it’s happening at scale, like it has the potential to, but, you know, being in the space that I am, we’re in, um, sort of a data security space, and the security ecosystem is broad, right? And so there’s a lot of different aspects of cyber resiliency that matter, uh, for our customer base. And there’s nothing we wanna see more than, whether it’s Presidio or CDW, or, you know, you pick here. You, you pick your channel partner then actually putting together a really strategic offer for, you know, their customer, leveraging the Mac to go get the deal done right. And then bundling multiple solutions together, uh, in a portfolio sale for the, for the customer. Yeah. Um, it’s, you know, it’s what they’ve done with Disti in the past, right? Yes. Yes. It’s, but the reality is there’s a lot of mutual value exchange with the Mac, with the Microsoft sellers for the customer, with procurement. Now that buying motion has just evolved, right? And so, um. Yeah, there’s, there’s so much upside for this multi-partner aspect of it. [00:25:10] Vince Menzione: Agreed. Agreed. John, I know you’ve got your event coming up in another week, and I, I don’t want to take away any of the excitement around some announcements that things are going on. What are some of the trends you’re starting to see? I. [00:25:21] John Janke: I mean, a lot of what we talked about is we do this cloud, go to Market xp. It’s a digital event, uh, where we bring, you know, kind of the cloud providers, ISVs practitioners. We break ’em down into categories. Uh, so that’s next week we do a day on strategy. So the first day is really about where the market’s going. The second day is practitioner grade, so there’s a rev ops track and an alliances track because for cloud go to market, to get the super scale, you gotta get the alliance team, the rev ops team, and the revenue team to work together to drive an outcome. And that is what the people who get to a billion dollars do and do well. And then they think about, you know, how many of my reps know how to win this way? Uh, you know, Wiz was an interesting one where they, they published last year, 99% of their sales reps knew how to win with marketplace, which, like that was, they were kind of born cloud go to market native, uh, which was. Really fascinating to see, but that’s a lot of what we’ll focus on next week is kind of that intersection between rev ops, alliances and revenue and thinking about, ’cause there’s a lot of discussion around automation, like how, how do you automate this process? How do I integrate it with systems and automation is totally important, but. Revenue generation is more important. They’re like, that’s what people actually want. Uh, and I, I was talking to an ISV last week and they were like, Hey, you know, we, we did some automation, but we’re not getting the results we were looking for. How can we rethink that? So we’re gonna really try to continue to share examples of people who have cracked the code on not just learning how to win and setting up the infrastructure, but win win repeatedly. Win at scale. Shane, any [00:26:56] Vince Menzione: insights from your side on what you’re starting to see as we enter 26? [00:26:59] Shane Wilson: Yeah, I, I think I’ll take the trend topic and talk about kind of what. What’s most important, which is like the, the trend is that winning ISVs that do it, right. Um, pull the whole company together in one strategy around cloud go to market. And so it’s, it’s, you know, it’s a dovetail on what John was just talking about. Yeah. But if you don’t have sales product, rev ops right? The whole company, even marketing right. Really geared around this motion, it’s gonna be challenging. And so, um, I can share a couple things that I’ve done at a couple companies now to build out teams to sort of, um. Fast track that in and make it more possible, which is, you know, when I think about how to like create partnership teams that matter, it’s like, yes, you need the alliances team in there first. Um, but then you also, I like to have my hands on the actual marketplace operations motion of it too. ’cause how companies do quote to cash. Um, and process orders matters a lot. And, you know, reps aren’t gonna sell in the marketplace if it’s hard. And so we need to be able to make things field turnkey to field sellers. Um. To get to that 99%. Like Wiz, we’re not there yet. ’cause we’re born there we’re, I’m, I’m coming from, uh, hey, no one’s ever done this before, to, Hey, we’re gonna go win in this space. So, yeah, it’s important to get everyone on board. And so it, when I think about how to build an organization, a winning organization structure around this, it’s like the I, the Alliance team comes first, but beyond that, like I need to get a marketplace operations. You know, e either on the team or super, super tight, um, dialed in. And then beyond that, there’s a go to market element of, of selling, right? And so that’s the sort of the third wheel of, I think real successful ISV partnerships is do you have folks focused on the motion helping en enable all the broad, the broad sellers to. You know, do the motion correctly, not to make too many mistakes on first calls with Microsoft and go cash that Mac check. Right. Um, and it sometimes it’s hard to get the internal stakeholders to believe in that quickly. Right. So, but I, I, I’m happy to chat with folks more post session as well on this, right. But I, the, the three legs of the stool are super key with alliances and then the actual marketplace sales motion to make it real turnkey and easy, um, operationally inside the company. And then actually have go to market specialists, right, to go and, and push that. So. Um, if folks wanna talk about your, your company, about that with me, I’m happy to. Yeah, that that’d be great that you offered [00:29:07] Vince Menzione: that time. [00:29:07] John Janke: I like this workflow shift where this used to be about like, Hey, how do I help a deal? How do I win with a customer? Yeah. And it really, I, I had an, you know, again, I, I get to spend a lot of time with ISVs who are. Pioneering this and just really learning from them and then trying to apply those practices to the company and the ecosystem. But someone was talking about from lead to renewal, like that’s really the process that cloud go to market needs to be aligned to. And if you break down your lead to renewal process and then you look at all the different touch points, and then how do you inject, you know, people, process, technology into that entire lifecycle. It will. Change the way you think about this because a lot of people are like, Hey, why don’t I get more leads? That’s right. And when you, when you boil down your lead to renewal process, if you skip all the way to leads and you haven’t done the work in the middle of the funnel to go build a brand, to enable you to go tell a better together story to co-market, I mean, you’re never gonna get the leads. Like, so I think that’s a, a good framing just for all of us to, as we think about the business and where we’re at, like lead to renewal. ’cause you can use a lot of different tools in there. [00:30:12] Vince Menzione: I want to touch on, ’cause you talked about this a little bit earlier too, in terms of the, the framing was, you know, it used to be the largest organizations that had the largest commitments that went after it. Understood it. Uh, in the beginning you had to teach them how to go buy off of it. Right. It seems to be moving down market. Right. And this is, some of this is the channel coming at it. Some of it’s also we’re gonna have PAX eight and Ingram Micro on stage here the next two days. People that have kind of stayed away from marketplace. Right. But in a way saying. Even the smallest customers need access to the same sets of tools and capabilities, and they want to purchase modern technology the same way. And so it seems to be changing things. I know, John, you’ve had it some perspective on some of this as well. [00:30:54] John Janke: Yeah. A, a big, another big, and this I think trend will be next year, it’s happening right now, but it’s still really early, is this idea of evolution of storefront. So if you want to change buyer behavior, you have to meet buyers where they show up, uh, and. Like today, storefront, think Azure Marketplace or AppSource, those are the storefronts, but that’s not where people organically discover. So how do you initiate those buying moments where people organically discover? And that’s gonna be some sort of refactoring of storefronts. Uh, and Jay McBain has talked for years about how they’ll be more marketplaces and more storefronts. That’s right. And, and I actually think that’s really starting to come to life. And PAX eight to me, I think is a great example of that, where they’re a marketplace for MSPs focused on s and b. And they’re gonna need specific solutions that their MSPs can package up to deliver value to their SMB customers. But that’s gonna need to somehow connect to Azure Marketplace and AppSource. That’s, that’s right. Which is like a, a, a fuel system. So I, I think it’s a good signal of this change that’s happening like more storefronts. More marketplaces, more specificity around solution and bundle and what do people need? So I’m, I’m excited to hear more from, I’m excited as well. [00:32:06] Vince Menzione: I also think there’s a level of sophistication happening down market. I call the MSP market that wasn’t there even a year or two ago, right? These were organizations that were used to break fix and now getting involved in a much clearer, uh, ways in terms of driving a complete solution set in ways that they didn’t before. Really, they weren’t involved in that level. [00:32:27] Shane Wilson: Yeah, I would, I would double click on the, um, the storefront idea, right? Because folks are finding products in new places and trying to buy products in new places. So that’s a real deal, um, coming from a security and infrastructure perspective, um, even in today’s world of, hey, there’s a cloud buyer out there and there’s procurement that buys cloud stuff, and we’re attaching to that a, a major part of the motion that we actually have to put. Time and investment into learning on is what I call building a bridge and building a bridge between say, a traditional buyer of software to whoever’s gonna click by on the deal. Uh, who owns, say the, the Azure tenant. Right. For a giving you customers you’re selling to. And so there’s, there’s, there’s topics like, Hey, how is budget attributed across the different, you know, lines of business inside this, toward the Mac? Yeah. And then there’s the very sort of tactical process of like. Does the person that needs to accept the offer even know about what we’re doing in the deal, right? So there’s a lot of bridge building you have to do from an ISV and partner. That’s where partners play a huge role too, is like helping build these connections in and build a bridge early in a campaign, right? In order to have success. So you can actually transact easily when you’re trying to get the deal done, but it goes to the point of, hey, the demand and purchasing, um. You know, center of gravity is changing, right? Yeah. So, [00:33:39] John Janke: and every ISV, whether you think you have a marketplace or you don’t, most people would say, I don’t have a marketplace. But everyone on their website has a tech ecosystem page that shows all of your partners. That’s right. And it shows your technical partners, and it shows your channel partners and your system integrator partners. And effectively that is a catalog and that catalog. Has zero actionability. All it does is you click on it and it takes you to your partner’s website. So if your website is where all of your buyers discover you, why wouldn’t you want to enable them to take some action? Yeah. This is what storefronts will be, and that will not just be your storefront, it will be all your channel partner storefronts, and they’ll all connect together like that. This is a big wave that I think will really play out over the next 24 months. Yeah, I think [00:34:22] Vince Menzione: we’re starting to see that in a big way and, uh. Everyone’s gonna embrace it. [00:34:26] Shane Wilson: Well, you see a consumer grade, right? It’s gonna move from consumer grade on, uh, say social media, buy a thing right into the enterprise space, uh, dramatically, I think the next two years. [00:34:33] John Janke: Yeah. Shopify did this in B2C, like when Shopify and there, there’s really interesting like, um, story where when they were, I. Early raising money. And they talked about how like in B2C e-commerce, there would be thousands of new storefronts and everyone’s like, no way. Like Amazon and Walmart Got it locked up like, this is never gonna happen. This company’s going nowhere. I mean, Shopify’s a hundred billion dollar company now. ’cause they created hundreds of thousands of storefronts for small businesses and entrepreneurs like. I think B2B will look very different than that, but that’s, it’s like B2C always trickles into B2B over time. [00:35:10] Vince Menzione: So, final advice for our partners watching, listening, being in the room here today, and we, I know we’re gonna have some more time for you to talk with them. Uh, appreciate you making time to do that. But any final advice for them as we finish this new fiscal year with Microsoft? We get into 26. And for the, the partner ecosystem in general, how they, you know, you talked about a few things, a few trends happening. Uh, what do you both have to share with this amazing audience? [00:35:33] Shane Wilson: I mean, I’ll kick us off. I think consistency is most important, right? Yeah. So it’s one thing to, um, uh, you know, get a couple wins or, or, you know, know a play, but consistency across the organization and starts at like the C-suite down to the shop floor, right? Uh, of how you’re operating your strategy, how you’re executing on your strategy, and then also how you’re sharing wins. So, ’cause this is a journey, right? And it’s not always, um, say the first month or first quarter that you get all the results that you want. But it’s really critical as a leader in a company to be able to help articulate what the stepping stones and the milestones look like to get to greatness and then to celebrate those wins all along the way. And do that internally and also do it externally with Microsoft and with the partner community broadly. Right? So I would say consistency, that rhythm of business, just being very thoughtful around that is, is, is super important. And then, um, with that, just leveraging. The community. Right. Um, so events like, like up Right. And just, you know, I’m happy to share any of my secrets to success with anyone in the room. Right. But just le leveraging the community and, and folks like tackle and others, right. That have so much experience in this space as well. So, [00:36:36] John Janke: yeah. I, I think the, um, kind of back to the time series of marketplace moments, there is, uh, people who started in 2018. A lot of people failed in 2020. People started. A lot of people failed in 2022, maybe less people failed, but still lots of failures. And there’s some PTSD in the industry around some failures. Like, I thought this was gonna work. I thought lots of people were gonna buy, I was gonna get all these leads. Oh my gosh, co. I was gonna co-sell and I was gonna help my deals go faster and maybe it didn’t happen. The thing I would say is like all of these moments compounded lead to. A difference of experience, and that is like if you’ve struggled, take a step back and be willing to be like, Hey, the market is evolving and there’s ways to take a step back, look at the success or failure you had and refactor your strategy for the future. So I would say, um. And, and it’s fun. It’s really fun to talk to ISVs who are hitting an unlock moment. Like I was talking to someone this morning and they’re like, Hey, like we, we had this major unlock moment. And like things have kind of taken off. ’cause a lot of times in the journey you end up with this like 10 x factor that happens. You struggle consistency’s such great advice. Um, like you set a goal your first quarter, it doesn’t happen ’cause you’re, you’re still like. Trying to teach people second quarter, maybe a little bit happens and you’re like, oh my God, is this actually not gonna work? And then in the third quarter it starts to snap into gear like that consistency’s required and how do you get to that 10 x factor? ’cause they’re there. And this is a little bit about our event. I mean, if you’re interested in joining. A little bit of a [00:38:11] Vince Menzione: segue for you, Jen. [00:38:12] John Janke: Yeah, we’ll have, I mean, we’ll have, uh, and, and again, like on the practitioner grade day, we’ll have some folks from Microsoft joining us, Michael Clark, who owns the co-sell, uh, engineering organization. Ryan, who’s been a long time part of the marketplace organization will join Adam Boyle or head a product just as we talk about how do we, I. Industrialize this for enterprise grade scale. Vince is gonna be on yeah, kind of doing a highlight reel of this week. ’cause there’ll be so much to share with the ecosystem. Uh, and then a lot of really interesting customers telling stories, uh, throughout it that I think, you know, we’ll, we’ll get to take snippets of those and share ’em with the ecosystem. But, uh, if, if you register, you get access to all the content remotely asynchronously as well, so you don’t have to actually show up full time. [00:38:54] Vince Menzione: That’s great. And I do think during this time of rapid change and transformation, it’s important. We had to stay, we had to lean in. We had to continue to lean in. We’re just at the early days of change. Right. We talked about many moments. Yeah. So, so great to have you both here. Um, thank you for making time as well, uh, networking with some of our community here. I know that tackle’s gonna be leading a session, a workshop as well. So Shane, thank you for making time for us as well. Thank you, Vince supporting us. Yeah. Thanks Vince. Great everybody. Thank you. See you through the day. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. 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Recorded Live at Ultimate Partner LIVE in Redmond, WA Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. Join Microsoft’s Sandy Gupta and NVIDIA’s Pat Lee as they explore the monumental shifts driven by AI in the software landscape. Discover why “ISV” is transforming into “SDC” (Software Development Company) , the dramatic reduction in AI token costs and hallucination rates, and the acceleration of cloud migrations. Learn about Microsoft’s commitment to a “marketplace first” approach and a single $1 billion marketplace deal this quarter , and NVIDIA’s vision of embedding AI into every application. This discussion highlights the emergence of agentic AI, the convergence of ISVs and SIs, and the critical importance of embracing AI for all partners to drive significant business outcomes and avoid being left behind. We’re curating the very best of these moments—fireside chats, expert panels, and executive insights—so you can stay ahead of the curve and fully aligned to where Microsoft and the industry are heading. And this is just the beginning.More sessions. More voices. More of what you need to know. If you’re not yet part of the UPX Community, now’s the time to join us. Access exclusive content, events, and strategies that keep you in front of what’s next. Thanks for being on this journey with us.— Vince https://youtu.be/ld9h1pZJ_Ro Key Takeaways: The terminology for independent software vendors (ISVs) is evolving to Software Development Companies (SDCs) to reflect a broader scope of software innovation. The cost of AI tokens has dramatically decreased, and AI hallucination rates have significantly gone down, leading to greater democratization of AI. Cloud migrations are accelerating, largely driven by AI, which is broadening opportunities across the entire value chain for the ecosystem. Microsoft is adopting a “marketplace first” approach, with a single $1 billion marketplace deal projected for this quarter, indicating a massive shift in how software is sold and consumed. Agentic AI, characterized by headless agents focused on specific tasks, is a rapidly emerging area with significant potential for business process automation and interoperability across different applications. The industry is witnessing a convergence of ISVs and system integrators (SIs), as customers require both robust software and hands-on implementation and change management support. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. https://youtu.be/s33fltuizEo Transcript: Key Tags: AI innovation, software development companies, SDC, cloud marketplace, NVIDIA AI, agentic AI, digitaansfol trrmation, B2B technology, strategic partnerships, ecosystem growth, Microsoft Azure, AI monetization, enterprise AI, digital agents, industry foundation models, employee productivity, customer engagement, business process automation, drug discovery, cyber security, financial services, healthcare AI, channel partner collaboration, tech intensity, go-to-market strategy, cloud migration. Transcript: [00:00:00] Sandy Gupta: This space is moving so fast and it’s like I was talking to the Pearson guys. The fastest training that’s happening is people who are learning how to develop agents who are non-technical. [00:00:14] Intro: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together. Managed services will be one and a half times larger because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner Live at Microsoft Redmond Campus, our most powerful event. Yet, over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room. This episode featuring Sandy Gupta from Microsoft and Pat Lee from Nvidia brings us right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in. So I am thrilled to invite to the stage. Uh, first of all, I want, I’m inviting back somebody who was with me in Dallas for the very first time. He was a day number 52 in his new role, Sandy Gupta, who’s an incredible leader. Uh, at the time we called his role infras, ISV independent software vendors. We’re kind of moving away from that. We’ll talk about that. And here’s the other cl. Piece, we’ve got Nvidia up on stage, right? So have anybody here who’s heard the name Nvidia before? Uh, any, anyone there? Uh, we, we think that this is a formative moment in time and we talk about tectonic shifts, right? We talk about the world of ai, we talk about the build out. So I am thrilled to invite to the stage both Pat Lee. From Nvidia who leads the alliances and strategic partnerships and Sandy Gupta, who leads the software development corporations SD get ready to say SDC Software development companies. This is the new terminology we’re getting away from the old world of ISV. So I wanna welcome these two incredible leaders to the stage, Sandy and Pat. Glad to have you. So good to see you, my friend. Uh, so good to see you. I love this guy. So good to see you again, pat. Great to meet you. Nice to meet. Glad you could join us. Uh, Sandy, I gotta say, because I’ve, I’ve told you this before. We’ve had you on stage. We’ve had you on the podcast. I am envious, so envious of your hair. I just think [00:02:49] Vince Menzione: it’s incredible. He’s got, he got the most amazing head of hair. Um, well, you know, just by the way, just looking at. I, I just got a haircut and you, and you got a haircut. Like, and, and Pat, and I can, this will take me a full year to grow and Pat, I, and I can, I love it. So good. So join while we can. So good. So good. Uh, I’m gonna let you both introduce yourselves and then we’re gonna dive into this conversation, but so great to have you back. Thrilled to have you both join us. So I’ll let you introduce yourself and then turn it over to Pat. [00:03:17] Sandy Gupta: Yeah. I mean, Vince, first of all, thank you. It’s an honor to be on this platform. Again, thank you with these incredible partners. But first of all, thank you that you are safe. Thank you. I think, uh, you played down the accident you had, and I’m just so glad you are safe, and I know it’s still not easy, but yeah, you’ll recover and thank you. And, and, uh, you know, that’s, it’s, it’s amazing that you, you’re good. Um, look, I, I lead the global ISVs for Microsoft and so, um, or STCs. Yes, yes. Now it’s gonna take some while because it’s been a 32 years of practice of calling ISVs and. Well, we now see software companies emerge who are not like ISVs, what we used to think about as isv. So that’s kind of the change. So I spent a lot of time working with our ecosystem of software companies, helping them grow their top line revenue. Been 18 years in Microsoft and learning every day. Yeah, [00:04:11] Sandy Gupta: and by the way, one thing also is like incredible partner here, pat Lee. [00:04:17] Pat Lee: Well, thank you first of all, it’s a pleasure to be here, an opportunity to speak to this audience. So I’m Pat Lee. I lead a strategic enterprise partnerships at Nvidia, and I’m focused on really the leading enterprise hardware and software providers and helping them bring AI to their platforms to, and let them enable all the power of the data and, and what they’re delivering to their customers. And I think there’s a great opportunity there, huge. Once they’ve done that, it’s a great opportunity for all of you to help deliver and deploy it. [00:04:42] Vince Menzione: So thrilled to have you both on stage. Um, this is gonna be a really exciting conversation. Sandy, I got to be with you day number 52. Uh, I’d love to dive in a little bit about what you’ve learned from, uh, that was early October of 24. I. It seems like it was last week in some respects, but I, I would love, maybe we could share a little bit with this audience, like how you were thinking about this o other than the fact that we now stopped calling them ISVs and we’re calling ’em SDCs. Yeah. But I know that’s an overall vision for how you’re and how you’re supporting these partners. [00:05:15] Sandy Gupta: Oh, thanks Vince. Uh, look, I think if I look about what I’ve learned both in terms of externally and internally, what has changed and how it’s shaping for us for next year. Um, one is just externally, if you look at it, the cost of tokens have come down dramatically. If you look at that, I mean, I was just looking at a. Uh, report from Stan Stanford AI Index. It just came out. It was like the cost of tokens have gone from $20 per million tokens to seven, you know, 7 cents Wow. Per million token, right? And so, and the hallucination, which is also a big part of, hey, for enterprises, like for them to put an autonomous agent, they need to be very thoughtful about that. If you look at the recent reports, the hallucination has really dramatically gone down. In the same linear scale as the cost. And, and that is because AI is now, you know, really also being trained to look at the outputs of AI to see, hey, is it actually hallucinating or is it not? So there is a lot of democratization of AI that’s happened very, very fast. I will call it almost like a tech intensity. Mm-hmm. You know, when I joined, when we met first is, um, still the ics were connecting and say, Hey, should I do a co-pilot? Should I, yes. Infuse g PT four in my application, or should I develop a co-pilot? Now it’s like the co-pilots are already out there and, uh, for every role you can think of, whether you’re, you’re on a shop floor or you’re a physician, or there is a co-pilot for you. And then a lot of them are now looking at, Hey, what’s going on with, um, with, with, uh, with my agent framework, how am I thinking of monetization, governance, security? Go to market, all of that. So massive shift happening. Massive shift in, in that. Um, I would also say that we’re seeing a massive shift in marketplace. We, we talked about today with Serial and, and also we talked to John and and others about marketplace today. Uh, we are about to drive to a billion dollar marketplace deal this quarter. Wow. Single deal. Single deal. And, uh, that is, uh, so the shift to marketplace is real. And, and I think we are feeling it. Uh, we are very committed to it. Um, so that’s kind of happening. Uh, we are seeing some in interesting things that, you know, cloud migrations are also accelerating very fast and, and I think part of it is AI is driving a lot of acceleration and it’s really broadening opportunity for the entire ecosystem because there’s just so many ways you can think about the value chain that’s emerging as you get to cloud. So internally, I would say that this. Group of companies, the software companies that, you know, I’m managing as go to market is the fastest segment of our commercial business. Yeah. And so, uh, that’s fascinating. Good and bad thing is. Getting a lot of attention. Right. And so the good part of the attention was that Judson was like, Hey, this is important. Yeah. [00:08:21] Sandy Gupta: And here’s some money to go try a few things that you see are important for H two. Nice. So we can shape next year. Nice. So, so I think there is both internally, there is a lot of recognition of what’s going on and, and we need to, you know, invest and, and uh, and in certain specific areas. Uh, I would say, the way I quickly say is that shaping of for next year is we are going to have a really big focus on tech intensity in a sense of, hey, how do we help our customers do a quick fail fast? Hmm. Fail cheap, you know, way of investment because you have to try a lot of things. Right. In ai And we’re [00:09:03] Vince Menzione: saying customers, you’re talking about the ES software development corporations, [00:09:06] Sandy Gupta: companies. Yeah. And with them. For the end customers and for the end customers. Right. As well. And, and because there is a lot of trial needs to happen, there’s a lot of innovation ideas. Some of them will never see the light of the tunnel. But many of them are worth trying. And so we want, want to find a very agile way to invest resources and bring very specialized partners, small or big services companies who are deep in AI to really help our ISVs to do those things. Uh, we are gonna come up with a, one of the most, I would say, competitive migration program. And I’m very about that. Oh, tell [00:09:40] Vince Menzione: us more. [00:09:41] Sandy Gupta: Well, I think we’re still cooking. Okay. But I think this is where we, I feel like. The tam of opportunity for still a lot of the ISVs to go to cloud is huge. Exactly. And, and it’s, I think it’s an opportunity for us. So I, I’m very thrilled about that. Um, that I think that’s gonna happen. And then really next year is a big year for us to take a marketplace first approach. Good, good to hear that. And I can, I hear a roundup applause for that, by the way. I think that’s an incredible, [00:10:10] Vince Menzione: yeah. That’s incredible. [00:10:11] Sandy Gupta: I think those three things I would say, Vince, and, and, and overall, I was just telling Pat in the green room, hey, how we are going to stimulate our sellers to sell more with partners? Yeah. And, and already like, you know, Nicole talked about how we actually put the money where the mouth is today and investing in the ecosystem, but. Making sure that our sellers are really creating the demand that’s out there with our partner. I would love, I want to, I want to give Pat some time as well. Yeah. But I would [00:10:38] Vince Menzione: love to hear from you, like, how are you thinking? When we, when we were up on stage in October, you had basically winnowed down the organization, right? You took the top 30. Directly, and then you push down to the field organizations, the other large, very large, significant ISVs or SDCs. Yep, yep. How are you thinking about the management of this ecosystem? Especially in light of what you just mentioned in terms of the The adoption, the new adoption curve? [00:11:04] Sandy Gupta: Yeah. Do you wanna go to Pat first or do you want, then we’ll come back. Yeah. And then I think we’ll come [00:11:08] Vince Menzione: into Pat. Yeah. So [00:11:09] Sandy Gupta: the way it is playing out is like we are starting to think about what is the right resource model for an ISV. Where they are on the journey. Okay. I think we have had, for the longest time, you know, Microsoft super well, uh, that we had a very inflexible model that basically said, Hey, you can only do this if you have this designation or this or that. Yes, we have partners who are incredibly technical and they don’t need technical support from us. There are partners who are incredibly good at Cosal, say, Hey. I’ve got my customers. Don’t worry about it. I’ve got it. What I need you is innovation and, and help us, you know, but we can do the direct co-sell. We are good. So we’re trying to figure that out. It’s like, hey, where do we meet the partners where they are rather than create a, a very rigid model. I’ll tell you Vince, like I lean in like yesterday, I was in Orlando, just came back last night and we had like a, essentially a late stage startup with big partnership. Jason and I were both there. Very nice. And we are pretty much leaning in, so it’s less about now, Hey, do I have this global partner or do I have a startup? Yeah, that’s what I was getting at. It’s more like, Hey, is the opportunity, is it the right opportunity? Dive into yes. Is it the right opportunity? And we bring, that’s great. The machinery. [00:12:26] Vince Menzione: Well, at our next event, I’m gonna dive in even deeper on this conversation with you. Yes. This is a big one, pat. I’d love to hear your vision. Nvidia is in a juggernaut right now in this industry. Uh, fastest growth of any company, uh, in my lifetime. Uh, we used to talk about compact getting to a billion dollars back in the day. I mean, NVIDIA’s market share and market cap has just been astounding. Uh, we talk about the infrastructure build out, uh, we talk about the, the commitments that are made around cloud. And really AI is being driven from your organization. You really are the leader in driving the technology, and I’d love to get your idea and vision on how you’re thinking about it working with Microsoft. And how and how you’re doubling down and leaning in. [00:13:09] Pat Lee: So from First principles, NVIDIA’s a full stack software and computing company. [00:13:13] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:13:13] Pat Lee: Everybody thinks about us as just providing GPUs. It’s not that. Yeah. We provide the full infrastructure and software stack required to make AI successful and we have partners that take various layers of it and what they need to make their business successful. But that requires partnership. Um, so for EX, and we have a deep partnership with Microsoft and how we work together to provide. The best infrastructure possible for AI to meet the needs of their own apps, their partners apps, and the apps that all of you’re gonna help your customers build. It’s not one thing, it’s all of them, right? And I think what we need to do is make sure that we help provide the necessary platforms that can be used at all three levels. Because what Azure OpenAI needs is very different than what a leading ISV needs. It’s very different than what a GSI needs to deliver a solution to a customer. So we’re really trying to make sure we provide the right hardware and software at the right levels to enable people to be successful across the board. And by doing that, it allows us to help Microsoft be more successful. Great quarter for, uh, Microsoft This last quarter. Yeah. Congratulations. Just watching acceleration growth. I mean, we’re excited to see that because it means more and more people are taking advantage of the power of AI and that is us. If our number one goal for Nvidia is like, I want every enterprise to have AI embedded in their solution. Yeah. That’s it. That’s our vision. AI in every application, that’s what we wanna see [00:14:38] Vince Menzione: moment. Yeah. I, I think we’re seeing it. I, you know, it’s funny because we had this conversation a couple years ago. It was like, it’s not happening fast enough. And I, again, I come back to the Bill g comment, right. ’cause we expect too much too soon. Mm-hmm. We’re getting there in incredible ways. The, the technology is taking off in some, so much more deep and intangible ways right now. [00:14:57] Pat Lee: And as you see with some of these companies, like is v so a number of ISVs in the room here are partners of our ServiceNow. Cohesity. Yeah. Um, we’ve done work, work with help them innovate to help bring their AI into their platforms. Right. If you look at some of their own comments about AI and how it’s growing, it’s a, it’s amazing to see how it’s grown and just the amount of time they’re able to first get into market with a basic solution. And how the technology’s just growing every day. This is not slow. This is not the old days of adding a feature every 18 months, every, every month. Something’s changing, evolving, and people are looking to adopt it. And how do they really bring that power of AI to their customers? Mm-hmm. And then more importantly, figure out in what way Some companies are monetizing it through upsell. Some companies are baking into their base product to drive more people onto a cloud computing model. Everybody’s trying to figure out the business model that makes the most sense for them. What is the metric that’s gonna allow them to be successful? Yeah. And driving the investment for AI to lead to the outcomes they care about. [00:15:57] Vince Menzione: How does your team layer in support for Microsoft then? You know, ’cause you talked about three different areas of growth or growth opportunities working with these partners. Is there a level of specificity working with the Microsoft teams on on, I mean, [00:16:10] Pat Lee: Microsoft’s a strategic partner. Yeah. We have a deep dedicated team focused on, yeah. Delivering what we need at each level at these things. That includes everything from the infrastructure build out across the board to, you know, help helping Microsoft optimize internal applications that were then delivered on the cloud to then now, I mean, we look at that, one of the things that we’re excited about Nvidia from the software perspective. That we’re part of, um, Azure AI Foundry, um, and we have a rich software stack that’s embedded in Azure AI Foundry that can be bought through the marketplace. Very nice to deliver high performance models that can be used to help build applications for your customers and delivered NVIDIA’s pride and joy is delivering the best performance ever. Um, for example, we can deliver LAMA 2.8 times faster than the base solution in Azure AI Foundry. Wow. By leveraging our marketplace solution. It stays in the AI foundry ecosystem, and you can take advantage of that to build out applications to deliver. The best solution for your customers? Yeah. Vince, [00:17:09] Sandy Gupta: just, you know, we, I, my team manages Nvidia as a software partner. I see. Very interesting. Why customer, that’s a different approach. Yes. Which is a very different approach, approach to kind approach [00:17:18] Vince Menzione: frame what Pat is saying. So you’re helping to forge some of these partnerships, uh, from Foundry over to some of these other ISVs that are gonna be building out solutions, ag Gen. I wanna dive in on AG Agentic, ’cause I think this has been a huge topic area. Yeah. It seems to be the area of most growth right now. [00:17:34] Sandy Gupta: Yeah. I mean like if you look at it. The taxonomy of it is like if you have a copilot, it’s specific to a role that’s helping the human. It’s like a AI assistant. Yes. And then if you look at AgTech, it’s about, hey, it’s, uh, it’s headless. It’s specific to a task, and the idea of architecture is make it as narrow to a task as possible. So for a complex task, you can reuse a lot of different agents and, and all of that. I mean, I’d love to like even say, Hey, how many people here use teams? That’s pretty much everyone. Yeah. How many people have added an agent to teams? It’s like 10%. How many people have created an agent in a team? It’s actually impressed. There is actually more than I expected. Four or five. Yeah. Look, it’s uh, this space is moving so fast and it’s like I was talking to the Pearson guys. The fastest training that’s happening is people who are learning how to develop agents mm-hmm. Who are non-technical. Yeah. [00:18:36] Sandy Gupta: And if you look out to teams, and for those who have not done that, it is super easy to go and, and teams and co-pilot studios just. One framework. There’s just so many low-code, no-code frameworks out there, but it’s incredibly sort of, the pace is moving. But I wanna bring back to like, hey, how is it being used and how is it being consumed? So I wanna go back to what Nicole was saying. This, this morning is kind of the frame and Judson talked about it, uh, last week. I don’t know if those who heard in his AI. L uh, tour in London. Yeah. Said, Hey, like there’s a four big pillars of how AI is being consumed. One is how we are using for employee experience, and that is a lot of things like, for example, M 365 co-pilot for knowledge workers, but there are a lot of fine tuned co-pilots in the market for different types of audience. And he was talking about, hey, how, um, 65,000 of his sellers are now using them. And the top quartile of that has kind of seen, like, he’s seeing like a close rate go up 23% and per head revenue’s gone nine 9%, which should multiply by 65. It’s, it’s a, it’s a good number. Uh, so we are seeing a lot of that sort of adoption in the enterprise today on, hey, just employ productivity. Productivity is incredible. Uh, there is a big pivot that is, we have seen a scale is like the customer engagement. And, uh, we talk about like our own engagement. Like we have like 15,000 support people, about 25,000 vendors. And, and Judson pulled like about half a billion dollar cost out. Wow. And the customer experience has gone up in terms of the feedback we are getting because it’s all now the triage is done through a Gentech framework and they, and the triage decides, the agent decides whether it’s, it’s time to go to a copilot with a human or. Pass it to an agent to, to be able to, because they know the, the customer really well. But then I think the two big areas it’s emerging now is the third is like really around the business process automation. I was just talking to a big hedge fund yesterday in Orlando and they were saying, Hey, we’ve got one of the most successful hedge funds. And they were like. We have like 400 business processes that we have identified to really kind of automate over time, but there’s like five that we really are going to really hit is gonna be the biggest, uh, impact for us, and they’re very focused on that. I think like that thing is kind of, I mean, imagine like EIF tomorrow got automated. Yes. I mean this whole entire room will be full of joy and, and uh, and, and the employee no more [00:21:17] Vince Menzione: whiteboards with, uh, calculations on them. Uh, our MDF [00:21:21] Sandy Gupta: here, like, oh my gosh. And the Microsoft employees will play golf every day. Right. If that can happen, no matter what role you are in, you get sucked. EFI is like our investment funds and stuff. So it’s like a business process that nobody knows how it works. Yeah. Uh, and then like, uh, you look at like, but the last thing I wanna say is he, she talked about bending the innovation. Yes. I think it’s the products that are coming in the market now. Like if you look at Siemens, I was in Hanover a few weeks back and Siemens published with us, like a co-innovate, like a industry foundation model. Mm-hmm. Essentially putting all the modalities of engineering and manufacturing in GPT-4. And other models and all, and being able to consume that through hundreds of copilots that the ecosystem can develop. I mean, can you imagine Siemens, like company becoming a software company? Yes. Bringing their really core value to the market through a fine tune, you know, industry specific model. So, so I think there is this way how things are sort of. Like what are the dimensions? But then when you look at, Hey, how’s it been consumed? How the co-pilots and Gentech has been consumed by enterprises in these four dimensions. I would say co-pilot is the best way for diffusion in the enterprise where everyone can touch and feel ai, whatever their role is. And, and most of this, it is no more longer a debate. Everybody has a copilot now, right? For the role, uh, NISV has for their specific role, whether it’s manufacturing, healthcare, et cetera. And then the things that differentiate you. That’s where it’s really about working on, Hey, do I do, I buy and build? And, and that’s where this whole age agent framework is coming to life, which, which can go in more details here. [00:23:08] Pat Lee: And I think with age agentic, it’s very interesting, right? Yeah. I think. A lot of companies are trying to say they’ve got the perfect agent solution, but the challenge you all know is nobody has a single system of record. They’re running their business ons. So what happens when you have systems of record from different vendors? That’s where the fund’s gonna come into play with agent ai, totally and X. One of the things that we’re working with Microsoft on and how do we help agent interoperability standards. So when you want to go, I wanna write an agent in Salesforce and I wanna write one in Microsoft, I wanna write one in ServiceNow. How can you tie them all together? Yeah. In a way to go back to that question, what business process do we need to solve? Because That’s right. It’s never in one app. Totally. Your business process runs across all these different apps. Yeah. [00:23:52] Pat Lee: So the best thing we can do, I mean, one of the things that we’ve talked about internally is like instead of having to learn complex APIs from each different application, you’re gonna be able to speak natural language. To a set of agents and you’ll have [00:24:05] Sandy Gupta: context. [00:24:06] Pat Lee: Then you’ll have context on intention. Intention and, and there’ll be a reasoning agent there. I know this is geeky techy, but you’ll be able to ask questions and it’ll go off and spin up different agents that can talk to different languages and do it all and bring it all together for you across applications. Yeah. [00:24:20] Pat Lee: That’s the power of a agentic ai and this isn’t science fiction. This is, this is happening, and like you’re gonna see more and more over the next 18 months. You’re gonna see this growth and it’s a huge business opportunity because. People who are resellers or system providers, your customers are gonna want it. That’s right. They don’t want end up paying for 12 different applications. They want a single way to solve the problem. Even if they have to pay for them, they don’t want have to interact with ’em 12 different ways. Totally. So how do we help them do That’s right. Yeah. [00:24:47] Vince Menzione: And we’ve been talking about tectonic shifts for years now, but now it’s really accelerating, right? Yeah. And AgTech AI is really, so what are the, the milestones along the way? ’cause we’re gonna be here sitting down from here a year from now, having very different conversations than we’re having right now. What do you see? [00:25:03] Sandy Gupta: Well, I mean, just to bring this to life, if you have a phone, you probably, I have an iPhone where I use 300 applications, right? Yeah. What if you contact switch from one to the other? What if you don’t need to do a contact switch and essentially go, they go to one another? You can, yeah. And, and you have an open table. Agent that goes and reserves the dinner for you and your wife. And That’s right. Without, as long as you have the intention, without having to go from hey, weather application to this. And if you think about that system of intelligence that Pat just talked about, which is no longer this passive APIs, but it’s a system of intelligence that is talking to all these different, uh, different siloed, um, system of records that is a whole emerging sort of ecosystem right now. Say a couple of things, Vince, uh, that’s emerging in the ecosystem that we worth talking about. Yes. You know, we are seeing a lot of convergence of ISVs and sis very [00:26:03] Vince Menzione: interesting to see this. [00:26:04] Sandy Gupta: And, and, and I, as I talk to customers, they say, Hey, um, would love to work with these ISVs, but I need them handhold me. And I’ve been giving that feedback to the ISVs, Hey, it’s not enough to just have build a software right? On the other hand, the sis are having the same thing. It’s like you cannot, because you know for us, we are going and saying, here are the use cases in your industry, in your domain, and you can either build yourself or with the SI or you can buy and configure. And both of them require, there is a convergence of like what your capabilities are as a partner. Even for consulting partners, I, you know, starting to get the feedback from our customers is that, hey, I love the change management because it’s super critical because we asked the, we have put the business process and nobody’s using them, but the change management has to be in the workflow. Not just an outside training, like how do you insert the change management right in the workflow, what you’re trying to do when you’re trying to do, so, it actually leads you there then doing it. So, [00:27:15] Vince Menzione: so we’re gonna see a convergence of ISVs and sis. Then it has to, it has to happen in order to have the velocity that you need to have for these businesses. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a, that’s fascinating. What else are you seeing, pat, on your side? [00:27:28] Pat Lee: I, I think it’s the, it’s, it’s the accelerated growth of ISVs adopting this technology. Some, the, the early ones are getting farther ahead. Yeah. And, but the good news is the technology’s evolving so quickly. It’s time to catch up and it’s not as hard to catch up today. You started two years ago on this journey. It was gonna take you a year to figure it out. Now you can start and have something to market in three months. The opportunity is just there. ’cause the tooling, the technology. Is better. I know you’ve [00:27:54] Vince Menzione: talked about healthcare. Is that one of the areas we’re seeing the most Emergence of health. Healthcare [00:27:58] Pat Lee: is a great opportunity because you know we talk a lot about large language models. [00:28:02] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:28:02] Pat Lee: Those are not the only models out there. [00:28:04] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:28:04] Pat Lee: Large language models are one component of all the models we have. We have a whole division in Nvidia focused on healthcare and by biological models that can be delivered. Bio nimo is actually gonna be coming to Azure AI Foundry. Wow. So you could do drug discovery inside Azure AI Foundry. That’s amazing. Kick off the model there and have it tie into the rest of your business system. So there’s lots of opportunities. More and more models are gonna have across various businesses, whether it’s financial services, whether it’s healthcare, um, and security’s a big area. You’re seeing lots of growth in terms of agentic frameworks, just because the complexity of just providing the security needed in this very rapidly moving world. Is really critical. [00:28:44] Sandy Gupta: Absolutely. I would say cyber and with all this agent, I mean imagine like a, a company with 500 SMB, 500 people with 5,000 agents. Yeah. That’s gonna be the reality and the security, the pri like about governance of all of that entitlements of like which agent can do what. It’s gonna be a, where I think massive opportunity. [00:29:05] Pat Lee: It’s interesting about agents. In some ways HR is gonna be it. [00:29:10] Sandy Gupta: Yeah. [00:29:11] Pat Lee: HR is gonna be in charge of agents. In some ways it is like I take over that IT it’s like it’s building new things out. It’s a very fascinating place. Everything [00:29:18] Vince Menzione: you’ve talked about today has been about outcomes too. I think about healthcare being 19% of gross domestic product in the United States, right. As a, as a, as a recent victim of it, and just, I’m thinking about security. I’m thinking about financial. You start layering in these incredible components of our, of our models today. The outcomes that you’re gonna drive is the derivatives are gonna be so valuable, the creation that’s created. Yeah. So we’re going into, you know, we’re going into Microsoft’s fiscal 26. Yeah. What, what are the things we need to, with this amazing partner organization, these ultimate partners in the room, how do we need to think, what final advice would you give to them? [00:29:52] Sandy Gupta: Look, I, I’ll start is one is, uh, I would say don’t stay back from ai. Just like, really skill yourself. I mean, just get into, build an agent today, just tonight. Just build an agent and, and it’s not that hard. Don’t let the geeks. Frighten you. It’s, it’s actually more easy than you think. Yeah. [00:30:12] Sandy Gupta: And, and it’s helping me. I, I built an agent just to improve my English writing. Very nice. So it’s helping me. Every time I write something, it corrects me. Uh, second is, um, the time has come how the ISVs and the channel partners kind of come together. We talked a lot about in the marketplace session and. We really need, want to go deep into that because if you look at the mid-market and SMB, they’re not gonna consume AI by building it themselves, the solution themselves. And, and I think the market, the time has come now for the, for these partnerships to come together. And, and the P two P and third is, um. I’ll just leave it that we’re gonna have a massive focus on migration next year. Yeah. And, uh, and I wanna make sure that everyone here is part of that, uh, huge opportunity sort of opportunity. Huge opportunity. It lends every type of partner in that. Uh, but most importantly, thank you everyone for being the, being our partner and, and amazing ecosystem and Vince, amazing platform. Thank you so much. Yeah. I, [00:31:18] Pat Lee: I think now is the time. This is not, there’s not a time to wait. Um, and there’s all sorts of ways to get started. You can get started as simply as an agent there, but I think one thing that every business that you work with and support has a mound of business critical data that they need to maximize, to get value out of, to put it, to make their customers get value out of. And if we’re not helping them get there. They’re gonna lose business. Yeah. Other people are gonna come in and take that business. If you can’t maximize the value in these applications, they’ll be replaced. Yeah. So if we don’t make AI the prominent and most important feature of these applications, they won’t be able to keep up. [00:31:58] Vince Menzione: I hear you loud and clear. I hope everybody else hears this loud and clear. ’cause it is important. I think there was a sense of hesitancy in the beginning. Like there was this feedback that was coming from CFOs saying, we’re not seeing the value yet in ai. This was in the beginning. Mm-hmm. [00:32:13] Vince Menzione: And I do think like organizations need to hit the gas pretty hard right now is the impression. And they [00:32:18] Sandy Gupta: don’t need to build everything today. Right. Like I think that’s the key thing is like, and there’s something they should build. So, [00:32:24] Pat Lee: yeah, they, they should build what’s right for their business. What, yeah. Like as I said earlier in SA platform play. Yeah. Yeah. If I look at number of the partners I talked about like earlier, we’re providing the platform. Yeah. [00:32:33] Pat Lee: They’re bringing their business value on top of it. Yeah. And then they’re getting the value out of it. That’s that, that’s the thing. It’s like you don’t have to build all this. There’s a lot of foundation you can build on top of. [00:32:43] Vince Menzione: Fascinating conversation. I want to thank you both, incredible leaders on stage. I hope you all valued as much as I did Sandy, so great to see you again my friend. [00:32:51] Sandy Gupta: I learned so much from you. Every time once we talk, I learned a lot from from you. Thank you, pat. [00:32:56] Vince Menzione: So great to have you join us. Having the video up on stage at our Ultimate Partner event has been of great value for us as well. Pat, thank you so much. Thank you very much, so much for joining us. You’ve both been incredible and I hope you’re staying around for a little while. Yeah, yeah, I will. Uh, there everyone, I’m sure wants to spend time with both of you. Yeah. Absolutely. So I want to thank you so much for joining us at, at our event this year. I will see you at the, at the dinner. Yes. We’re gonna, we’ll see you up on, we’re gonna have a great meal together. Much Thank you much so much. Thank you so Pat, much Pat, so much. Thank you so much. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Eye to Partnering. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. 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Cyril Belikoff at Ultimate Partner LIVE in Redmond, WA Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. I’m excited to bring you even more from the Ultimate Partner®—and this one’s straight from the main stage at Ultimate Partner LIVE at Microsoft’s Conference Center in Redmond. If you haven’t been in the room yet, these events are something special. The energy, the insights, the access—it’s where strategy meets execution, and the partner community comes alive. In this episode, we feature a powerful session with Cyril Belikoff, Microsoft’s new leader for Marketplace, who joined us to share his bold vision for the future. Cyril dives into: The “lightbulb moment” around AI and why it changes everything How Microsoft is mainstreaming the Marketplace as a core GTM motion What partners need to know about incentives, MCAPS priorities, and the rise of multi-party offers And how the shift to AI and ecosystem selling is redefining what success looks like in this era We’re curating the very best of these moments—fireside chats, expert panels, and executive insights—so you can stay ahead of the curve and fully aligned to where Microsoft and the industry are heading. And this is just the beginning.More sessions. More voices. More of what you need to know. If you’re not yet part of the UPX Community, now’s the time to join us. Access exclusive content, events, and strategies that keep you in front of what’s next. Thanks for being on this journey with us.— Vince https://youtu.be/yIfT1HZriGQ?si=yq_hIvNSp1pvrWtS Key Takeaways: AI adoption is creating exponential opportunities for partners, with leading customers seeing 10x ROI in just over a year. Microsoft’s marketplace is centralizing digital transactions, incentivizing co-selling, and simplifying procurement for customers. Microsoft prioritizes its partners, offering the highest compensation among hyperscalers and integrating marketplace deeply into its products. The multi-party offer (MPO) capability is driving significant sales growth, enabling partners to collaborate effectively and increase deal sizes. Microsoft emphasizes a channel-led approach, empowering partners to scale and leverage the marketplace for software and application sales. Microsoft views the current AI landscape as a “light bulb moment,” urging partners to innovate and build solutions within its ecosystem. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. https://youtu.be/s33fltuizEo Transcript: Key Tags: Microsoft, Partner Ecosystem, AI, Marketplace, Cyril Belikoff, AI Adoption, Digital Transformation, Cloud, Azure, Co-sell, Channel Partners, ISVs, Software Development, Multi-Party Offer, Customer ROI, Partner Profitability, Technology, Innovation, Business Strategy, Future of Partnerships, Microsoft Azure, AI Foundry, Trade Ledger, Content Square, Hyperscalers, Managed Services, Data Quality, Ultimate Partner Live, Ultimate Partner Experience, UPX. Transcript: Cyril Belikoff Transcript [00:00:00] Cyril Belikoff: You know, as the AI adoption increases, the opportunity for partners sort of exponentially explode, customers are seeing almost four XROI on average, and then the, the leading customers who are really leading into AI are seeing 10 XROI. They’re seeing that ROI in like 14 months. [00:00:19] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, [00:00:25] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together. Managed  services will be one and a half times larger [00:00:31] Cyril Belikoff: because it is the customer buying behavior that has created a need for all of us to rethink our models. [00:00:38] Intro: Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. [00:00:58] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner Live at Microsoft Redmond Campus, our most powerful event. Yet, over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room. This episode featuring Cyro Beov, Microsoft’s new leader responsible for marketplaces. Brings you right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in, uh, all up, uh, Cy Beov, I’m so glad to have you join us. So good to have you here today, sir. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. I’m I gonna grab a water here. Oh, please do. Yeah. I’m gonna grab a coffee. In fact, you uh, you were, you’re second next to me here. Great. Perfect. We put you in the center. The hot seat. In the hot seat. Yeah. So, so great to see you. Yeah. Um. Yeah, we were, I was sharing this with, with the audience, but you and I were supposed to get together in person. Exactly. [00:02:00] Cyril Belikoff: We had a snowmageddon here. I think, you know, I picked the heck of the time. You get a dusting of snow and Seattle sort of shuts down. [00:02:06] Vince Menzione: You know, I grew up in the Northeast, we get 48 inches of snow overnight, and everybody would continue on. And I was like, oh, what happened? I mean, I was, I literally was at the hotel going, okay, well I was doing all these, uh. These teams calls because I couldn’t get people in the meetings and that kind of thing, so I’m so glad we could. Thank you. Do this in person. Thanks for the [00:02:22] Cyril Belikoff: invite again. [00:02:23] Vince Menzione: Thank you. Thank you so much. See you, all of you. So, uh, I thought we’d talk a little bit of a broader, uh, conversation too, and then we’ll dive in on marketplace. Great. Because I think it’s a greater conversation. Great. I happen to know your organization. Um, Alyssa Taylor has been a podcast guest here, somebody I worked with at Microsoft. Yes. And who’s taken on bigger, bigger, and bigger responsibilities within the organization. Uh, leading. Leading, I would call it cloud Go to market probably is probably the right term. But, uh, talk to me about your organization because. You, you drive a tremendous amount of the energy and effort around Azure and industry Yep. And partners, uh, even before this marketplace changes. Yes. Or happened recently. So tell us a little bit about your background. A long time at Microsoft Over, yes. Over 20 years. [00:03:11] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Um, so yeah, I’ve been at Microsoft, I think 27 years. 27, 28, something like that. Right outta [00:03:17] Vince Menzione: college. [00:03:17] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Lots of different, pretty much. I, you know, I had, uh. I had three days at, uh, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and then I decided, no, no, Microsoft’s my thing. Um, it’s my move. And so, uh, it sort of paid off, I think. Um, so yeah, I, uh, I’m part of, as you mentioned, uh, the commercial, um, cloud and ai, uh, organization. Yeah. Uh, and my particular remit is around solutions and. Partner marketing to really focus on how we take all our products and take them to market with more of a customer outcome solutions basis. And then obviously, how do we enable our partner ecosystem? And that’s where sort of marketplace sort of has now, um, fit, uh, fit in there. So it’s, it’s, you know, it’s an exciting time for software development companies, system integrators, all types of partners really, particularly around this AI transformation. Yes. And what’s going on? Um, you know. And of course being in the, the AI team, I’d be remits to talk a little bit about that and what it really means for partners. I think Please do, please do, please do. Um, for, you know, this is a massive platform shift, I think everyone is, is is talking about it sort of at the same altitude as cloud or mobile or the internet. I sort of prefer the light bulb analogy. Um, and what I mean by that is, you know, back in many, many years before cloud, um, someone invented the light bulb. Yeah. And it, it really changed. Both the con the, the, the life in the home and in the workplace, productivity, you know, sword. Um, but then people were like, well we, now we need sources for that light bulb, so we need to build infrastructure. Yes. And power and then power stations. And then the power station companies built this power stations and then realized, well, we can actually produce more power. So are there other things we can put in a home in a factory? Um, and then. People started to innovate. And then not only were they light bulbs, but dishwashers and washing machines, that’s, and all these sort of innovations came. And so AI is sort of at the same platform level. Yeah. Um, and we are com commit. We are committed in building out tons of data centers. We’re buying. Endless amounts of incredible amounts, AI chip sets, uh, to put into the infrastructure. We are building a few light bulbs, yes. But we need partners to build dishwashers, washing machines, and innovate, um, uh, across the new opportunities for the customers. And it’s just, it’s an exciting time and that’s where sort of marketplace comes into that. Yeah. Portfolio. [00:05:37] Vince Menzione: Well, and I love the fact that it, you, you’ve taken and embraced it in such a more deliberate way. Right? Because when we first started thinking about it, cloud, you mentioned cloud really changed things in a big way, uh, because it, it opened up opportunities and AI of course became that. Yeah. Um. So, you know, marketplace, it felt like it was on an island in many respects. And not, this is not diminishing or just, it was just, I think it just kind of grew up on its own and it was, it was tied into a product team and just now seeing the evolution of where we’re going with this and how it’s more cohesive into this whole cloud go to market. I’d love to get your. Uh, perspective on what is changing and how it’s going to enhance things for, for the partners in the room today. [00:06:20] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, so if we connect back to AI and, uh, and even back to our history, we’ve always been a partner first company and, and like when we started the marketplace, you’re right, we had to incubate it, we had to build it at many years back now. Um, and we needed to mainstream it into the core business so that it can be part of our product strategy and we’ve. Our products are, you know, we’ve always wanted to be great partners for partners, um, and with our core products. And so marketplace should be no different. And you know, for marketplaces has both the sort of supply and demand side. So we have our classic customers, but then our partners need to. You know, provide supply into the marketplace. And so we want to be awesome partners for those software development companies. Give them a great stack to build on. Um, allow them to innovate and differentiate with ai. Help them to, you know, have amazing productivity with their own developers with things like GitHub copilot. Yep. And then to leverage our own footprint to grow with our sellers. Exactly. With our, with our products and sort of the broad distribution that we have. And so marketplace becomes the center of that. It does becomes the core of how we go to market faster, sell more, uh, and we are investing on the demand side to get customers more to marketplace, right? And so we’ve doubled our marketplace revenue just in this last year. Um, of course. Now much more money is made by partners. Yeah. Through that revenue. Um, and, uh, we have aspirations and on the path that this is the store to buy your AI solutions. Yes. With Microsoft as the platform and then partners providing whether it’s software as a service or agents, and it’s fast becoming that. So we are seeing, even on ai, we’re seeing a hundred, 200% growth on ai, particularly in our marketplace. That’s outstanding. Lots of momentum. You’re right. We, we sort of had to incubate it like any, excuse me, any good product. You want to incubate it so it doesn’t get caught up in. Sort of the requirements of the machine. [00:08:17] Vince Menzione: Yes. Right? Yes. And [00:08:18] Cyril Belikoff: now, now it’s time to mainstream and we want to go really big, as you said. [00:08:21] Vince Menzione: Well, I think what you’re signaling to the audience and to the partners watching today is this, that like Microsoft is doubling down. Right. And I always talk about the seven seats at the table because I’ve always believed, I mean, from the old days, it was like, you know, you get a large GSI in the room and you have one throat to choke, but customers are making and dictating their own decision process, and they’re looking at the seven seats at the table. They’re looking at. They’re looking at data and, uh, AI partners, they’re looking at security and governance partners. They’re looking at maybe systems integrators or managed service providers. They’re bringing it all together. And because they’re buying off of your marketplace, they can do that. They couldn’t do that before. Right, right. And now there’s a new, a new vehicle to get there. So, [00:09:00] Cyril Belikoff: yeah. I, I, I totally agree. I think there’s, um. Lots of opportunity as you talk about the multiple seats at that table. Yeah. And so if you bridge into the connection between a partner and a customer and Microsoft and what that might look like, you know, the marketplace, as I mentioned, is becoming the center for the digital transaction, whether it’s a large customer or small, but also we putting the right levers in place to connect partners with our own sellers. And so if we wanted to be at the center to provide the right solution to the right customer at the right time. We need to make sure that our own sellers have marketplace in their compensation, and we’ve made that change. [00:09:39] Vince Menzione: Nice. Um, so what is the connection point now across Azure Consumer Revenue marketplace? Yeah. And co-sell. So the first is, [00:09:46] Cyril Belikoff: so the first on co-sell is that our sellers are incented to co-sell literally in their compensation plans. Nice. That marketplace can help them retire their quota. Like, it doesn’t matter how much strategery stuff I do in my ivory tower. Yeah. That lever is golden. ’cause sellers follow their back pocket. Fantastic. They’re, we tell them to follow their back pocket. That’s literally how we ask them to, to operate. Um. Then from the customer side, uh, we have this concept called Microsoft Azure Commit to consume or the Mac. Yes, we love our acronyms and so customers will negotiate with their account reps or our executives and they’ll make a commitment to Microsoft for their Azure commitments over a three to five year period, and then they’ll get some sort of discount. Simplistically, I’m just simplifying it. Yes. A hundred percent of the marketplace transactions can retire that customer’s commitment. So if a customer makes a $10 commitment to Microsoft, it’s a little bit more, add some more s zeros. But something like this, say $10 and they’re buying an application through the marketplace and that application cost $2 and Microsoft’s getting, you know, sense and the, the, the software development companies getting much more, uh, percentage wise, they are able to retire them. Full Microsoft commitment on Azure. Uh, based on the full commitment that they’ve bought, bought in the marketplace, including the cost of the, the ISV or software development company application. So we are incenting the seller and we are incenting the customer to get to, to encourage their flywheel to go even faster. And, um, many customers look at that, uh, Azure commitment and that contract as also a procurement, um, accelerator. Yes. So if, uh, software development companies. Have things in the marketplace, the procurement requirement is substantially reduced because. That acquisition has already been approved by the business. Yeah. And as long as there’s a business leader that says, yes, I want you allow, I will allow you to decrement the, the Azure commitment. There’s the procurement side is close to zero in some cases. Now, not all cases, but in many, many customers are going that way. [00:11:55] Vince Menzione: You’ve simplified it, you’ve taken away all the legal language. Correct. You’ve taken away the, the whole, the whole term, the terms, and then worrying about payments. Right. It’s all, it’s all handled now for partners. [00:12:04] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, and then obviously we incent the seller and then we incent the the customer too. And then lastly, a lot of software driven companies. Sort of on the medium si medium to small size. They love the fact that it’s a global transaction. Yes. They don’t have to deal with taxes across B country boundaries. That’s all handled in the marketplace. And so there’s just so much value to getting scale. Um, I. We’re very excited by, as you can tell. Yes. I’m, I’m, [00:12:28] Vince Menzione: I’m excited with you. I’ve, I’ve talked about this as the marketplace moment, and you know, of course we’re gonna have some of your other leaders up on stage. Right. We’re gonna have Sandy talking, talking with Nvidia and some conversations. We’ll have some of the marketplace vendors that help enable these ISVs or software development companies on how to, how to attract and work with Microsoft. We’ll also have some of the co-selling leaders in the room that will help. How do I, how do I become more relevant with Microsoft? So I’ll have some incredible conversations here. And this all ties in. I, we talked about marketplace, but the Azure consumer revenue number. Um, I think we know that there’s a paradigm between marketplace and channel sales. What’s the advice on how to balance the best of both worlds? This is an interesting conversation I hear all the time. From reseller or channel partners operating in one direction and the marketplace operating in a different direction, or at least that was the past. Yeah, that was the past paradigm. [00:13:19] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. It’s a, it’s a great question. The first I would say is use it. Give us feedback and we’ll get better. Um, and that’s how we work with our partners. We work for 50 years like that. Um, and so we wanna work for the next 50 years. And so there is no. Either model that we have to crack besides our channel integration with marketplace, it’s just vital. Yeah. Um, we spend a lot of time with Nicole and her team around how we, what we call sort of co-sell at scale and like how do we get scale through our channel without a Microsoft seller involved. That’s right. Um, and so we are, we are thinking deeply about that and, and really working through that. And so it’s really about the channel led sale and how we enable marketplace and transitioning. Um, the classic business where needed to marketplace. Yeah. Now there’s obviously parts of the business that might not be on marketplace, but if you’re selling a software, um, a software application, the marketplace is the right place to do it and then connects to everything that we just discussed on that value that the customer values. Um, and, you know, we want to enable access to the 500,000 partners at scale that rely, uh, on our classic partner, um, engines. On the new marketplace and we, we started to do that. And I guess the, the hero, uh, capability is, uh, multi-party office or NPO. [00:14:43] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:14:43] Cyril Belikoff: Um, the ability to do. Multi parties that this a partner with a software company or or app provider and a customer multi-party offer sort of that capability. And we’ve, you know, we’ve, we’ve launched it in select markets, us, uk, Canada, and already we’re seeing sort of a third of our sales with, uh, almost two times the average size. That’s incredible. With that capability, it’s obvious, like we know, like, yes, we had to incubate the business. Now we’ve gotta mainstream, we’ve gotta mainstream into. Our channel partners too. And so while I don’t have tons to share, you can be sure that we are building more capabilities in the future that. Empower more channel led growth and more partner to partner selling. [00:15:26] Vince Menzione: That’s fantastic. It is an incredible engine, the multi-party offer engine. And then some of the early learnings were that it wasn’t always the largest partners in the world. It were, but it was partners that were closest to the customer providing some capability along with the other solutions that were coming along with the multi-party offer. Mm-hmm. So, um, just in, uh, in, so I think, you know, it is an inspiring time for all of us as we, as we think about this, uh. T we were, we’re at the end of 25. 25. You’re leaning in on 26 in a big way. Yeah. I’m, I’m assuming here. Of course. So I do think it would be great for you to give some of the learnings to this group of leaders in the rooms, all the people that are gonna be attending or watching this on livestream. Um, anything you’d like to leave us with going into fiscal year 26 for this group? Yeah. [00:16:13] Cyril Belikoff: And thank you for, again, for the opportunity. So as we close out here, um, you know, as the AI adoption increases. The opportunity for partners sort of exponentially explode. Yeah. Now I use the light bulb naturally, but I’ll give you some numbers right around numbers. Customers are seeing almost four XROI on average, and then the, the leading customers who are really leading into AI are seeing 10 XROI. Wow. And the amazing piece about that is. In addition to it being 10 x is that they’re seeing that ROI in like 14 months. In typical other IT projects, it’s been like two to three years. And you write a business case and the CFO looks at the business case and they have this, you know, risk analysis and it goes three, sometimes five years. They’re seeing ROI in 12 to 14 months. Yeah, that’s fantastic. And um, it’s not surprising ’cause that’s literally the pace of the industry right now and AI is even. Faster than that. And so there’s, there’s customer, real, customer tangible value. In addition to that, for every dollar that Microsoft makes, our system integrated partner makes almost $9 and a software company makes almost $11. So the, the math on the partner side. Is very good too. It’s very good. And so when you just, just think at a high level of that flywheel, okay, the customer is seeing value, there’s opportunity in the partner. Of course we see value, we are investing that flywheel has to move. Yeah. And if you’re on that bus, you’ll get value if you miss the bus. You don’t get value. Like we try to get on a few buses, many across the years. I won’t mention mobile, et cetera, et cetera, but maybe I just did. I, I remember those days I was in this room. Um, we try to get on a few buses. We have not missed this bus, and we are leading this bus and we want, we need our partners, um, because as I said, we, we are building platforms and so, and the [00:17:57] Vince Menzione: compensation for partners is the highest in Microsoft amongst the three hyperscalers if you do the analysis work that I, yeah, we are [00:18:03] Cyril Belikoff: pretty aggressive. Yeah. Uh, in looking after our partners, and again, all different private partners, channel partners, system integrators, software companies. And really, as I said, the marketplace is the connector for it. If you haven’t engaged in the marketplace, get on, take a look, try it, do a few transactions with some customers and then give us feedback and you know, we will continue to evolve it even deep into our products. For example, uh, it’s a good example. So Azure, AI Foundry. So it’s basically our core product for that customers use to implement. AI applications, whether it’s advanced machine learning or generative AI or AI search, pick your thing. It’s, it’s got all the goodness in there. It’s, you know, confidential ai, trustworthy ai, all all the pieces, AI foundry. So customers literally are going to this product. In the product. It has the most models on the planet, like 1800 large language and small language models. Wow. Customers need to transact those models. Yes. So what we’ve done is we’ve connected that core product. And when the customer is trying to implement it says, do you want to transact this? And it, it’s an automatic behind the scenes link to marketplace. So it gives you a mental model on how we think about this is not just gonna be like a classic partner transaction in front of a customer thing. We are going to embed it in our products more and more and more to, to really encourage that flywheel between customers and partners in a really seamless integration way. Um, so many. Great examples. Yeah, I get super passionate about it. I guess I would, um, before I close out, I’ll mention one or two, uh, partners, so please do. Trade Ledger is a good example that I love. Trade ledger, um, end-to-end like lending platform. They literally did their first go go, uh, COSAL deal with a big bank. And the deal that the previous previously negotiated went from 4 million. To 25 million. Unbelievable. And that might not sound lot, a lot to some Microsoft people. Yeah. But for a company like Trade Ledger on one deal, then they can try do it on 5, 10, 20, and a hundred deals. That’s, that’s real return. Um. I guess Content Square is another one. They do insights, analytics. Yeah. And they’re seeing marketplace help them close deals, 11, 12, 13% faster with more than a hundred percent uplift on on their deal value. And so there, as I mentioned, we are integrating into product, we’re driving demand, we’re getting software companies to build, integrating with channel. And so we are, we’re investing deeply. Right. And I guess I would just close out with where I started. We have a light bulb moment. So let’s go build some washing machines, get it onto the marketplace. I love this. And go [00:20:45] Vince Menzione: learn together. I love that. And this is your first time really, I would say, at an event like this with partners in the room. So, so great to have you. Thank you so much. This effort and having you hope, hope to have you on stage many times. Great. Because I think it is a light bulb moment. I think we are just at the beginning, the precipice of this opportunity and really it’s gonna be an exciting time ahead. Perfect. So, so great to have you. Thank you [00:21:06] Cyril Belikoff: so much. Great to appreciate it. Great to have you. Thank you sir. Appreciate you making time for us. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank. [00:21:11] Vince Menzione: Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Eye to Partnering. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate Partner Experience Leaders come to learn from each other. It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge. With insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results. And we’re just getting started. We’ve got big plans for you this summer as we’re taking this studio, and we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here, and it’s all coming to you soon. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level. . Key Tags: Microsoft, Partner Ecosystem, AI Transformation, Nicole Deason, Microsoft Partners, Generative AI, Cloud Solution Provider (CSP), MCAPS Priorities, Customer Zero, Skilling, Business Growth, Profitability, SMB, Fiscal Year 2026, Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, Innovation, Industry Solutions, Channel Partners, System Integrators, ISVs.

From Ultimate Partner LIVE in Redmond, WA Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. This episode is something special. It was originally recorded as the kickoff conversation for our May Ultimate Partner LIVE event—a powerful session that featured none other than Nicole Dezen, Microsoft’s Chief Partner Officer, and a true champion of the ecosystem. Now, we’re bringing it to you, our amazing Ultimate Partner Podcast community. In this candid and insightful conversation, Nicole shares Microsoft’s unwavering commitment to its 500,000+ strong partner ecosystem—especially poignant as the company celebrates its 50th anniversary. We explore how partners are not just part of the Microsoft story—they are the story.From driving innovation to fueling growth in the era of AI, this dialogue makes clear that partners are at the heart of Microsoft’s transformation agenda. You’ll hear about the company’s FY26 strategic priorities—known as MCAPS—including renewed focus and record investment in the SMB segment, and the role of partners in shaping what’s next. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vuEsmcPvD4 Partnerships are Microsoft’s Core: Microsoft’s foundational commitment to its partner ecosystem is deeply ingrained in its 50-year history and remains central to its future strategy. AI is a Partner-Led Opportunity: Partners are crucial to driving AI transformation, with Microsoft actively supporting and incentivizing those who leverage AI for customer solutions and business growth. Substantial Profitability for Partners: The Microsoft ecosystem offers significant financial returns, with partners earning multiple dollars for every dollar of Microsoft revenue, boosted further by generative AI. Strategic Alignment with Microsoft Priorities: Partners can maximize their success by understanding and aligning with Microsoft’s five MCAPS priorities, which guide both Microsoft’s internal sales and partner incentives. Targeted Investments for Ecosystem Growth: Microsoft continues record investments in its partner ecosystem, with a strong focus on empowering partners, especially those serving the high-growth small and medium enterprise (SMB) segment. “Customer Zero” Enhances Partner Credibility: Partners are encouraged to use Microsoft technologies, particularly AI tools, internally (“Customer Zero”) to build authentic experience and credibility for customer engagements. https://youtu.be/s33fltuizEo Transcript: (0:00) So I wanna take this moment to welcome a friend, (0:03) an incredible leader, somebody who leads the largest, (0:09) imagine this, the largest ecosystem in our industry (0:12) is the Microsoft ecosystem, (0:14) with over 500,000 partner organizations. (0:19) Nicole Deason has done an outstanding job (0:22) of taking this organization to the next level. (0:26) In fact, we recognize, Nicole was on my podcast last year, (0:29) we were up here in Redmond, (0:30) we recorded a really great interview. (0:32) If you haven’t had a chance, (0:33) you can find that on our YouTube channel. (0:35) You can find that incredible discussion that we’ve had. (0:38) I’ve asked her back because a lot of things (0:40) are happening at Microsoft. (0:41) And I also wanted to recognize her. (0:43) Like see, we did this Partner Leader of the Year Award (0:46) at the end of 2024, and we recognized Nicole (0:48) for how she’s reshaped Microsoft’s landscape, (0:51) how she’s really tightened up Microsoft’s focus (0:54) and strategy, and I wanted to have her back today, (0:57) A, to recognize her up on stage (0:59) for her outstanding leadership, (1:01) but also have you hear from her (1:03) about her point of view as partners (1:06) and how Microsoft thinks about this ecosystem (1:09) and its approach to support this incredible thing (1:11) that was created over 40 years ago. (1:14) Microsoft was the first company (1:15) to really embrace partnerships, (1:18) and still is at the very forefront of it. (1:20) And so I’m excited to have Nicole join us. (1:23) Nicole and team, but we also have a little something (1:27) we’re gonna bring out here. (1:28) So here comes Nicole. (1:30) Nicole, so good to see you. (1:31) So good to see you. (1:32) Thank you for having me. (1:34) I love having you. (1:34) Thank you so much. (1:35) I love your jacket, too. (1:36) Obviously, I’m really into the green, okay. (1:38) Yeah, I love the green. (1:39) I love the green. (1:40) I need to wear more green. (1:41) We have a little gift for you. (1:44) I try and lift it. (1:45) They told me it weighs about 300 pounds. (1:46) Okay, well, I’ll do it. (1:47) Here, we’ll do it together. (1:48) We’ll do it together. (1:49) So this is just our recognition (1:51) for all the work that you’ve done (1:53) and all the support you’ve given (1:54) these partners in the room, (1:55) and the thousands and thousands of thousands (1:58) that will be watching us, (1:59) listening to your amazing guidance and leadership, (2:03) and so glad that you could spend some time (2:05) with us this morning and kick off our event. (2:07) Thank you. (2:07) This is a really nice honor. (2:09) Thank you so much. (2:10) We’ll proudly put that there. (2:12) You’ve done an incredible job, (2:13) and we’re excited to have you for a little fireside chat. (2:18) We have some people in the room. (2:19) We have a bunch of people on the live stream as well. (2:22) So we got to do this in a studio. (2:24) It’s a little bit different, (2:25) but I wanted to have the opportunity (2:27) to spend some time here with you (2:28) because I think there’s some really incredible things (2:30) we need to talk about here. (2:32) First off, we haven’t even talked about this yet. (2:35) I was saving this for you. (2:37) Microsoft’s 50th anniversary. (2:38) Yeah, so exciting. (2:40) I mean, it is incredible that it’s been 50 years now. (2:43) It’s amazing. (2:44) It’s really hard to believe, (2:47) you know, 50 years of so much heritage. (2:50) And, you know, when I think about our 50 years, (2:52) I think of it as 50 years of partnership. (2:54) So massive, massive thank you to all of our partners. (2:58) Our success is absolutely based (3:02) on all of the work we do with our partners (3:04) and organizations like yours, Vincent. (3:05) Thank you so much. (3:06) Thank you for your support as well. (3:08) We feel that as well, these partners wouldn’t be here. (3:10) We wouldn’t even have this thing called partners (3:12) if it wasn’t for Microsoft. (3:13) You know, we’re incredibly fortunate here. (3:17) The company was founded in this heritage of partnership. (3:21) It’s in our DNA. (3:23) And every single one of our three CEOs (3:26) has proudly focused on partnership. (3:31) And, you know, Satya always says, (3:32) this company has always been (3:34) and will always be a partner-led company. (3:36) It’s pretty exciting. (3:38) You know, when I, if you think about (3:40) where the company started, (3:42) we started with this really bold vision (3:45) that technology could change the world. (3:47) And it certainly has and continues to, you know. (3:52) And I heard your very nice introduction, by the way. (3:55) Thank you. (3:55) You know, Microsoft is so proud (3:57) to have 500,000 partners in our ecosystem. (4:01) It’s remarkable. (4:02) We actually, we grew the size of our partner ecosystem (4:05) 20% year on year in the last year. (4:08) That’s fantastic. (4:08) And there’s a whole bunch of reasons why. (4:11) And, you know, it’s really exciting (4:12) to see the excitement and enthusiasm (4:15) for everything we’re doing. (4:16) And, you know, you and I go way back. (4:19) And it started in this company. (4:21) Well, you know, I’m sorry we were five. (4:22) You were a lot younger than I was. (4:25) But, you know, it started with building (4:28) and selling Windows PCs in the office, (4:32) still going strong today. (4:34) And then we sort of evolved into cloud migrations. (4:37) And then, of course, now it’s all about the era of AI. (4:42) And, you know, our partners are really the backbone (4:45) of AI transformation, solving complex customer challenges (4:49) around the world. (4:51) Microsoft has always been really deeply committed (4:53) to partner success. (4:55) And I love just seeing how amazing it is (5:00) to see our partners thriving in this time. (5:04) We, just last year, we did some IDC research. (5:07) And the research told us that for every $1 (5:09) of Microsoft revenue, our services partners (5:12) earn $8.45. (5:14) Wow, that’s outstanding. (5:15) And our software partners earn $10.93. (5:18) And it’s one of the measures we hold ourselves to. (5:20) It’s really, really important that we can create (5:23) a healthy, thriving, profitable ecosystem for our partners. (5:28) Then you add generative AI on top. (5:30) And, wow, like hockey stick growth in so many dimensions. (5:33) It’s amazing to see just the growth faster (5:37) than the overall IT market, which is amazing. (5:40) Generative AI, fastest platform adoption (5:43) in the history of technology. (5:46) These stats are pretty awesome, if you think about it. (5:49) It took mobile 16 years. (5:52) And then it took the internet seven years (5:54) to reach 100 million users. (5:57) LLMs achieved that in months. (5:59) It’s incredible. (6:00) Right, and we’re just getting started. (6:02) And for me, when I look across our partner ecosystem, (6:06) and I see the demand and opportunity for the work (6:10) that every single one of our partner types is doing, (6:13) it makes me really motivated and excited. (6:16) And then the partners that are betting their business (6:18) on Microsoft AI, those with more than 25% (6:21) of their Microsoft revenue on AI, (6:24) receive higher margins and revenue growth. (6:28) And, you know, I’m just incredibly proud (6:32) to see what we’ve already done in our 50 years. (6:36) And I know so much excitement ahead. (6:38) Just getting started. (6:39) What is it that Bill has always said, right? (6:42) We expect too much in the first year or two. (6:44) We expect rapid growth, but we underestimate (6:47) what we’ll see in 10 years. (6:49) That’s right. (6:49) I think we will underestimate what we see (6:51) in three and four years. (6:52) Oh, absolutely, and I am beyond confident (6:55) that it’s actually our partner ecosystem (6:56) that will lead the way here and teach us all things (6:59) that we never imagined. (7:00) Yeah, it’s going to be an outstanding day (7:02) of conversations around these topics. (7:04) So glad you could join us for this. (7:07) So we’re at the end of 2025, Microsoft 2025. (7:11) People don’t always understand (7:12) the fiscal year differences, right? (7:14) Hey, two months have to go. (7:15) Let’s not forget it’s Q4 at Microsoft. (7:18) Yes, get out there and sell partners. (7:20) We still always get encouraged, that’s right. (7:23) People don’t understand, if you haven’t been (7:24) around Microsoft for a long time, right? (7:26) July 1st is the beginning of a new year. (7:28) Yes. (7:28) And I think it’s a super important time (7:31) to have you here because it is like giving people (7:34) a little bit of a forward glance to what’s happening. (7:37) Like there has been a lot of change, right? (7:38) A lot of change, transformation, (7:40) and I would love for you to share (7:41) with our incredible partner ecosystem (7:44) what you’re seeing and where we’re going. (7:46) I think we’ve definitely accomplished (7:48) more than a year’s worth of stuff (7:50) in the 10 months of this year so far. (7:53) So I’m just incredibly proud and grateful (7:55) for the excellence I see across the ecosystem. (7:59) For Microsoft, it’s been a record year (8:01) of investment in our partner ecosystem (8:03) and I’m thrilled to be able to say that. (8:06) There are several things we’re doing. (8:09) For us, it starts with our five MCAPS priorities. (8:13) Every Microsoft employee sort of has these (8:15) tattooed on their foreheads. (8:16) Yes, right up here. (8:17) And the thing that’s cool is I love it (8:19) when I’m having partner conversations (8:21) and we talk about the work that our partners (8:24) are doing across the five priorities. (8:26) So they’re co-pilot on every device, (8:29) AI design wins, securing cyber foundations (8:32) for every customer’s, delivering the M365 core, (8:37) and of course, cloud migrations (8:39) because customers can’t take advantage (8:40) of all of this amazing AI goodness (8:42) until they’re in the cloud. (8:45) There’s a few reasons why understanding (8:48) these priorities I think is so beneficial (8:50) to our partners. (8:51) Number one, understanding how Microsoft sells, (8:55) how we coach our own sellers, (8:56) I think is incredibly valuable (8:58) because it allows us to go to market together in harmony. (9:03) Excuse me, the second thing is we pooled (9:06) our partner incentives around those five priorities. (9:09) So there’s real economic benefit (9:12) for every partner out there to get after them. (9:15) So important. (9:16) Yeah, and the thing that I’m really excited about (9:18) is these priorities apply to every customer segment, (9:23) every partner type. (9:24) So whether you’re an SI, an ISV, a channel partner, (9:27) a device partner, you name it, (9:29) there’s a role for you to play in these priorities. (9:32) And this is really about how we support your work (9:35) as you deliver value to our customers. (9:38) The next thing is, you’ll hear us talk a lot (9:42) about customer zero, and Vince, (9:44) you’ll remember the days where we talked dog food, (9:46) which I just saw. (9:47) I’m so glad we got rid of dog food. (9:49) We’re so over that. (9:50) Then we were drinking our own champagne, (9:52) but now we’re in the era of customer zero. (9:55) Customer zero really means that we use our own things first. (10:00) And Microsoft has always had this principle of doing it, (10:03) but it’s actually more important than ever with AI. (10:08) And where I’m seeing the most growth, (10:11) the most rapid transformation in our partner ecosystem (10:16) is those partners that are utilizing this technology (10:19) in their own business, (10:20) because that’s when you have the most credible examples, (10:24) the most authentic experiences (10:26) to go have those customer conversations. (10:28) Customers are counting on you (10:30) to help them understand what to do in their business, (10:33) and they’re looking for you to tell them how you’ve done it. (10:36) And when we talk about AI transformation at Microsoft, (10:40) we talk about it in terms of enriching employee experiences, (10:46) reinventing customer engagement, (10:48) reshaping business processes, (10:50) and then bending the curve on innovation. (10:52) And there’s just- (10:53) Oh, I love bending the curve. (10:55) Bending the curve, yeah. (10:56) We love to bend the curve around here. (10:59) You know, it’s really amazing to see (11:02) what each part of our partner ecosystem is doing. (11:05) It’s actually been less than 12 months (11:08) since we launched Copilot Plus PCs, (11:11) you know, near and dear to my heart. (11:14) It’s amazing to see what our device ecosystem is doing (11:17) with the most powerful NPUs in the market, (11:20) you know, provided by our largest silicon partners. (11:23) Our ISV ecosystem, you know, (11:25) this is a place where there’s just, (11:28) we’re just fueling innovation in the market. (11:31) And the things I love the most (11:32) are when I see these solutions come out (11:35) from ISVs around the world (11:38) that are just helping customers solve real problems. (11:43) There’s a really cool example recently from Sitecore. (11:46) They introduced some capability (11:49) that helps marketers pre-test content (11:54) before they publish it. (11:55) It sounds so obvious, right? (11:56) But they didn’t have that capability (11:59) until Sitecore introduced it, (12:01) and it’s running on Azure and Azure Open AI. (12:04) And so I love it when it solves (12:06) really real-world problems for people. (12:09) You know, our systems integrators (12:11) are really leading the way, (12:12) particularly around industry solutions. (12:15) It’s been really impressive to see (12:17) the way that system integrators have paired (12:19) our customer solution areas with AI capability (12:22) across industries, delivering real value. (12:25) And then, last but certainly not least, (12:27) our channel partners. (12:29) You know, the channel is really the face of Microsoft (12:32) in so many cases for the small (12:34) and medium enterprise customer. (12:37) And I’m really, really proud to see (12:39) the way the channel has embraced, (12:41) you know, supporting the entire lifecycle, (12:44) or we like to say all five MSEM stages. (12:47) There’s so much TAM to be captured here. (12:51) $661 billion of TAM (12:53) in the small and medium enterprise segment. (12:56) So welcome, one and all. (12:58) There’s lots to do here. (13:00) And you know, this is a place (13:02) where we are heavily, heavily investing (13:05) in these partners for growth. (13:07) 70% of our investments are pooled toward the partners (13:11) that service the small and medium enterprise segment. (13:14) So it’s an opportunity. (13:14) And we’ll hear from some of your leadership (13:16) on how to best engage with sellers, (13:19) as partners working with sellers in those organizations. (13:22) We’re also gonna hear from the SMB market as well. (13:24) We’ve got both Pax8 and Ingram Micro (13:26) coming on stage here over the next two days. (13:28) What an incredible opportunity now, right, (13:30) to take some of the modernization and marketplace (13:34) and extend it out and be much more deliberate (13:37) with smaller customers. (13:38) Yes, yeah. (13:39) The SMB space in particular is a segment (13:44) with so much growth opportunity (13:45) and so much dependence on very strong, capable partners. (13:51) Yeah, so it’s an incredible, incredible opportunity. (13:53) You’re gonna hear things on stage here. (13:55) They’re gonna hear some more from what you’re sharing, (13:56) but also from some of your leaders (13:58) that are gonna share some more. (13:59) There’s gonna be some very insightful (14:01) and provocative conversations the next two days. (14:04) So let’s talk about 2026. (14:06) So people are like, happy new year. (14:07) Like July 1st is just around the corner. (14:09) So I know you have been incredibly busy. (14:12) I know what this time of year is like, a lot of change. (14:16) Let’s observe what happened in the year so far. (14:18) Let’s address what’s not working right. (14:21) Let’s pivot to what’s working even better. (14:23) And then you’re laying it out, right, (14:25) in the next couple months. (14:26) I’m excited for what you’re gonna be providing. (14:28) These partners need to listen in to you (14:30) on what’s happening. (14:31) Yeah, we’ve been hard at work for planning, (14:34) and you nailed exactly how we do it, by the way. (14:36) That’s awesome. (14:37) I’m really excited about what we’re doing. (14:39) I would start with what isn’t changing, (14:42) because I think that’s really important. (14:44) Our five priorities are enduring. (14:48) We’ve seen really great momentum (14:50) from our partner ecosystem. (14:53) The partners that have embraced these (14:55) are making meaningful progress with customers (14:57) and we just wanna continue to fuel that. (15:01) We will continue significant AI investment, (15:05) and we will do all of this (15:07) through the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. (15:09) And this is where any partner can get the technology, (15:13) the tools, all of the capability (15:15) to build healthy, profitable businesses (15:17) where we co-sell together. (15:20) And so I think that it’s super important (15:22) for partners to understand that. (15:23) I am also going to encourage everyone (15:26) to plan to attend MCAP Start for Partners. (15:29) That’ll be on July 15th, so two weeks into our fiscal year. (15:34) We do this readiness event. (15:36) At the same time, we’re readying all of our sellers. (15:39) So partners get access to the exact same information (15:42) that Microsoft’s entire field sales force gets, (15:45) and it’s all about ensuring that you have access (15:47) to the latest and greatest, (15:49) all the goodies in our toolkit for next year. (15:53) And that’s gonna be digitally available. (15:55) So everybody in the 500,000 can all embrace (15:59) and this change is happening. (16:00) And we will not be shy about letting everybody know (16:03) when registration opens. (16:04) That’s coming soon. (16:05) And one more thing. (16:07) I know everybody’s busy here today, (16:09) but we did publish a blog today, this morning, (16:12) with a lot of new CSP announcements. (16:14) Yes, please share that. (16:15) So don’t distract yourselves from today’s amazing agenda, (16:19) but maybe when you go back to your hotel rooms, (16:21) check out the blog. (16:23) Because we’ve announced a ton of new capability (16:26) for the CSP partners, the Cloud Solution Provider partners. (16:31) There are a couple things I’ll share here. (16:33) Number one, probably the most requested thing (16:36) from every partner and frankly, every employee at Microsoft (16:40) is today we’ve announced we’re introducing (16:42) three-year CSP SKUs for M365 and Teams Enterprise. (16:47) I’m really, really thrilled about this. (16:49) We’ll have some nice promotions to support it as well. (16:52) And the other thing that we’ve been really hard at work on (16:56) is enhancing CSP capability with systems and tools, (17:01) reporting, enabling better upgrades, upsell, renewals. (17:06) As you would imagine, all of this is infused with AI. (17:10) All designed to make sure that we have a healthy, (17:13) profitable, thriving ecosystem. (17:16) We’re also updating some of our authorization requirements. (17:19) We’ll align our incentives to all of that. (17:22) There’s tons of information in the blog, (17:24) so I encourage everyone to go check it out. (17:27) And really, this is all designed to ensure (17:29) that our partners can deliver great success (17:32) to our customers. (17:33) I know your team has been hard at work on this (17:35) and so you have some incredible leaders been driving. (17:38) The system and tools component alone is really enhanced (17:41) and been enriched over the last couple of years. (17:44) Yes. (17:44) Great teams work there. (17:46) Lots of AI capability there. (17:48) We have to be our own customer zero, right? (17:51) Absolutely, yes. (17:52) I love it, I love it. (17:54) So what advice do you have for these partners? (17:56) Obviously the CSP reading all of that, (17:58) what advice do you have for them in terms of leading in? (18:01) We obviously talked about the co-selling, (18:04) the ability to engage, understanding the priorities (18:07) at the SEMCAPS event. (18:09) Anything else in particular we should be aware of (18:11) and lean in on? (18:13) Yeah, you know I like threes, (18:15) so I’ll go with three things. (18:17) Yes, please. (18:18) First of all, I really encourage partners (18:21) to continue to take advantage of all of the skilling (18:24) we’re pumping out into the market. (18:26) Record year of skilling investments this fiscal year (18:30) for really, really good reason. (18:33) I don’t know about you, (18:34) but I feel like the rapid pace of advancement (18:37) of the technology is challenging each of us (18:40) to really stay current. (18:41) Exactly. (18:42) And so, you know, please take advantage of the skilling. (18:46) The partners that leverage our skilling the best (18:48) are also the ones that have earned designations, (18:51) earned specializations, generating more revenue (18:54) and more profit. (18:55) There’s a very, very logical connection there. (18:58) So I encourage everyone to do that. (19:00) The second thing is, obviously I talk a lot about CSP. (19:05) We’re quite excited about the investments here. (19:08) I really encourage our CSP partners (19:11) to focus on developing the muscle of upsell. (19:15) The beautiful thing about CSP (19:17) is that it’s this always on motion. (19:19) So when you’re renewing an ME3 customer, as an example, (19:24) we wanna help you get all of the tools you need (19:28) to do the upsell. (19:29) And that could be attaching co-pilots. (19:31) It could be attaching a mini bundle. (19:32) It could be upsell to ME5. (19:34) There are a wealth of tools available to our partners (19:38) to help you do that. (19:39) And at the same time, we are skilling our own sellers (19:42) to do this work with you together. (19:45) This is the next wave of how we work together (19:48) with CSP as a hero motion in our business. (19:51) And then last but not least, (19:53) I have to say it again, customer zero. (19:55) It’s really, really important. (19:57) The partners that utilize this tech (20:01) are truly the ones that are the most credible (20:04) and really leading the way with customers. (20:06) I would encourage every partner out there (20:09) to go check out CoPilot Chat. (20:11) It’s free. (20:12) So there’s no blocker here. (20:15) And it’s a great way to familiarize yourself (20:18) with the easiest way to experience AI. (20:21) And it also allows you to build agents. (20:25) And the thing that’s really powerful about this (20:28) is agentic is the most asked about topic. (20:33) You know, if you go into the ABC just next door, (20:35) there isn’t an ABC with a customer (20:38) where they don’t ask us about agentic. (20:40) And so we’re in this zone of bringing in partners (20:45) that have already built their own agents (20:46) inside their own businesses. (20:48) Microsoft is doing this ourselves too. (20:51) And so the partners that are customer zero (20:54) on this technology are the best equipped (20:57) to co-sell with us and go to market with us. (20:59) So I’m quite excited about this. (21:01) And Nicole, you could have, (21:02) it’s almost like I gave you a list of things (21:04) to cover for people because we’re gonna cover (21:06) so many of these topics up on stage the next few days. (21:09) That’s awesome. (21:09) So, so great to have you back here. (21:11) Thank you. (21:12) Your leadership is commendable, (21:14) really commendable for what you’ve been driving (21:15) to the organization, (21:17) the alignment of the sales organization (21:19) and some of the work your team has been doing (21:21) just this year alone. (21:22) But everything you’ve done to support this ecosystem (21:24) in such a big way, (21:25) I applaud you for all the work that you’ve done, (21:28) the support of this Microsoft ecosystem (21:29) and these partners up here today. (21:31) So thank you so much for making the time for us (21:33) at a very busy time of year. (21:35) Thank you. (21:35) Thank you for all of your support (21:37) and just a massive thank you again to all of our partners. (21:41) Your success is phenomenal. (21:43) I’m so inspired by it and I’m beyond confident (21:46) in what you’re gonna deliver in the year ahead. (21:48) It’s gonna be an incredible year. (21:49) Yeah. (21:49) It’s just getting started. (21:50) So glad to have you help us kick it off. (21:53) Thank you. (21:53) And coming up on stage with me. (21:54) Thank you. (21:55) I so appreciate you. (21:56) Thank you. (21:56) Thank you. (21:57) I have to take my beautiful award. (21:58) Yes, yes. (21:59) Thank you. (22:00) I love to see it up on your mantle. (22:02) Absolutely. (22:02) Thank you so much. (22:04) Thank you so much. (22:05) How about a round of applause for Nicole? (22:07) Is that incredible?nd some procurement things, right? Because they just went in, did it through the portal with the existing agreement, so it’s a little easier on them. So that’s kind of where you, yeah, they didn’t get the Mac decrement, but it, it is a better story for them . Key Tags: Microsoft, Partner Ecosystem, AI Transformation, Nicole Deason, Microsoft Partners, Generative AI, Cloud Solution Provider (CSP), MCAPS Priorities, Customer Zero, Skilling, Business Growth, Profitability, SMB, Fiscal Year 2026, Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, Innovation, Industry Solutions, Channel Partners, System Integrators, ISVs.

The Marketplace Revolution: Transforming How Software is Bought and Sold. Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ If you haven’t yet attended one of our Ultimate Partner Events, you’re in for a truly magical and industry-leading experience. In case you missed our Winter Retreat, we’re bringing one of the final sessions to you here: the Ultimate Partner. In this session, join industry leaders Jason Rook, Dux Sy of AppPoint, and Dexter Hardy of Integral as they dissect the reality behind the cloud marketplace hype. This dynamic panel explores the tectonic shifts driving customer behavior and how major hyperscalers are responding. Industry leaders Jason Rook, Dux Sy of AppPoint, and Dexter Hardy of Integral dissect the reality behind the cloud marketplace hype. This dynamic panel delves into the tectonic shifts driving customer behavior and how major hyperscalers are adapting. Discover firsthand accounts of achieving unprecedented reach, accelerating deal velocity, and transforming sales strategies through platforms like the Azure Marketplace. Explore the evolving promises of marketplaces, from lowering the cost of goods sold to the strategic shift in salesforces and the power of co-selling. Gain invaluable insights into public vs. private offers, multi-cloud strategies, and the role of enablers in navigating this complex ecosystem. Whether you’re a startup or an established enterprise, this session provides actionable takeaways to leverage the immense potential of cloud marketplaces and future-proof your partnering strategy in the age of AI. https://youtu.be/FGed2N2JC2U?si=p9T33-eu5Y7PnhK0 Here are 8 key takeaways from the discussion: Cloud marketplaces are experiencing real and significant growth, driven by customer buying behavior and the need for digital transactions. Marketplaces offer unprecedented reach and the potential for rapid global expansion, as demonstrated by Integral’s experience. Co-selling through marketplaces aligns incentives and can accelerate deal velocity and increase deal size, particularly with cloud consumption commitments. The “lower cost of goods sold” promise of marketplaces is more readily realized by startups with simpler offerings than large enterprises with complex sales motions. Marketplaces are driving a shift in salesforce strategies, with companies increasingly embracing digital-first approaches and leveraging marketplaces for customer acquisition. Combining channel strategies with marketplaces, including multi-party private offers, presents significant opportunities for growth and new service offerings. The choice between public and private offers depends on the company’s maturity, brand recognition, and the nature of their solutions, with public offers being beneficial for initial brand building and private offers for larger, custom deals. While professional services can be offered through marketplaces, they don’t typically decrement cloud consumption commitments, making software sales the primary driver for leveraging those commitments. It was another bold, thought-provoking, and energizing discussion that left the audience inspired and eager to take action. And we’re just getting started. If you found this conversation as compelling as we did, don’t miss another Ultimate Partner event. Our next conference, LIVE, is taking place later this week in Redmond, on May 1–2, at Microsoft’s legendary Conference Center. We’re curating an even more impactful experience, featuring returning thought leaders and fresh voices who have never taken this stage before. Not yet part of the UPX Community? Now’s the time to jump in. Get access to exclusive content, events, and workshops designed to keep you ahead of what’s next. Register Today!!! Register Today! Keywords & Transcript Jason Rook Panel AUDIO EPISODE [00:00:00] Dexter Hardy: It absolutely blew my mind the amount of reach and scale that we were able to accomplish just through the marketplace. When you look at there’s 7 million or more and growing active users in just Azure Marketplace alone, those become your captive audience for your solutions. [00:00:22] INTRO: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together. Managed services will be one and a half times larger [00:00:34] Dux Sy: because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. [00:00:40] INTRO: Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. Welcome to, or welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. On February 20th, 2025, a small group of industry leaders converged here in Boca Raton, Florida, in this very studio for Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat. What followed was an incredible discourse on the tectonic shifts and the rapid change. We’re all seeing as partners. If you weren’t able to join us in person or on the live stream, we’re bringing this incredible session to you here. This is my gift to you. All I ask in return is that you tell your friends, subscribe. Consider joining the ultimate partner community and hopefully joining us in the future. At an Ultimate Partner event. I hope these sessions provide you the learnings you need to continue to achieve your greatest results. And now here to this amazing session. [00:01:57] Jason Rook: Um, but my first question I’m gonna ask is, uh, ducks and ducks are both, is is the marketplace hype for real? And then within that, introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit more about what you guys have been doing in marketplace, and we’ll continue to dive in from there. So Ds, I’ll start with you. Tell us a little bit more about AppPoint and then is this marketplace hype for real? [00:02:15] Dux Sy: Sure. Well, thank you. Hey everybody. My name is Ds Raymond SI serve as a Chief Brand officer at AppPoint. We’re the global leader in data security, governance, and resilience. And we’ve been in business over 20 years and these days we’re so stoked about the channel as, uh. Um, Janet mentioned we’re all in a hundred percent. We’re helping a lot of our partners build new businesses around ai, making sure their customer’s data is secure as they journey through this new world of, uh, uh, transformation. So it’s the hype reel. Absolutely. Now we’re in the early stages, and I can answer that multiple ways, but I, I, I’m gonna highlight three things why I think the hype is real. Number one, if you have large customers, specific to the Microsoft world. So a lot of these customers have what’s called Mac. And what we’re seeing for a lot of our large customers, they want to draw on their Mac and it just helps our uh, deal cycle to go through much faster. So that’s number one. If you’re an enterprise Azure marketplace, for us it’s real second beyond the Microsoft marketplace, there’s tons of marketplaces out there. That’s how really we scale and go to market with our channel business. Uh, we’re in over a hundred marketplaces around the world, and that’s one, one of our top strategies to grow our business in the channel ecosystem. And number three, that’s the reality of the world. Looking forward to the future, you can only hire so many sellers in your organization. You can hire so many p dms and channel uh, leaders. You need automation. You need technology. You need a better way to distribute. So I think that’s why the hype is real. [00:03:50] Jason Rook: So Dexter, I’ll kind of come to you with the same question. I know you’ve, you’ve been on this journey for a little bit of time now. Um, you’ve got kind of a little different business model that you’ve built and you’re building, um, for you is the marketplace hype for real? And then tell us a little bit more about Integral. [00:04:05] Dexter Hardy: Okay. So, uh, glad to be here. Dexter Hardy, president, CTO at Integral, Inc. Uh, simply put, we help you move to the cloud. Um. We started out as an si, so doing a lot of the app application development, migrations, things of that nature. Um, the small thing called covid happened, you may have heard about it in the news, but, uh, what we did was we focused on what was our superpower, what did we do really well, and we created cloud solution accelerators, putting them in the marketplace, Azure marketplace specifically. And what we saw, and this is answering a long-winded way of saying. It’s not hype. It is actually a real thing that allows you to grow. We went from being a small regional organization to the first year of being on the Azure marketplace. We were in 44 countries by the following year. We were in over a hundred countries, and that’s continuing to grow to this day. So I think the first thing that people need to really focus on if you’re leveraging marketplaces, are what is the value proposition of your software and or solution? Second, what is the experience? I heard a lot of conversation about AI and the agents and what it’s gonna do and how is it gonna impact us? Well, people don’t buy an iPhone because it has a feature list. They buy it for an experience. And so I think the marketplace is going to amplify experiences, uh, for by buyers. [00:05:31] Jason Rook: Well, I would, I would just chime in and, and say from the a representing the hyperscalers, um, that it’s absolutely for real. And I think if you think about why it’s for real, it’s really for real. Because of all the things that Jay just laid out for the next 10 to 20 years. Right. And so for all of the hyperscalers to participate in the AI evolution, microtransactions, consumption based services, we all have to build these mega data centers and we have to have people in there using them. And the path to get there is to get more software development companies building on our platform. And you can’t get. Software develop, develop companies to build on a platform if you don’t have a way for them to sell today. So it is absolutely for real, wherever you’re at on that adoption curve, it’s going to happen. Right. So I think the next thing, when I think about the, the hype about marketplace, we also talk about the promise of marketplace. There’s a couple things when you, when you think about marketplace and what it does for you as a software development company or a channel partner, um, there are a couple things we often kind of refer to and one. I’ll go back to the marketplace promise of kind of expansion and reach of customers, um, docs. From your perspective, um, has that promise kind of been true for you, the reach and expansion with Market Cloud Marketplace? [00:06:47] Dux Sy: Absolutely. So at point, we’re a 20-year-old company and we started our business, frankly, doing the hard things first. We went after the enterprise business. We built a global. Platform and we’re in 17 countries. That’s what we did first, and then frankly, we’re playing catch up on channel. We, we realized and recognize that channel is the way of our future, and through the marketplaces, that’s how we’re growing so fast. We’re doubling down on channel. We’re committed to it, and not just from making sure that we get new partners, but we also get feedback. We are building new technology specific to the channel ecosystem, and we’re gonna deploy it through marketplaces as well. [00:07:31] Jason Rook: Another thing about this conversation is that it is a little bit unfair because I do know all of your marketplace data, right? And so this question about expansion and reach Dexter, um, give us, I mean, your numbers are off the charts with that. So give us a little bit of your perspective about marketplace and your ability to reach new customers and grow. [00:07:50] Dexter Hardy: Okay, so, uh, he has a back, he has a back channel to see our, our statistics. But like I said before, um, it absolutely blew my mind the amount of reach and scale that we were able to accomplish just through the marketplace. When you look at there’s 7 million or more and growing active users in just Azure Marketplace alone, those become your captive audience for your solution. A lot of companies are missing out on those eyes and those buyers, but the marketplace is a 24 hour sales guy that’s like ready to transact whenever your customer wants to transact. Add on top of that research from Gartner. Tech buyers now want to buy digitally. They don’t want to necessarily get out on the phone and just go through the traditional sales cycle that comes second. Now, like if they want, if they want to engage with you in a very deeper way. Well, can you get your foot in the door first and the marketplace opens that door up for you? So for us, like I said, over 18,000 I think, or so customers, we have, you know, over a hundred million Azure consumption hours on our solutions and growing. I think that is the opportunity where you see we’re adding value, you’re changing the experience, and for us is an absolute amazing ride. [00:09:13] Jason Rook: Okay. So another marketplace place promise that you often hear from, from everyone in this space is that, and, and, and Dutch, you kind of alluded to this with the Mac component. Yeah. But it’s that deals move faster and deals are larger in cloud marketplaces. Um, I’d love to get your perspective on that particular marketplace promise. Are they faster or, you know, deal velocity and are they larger deals? [00:09:35] Dux Sy: So maybe before I answer that question, Jason wasn’t expecting this. For, for the benefit of the audience. Maybe some folks may not be familiar with Mac, uh, especially folks watching as well. Yeah. So yeah, the official definition of Mac, [00:09:46] Jason Rook: yeah, well, uh, Microsoft Azure consumption commitment, but in reality, all the hyperscalers have some type of cloud consumption commitment that a customer can make. So you have the EDP or the PPA with AWS, you have the CUD with G-D-G-C-P. Um, and you know, if you think about modern procurement and those new millennial buyers, they probably know those ments acronyms today because that’s how they’re thinking about cloud purchasing, cloud software, right? So customers that have this cloud consumption commitment. And in many cases, they have the ability to draw down that commitment when they purchase, let’s call ’em eligible applications through a cloud marketplace. [00:10:21] Dux Sy: Very good. So to answer your question, um, yes and no. Yes. In our enterprise customers, so a lot of our enterprise customers, big companies, they have a lot of these commitments. And what we’re finding is not only that, it makes it faster, sometimes makes the deal size bigger for us, because in the past, let’s say they, they, they wanna procure. A lot of solutions from us, but they’re like, you know, based on budget phase one, phase two in the next two years. Whereas, you know what, we could do them both and draw it from our Mac commitment. So on the enterprise level, absolutely makes it faster, makes it better for us. But then if we go down to the SMC space, for example, it’s, it’s still growing because in some cases the flexibility of the Azure marketplace is still not on par with the other marketplaces. For smaller organizations. Yeah. [00:11:10] Jason Rook: Um, Dexter, same question to you and then I’ll kind of respond to that. Okay. [00:11:15] Dexter Hardy: So what we see is, well, first of all, we would be considered a startup because no one would’ve known our brand. No one knew who we were. So what we did was we used the marketplace one to spread out and grow our brand. We, we, I worked in marketing, supporting marketing agencies. We focused on the marketplace as a groundswell opportunity. So what we did was the marketplace has so many people out there, our barrier to, we lowered our barrier to entry. And the marketplace gives you that easy transaction to kind of acquire and build out your brand. And now what we’re focused on is deepening those relationships through a channel and through additional, uh, you know, deepening that relationship with the customer, going in, cross selling, doing different things, talking about AI readiness, et cetera. So that’s where we different approach. Mm-hmm. Same outcome is really just expanding your reach and we were able to do that in the marketplace, to deepening that relationship and then going into co-sale, going into, uh, you know, bigger, more tangible, uh, sales within, within those organizations. Yeah, [00:12:26] Jason Rook: so I think docs, especially around your point around cloud commitment, from my purview, there’s no doubt right, that marketplace deals. In some ways are larger granted now. So Microsoft, we don’t know what those deals look like off marketplace, right? But what I do see is a lot, um, a lot of upfront annual payments or a lot of upfront deals, right? So what used to be a three year term is now turned into a one year upfront, right? We see that a lot ’cause that customer’s trying to manage that cloud commitment that they have. Uh, we’re gonna talk a little bit later about in integrating channel into that, and I think one of the things that the channel does. Really well is that the channel helps a customer with that procurement journey. And we see channel partners that have just amazing kind of cloud estate practices, right? Where they help the customer make those purchases. But I do see larger deals. Um, I. I would say from a velocity perspective, it’s absolutely true as well. At least from what we see from the minute a deal enters the pipe to the minute it closes. A lot of times we find out about those deals like three days before the end of the month. Right. And which, which might not be typical off marketplace experience. So the, I think those two marketplace promise topics are kind of, have. Positive answers, but I got another one that I don’t, I don’t know where you’re gonna go with this one. So one of the, the promises of cloud marketplaces is this idea of, it lowers the cost of goods sold for the software, develop the development company, right? So, you know, all these promises of automation and scale and those types of things. But when you think about your journey in conversion and selling through cloud marketplace, mm. Have you really seen your costs go down? Have you seen fewer people? Have you seen the deal cycle get easier? And you know what I’m gonna change. I’ll go to Dexter to start this one and let you finish ds. [00:14:09] Dexter Hardy: Okay, well, absolutely for us, uh, we focused on the automation first. So leveraging ai, having a small team that can punch way above our weight with regard to being able to deliver our solutions are out there. Again, you have this 24 hour salesperson that’s pushing that out. Our costs of goods sold are not increasing relative to the amount of, uh, expansion and growth that we’re seeing in our organization. And that’s really been a powerful thing for us. [00:14:40] Dux Sy: So for us, not yet. So for us, the velocity is faster. And I think this is where we’re different because a lot of our, uh, marketplace transaction are private offers. So the idea is we’ve done the work. We pitch, we sold and we created this private offer for transactional purposes. So a lot of the backend is still the same, but what it does help is just the velocity. [00:15:06] Jason Rook: Okay. So I would, I would say my perspective on this particular marketplace promise has a lot to do with. Who you are and where you’re coming from. So in Dexter, your, your situation, you’re more of a startup. Right. And I know your business, you have lots of different skews, but I think more of the startups that I talked to, like the ones that come outta the Microsoft ISV success program mm-hmm. Where they, they. Kind of, they’re born in the marketplace. We used to term them born in the cloud, right? But they’re kind of born in the marketplace. They’ve designed their entire sales motion around it, and maybe they have one, two simple SKUs, right? That that’s it. And I think they see that as a lower cost of good sold opportunity. When I talk to the big guys, the household names, the NetApps, the Palo Altos of the world, that’s not the case, right? They have hundreds of SKUs, hundreds of agreements. Um, they’ve, they’ve got everything they do as a custom private offer deal. Mm-hmm. And so I don’t think they’re realizing just like you, much like you docs the, the lower cost of good sold promise of, of cloud marketplace today. Um, so let’s, let’s move forward to kind of building off that cogs conversation into shift of your sales force. Right. Um, and I think you both have an interesting perspective on this, um, Dexter, let’s start with you again as well, because I think you shifted from a different business model, right? Yeah, absolutely. Um, what, what’s the shift of Salesforce look like for you with cloud Marketplace? [00:16:28] Dexter Hardy: So again, cloud marketplace, we are digital first. We didn’t even want to have a representative out trying to sell our product first. Because we were changing from an SI to an ISV. This was a new model. Obviously we wanna prove it out, but the proof is in the pudding to use a southern term. We are, we are benefiting from that 24 7. It’s right there in your face. It’s click to add, you download the product or deploy the product to the cloud. And it moves like our time of our customer acquisitions, three to 400 downloads a week, like customers are quickly. Able to acquire and move with our solution. So for us, we wanted to go there first, and then what we add on that, which was brought out another section is customer set. Right? We make sure we follow up and then that’s where we do our cross sale or deepen that relationship and then do co-sell from that perspective. [00:17:26] Jason Rook: So what about you Dux shifting that sales force that you already had in place for 20 years? [00:17:30] Dux Sy: That’s right. So, uh, we’re, we’re in this great transition, so I would say. Marketplace. And frankly, all these uh, new cloud models is a catalyst for us. So, as we’ve said publicly, we’re really pushing to shift our business to be very channel focused. Not to say we’re going to, uh, uh, forgo our current sales organizations ’cause we still have a lot of great customers around the world that are enterprise level, that our sales teams we need to focus on. But what’s happening today, even a lot of our enterprise sellers. They recognize the value of the marketplace because it can accelerate deal velocity. So that’s one. But then knowing that the future for our organization is really support a lot of our partners, the, the understanding and also the value our organization putting on marketplaces is continuing to grow. So I can see eventually there’s gonna be a, a huge shift, regardless if it’s our direct sellers or our channel team. Uh, but we’re in that transition phase, right? [00:18:31] Jason Rook: So what do you think’s the bigger leap for your direct seller sellers? Is it the leap to understand marketplace transaction model? Or is it the leap to selling better through channel? [00:18:45] Dux Sy: I think, are you asking which one would come first? [00:18:48] Jason Rook: Yeah. [00:18:49] Dux Sy: I think it’s, it’s actually both happening at the same time. ’cause a lot of them are seeing the value today. Like for example, a lot of our top customers are big Microsoft customers. So they’re seeing, wait a minute, my sales cycle is much faster if I go through the marketplace. So everybody’s excited about that. But then at the same time, on the channel side, this myth that channel is for mid-market and SMB, it’s not quite true anymore because even there’s a lot of channel partners working with enterprise customers. So that’s very attractive for our direct sellers too. [00:19:26] Jason Rook: Um. So let’s, let’s move forward to another question, and I’m going to, I think it’ll, especially at, uh, ultimate partner, we use the term co-sell a lot, right? And I think at, especially at Microsoft co-sell can both be a noun and a verb, right? So the verb is going out and selling jointly with everybody in this room. The noun is the program, right? So, um, you guys have both participated in co-sell the Noun or the program for several years. And today in the Microsoft world, that’s a very Microsoft specific cloud marketplace question. But, um, co-sell is marketplace, right? You can’t do one without the other. I’d love to get Dexter, we’ll start with you. I’d love to get your perspective on what co-sell and marketplace is changing in your business. Good and bad. [00:20:11] Dexter Hardy: Okay. So I think just speaking from our journey, um, you have to be at a certain level. Of sales within an organization to even think about co-selling. And a lot of people miss out on, you know, are people buying your product now? Well then co-selling is not gonna work for you, right? So you have to have a certain level of critical mass that you’ve been able to obtain within your organization, and then you activate that part of selling. So that’s the first thing that I would say. Is it good or bad? I think it’s great because now you have the ability to amplify. And get those relationships built deeper across, uh, organizations where you may only be in one business unit now, now you have an enterprise agreement. So I think, you know, combining the Mac, telling the story that you, you know, you have this critical mass within your organization. Hey, company, we’re over here. You’re, you’re using us, you can pay down your Mac. You have the, don’t go in the store and pay cash. You have a coupon. That’s what a Mac is. I always tell people that like, it’s like. You have a Publix coupon, go with the coupon. Don’t go spend cash, right? So just making that awareness for your customers so that they understand the value of your solutions and how they can leverage that to save, uh, potential dollars. [00:21:29] Dux Sy: I haven’t seen those Sunday paper coupons in a long time. It’s all digital now. It’s [00:21:34] Jason Rook: all it all digital. Yeah. So docs, um, yeah. I mean, endpoint’s been a co-sell Yeah. Partner of Microsoft for years, right? Mm-hmm. Um, what’s your experience been as, as you’ve shifted this model and as you, the Microsoft sellers that you’ve known for Yeah. Decades, right? Shifted it to the new co-sell model. I think it’s [00:21:52] Dux Sy: great. I think first of all, right, speaking of the Mac again and again, not to belabor my point, it. Increases the velocity because with co-sell marketplaces, customers, they just want to draw from their Mac. That’s number one from our Microsoft counterparts. It hits their a CR and they would walk us in because they know, oh, your solutions are a marketplace. It’s gonna help me, it’s gonna help you. The third part, it just broadens our sphere of influence at that point. And while we, we may be a, a larger ISV since we’ve been around 20 years compared to others, but there’s. A big market out there. There’s a lot of customers out there that don’t know us, um, and, and they see us and we can take advantage of it. [00:22:37] Jason Rook: So I, I, I think I would echo both of you. I think the interesting part about co-sell is in the marketplace world is that it does have clear and accountable. Um, alignment to seller compensation, right? Mm-hmm. So that has changed a lot of the relationships. I think the other thing, and I’ve talked about this at Ultimate Partner before, is it’s moved the cheese for a lot of traditional Microsoft partners. Mm-hmm. Um, especially those that are not software development companies that are more systems integrators, GSIs, MSPs, VARs, those types of partners, whatever acronym you wanna throw on them that have always struggled to have a relationship with Microsoft. Um, because they were, um, VMware reseller, a Cisco reseller, and Microsoft wasn’t the top of their line card. Um, now those channel partners are selling massive ISV deals through marketplace. Mm-hmm. And they’re bumping out some of the more traditional Microsoft partners that were there at the table because they had relationships. And I think that’s an interesting trend. That’s only gonna continue as we see this marketplace momentum. Uh, go on. [00:23:42] Dux Sy: I want to add to that, and that’s, I think, where the future promise is, right. It’s this better together partner to partner story. It’s the, the ability to do multi-partner offers. And, and that’s a lot of the things we’re working on today. And what, what really, uh, gives us that good combination, be it an ISV, an si, an MSP. So I think that’s where there’s a lot of room for growth in that aspect. [00:24:04] Jason Rook: So let’s just jump into that top area right now. Doc, you, you’re, you’re trying to really flex this channel muscle. Tell us a little bit more about what you’re doing with multi-party private offer and embedding channel in your sales. Sure. [00:24:17] Dux Sy: Uh, so we work with a lot of different partners in different shapes and sizes, and the team has done a phenomenal job with putting together multi-part offers. Some of them we may be behind the scenes that the partners just going forth, so, so a very specific example. So we talk about ai. We all know that the holdup of ai. Is not because of ai, but because of poor data. Right? [00:24:42] Dux Sy: And you can see all these reports, you know, copilot pilot stays there. It’s just a pilot. And the challenge is not because of copilot, but the data states not ready. You know, you have 40-year-old TPS reports that’s sitting there, right? Uh, oversharing is a problem. So all these things, right? So what we’re working with a lot of our partners today is, Hey, this is an opportunity. If you do services around migration or cloud protection, introduce a new service around ai, data security, and let’s put it together in the marketplace as a multi-partner offer. So people can click, Hey, I want AI data readiness or co-pilot confidence, whatever you want to package it as. So those are some of the things we’re working on and it’s really exciting ’cause it’s, it’s introducing a new line of service for our partners to expand their business in. Yep. [00:25:33] Jason Rook: So Dexter, you and I chatted about your channel strategy, right? And when I look at your marketplace business that I would say today, I’ll just say it’s not very channel heavy, right? And it’s super attractive marketplace business to me, right? So I’m, I, my question was why are you gonna go down that path? So I’d love to know more about what you’re thinking about how you’re gonna grow utilizing channels and marketplaces together. Right? [00:25:54] Dexter Hardy: So the first thing that we focus on again, is, are, do we have, and are we adding value? With our huge span of customers and the amount of usage that we’re getting on it, that answer, that answers hand, hands down. Yes. So now what we look at as a channel partner, our solutions help sis do their job. That’s what we cut our teeth on. That’s what we were. And so that’s how we started as an organization. So now it’s just getting the word out to other sis. We can help you reduce your cost and be more profitable by leveraging our solutions. So selling through the channel becomes the opportunity through a multi-party private offer. Through that channel relationship to say, Hey, we’re not competing with you Big five three, whichever consulting you are now, right now. Right. So where we’re looking to partner with you one to give you more, um, profitability margin. You know, you look at margins, you can say, Hey, this is how we get here faster to. That a CR that you’re looking to get to become a better version of the partner program. ’cause there is A-A-K-P-I that you need to get. You get that because now we’re sharing, and now that becomes part of your KPI as well. The third piece is, well, it’s a big pie, right? Even if we’re looking at, we’re talking about trillions of dollars, the law of large numbers, we multiply any percentage times a trillion dollars. That’s a large number, right? So that’s how we look at. Holistically growing that market. And so instead of having just one line of business or one way to go to Market Channel adds another growth opportunity for us and also partnering through the MPL. [00:27:34] Jason Rook: So I think there are probably some software development companies that have tuned into this or even in the room today, um, that are still thinking or still really early on their particular journey. Right. Yeah. And I think one of the things that if you’re in that case, you might have some questions about. The utilization of a public offer versus a private offer. Right. We usually, we refer to public, our private offer as a custom deal. Mm-hmm. Um, and I know both of you have different perspectives on that or different levels of success. Um, Dexter, let’s start with you. Public offer and private offer. Your business has been very good, which is public offer, right? We are public all the way. Yeah. [00:28:14] Dexter Hardy: Okay. So, and I, I, I say we start public all the way again. That barrier to entry. Customers don’t know your name. You gotta build your brand, you gotta build your momentum. You get out there, you’re acquiring customers, you know, 33, 33 government agencies, you know, over 160 countries. And now you can then build on that second layer, right? Which is the private offer. You can say, Hey, X, Y, Z customer, you’re, we see you’re using all of these solutions. It would make sense to do this private offer with us, as opposed to. We don’t have a name, we don’t have a brand. We come in with our sales person and we’re saying, Hey, come do business with us. No, you don’t even have the credibility to do that. But now, because we’ve taken that ground soil approach, we’ve gone out, we’ve, you know, built out our brand using public offers, now we can then step into that next tier. [00:29:05] Jason Rook: So, so ducks, from your perspective, WI, you, it sounds to me like you’re mostly all custom deals. [00:29:13] Dux Sy: Today. Correct. So a lot of our deals, ’cause it’s the nature of deal size, a lot of ’em are very large and we have custom private offers, but long term we want to build our muscle in the public offering and especially a lot of the new solutions we’re, we’re coming out with. [00:29:27] Jason Rook: Yeah. I think my perspective is, I’ll, I’ll say in the, in the Microsoft commercial marketplace, um, if you think about revenue wise, definitely private offer is king, right? And 17 times larger than public offer deals on the whole. But what you do see is. ISVs or software development companies that do have the, your story, Dexter. And again, back to the way I kind of framed you up when I see that they’re mostly those that started in cloud marketplace. Right. And they’ve been that way forever. I think we’re still in this phase. I know early majority, you know, that we’re there, but we’re still in the space where I think customers come to the marketplace to buy, not to shop. Mm-hmm. Still. Um, and if you think about the ones that are really coming here, they’re coming to draw down their cloud commitment from some hyperscaler. And they’re, they know kind of what they’re looking for in most cases. And I, I think even with you, Dexter, they know what I mean. ’cause the solutions you saw are really unique. Right. If I’m looking for Bantu or something like that, I, I am gonna find that I’m not just coming out to the marketplace, say, oh, who has something I could buy today? Right. I don’t think we’re there yet. I think in the future when we get more further down the path that Jay kind of outlined today with microservices and that type of thing mm-hmm. I think there’ll be more of that shopping. But the most successful ISVs today are. Are really wrapping around that, that custom story, or they have, I would say you have very clear and unique offers in the marketplace. Dexter. Yeah. [00:30:48] Jason Rook: Um, so there’s a lot of work here that you guys have put in to get into cloud marketplaces, a hundred marketplaces for you, DS and, you know, in Dexter. Um, I’m sure. Let’s, let’s just ask right now, what’s your strategy around multi-Cloud Dexter? We’ll start with you. [00:31:04] Dexter Hardy: So, um, I’m a huge proponent of doing one thing really well, first. And then expanding on it. So we focused, we Microsoft partner, we focus on Microsoft. We’re doing that really well. Our customers are in AWS and GCP. So we are moving out into those ecosystems based on what we see our customers, where our, where we see our customers. Mm-hmm. So that way we’re able to give them a full picture of how we can support them. If they chose us over here, they know that they’re gonna do the same quality across every cloud. Uh, so that’s our approach is just not that we are saying, Hey, let’s just, you know, go out and, you know, shotgun approach just kind of go everywhere. But no, it’s a systematic, we’re doing this really well here. Our customers are there and so we’re, we’re following our customers [00:31:54] Jason Rook: docs. How, how are you handling them? [00:31:56] Dexter Hardy: Cloud? So for [00:31:56] Dux Sy: us, I think the, the driver for us to invest in marketplaces is not necessarily direct customers. So when we started this journey, this is way before mm-hmm. Um, uh, Microsoft Marketplaces is we were committed to growing the channel, and we know a lot of our partners transact through marketplaces. So that’s how our marketplace journey started. However, through time, uh, especially through AppSource, anybody remember AppSource or it still [00:32:24] Dexter Hardy: exists [00:32:25] Dux Sy: as your marketplace, right? Did I just say, do they remember? Okay. Um, but through Azure Marketplace, we have a lot of large customers really transacting there. So that’s our direct side. So, so we look at it, uh, two-prong approach, right? We scaled fast because we wanna make sure we want to meet our, uh, channel partners where they are. But then now as customers are really buying and transacting to marketplace, we’re also serving them, um, in these marketplaces as well, right? Multi-cloud. Absolutely. That’s part of our growth strategy as well. Cool. [00:32:55] Jason Rook: So a another question for maybe those that are early in their journey with cloud marketplaces, especially if you’re a software development company. And I think today we have, um, we have this ecosystem that continues to evolve that we, at Microsoft, I think we’ve thrown a title on ’em. Then in a lot of the other hyperscalers have, have as well, we’re calling them the enablers, right? So we, one of those keynote sponsors here at UPL is sugar. Um, you know, you got tackle, we transact Azar work span. Every day I get a new email from another enabler. Um, I don’t think either one of you used an enabler yet, but you both have different opinions. And Dex I’ll start with you and then Dexter, you can kind of give us your opinion on the enablers. Like where do they play for you and where don’t they? [00:33:34] Dux Sy: Correct. So I think what the enablers are doing, uh, for, for marketplaces are fantastic. And I think when we started our journey, uh, and, and maybe a lot of them haven’t, didn’t exist yet. We had to figure this out. So we thought, boy, we’re in this business for 20 years. We figured out how to grow direct, working with large customers, government agencies. We can figure this out. Right? Which we kind of did and we’re doing today, but it’s, it’s work, right? It’s, it’s, we have a whole team doing all the different pieces that needs to be done, marketplaces. Whereas I can see for, let’s say you’re a startup, you want to scale, you want to interact with different marketplaces, and you don’t have that team. I think enablers are, are uh, uh, fantastic partners to work with. It. [00:34:18] Jason Rook: So Dexter, what’s your take on the enabler [00:34:21] Dexter Hardy: ecosystem? So we personally do not use enablers. Um, and again, that’s, that was our choice from a startup perspective. You know, price point being a barrier. You need to, as a, as a startup, you have so many other barriers in front of you. If technology is your strong suit, which was ours. A lot of it we kind of understood. So we leverage our own internal knowledge to go to market and, and, and take that, take that step. So if it’s not your superpower, obviously the enablers are going to get you there quicker, faster. And so you can, you know, justify that cost. But for us it was a scenario where, okay, we already understand how to deploy the, to the cloud. We understand what the, what the rubric is, so why add that additional cost to our. Additional stack. Right. So for us, we, we chose to go net new on our own. Mm-hmm. And so that’s allowed us to kind of build faster, quicker, because we don’t have to integrate with something else. Right. We automated that. And we do use copilot. We use creating our own agents as well. So, uh, like I said, we’re leveraging technology to deliver technology. Okay. [00:35:30] Jason Rook: Yeah, I’d say, you know, from my perspective, I think. Hmm. A couple things. I think, again, I mentioned the, like the larger, more historical household names, security and data providers. Um, definitely when they have legacy business and they’re bringing it over and they have, you know, hundreds of SKUs makes a lot of sense. Um, I think the next evolution of that whole group will be the additional value they provide, right? Mm. So, you know, everything from, like we talked earlier about just the. The effort to put together private offers and the effort to do that with a channel partner and, and those types of things. Um, the effort to track that business, Dexter, when you go multi-cloud, maybe that’ll push you over the edge, right? So I think there’s, that ecosystem will continue to evolve a little bit. So, you know, we wanted to save about 10 minutes for some questions. I’m gonna just ask you, you know, for some parting thoughts for the, the audience, like what, what would you like the audience to take away about your journey that might help them out in Dexter? I’ll start with you. [00:36:30] Dexter Hardy: Okay. Um, well, as an, as an entrepreneur founder of a business, obviously you have to take calculated risk and emphasis on the risk side because you know the market is changing. What will used to seem steady is changing rapidly. AI is just making that faster so, you know, have confidence in what you’re doing. Focus on being 1% better, do one thing really well and you will be just fine. Yeah, [00:36:59] Jason Rook: ducks. What [00:36:59] Dux Sy: would for me, uh, three quick things, right? Number one, who’s your audience? Who’s your market? Are you selling direct? Are you selling or you want to do partner to partner? So once you’re clear of that, then you decide which marketplace you want to go to. I, I agree with Dexter, right? Focus, at the very least, go, go with the top three hyperscalers, and if solutions would. Would support those audiences in the three, uh, marketplaces and or four go for it. And then last, but not the least. As you build that muscle, then think of scaling through channel. Right? Yeah. [00:37:33] Jason Rook: Good. So we’ve got about 10 minutes left. Let’s, uh, let’s open it up to some q and a. I know there’s microphones and we already, oh, cloud marketplace. We have ’em stacked up. [00:37:42] Question: Yes. Yes. Uh, so first of all, I, I want to say this was a really, um. Really great contrasting conversation, the two different parts of having success in the marketplace. So absolutely amazing. Um, I’ve got kind of a two part question, uh, because I think it’s really important for a lot of ISVs to hear this experience is, and, and I’ll start with that point because it’s something I have familiar, uh, fam I’m familiar with. Um. A procured app app Point back in 2018, 2019, brought it into a big bank. Um, it was purchased through Kaizen, which was a partner of your all’s Microsoft brought in great experience. Um, so I can see the benefit and I can hear everything that you’re doing is, is exactly what, uh, ISVs need to be targeting in terms of co-sell. So congratulations on that. I love to hear all the progress that you guys are making. Um, my question for you is, it’s something that I run into all the time with with companies is we hear these, we hear these ISVs just say, you know, our product is just our product. It’ll never be anything other than custom. We’re always just gonna do private offers. They just dismiss the, the frictionless type experience that you can get it in, in a marketplace. Like what, what you’re seeing with Dexter. And so, you know, it’s one of those things you, you hear repeatedly and I see at point you, you’re having a whole lot of success with co-sell. But what type of obstacles are you up against in terms of getting the alignment inside the organization to actually start working towards PLG motions mm-hmm. That are going to enable you the way that Dexter is because you’ve got that, you know, that, that, uh, contrast. Yep. Where a startup is born in the born in the marketplace, natively deployable. You’ve got that experience and then you’ve got more legacy systems that are extremely customizable. And rely on private offers and, and yet stay away from growing towards that trajectory. Mm-hmm. So I’m curious from, from your standpoint, what are those obstacles? How are you bringing that to light inside the organization? Mm-hmm. To, to make that change? Yep. And then my second question, so I’ll, I’ll tee you up, Dexter, is what is it that you’re seeing with the click to deploy type mechanisms, the public offering that you offer? What is it that you’re seeing? That’s creating the most success for you because I think, um, it’s really important the experience that customers have. It’s not just about finding your product, it’s being able to be easy to use, try then buy. So I’m curious, you know, what has been successful for you? Um, what’s your name, sir? Justin Murphy. [00:40:12] Dux Sy: Justin, thank you. I love your glasses. [00:40:14] Question: Oh, thank you. I like your suit. [00:40:15] Dux Sy: Okay, so fantastic question and uh, maybe let me preface it with this. I think. I think what I love about it, I, I’ve been here 12 years and, uh, I think this is like the best year I’ve been here with all these changes in the growth. So AppPoint started and, and I, I share this and I’m not, you know, I’m shamelessly plugging this, but I think AppPoint is the only ISV started with two people building the first SharePoint migration solution in 2002 in a public library in New Jersey. Fast forward today that went public. We went public on the backs of Microsoft. So thank you Microsoft. Right? And and the reason why is App Point’s a very entrepreneurial organization. Now we start our business with the enterprise, like enterprise is the hardest nut to crack and we cracked it and we’re continuing to do well. That’s great. And we realized though, to scale and to grow, we gotta do channel. We gotta hit. Those what folks with the SMC audience. But we can’t do it. We can’t hire enough people to do it. ’cause we gotta focus on the enterprise. And from a change perspective, pivoting, I would say we we’re pretty up for that. As Dexter mentioned risk. We love risk. Right? When, when, uh, Microsoft back in 2010 announced, Hey, we’re gonna go full B pause if you don’t know what that is, you weren’t born yet. This is the granddaddy of 365. And they reach out to us, say, Hey, we’re gonna go full on the cloud, but we need partners like you to build on the cloud. We said, yes, we’ll do it. And then when they shifted to, uh, subscription, we did it. That was a big jump. ’cause back then everybody was like, what are you smoking subscription? Ha ha ha. Nobody’s gonna pay monthly. Right? And then, and then this idea of scaling our platform globally, we’ve done it. So we’ve done all the hard work. And a few years ago we realized. We got to invest heavily in the channel in which we have. So certainly we start and say, Hey partners, we’re in the marketplace. Here’s our solution. Enterprise grade solution, now available to SMC. Great. But we didn’t stop there. We listen, partners like this is great, but uh, we have a lot of partners and it’s so manual. We need multi-tenant management, we need workspace governance. We need, you know, risk monitoring. We need like a full knock so we can see all the different clouds environment. And we built it. So we have a fantastic partner specific platform called Elements Platform, and we, we just bought a company a few months ago to integrate with that and we’re gonna continue to grow and invest and double down in it. So, to your point, right, yeah. Today, at least in the Microsoft marketplace, we have a lot of private offers because we still have a lot of those big customers we work with that they want to draw from Mac. But at the same time, from a, a. Growth standpoint, we’re really gonna invest a lot in our channel. Not not just from a selling motion, but innovation as well. So our partners, not only can they sell more and grow their business, but they can run their businesses better. So our greatest challenge really is just time. It’s, it’s really, ’cause unlike maybe other organizations like you mentioned, how did I, how did you convince your internal leadership? It’s reverse for us. We don’t have to convince internal leadership. You know, you talk about, uh, uh, Vince talked about growth mindset. We live and breathe it. Like, great idea. Go do it. Right? If you fail, it’s okay. You learn from it then, but let’s move on. So really, our, our greatest, uh, uh, thing we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re fighting with is just time. It’s like, there’s just not enough time. But other than that, I think it’s, it’s, it’s a wonderful time to be a partner in this ecosystem. There’s so much to do. Hopefully that answers your question, Justin. [00:44:00] Dexter Hardy: So I’ll start with a little bit of a quote. If we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change, and I say that from a standpoint of being an engineer. When you’re out creating software or building anything, right? You’re thinking about features, functionality, turn that lens and say, what is the experience? Our solutions are set up to help DevOps teams. Mm-hmm. Who someone gets a, they read an article and they’re like, oh, we need to implement this technology. And now that DevOps team is like, oh. What we’re doing, what and how long do we have? No. Our solutions help them with their life experience. Like you click to deploy, like you go in, you need to deploy this. Five minutes later it’s in the cloud, we’re onto the next thing. Okay, we can do those things. Right? You’re improving their experience. So that’s what we started to look at from a, from an ISV perspective, is not just software, but what are you doing to improve the quality of the people’s lives that would use your software. And that’s, you know, like I said, we were sis, we did that. So we knew, oh my God, these people are gonna be raving about this. Right? And then the market proved that out. So I would say focus on, just change the lens. If you’re looking at click to deploy or whatever it is you’re trying to evaluate, it could be, you know, rocket science, which with chat DBT and all the AI tools out there can be really made simple within your solutions. I. You just have to change the lens. Don’t just do technology for technology. Do it for the improvement of quality, uh, improvement within, uh, life experience, uh, and, and getting your, um, constituents time back. So, next question. [00:45:48] Question: So I, I know we’ve been talking a lot about software products in the marketplaces. Um, how do services, sides of marketplaces work? And I’m sure it’s different for each of the hyperscalers, right? But like. Can I, as a services provider say, oh, here’s a 50 KPOC. It’s all gonna be custom built. Right? And then like we sell it through the marketplace, it retires. Mac is, is that, is, does that work? Or is it only for software? Can I [00:46:14] Dexter Hardy: jump in on this? Yeah. If you talk to me afterwards, you can partner with an ISV and do a multi-party private offer that’s transactable in the marketplace. So including the services, right? So let I, let [00:46:26] Jason Rook: me just make, in the Microsoft commercial marketplace in the Microsoft, uh, you can now you can, well, in the Microsoft commercial marketplace in the us, Canada, and the United Kingdom, you can now sell a private, a professional services private offer. Proof of concept 50 K, proof of concept, great idea workshop training, managed service contract training. The only thing you can’t do is the time materials contract within there. Right. Your question though? No, it does not decrement the Mac. Um, so mm-hmm. Yeah. So software sales are the only thing that decrement the Mac in the Microsoft commercial marketplace. Now, all the hyperscalers have professional services capabilities and they all have different, you know, models in which those may or may not decrement cloud consumption. Um, but I think the rule of thumb for professional services providers, or if you’re a peer play si, um, it’s all about cloud consumption. And you can look at most recent AWS announcements. You can look at our earnings report. You can look at all those things. It is about driving cloud consumption of our first party products, so software’s king. Um, and so that will always get the, you know, that’s always gonna be at the top of the list. And I think you’ll consider, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll realize that we continue to provide features to allow professional services in ways that we think pull software, right? So, um. That’s the way I would think about it. If you are a pure play si, which there are a lot of those that have yet to, you know, like I was mentioning earlier, the traditional sis at Microsoft that have yet to adopt marketplace. The reason why you do it really isn’t because you want to become a transactor, although some do, because it is pretty easy money in some ways. Um, the reason why you do it is you want to keep or build relationships with Microsoft field. That’s the reason why you go down the marketplace path if that’s the the business you’re in. But from a proser perspective, yes you can do it, but software will be key. [00:48:14] Question: So then is the buyer buying that private offer and that bundle because they’re getting to retire the Mac on the software side. And then like the partnership that we would strike within the ecosystem is more like, Hey, we can accelerate your journey, right? Um, the customer’s journey, buying your software with our services. So then we bundle that together into a private offer. Customer says, oh, like Mac drawdown is gonna be 10 K, but then I need to create new outlay for 50 K for the POC. Right. Like, it, it, it feels, so when I reconcile that with some of the things we heard earlier today, right? Like $7 for every dollar that goes to cloud consumption, it sounds like, at least with your setup at, at mac, right? Like. The drawdown is only for the dollar. The $7 is like new money from the customer. [00:49:05] Jason Rook: You remember that? $7 of net new revenue that’s attached to that transaction, right? So that could be $7 of product sales, $7 of your services, the whole pie. So if you think about the most typical pro in the Microsoft commercial marketplace today, the most typical. ProServe engagement is, I’m gonna use some names just to make it up. ’cause earlier I think Jay mentioned Palo, so let’s use Palo. So you’re a system integrator and you do a great job of implementing Palo NextGen firewall or an FWS or whatever they call it today. So you go to the customer, customer has a Mac, they wanna buy Palo Firewall, but you’re gonna do a hundred thousand dollars implementation. You would, you would say, I’m gonna sell you a Palo Alto multi-party private offer for the firewall. Or a million dollars let’s say, and I’m gonna sell you my professional services private offer to do the implementation. It’s a hundred K fixed bid deal, right? So Palo’s gonna send you a private offer for your, for the firewall. You’re gonna mark it up, you’re gonna send it over to the customer. So you’re gonna make some margin on what Palo just sent you. When the customer clicks buy on that offer in their Azure portal, that million dollars decrements their map right? You, when you also send, when. In parallel, you will send over your private offer through partner center into their Azure portal. And when they click buy on that a hundred thousand dollars offer, it does not decrement their Mac, but it does end up on their Azure invoice. So the value to that millennial buyer now is they only had to go into the Azure portal and click, click, click, and they’ve bought all that. The invoice is only gonna be one invoice from Microsoft. It’s gonna come with all their other stuff. Um, also. They probably maybe got around some procurement things, right? Because they just went in, did it through the portal with the existing agreement, so it’s a little easier on them. So that’s kind of where you, yeah, they didn’t get the Mac decrement, but it, it is a better story for them We have rowdy questions in the front. I know. I love it. Yeah. So one more question because we had somebody on the chat. I wanna be respectful of the fact that the chat and then we are gonna take a break for lunch for 15 minutes. So, manic rain from, uh, NetApp, you probably know. Question for you Jason. Can you speak to Microsoft’s recently announced SME and C org? Specifically, what changes is Microsoft planning? To make with regard to channel partners and marketplaces. Loaded question. [00:51:33] Jason Rook: So I, I, man, probably we can, we can set up a call to talk about that. Okay. Um, if you’re still tuned in, um, I can’t speak to that today. That was, I mean, you know, Microsoft ecosystem that was recent, so we work in months, quarters, and fiscals, so we haven’t got to that point yet. So, yeah, good answer. Thanks for the question. Thank you, thank you. [00:51:56] Vince Menzione: Thank you for joining this episode of Ultimate Partner. And if you haven’t done so already, mark your calendars. Ultimate Partner Live Spring is coming to Redmond, Washington on May 1st and second. This is going to be an incredible event like each of our Ultimate partner events. This one is going to be just a little bit better than the one before. We’re having incredible leaders from Microsoft. Industry leaders talking about co-selling marketplaces, aligning to Microsoft priorities and more. You don’t wanna miss this event. Sign up today before seats run out. Keywords: cloud marketplace, azure marketplace, aws marketplace, google cloud marketplace, marketplace strategy, isv, software development, channel partners, co-selling, private offers, public offers, multi-cloud, digital sales, sales growth, customer acquisition, partner program, tech partners, ai, data security, cloud migration, SaaS, B2B sales, tech industry, business growth, entrepreneurship, startup, digital transformation, Microsoft, AppPoint, Integral, Jason Rook, Dux Sy, Dexter Hardy, Ultimate Partner, tech trends, online marketplaces, software sales, cloud consumption, deal velocity, cost of goods sold, salesforce transformation, partner to partner, multi-party private offer, channel strategy, marketplace enablers

Why the C-Suite Must Rethink Everything—From Sales to Strategy—in an AI-Driven World How to challenge conventional thinking and how executives must adapt to the current marketplace. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ This dynamic panel discussion dives deep into the tectonic shifts impacting the tech industry, particularly the role of AI and the evolution of partnerships. Industry experts Jay McBain, Janet Schijns, and Greg Sarafin challenge conventional thinking, emphasizing the urgent need for companies to elevate partnering to the C-suite and adapt to the rapid advancements in AI. The conversation explores how AI is poised to disrupt SaaS, reshape revenue models, and even alter the very nature of work. The panelists debate the balance between direct sales and channel strategies, the impact of marketplaces, and the importance of integrating partnering throughout an organization’s operating model. The discussion also addresses the potential for AI to both streamline operations and create friction, with panelists highlighting the importance of data integration and the development of agentic technologies. The panel grapples with the promise of AI-driven efficiency gains versus the need to preserve human-centered experiences, particularly in local communities. Ultimately, the conversation underscores the transformative power of AI, the evolving dynamics of partnerships, and the critical need for businesses to embrace change to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving landscape. https://youtu.be/OkN7nfSLuKY?si=A8q9mu-niYhFZLwL Key Takeaways AI is Disrupting SaaS: The panelists believe AI is rapidly changing the SaaS landscape, potentially rendering traditional SaaS models obsolete within a few years if they don’t adapt to autonomous SaaS. Partnerships Need Elevation: There’s a concern that partnerships are not being prioritized at the board and C-suite level, which could negatively impact companies’ success. AI Will Change Work: AI is expected to significantly impact the workforce, with agents potentially replacing task-oriented roles and digital twins augmenting human capabilities. Revenue Models Are Evolving: AI is driving a shift away from traditional subscription models, with new pricing structures emerging. Marketplaces Are Important: Marketplaces are playing a growing role in shaping buying behavior and influencing which tech stacks and ecosystems are successful. Direct Sales vs. Channel: The panel discusses the evolving balance between direct sales and channel strategies in an AI-driven world, with a potential shift in the calculus of cost of sales. Data Integration is Key: Effective use of AI in partnerships requires robust data integration across different systems and platforms. Human Element Matters: Despite the rise of AI, there’s an expectation that human-centered experiences and local businesses will remain important, particularly in the SMB sector. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain insider knowledge from industry leaders shaping tomorrow’s digital world. Tune in now for an inspiring conversation that could redefine your business strategy! Register – Only Two Weeks Left !!! Register Today! Keywords & Transcript Keywords: AI, artificial intelligence, partnerships, channel, SaaS, software as a service, technology, business, digital transformation, agentic AI, marketplaces, hyperscalers, cloud computing, sales, marketing, C-suite, leadership, innovation, tech trends, future of work, automation, digital twins, revenue, go-to-market, partner programs, tech industry, enterprise, enterprise tech, channel strategy, co-selling, integrations, tech industry, generative AI, cloud computing, digital marketing, B2B, technology, business, software, IT solutions, partner enablement, partner management, tech partnerships, AI trends, autonomous SaaS, agent layer, data integration, revenue production, cost of sales, sales enablement, partner development, channel account managers, partner account managers, digital twin, co-pilot, autonomous CRM, partner ecosystem, OEM partnering, strategic partners, small p partnering, Big P partnering. Transcription: Winter Retreat Panel Audio Episode [00:00:00] Greg Sarafin: I tell you how many people, they think more partners equals more revenue. That is completely the opposite of the truth. Fewer strategic partners equals more revenue. Everybody else should be on your platform. If you’re a platform company orchestrated in your platform ecosystem, when it comes truly to partnering, it should be a very short list. [00:00:19] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, [00:00:25] Jay McBain: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together, managed services will be one and a half times larger [00:00:31] Intro: because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized, and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. [00:00:44] Intro: Can you figure out first what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. [00:00:56] Vince Menzione: Welcome to, or welcome back to the Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzis and my mission is to help leaders like you. [00:01:04] Vince Menzione: Achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. On February 20th, 2025, a small group of industry leaders converged here in Boca Raton, Florida, in this very studio for Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat. What followed was an incredible discourse on the tectonic shifts and the rapid change we’re all seeing as partners. [00:01:26] Vince Menzione: I’m joined on stage for a panel discussion. With Jay McBain, principal analyst at Canals, Janet Schein, the CEO of JSG Group, and Greg Raffin, vice Chairman Emeritus at ey. If you weren’t able to join us in person or on the live stream, we’re bringing this incredible session to you here. This is my gift to you. [00:01:50] Vince Menzione: All I ask in return is that you tell your friends, subscribe. Consider joining the Ultimate Partner community and hopefully joining us in the future at an Ultimate Partner event. I hope these sessions provide you the learnings you need to continue to achieve your greatest results. And now here to this amazing session, I would say Eco somewhat. [00:02:12] Vince Menzione: I just want frame the conversation here. Janet sits on a couple of boards. I’ve asked her to join the conversation ’cause we wanna learn not only what partners need to think and do differently. But what do organizations all up need to think and do differently? Greg has led the largest, I would say, one of the largest ecosystems in the industry at ey, taking it from under a billion dollars to 11, 12, maybe even more billion dollars a year in annualized revenue with a really true partnership strategy. [00:02:41] Vince Menzione: So we wanna get their perspective here in the conversation. Uh, I’m going to start with a little bit of a softball. I want to, I want to go back to these tectonic shifts. Jay, Jay just shared a whole bunch of new information with us. Anything that was most striking from that conversation with Jay? Just now? [00:02:57] Janet Schijns: I think that, [00:02:59] Vince Menzione: just let it, yeah, let it, let’s see. Yep. You’re on. Everybody awake now? Okay, good. [00:03:05] Janet Schijns: Uh, I think that the big thing that struck me in the conversation is how few senior leaders are elevating partnership to the board and the senior level. Yeah, I, I see instances of it. I’m on some of those boards, but then I see a lot of instances not of it, where the, where the channel or partner, um, community and leader is being shoved down in the organization rather than risen up. [00:03:29] Janet Schijns: And I think this is the biggest risk to that Fortune 500 list. You wanna know who’s gonna be off that Fortune 500, less than 20 years, the people who didn’t get to that, elevated to their C-suite. And truly, if you’re not a company whose CPO is in line to be your next CEO. You’re gonna be off that list. [00:03:51] Greg Sarafin: I, I’m actually gonna hit on the AI point since my 88-year-old father asked me about ai. Every time I talk to him, see your earlier question. I started laughing. I’m like, okay, I gotta talk to Pops this weekend. Um, here’s what I’ll say about ai. It is, I, I do not believe we’re over indexing on ai. In fact, I believe many SaaS companies are under indexing on it. [00:04:12] Greg Sarafin: I believe SaaS as a species will cease to exist in five years. Unless it makes the pivot to autonomous SaaS, right? So building the agent layer. If you talk to Christian Klein about his strategy at SAP, you saw the BDC announcement last week with the partnership with Databricks. It is fundamental to SAP and every SaaS vendor on the planet large and small, that they get you to build the autonomous layer in their platform. [00:04:37] Greg Sarafin: Otherwise, you’re gonna build it in Microsoft or Hyperscaler or on video. And then they’re going to become a database in the future because the value capture will be in the agent layer, not in the legacy system of record SaaS platform. So that to me is if I’m a SaaS company, that is the thing I’m thinking about. [00:04:57] Greg Sarafin: What is the autonomous version of me? And then ultimately, what is the services on software version of me, which is the ultimate realization of like what I call the convergence between the SAS market and the professional services market. I could wax poetically about what’s happening in professional services. [00:05:11] Greg Sarafin: Yeah. But I’ll spare you all that one. [00:05:13] Vince Menzione: Well, we’ll go there. We’ll go there. Okay. But, but I wanna clarify in that, ’cause I, I do think that’s an interesting point because today we act, we, we feed the data into the CRM or ERP system, right? Very manual process. And then we act on the data, or we ask, we ask the system to tell us what to do. [00:05:30] Vince Menzione: So how, so how does the agent ai, so the entire, [00:05:33] Greg Sarafin: so the entire SaaS industry exists. To allow really inefficient humans to do things reasonably efficiently and very large multi human business processes. And how does it do that? It creates these little tasks and turns all humans into task reps, right? When you, if you have the misfortune of most of your days spent on a so platform, you’ve had that experience. [00:05:54] Greg Sarafin: It’s horrible. Right? So here’s the problem for the humans in that equation. Yeah. Task rabbits can easily be replaced by agents. Yes. Yeah. That is the truth. And they don’t have to be particularly smart agents. They’re, they’re really an agent based on an R three at this point, or a, uh, you know, a Gemini two oh is probably sufficient. [00:06:15] Greg Sarafin: It’s equivalent of maybe a college grad. Uh, to be able to do those types of tasks, rather things. Where it’s really gonna get interesting is in three to five years as that adjunct layer gets smarter and smarter, and now all of a sudden the intelligence about the finance function, facts function, whatever it is. [00:06:31] Greg Sarafin: Ends up in that layer and the old legacy SaaS database and all of the, you know, configuration files and all the hard-coded workflows and everything else, that’s meaningless, right? All that really matters is there’s a place to persistent data so it can be audited and validated and so forth, right? So it’s going to change tremendously. [00:06:56] Greg Sarafin: It’s gonna start by replacing the humans that are acting as task rec. Rabbits and the SaaS platforms, and it will ultimately be the margin capture in AI will land in two places. It’ll land at the agent layer and it will also land at the base of the stack. It’ll land in what we call the hyperscalers today. [00:07:15] Greg Sarafin: Nvidia will join them, I think XAI will probably join them, maybe Oracle will. Mm-hmm. And you’re gonna have these platforms where, from the data center, floor silicone, all the way up to the top layers of the stat. It’s completely owned by these major players and you’re gonna run your workloads on those stacks. [00:07:32] Greg Sarafin: Right? So it’s a very dystopian world. Yeah. Uh, it’s gonna feel like we have five different purveyors of IBM mainframes. Uh, but that’s the world that we are betting on in terms of how we think about how our business is gonna evolve. [00:07:46] Vince Menzione: So sas, SAS will go away in five [00:07:47] Jay McBain: years. I’ll, I’ll say that, you know, that the fight that the public fight in the last couple of weeks between Mark Benioff and Satcha at Microsoft has been about. [00:07:55] Jay McBain: Yeah. You know, software kind of ate the world. And then AI eats software. It’s not that eats the software, it’s eating the model. The idea when you don’t have as many tasks people out there is you don’t have to buy as many subscriptions. And when Salesforce starts charging you $2 per outcome or per conversation in Agent force, that’s a different model. [00:08:16] Jay McBain: But if you’re already spending $150 for the subscription and then you start looking at your bill and you’re getting the $2 hit. At, at some point, you know, wall Street, you’d love to say Wall Street, we’re gonna charge people $300 per person. Yeah. And it’s just not gonna happen. The subscription prices are gonna start to come down to the people that could actually go in and create reports and do analytics, do intelligence, but that’s, you know, 10% of people that might ever need to go in and log in. [00:08:41] Jay McBain: That’s the head of, of the model, the ui, ux on top. What, uh, Greg is, is talking about, and it’s absolutely true, is that 90% of people are not gonna need that head. Because your copilot or your agent force or whatever agentic AI piece is not gonna come log in and pretend to be you. It’s going in the back door. [00:09:00] Jay McBain: There’s the data, but it’s not gonna know what to do with the data. I mean, with 250,000 pieces of SaaS out there, there’s no way that these big models are gonna understand how the data is structured and how, how they could use it. Yeah. So the workflows that you build on top of the data layer, you know, if you own a channel software text, you know. [00:09:20] Jay McBain: Stack company, you’re gonna, well this data and this data and this data we connected and this is the value. And boy is that valuable to the sales person, the marketing person, the CX person, the product person. And that’s the co-pilot’s gonna talk to a co-pilot and behind the scenes be able to bring that value at the right time. [00:09:37] Greg Sarafin: They all really blow your minds. Imagine a world where you as a manager have 10,000 agents on your workforce, and then you have a digital twin of you. You can call it a copilot if you want, but it’s really your digital twin that is the interface between you and those 10,000 agents because you as a human being, cannot manage 10,000 agents, but your digital twin can. [00:09:58] Greg Sarafin: Your digital twin can then talk to you at human speed, which is a fraction of the speed of talking to those agents where you need to make a decision or you need to be aware of something. Right. So this is a business architecture that’s quite, uh, interesting. Uh, and, uh. We can talk about this at the bar tonight perhaps. [00:10:16] Greg Sarafin: ’cause I don’t think you want to take the conversation this direction. I you’re, anyway, I probably don’t wanna go there. I would just add [00:10:20] Janet Schijns: one thing. Yeah, go ahead. I think if you talk about where your C-suite and your board is having the conversations, they were promised something by the industry. They were promised by Microsoft and other 30% reduction in staff. [00:10:33] Janet Schijns: That’s what they were promised as the outcome of ai. So as we talk about agents and we talk about digital twins and we talk about everything else, there is a check. That was written for technology that the C-suite and the board are not yet seeing a payout for towards that. Hey, we get there, we buy all this meta stuff, and then nothing happens. [00:10:53] Janet Schijns: Buy all this AI stuff, right? What’s gonna happen next? This is where the people come in. The people are resisting the change at certain levels, particularly in the partner ecosystem. As an example, if you have 375,000 partners, why isn’t the first place you look for a digital twin? Your channel leader? Yeah. [00:11:11] Janet Schijns: Your channel leader can’t possibly scale, right? But that’s not the conversation they’re having. They’re having conversations about, hey, especially we could cut 30% of accounting. So that’s again, where you need to change that conversation at the C level in the company to make sure that you’re doing the right thing. [00:11:27] Janet Schijns: It’s gonna magnify growth rather than just cost savings with ai. And I think that’s where the break is right now. [00:11:33] Vince Menzione: So how do we solve for the break? Yeah, [00:11:35] Janet Schijns: well, I would, I was in the channel. I would put together a group of people, you know, think of class action lawsuits, but we’re not gonna sue. Um, I would put together a group of partners and get them a way to communicate to your board and your C-suite. [00:11:47] Janet Schijns: Their voices are being masked, their voices are being shut down. They’re being treated like transactional partners and they’re not. And, and so all of the C-suite and the board is relying on a group of people that don’t know anything about partnering as they make these large decisions. And so they’re bringing in experts that sell the technology, but those experts that sell the technology are telling them things that won’t even work for the actual go to market model we have in our own environment. [00:12:17] Janet Schijns: And so if you’re a channel leader listening, if you’re a partner listening, start reaching out to the board. Start making your decisions about who you partner with by who they have on their board. I look at the boards of some of these companies. They have no one that even understands sales or marketing, much less the channel. [00:12:33] Janet Schijns: They’re hiring channel leaders, partners, CPOs, that have no partnering experience because they went to college with them and they’re friends with them. You need to have the discussion. You need to take a Michelle McBain, and I’m looking at her right here in the front row, who’s an amazing channel person and, and have her voice heard. [00:12:51] Janet Schijns: Have my voice heard, have Jay’s voice heard. Right. Have all of Vince’s voice heard. Get the voices heard by the C-suite and the, and the, and the entire board, or honestly, I think they’re gonna go in the wrong direction. Yeah. Uh, and, and it’s gonna be very damaging. And, and again, I’ll repeat myself from earlier, those are gonna be the companies that fall off the Fortune 5,000, much less the 500. [00:13:11] Vince Menzione: I I do think there’s a skills gap and I’ll, a massive skills gap. And I’ll, I’ll look at the end there. Greg is a, is an example of somebody who brought financial chops into the board, right? Mm-hmm. And I think that one of the challenges we talked, we’ve all talked about this conversation. That the, the path to chief partner officer today looks like somebody who was a channel leader, who became a channel chief, who just took on the title chief partner officer, maybe has some cred in at the C-suite and maybe doesn’t. [00:13:39] Janet Schijns: Right. Right. [00:13:39] Vince Menzione: And that I think is, I think that’s one of the biggest challenges, is that nice [00:13:42] Janet Schijns: titling change and will make you believe that you’re important. And even though we do 80% of our sales through you, you’re not really important. And that’s the conversation you need to push that conversation. If you’re a partner listening to this, you need to push that with your top vendors, suppliers, ISVs, and if you’re a ISV vendor supplier, you gotta push that with your C-suite, push that with your board. [00:14:02] Janet Schijns: You are not listening. You’re, you’re not, and you’re running past your partnering and it’s gonna, it’s gonna really damage these firms that don’t really adapt because AI is, is great, but only if you apply it to the right place, which is your predominant go to market, your channel. [00:14:16] Vince Menzione: I know Jay and I had this conversation, maybe it’s two years ago now, right? [00:14:19] Vince Menzione: About the the new skill. Do you think we’ve, we’re seeing the new skill set apply generally? Because I don’t, I don’t know if I agree we have [00:14:28] Jay McBain: No, I agree with Janet and I spent a lot of time again Yeah. Boards. Yeah. And you know, looking and they’re very impressive people, you know, getting called into these big reseller boards, you know, there’s the head of United Healthcare, there’s the head of Boeing. [00:14:40] Jay McBain: I mean, these are people with ridiculous resumes. And really rich and famous and, and everything else. And I’m looking around the room going, you know that, that’s different. I go back to Janet’s originally original concept. And this isn’t just the technology industry. These are all 27 industries grappling with this. [00:14:58] Jay McBain: Yeah. Uh, one of the things that jumped out to me like two years ago when Apple was doing an iPhone launch, like later in the broadcast, you know, Tim Cook kind of stood up and said, do you know that 79% of people today will not buy a car unless it has Apple CarPlay? I’m sure he meant to say Android Auto as well. [00:15:15] Jay McBain: But imagine, you know, just switch gears and you’re in this $3 trillion auto industry, you know, 63 brands, 365 cars. Yeah. But it’s 120 year old industry. You’re just taking over a dealership from your great great grandparents or passing it down and because of a tech integration you’re missing, you’re about to lose four fifths of your buyers. [00:15:36] Jay McBain: So this isn’t just SaaS companies, right? This isn’t just marketplace. This isn’t the rich getting richer. This is every industry to Greg’s point has to lose kind of this ui ux on top. And I want my copilots talking to my pharmaceutical company, my pharmacy. I want them talking to my, um, all the industries I work in, um, or live in every day. [00:15:59] Jay McBain: And that’s part of every board. Yeah. Great. And I’ll say that there’s a 90% miss. Yeah. In terms of people that will be able to enunciate that and bring it up as a topic of. Critical importance, tectonic shift, inflection point is the best and quickest way, you know, into a board absolute or into a C-suite. [00:16:17] Jay McBain: And right now is absolutely the time. Yeah. [00:16:20] Jay McBain: Yeah. And I would [00:16:20] Janet Schijns: say, I know board seats are at a, you know, there’s not a lot of board seats available. A board advisor, you know, it just get to the point you saw J slide had 117 consultants in it. There you go. 117 people plus the top channel chiefs. That could be an advisor to your boards. [00:16:34] Janet Schijns: Absolutely. And I think the skill gap is just widening and it’s, it’s concerning. [00:16:39] Vince Menzione: And why isn’t it happening? [00:16:40] Greg Sarafin: I think it’s because we continue to conflate small P partnering with Big P partnering. Yeah. Mm-hmm. [00:16:47] Greg Sarafin: So small p partnering is partnering equals go to market equals channel one equals effectively indirect selling, right? [00:16:54] Greg Sarafin: Um, we forget that not every company is a platform company, but if you’re a platform company, you will not be a success. And by the way, platform not just top out, you know, my favorite platform company is Rebi. Go to Home Depot. Bloody thing is a huge platform. It’s a battery platform with an amazing assortment of tools. [00:17:09] Greg Sarafin: And I’m a tool geek, right? They’re auto, Tesla is a platform. Yeah. Right. So you know, generally in this world, you’ve got platform business models and vertically integrated business models. There’s probably an oversimplification, but if you’re running a platform business. Partnering is not just about channel, it’s also about co-innovation. [00:17:27] Greg Sarafin: It’s about co-investment and it’s about extending your platform through an ecosystem of partners and then being an outstanding orchestrator of that ecosystem, right? Which to me is really the center of gravity for partnering. ’cause that also then connects you back to the other side of partnering, which everybody forgets about, which is OEM partnering. [00:17:49] Greg Sarafin: Right. I drive my car, I’ve got my Apple car play, but I’ve got my RO seats. I’ve got my Brembo brakes. Right. This is not a new concept, folks, right? Right. But we’ve somehow, we’ve made partnering small p and I’ve been in many organizations where they have multiple partnering functions, not talking to each other, not realizing they all should be connected to maximize the flow of value through that value chain, and also reducing the number of partners they have. [00:18:13] Greg Sarafin: Because I gotta tell you how many people, they think more partners equals more revenue. That is completely the opposite of the truth. Fewer strategic partners equals more revenue. Everybody else should be on your platform. If you’re a platform company orchestrated in your platform ecosystem, when it comes truly to partnering, it should be a very short list. [00:18:31] Greg Sarafin: So to me, that’s the issue we have and we’re not explaining that to boards. Yeah. And we also frankly don’t have like a CPO if I said, okay, what is the role of A CPO and what is the career path to CPO? And I asked 10 smart people, I would get 10 completely different answers guaranteed. Maybe 11. ’cause one would change their mind extremely. [00:18:50] Greg Sarafin: Right? I pick that one. If I asked 10 PE those same people, what’s the role of A CFO? I get very similar answers, both in terms of the role and the career path, [00:18:58] Janet Schijns: and you know what that says to me. We don’t really have cpo. We don’t have CPOs. Right. The CPO isn’t actually a member. That’s right. The C-suite. [00:19:04] Janet Schijns: It’s a glory title we gave because we thought it might raise our throughput production in the little P by 10 or 15% to have a CPO. Ooh, maybe they can sell a little bit more next year. And I have to tell you, if you’re working with or working for a company, that that’s how they’re talking about the channel. [00:19:18] Janet Schijns: I like that little PI usually call it transactionally. Um, if that’s how they’re talking about the channel, you should run because your career is at risk. If the channel is about just distribution your, your career is at risk. That company’s going nowhere. It really should be integrated into the fabric of your company. [00:19:36] Janet Schijns: Where I would say back in the day, there was a quote from the head of Kellogg and he said, you could take everything we have and leave me the brand and I will survive. And I would say, now you can take everything I have and leave me the real partners and I will survive. And that’s the mindset that they need to get at the top of these companies. [00:19:54] Janet Schijns: Yeah. [00:19:54] Greg Sarafin: Which they don’t. Speaking of channel. Go ahead. Just one last point on channel. And channel is kind of like super sweet sugar cereal. Mm-hmm. Right? It tastes really good and it has no nutrition. In fact, it’s making you sick. Mm-hmm. Okay. For the most part. Mm-hmm. Uh, everybody needs a little cereal now and then, don’t get me wrong, [00:20:15] Janet Schijns: yes. [00:20:15] Janet Schijns: Sunday morning. There are two. [00:20:16] Greg Sarafin: There are two issues with over indexing on channel in your enterprise. The first is, um. You lose fidelity on your revenue forecast and if you’re a public company in particular, but even if you have, you know, LPs and gps that really care about your business performance on a quarterly basis, not being able to forecast your revenue because too much of your revenue is un forecastable is a really bad idea. [00:20:38] Greg Sarafin: Second thing is, particularly if you’re in an industry like tech, where it’s actually not the first sale that matters, it’s the renewal that matters. Selling through the channel typically has a much lower renewal rate than selling direct with customer success. Right. So your, your channel feels good because you’re moving some of your cost of sales. [00:20:57] Greg Sarafin: You’re making it invisible as cost of revenue, as effectively a discount. It’s only two or three points of discount, but then you add a bunch of cost of sales on top of it because now you’ve got a whole team that’s trying to define with those wooden sticks what the actual revenue forecast is gonna be from each of your channel partners. [00:21:14] Greg Sarafin: Right? And we’re heading to a world where the productivity of direct sellers is about the 10 x. Right, because autonomous CRM, what is it going to do is gonna eliminate all of that layer of sales enablement. People that suck at their jobs and can’t enable pretty much anybody, and are a huge drag on expense ratio, expensive cost to sales or sg and a to revenue. [00:21:37] Greg Sarafin: And it is going to now create sellers that actually you can expect to have 10 times the quota that they had yesterday, right? In three years, let’s say. So you actually need to be thinking about. Channel as don’t eat too many of those cocoa puffs, particularly given that you’re about to see a step change in the productivity of your direct sellers in terms of their ability to address the market for you. [00:21:59] Greg Sarafin: Then I’ll stop. I’ll just, uh, I’m gonna jump in on [00:22:02] Greg Sarafin: that. I thought that might get right. I thought that might get right. It’s [00:22:05] Jay McBain: provocative, so I’m gonna disagree with the. [00:22:15] Jay McBain: To determine how their customers buy your category or your industry dictates to you. Uh, I mentioned cybersecurity. If you went with your advice and ignored the 91.6% of customers who bought through channels, you’d be competing in 8% of your tam. If you sell PCs, 70% are bought through Larry and the white van. [00:22:36] Jay McBain: If you decide that Larry and the white van’s not good for you, you’re competing with Dell for the 30% direct. Market by market. There’s 2200 categories on G two crowd of categories that are all predetermined by your buyer and procurement and how it works. Yeah. So your channels, you wanna participate in a hundred percent of your TAM if, if you can. [00:22:57] Jay McBain: And you wanna participate in all the ways that money changes hands, whether it be indirect, marketplace or direct. And that’s one muscle. That’s small. P partnering. That’s the part I agree with. The bigger P partnering is, I’d love to partner with the other six people That’s right, who are doing the co-selling co-marketing, who are doing the consulting design, who are doing implementation integrations. [00:23:18] Jay McBain: That’s right. Who are lowering our cost to acquire the customer who are building bigger deals and closing them faster, and who get us a customer for life. If I can take those six and equate them back to my revenue targets, which is what boards and CEOs and CFOs care about, and do that in a repeatable, reliable way. [00:23:36] Jay McBain: That is the big P partnering. And by the way, every company has to do both. [00:23:42] Janet Schijns: Yeah. So, hey, I’m gonna, so I don’t know if you guys think I should sit between them or like. [00:23:51] Janet Schijns: I’m gonna, so here you go. I’m gonna do the thing. I’m gonna reconcile the two views, right? I think they’re both, I think they’re both right. Yes. [00:23:58] Janet Schijns: So on on the one level, we are seeing a seed change in reliability and how partners, because many of the partners are not commercializing the offer, it’s very hard to figure out, particularly in the enterprise and large multinational space. [00:24:12] Janet Schijns: When the deal’s coming in, if you’re not working it. That’s why folks like I’m looking right here at Partner Tap at Cassandra, that’s why they’re having so much sex success because that integrated selling model is how people are really understanding how they’re gonna get the master kind of massive opportunity from enterprise by doing it with direct and indirect as the old school thing would say. [00:24:31] Janet Schijns: But then to Jay’s point, um, if you don’t do that, if you don’t partner with partners, um, you start to have conversations that sound a lot like funnel reviews. At the C-suite, which means, again, run from the company ’cause they don’t understand partnering. Because partnering is about integrating it through the fabric of your product development, of your enablement, of your sales, right, of your innovation, of your compliance, of your governance throughout the organization. [00:24:58] Janet Schijns: It because it’s 90% in security, it ought to be a core element of your operating model. And if you have flow charts in your company, I always challenge people with this and those flow charts don’t show where the partner tap partner spot is in every single area. Then you are not in partnering, you are in [00:25:15] Vince Menzione: channel [00:25:16] Janet Schijns: to my friend’s point here, channels. [00:25:18] Janet Schijns: So you’re [00:25:18] Vince Menzione: eating Cocoa Puffs, you’re eating Cocoa [00:25:20] Janet Schijns: Puffs, and you’re gonna be disappointed every quarter because unless you have a, a small business kind of package that you know, you get your volume and that kind of even got your, your forecast, you’re being disappointed every quarter. You’re never gonna able to what’s coming in. [00:25:34] Janet Schijns: And they’re friends and they’re gonna hug later. [00:25:38] Jay McBain: I remember sugary cereals were always part of a nutritious breakfast, but you had to have the orange apple and the juice. Lucky Char with all the other stuff that made it part of a nutrition breakfast. Correct? Correct. [00:25:48] Janet Schijns: You had, you had the juice. Yeah. [00:25:51] Vince Menzione: Well, I also think that ignoring the business model in this conversation where Greg is. [00:25:57] Vince Menzione: At the very top of the pyramid. Right. Large enter mostly large enterprise, maybe some mid-market. And I’m, I’m not ignoring the other fourth ’cause you’re right on the channel versus partnering piece. Absolutely. But also as you get higher up in the stack and you have the luxury, I would say, of resources attached to each of those customers that are driving the, the executive level conversations. [00:26:20] Vince Menzione: It’s different than a channel that may or may just come in and accelerate or juice your revenue for a period of time. Right, right, right. Yeah. And I [00:26:27] Greg Sarafin: do tend to buy as big, right in my thinking, right? ’cause I’ve been a big company for a long time and my statements are not meant to address every market segment. [00:26:35] Greg Sarafin: And I do agree with Jay actually, that there are certain companies in certain market segments for, in today’s market, must address the market through channel. They have no choice. I’m also suggesting that the way the world works today and the way the world’s gonna work in five years may be very different. [00:26:50] Greg Sarafin: And so I’m front running that a little bit and there’s no way to know if I’m right or wrong. I’m just telling you the bet we’re making. Yeah. Yep. [00:26:57] Vince Menzione: Let’s, that makes sense. That makes sense. Let’s dive in on that. ’cause I do, you know, you, you, you touched on a AI and AG agentic, and I’d love to see how we talk about this. [00:27:07] Vince Menzione: Like for the hyperscalers in the room. How are we thinking about partner development managers? How are we thinking about partnering in general? We have so many, we’re still using Excel spreadsheets for crying out loud, and we’re doing funnel reviews and we’re having conversations with account executives that are going nowhere because they’re overwhelmed with what they have to go drive with partners, with a group of partners. [00:27:29] Vince Menzione: Again, for every one of their customers, they have to rely, they have to talk to at least seven seats. They have to have all these conversations. They can’t really navigate it. How does AI help us improve that? Like how do we, how do we get better at that through ai? [00:27:43] Greg Sarafin: Uh, I’ll tell you, uh, the perspective that we, we have right now, uh, we believe that we and a lot of our large clients, but I would extend that to any, any customer honestly need to get serious about taking the people cost out of revenue production. [00:27:59] Greg Sarafin: Yeah. Uh, revenue production either needs to be through marketplaces and other automated mechanisms of. Commerce, uh, or it needs to be highly productive sellers, either in your direct sales force or in some channel partners direct sales force. Right? Uh, the cost of sales enablement at most companies, including mine, is outrageously high when you then index it to the benefit you’re getting. [00:28:25] Greg Sarafin: Mm-hmm. Right? I can tell you that I run a, an awesome team of partner development and partner operations people, most of whom I’ve moved offshore. Over the years and then put ServiceNow and other technologies underneath of them to automate all their, I’ve made them TaskRabbits, I suppose. Yeah, to my earlier point, uh, because there was no off the shelf software, we had to build all our own, uh, to satisfy the needs of our business. [00:28:51] Greg Sarafin: That has been reasonably successful. But at any given time, I can only address the needs of maybe 3% of my total sales force across the 160 countries that we operate in. And it is not sufficient. It is too expensive for the benefit we’re getting, and it’s not scalable. I need something I can scale at zero marginal cost to cover 100% of every selling opportunity to any given time, whether it is a partnering selling opportunity and or a selling opportunity where I need to have a deep understanding of a solution that we’ve developed, maybe with a partner, maybe not, right? [00:29:28] Greg Sarafin: So to me, the answer is. All of sg and a that is not direct revenue. Production needs to move to agent capabilities. Mm-hmm. To enable all of sellers and our average bag color should, should have ultimately have 10 x the quota they have today if we do it right, that is our, that is our view and that is our bet on the future of. [00:29:54] Greg Sarafin: Selling it, you [00:29:55] Janet Schijns: know, at least in our shop. Yeah. And we’re seeing the same thing in partners, right? Yeah. The larger partners across the, whether an SI and MSP of, of Iron work or var, right? Um, they’re starting to look at AI and where it can eliminate friction in the system, um, more than where it can eliminate headcount. [00:30:10] Janet Schijns: So instead I wanna repurpose that headcount to build the next great product to sell the next great product to go 10 x um, you know, our revenue, the issue is. That everybody’s doing their little piece products. It’s kind of like when we started putting things in the cloud. Everybody, every single department in a company bought an extra large cloud. [00:30:28] Janet Schijns: Um, they didn’t really need it, but they bought it and they all swiped credit cards and usage rates were going crazy and right. And all of a sudden, at one point in time, the CFO was like, what is happening? Why are our IT expenses so high? Um, and then they consolidated back into centralized it again, right? [00:30:44] Janet Schijns: We’re gonna, we’re gonna manage all the cloud. We’re seeing the same thing starting to happen now with the AI journey across, um, in the partner community, particularly where a lot of pet projects have happened. Um, and they’re not really what’s important. And I’m gonna use a specific example that’s on that chart. [00:30:59] Janet Schijns: You shared the telecom industry. I was the, you know, chief channel officer at Verizon. Um, there’s a massive expense. To run pipe if you actually want an enterprise to have all this great stuff we’re talking about ai, cloud service, the whole nine yards to actually work, it actually has to connect. Um, and so that has been really left behind to a certain extent because the cost is so high, it could cost you $5 million to put a vertical riser in a corporate building. [00:31:26] Janet Schijns: Right. And so what’s happened, innovators have come around like broadband, GPT, who have said, you know what? We can do all the build function up until the person puts the pick in the ground, right? To dig the permits, the sizing, the everything with with ai, and that’s going to not eliminate hundreds of installers and hundreds of engineers. [00:31:49] Janet Schijns: It’s going to mean that rather than waiting nine and a half months on average for an enterprise network. You are going to get an enterprise network in a month. Think about what this does for your level of innovation. So it’s not just a snazzy, pretty hyperscalers and ISVs that are gonna use ai. It’s the the toasters, right? [00:32:08] Janet Schijns: The, the plumbing and it’s gonna get faster and faster. And that pace of speed is what we’re all gonna be measured on. Are we as fast as ai? [00:32:16] Jay McBain: Let me, let me do a real life channel example, uh, in agentic ai. So in the 28 measurable moments. That a customer moves through from, I have a problem to making the purchase and, and how to measure those. [00:32:29] Jay McBain: In today’s world, uh, we live as the products on the internet. So the world of buying buyer intent data, those early moments. And what did they search for? 81% of customers start on Google or now, you know, chat, GBT. Um, where did they move from there? What did they find on Google? Well, they found an ebook, they found a podcast. [00:32:50] Jay McBain: So it’s those early moments. You know, both Google and Facebook have created $6 trillion of value on us being the products and the internet. When you speak in your kitchen, Alexa overhears you and Facebook serves you up an ad two minutes later. That’s 6 trillion of value on the stock market. Yeah. Yeah. [00:33:06] Jay McBain: So we kind of all went to elections last year, 45% of the world and 90% of the incumbents lost. [00:33:14] Jay McBain: And we kind of told our, our elective uh, representatives we’re done with that. So the end of the cookie. It’s creating the biggest change in those 28 moments ever. Another tectonic shift, right? So Google goes and Creeds version two of the cookies, goes to sell it to the European Union, which are the toughest people to sell to, and failed. [00:33:33] Jay McBain: A week later, they lost an antitrust suit in the us. So this was kind of the final, you know, moment. So when you start to look at those 28 moments, especially early, you start to say, well, how am I gonna get to them? Who owns the moment and how do I partner with them? So you use Partner Tap as a perfect example, which is perfect agent, right? [00:33:51] Jay McBain: Not only looking at the two CRM systems for SQLs, but looking at the marketing automation systems for uh, M qls. That’s right. But if I could go and have an agent say, you know, Hey, they, you know, found your ebook, they listened to your podcast, they come to my website and they actually came to my event. You know, just between the two of us, we found four of the first 10 moments. [00:34:11] Jay McBain: Yep. Boy, would it be a great time either digitally or physically. Ushering the customer through the next 18 moments to make sure that we both win. Yeah, absolutely. And in this new world, it’s not just partner Tap. Now I, I have to have an attribution tool. I have to have my, uh, to, uh, my, um, through channel marketing tool. [00:34:28] Jay McBain: I have to have my deal registration tool, my opportunity passing my LEAP app. So here’s like five or six things that I can’t go log into all six and go figure out for a particular deal. All the stuff that’s happening. But boy, could my copilot or my agent go and tap into all these places, put it like in cohorts [00:34:46] Janet Schijns: and Perfect. [00:34:46] Janet Schijns: Yeah. Yeah. [00:34:47] Jay McBain: Um, scenario of, oh my goodness, I’ve now seen 14 of the first 28 moments. I know exactly the customer who they are. I know exactly what they want, and I actually know the seven layers of the stack and the seven people that would be perfect for this. Let me orchestrate the 14 things going on, and let’s go win more deals, but I can’t do it without these layers. [00:35:09] Jay McBain: And I just, in the headless world, I gotta have this data and, uh, be able to execute, you know, within milliseconds. [00:35:17] Greg Sarafin: I’ll also, uh, use a real example. I’ll use us. Uh, we’re working right now with, uh, several of our largest partners and a third party, none of whom I’ll name, uh, at the innocent. But, uh, so here, here’s, here’s the thing we’re solving for, um, in order to replace partner development. [00:35:38] Greg Sarafin: And make it scalable. I wanna say it differently. To make partner development scalable, we need to be able to scale it with ai, not with people. It’s not scalable with people alone. Mm-hmm. [00:35:48] Greg Sarafin: Um, now I could build a bunch of AI on my side, but in order for that AI to really work, it also has to be able to then do work. [00:35:59] Greg Sarafin: And my partner’s systems of record as well. Well, guess what? My partners love me, but not that much. Mm-hmm. [00:36:05] Greg Sarafin: They’re not gonna let me go trade, send around in their patch. Right. And by the way, I have the same view of them. So what we’ve determined is we actually need to work with a trusted third party to sit between us to build the agents to our specifications. [00:36:18] Greg Sarafin: That’s right. And those agents can work both sides of the street, literally. So they understand all my business rules and all of my constraints and, and how to access my systems of record, including my CRM, uh, et cetera. And then they also understand the same thing about the other sites, and they also understand the translation later. [00:36:36] Greg Sarafin: And they also know how to enable my sellers and their sellers to work together, even though they’ve never, they’ve never, never done that before. Right? So that is really where we’re hyper-focused right now, is how you create that sort of. Agent force to use Benioff’s term that works both sides of the organization, but protecting my data from them and their data from me, right, in order to accomplish and then really take the cost out and make it infinitely scalable to do partner enablement. [00:37:05] Janet Schijns: I love that. And that sounds too heady. If you’re listening, uh, here and the audience are on, you’re like, that seems we’re talking headless. That seems like a lot. Okay. But it seems like a lot to do. Right? Um, the simple thing I’ve encouraged people to do is go out and look at the seven or eight. Big partners that you have in your stack, right? [00:37:23] Janet Schijns: You know, maybe your checkpoint for security. Who else is in your stack that a partner would sell? And I know the guys from Unifier are here. They’ve built a cool platform as has Partner Tap, to let you actually integrate with those other parties, the third parties, [00:37:39] Janet Schijns: right? And, and maybe you start there, right? [00:37:41] Janet Schijns: Maybe you start at the very practical, like, hey, if a partner just didn’t have to. From a go to market transactional standpoint, register a lead in nine platforms, maybe that would get us more business. Um, you know, and maybe it would because maybe you’re kind of a pain in the neck to deal with. Um, and so those kinds of platforms that are just saying, Hey, let’s make it one motion for our partners, rip out to Greg’s point, that sales enablement issue where you have to have 10 people just to interface with systems. [00:38:07] Janet Schijns: That’s where you’re gonna see it. And you know, we see this at AV point. Now look, I’m biased, I’m on the AV point board. DS is here and he’s the best marketer in the world. But AV Point stood up one day and said, we’re gonna put a channel expert on the board. We’re gonna go hard at helping the MSPs with their business. [00:38:24] Janet Schijns: It wasn’t about the revenue, but the revenue followed. Right? When the MSPs saw the dedication, the, the things that at Point was doing to simplify their. Life to simplify their business, to help their business make money. The business came with it because the bottom line is partners do vote with the quote, right? [00:38:44] Janet Schijns: They’re not gonna quote you unless you’re a good partner. Um, and while we can sit up here and say, Hey, it’s not gonna be about transactions, it still is half about transactions. And so I would say that the better partner you become, and AV point has demonstrated this, the more and more business you get, the more your partners grow, the more your partners become the top Microsoft partners, because that’s the ecosystem that AV point is in. [00:39:05] Janet Schijns: The more the partners start to use you more and more in their business, the better partners they become. The more big companies now wanna be your partners and integrate into your stack, right? It really comes down to saying, I’m gonna put the revenue over here, as uncomfortable as that sounds. I’m gonna put it over here and first I’m gonna be a good partner and then I’m gonna get the revenue. [00:39:24] Vince Menzione: So I love what you have to say about a point. And, and Ducks is gonna be on a session in a little while talking about marketplaces. In fact. So I, we haven’t really touched on marketplaces in this conversation. We have two of the three are here in the room talking about marketplaces today. So I think it’s a really great, like we have $419 billion in durable cloud budgets today, right? [00:39:48] Vince Menzione: Why, why isn’t it moving as fast as it? I believe it should. I don’t feel like it’s moving as fast as it should. Partners are selling [00:39:54] Janet Schijns: against it. That’s my final answer. Okay. [00:40:00] Jay McBain: It it’s that there’s a couple layers to the answer. Yeah. Uh, one is that 82% compounded growth is nothing to scoff at. Right. That’s almost doubling in size every year. [00:40:10] Jay McBain: Yeah. AWS became a top 10 distributor in less than two years. A distribution business has been around 40 years. Mm-hmm. Agree. It took them two. Agree, agree. And that was top 10. Now we’re starting to talk about them as a top five, right. Joining TD Cynics Ingram, who are 60 and $50 billion distributors bigger than Nike and Coca-Cola and Starbucks and McDonald’s combined. [00:40:33] Jay McBain: That’s the size we’re talking about. That’s pretty fast. And that’s doubling almost every year when you add the agentic models. It continues to grow even faster than that, [00:40:44] Vince Menzione: but how much of it is fulfillment on private offers versus net new revenue? That’s, that’s the question I have. The thing that [00:40:50] Jay McBain: doesn’t change that quickly, which, which you know, is procurement. [00:40:54] Jay McBain: Procurement and large enterprise, especially procurement. In the government, 56% of our industry is enterprise. Mm-hmm. 44% is SMB does turn faster. Right. But SMBs are not buying cloud consumption. No. So to go to the procurement divisions, uh, and the government is getting dozed pretty quickly. Yes. In terms of how they buy. [00:41:16] Jay McBain: In other words, they’re turning everything off. Now. It’s a verb. I like it. And getting everything turned on. So we saw yesterday that, you know, Gartner just got like $5 billion of business shut off by the federal government. Yeah. And nobody looked to see if there was creating value and why, and who and where. [00:41:31] Jay McBain: And all they said is, it’s all off now. It’s canceled, and now you’ve gotta go reapply for the money. Mm-hmm. [00:41:37] Jay McBain: And so it’s just a kind of a 50% cost savings. But procurement is in, you know, dog years. Yeah, yeah. And that’s why it’s happening. And procurement, what you feel is slower procure and procurement has the [00:41:47] Janet Schijns: relationship with who? [00:41:49] Janet Schijns: The partner. Right. We’ve seen this 70 plus percent of the time they’re buying through the partner. The services is leading the sale inertia. So now when you try to push that to the marketplace and cut the partner out, and I’m sorry, with all the love in my heart to the hyperscalers, you are trying to cut the partner out. [00:42:02] Janet Schijns: You can talk to me about your partner program and what you’re trying to do and how you’re helping, but it’s not true. 50%, right? Exactly. It’s not true. You’re not integrating the partner into your marketplace play. So you’re forcing the partner to do the only thing they can, which is sell against you. And then the next thing they’re gonna do is find an alternative and we can smile and say, we’re too big to fail, but the hyperscalers are not too big to fail. [00:42:24] Janet Schijns: We have seen big companies in our industry fail before. So the hyperscalers that get it right. That. Get the partner to understand how it works in their business and how they can use and place orders in the, in the marketplace. Use it as part of their thing, lower their costs, because they’re putting their customers through marketplaces. [00:42:43] Janet Schijns: That’s the hyperscaler that wins. [00:42:45] Vince Menzione: I think we’re gonna hear some of that later. [00:42:47] Greg Sarafin: I’ll just give a slightly different take on marketplace. Different perspective, I suppose. So I, I don’t know where marketplaces end, but I can tell you they have already had a massive impact that may not be as visible to many of these. [00:43:00] Greg Sarafin: Uh, so in our business, you know, we, we sort of go to market by industry and then by buyer, right? So the, the head of, you know, uh, insurance operations at, in the insurance industry. And so it used to be for years that we had a partner ecosystem curated around that buyer. With a bunch of different technology products that we had pre-integrated together, and that was sort of our easy button offering. [00:43:26] Greg Sarafin: Now, if you wanted to piece part it out, that’s fine. We would do that for you too, but we always would come with an easy button. What’s happened with the marketplace is it is so dramatically changed buying behaviors. We had to actually create three versions of that ecosystem. One for the Microsoft stack, one for the Amazon stack, and one for the Google Stack, because clients want the draw down. [00:43:47] Greg Sarafin: That they get through the marketplace. Mm-hmm. And so if you go to them with an ecosystem that has something that can only be drawn down in Amazon, and it’s a Microsoft, it’s a Mac, that that client has a massive Mac and they need to draw down there, that’s gonna be a losing value proposition. So those marketplaces from one perspective are extremely, uh, successful from my per ’cause. [00:44:05] Greg Sarafin: They are shaping the winners and losers around each of those stacks. And then that has a wash back effect on us because we now have to support three different versions that’s right, of ecosystems for each of the solutions that we bring to market. So that’s a different take. I’d share with you all. [00:44:21] Jay McBain: I’ll take, uh, just three reasons why looking forward of all the trends coming together. [00:44:26] Jay McBain: One is the new buyer. 51% of our buyers now love marketplaces. Yeah. [00:44:30] Jay McBain: The second reason is all the models, subscription consumption, and now micro consumption over the next 10 to 20 years. Favor. Marketplaces. Absolutely. [00:44:40] Jay McBain: So this is, you know, your buyer creating change. This is the marketplaces. The one thing I haven’t talked about, which is a major trend is the new buyer, which is finops. [00:44:49] Jay McBain: There’s a new set of people, there’s 24,000 of them now that are 50% trained in tech and 50% trained in finance, and they’ve been employed now between the CFO and the CIO originally to kind of move around hyperscaler workloads to save money. Then moved out to kind of edge to cloud. Hey, should we run, run this on that old Dell server ’cause we, you know, could do it cheaper. [00:45:11] Jay McBain: And now they’re expanding into this agentic ai, which is the cost to the organization of tech, of every company in the world is outrageous. And the boards and everybody else have a laser focus on it. And now there’s somebody that’s trained on both sides and these, if you go to finops.org and, and study this model, these people love marketplaces. [00:45:34] Jay McBain: It this commit, the $419 billion of commit is coming out of Fin Ops because I don’t want shadow it. That’s right. I don’t want managers putting things on credit cards, bringing in security risks and other things. I don’t want our pub, our data going out to public clouds consolidate. This is becoming a center where the CFO and the CIO are both gated. [00:45:55] Jay McBain: And they are reporting up to the board [00:45:57] Vince Menzione: consolidation. Yeah. Yeah. I wanna open up the, I’m sure there’s gonna be a lot of questions and we have a short period, short window time. Mm-hmm. Uh, but for, for the studio audience, they’re gonna get more time with you all later. But questions I, I see. Is anybody up at the mic or anybody have any questions they want ask? [00:46:14] Vince Menzione: I’ll ask you to go to the mic though, if you can, Erica. [00:46:21] Audience: Well first I feel personally attacked by the comment, um, around the nine different platforms. ’cause I work at Microsoft, so it is a pain in the butt. Oh, thank you. Uh, that was not my question though. Um, earlier, uh, mark and I, I don’t know where he went, but we were chatting about some companies are actually, they are not, they’re drawing a line in the sand when it comes to ai and they’re, they don’t want it. [00:46:46] Audience: And I started to really think about that. And I’m just curious, you know, are what your thoughts are. Are those folks just doomed? You know, are they gonna have to pull it together or should there and could there be an uprising of people that are like, listen, we have got to make some changes here. Not just for compliance and safety reasons, but for human reasons. [00:47:11] Audience: And I’m just super curious on your thoughts about that. [00:47:14] Jay McBain: Yeah, I, I, I can take a stab. Two things to look at is, um, the integration first fire. And if, you know, a certain company in my stack, personal or professional life doesn’t wanna play and my co-pilot can’t go and do the work I need and I have to manually go and do things, I’m gonna stop by kinda like today, if, if somebody doesn’t take, uh, my version of payment. [00:47:38] Jay McBain: I, I find a new place to shop. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So that’s kind of the, your customers are gonna force the change on the integration first world. And then, you know, one thing I didn’t say is 50% of the Fortune 500 fail, and over 20 years, 71% of tech companies fail that aren’t in the Fortune 500 and can’t buy their way outta problems. [00:47:59] Jay McBain: 71% fail within 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. So what creates, you know, change? And if you’re not playing in this stack. And if you’re not having that agent and data model that you can add value, you, you know, this is, I, I can’t see a way forward and that’s why this is different than I ot and it’s different than other changes. [00:48:19] Jay McBain: It’s just the way we’re evolving, uh, as a society and the way we’re evolving in business to, I do agree [00:48:27] Janet Schijns: though that there’s going to be a, not a reckoning maybe is too call of a word. You know, back to the Arnold Schwartzenegger. Um, but there is a, a movement among younger people, gen Z, particularly back to the basics, back to hands-on loving bookstores, loving record stores, loving experiences. [00:48:46] Janet Schijns: And I do think that especially in SMB, if you think about shopping local, there’s gonna be a huge return to anti-technology to places you can go and get away from it. Where the robots won’t be, where there won’t be automation, where like actual humans talk to you. I, I represent this myself. My daughter has a PhD. [00:49:03] Janet Schijns: She was in research analyst in this industry. She’s dropped out of this industry and she’s opening an independent bookstore. Why? Because that’s where the money is for her long term. That bot’s gonna replace her as a research agent, and she sees it and she talks to her friends, and she knows that’s where the money’s gonna be in the local community. [00:49:22] Janet Schijns: So I think in the local community, you’re going to see an anti AI kind of sentiment in small business. [00:49:30] Greg Sarafin: Uh, I’ll just do a quick, quick take. Uh. First, I think co-pilots were certainly the place to start, but we’re never gonna be successful because changing the ways people work is super expensive. Nobody wants to spend that money, especially for somebody that does not have easily quantifiable benefits, which co-piloting does not. [00:49:47] Greg Sarafin: Uh, we are a use case for that at my firm. Uh, the second is that in general, companies want to have big returns that are measurable. Not little returns. And so if they’re gonna allocate capital, they don’t allocate capital. They, they, they have capital projects to make big changes to the equation of their value in the market. [00:50:09] Greg Sarafin: And so genic technology, when it is fully mature, I think will be that break point where you’re really gonna start to see capital allocated in large chunks to then change the way the enterprise operates. [00:50:20] Audience: That makes good sense. Yeah. Alright, [00:50:23] Audience: I have a question. We have a question. I have a question for Greg and then I have one thing. [00:50:26] Audience: So, Greg, you talked about how, you know, with agents, sellers, we’re gonna have fewer sellers. They’re gonna rise to the top, but, and, and the channel’s basically gonna go away. Totally disagree here. And I’m wondering, you know, with agents and looking at channel account managers, partner account managers. I mean, it’s the same thing on this side of the house too, on the partner side. [00:50:53] Audience: There’s so much coming out, so much technology coming out that’s gonna do the same job on the sales side as the partner side and trim that fat. But these channel relationships, like the seller, needs to have the needs to have those relationships. But I see fewer channel account managers, fewer partner account managers, fewer sellers, but we’re using agents to really get the right people to the dance for the relationships. [00:51:27] Greg Sarafin: Yeah. I don’t believe channels going away. My point was fairly, it didn’t make it well. Okay. It was trying to be a little provocative here to get him going, but, uh, I like to get rise. [00:51:40] Greg Sarafin: Yeah. Is you gotta think about your balance. Mm-hmm. And you also have to take to account as this genic technology makes your direct sellers much more effective. How do you rethink allocating cost of sales that way where you have much higher likelihood of draw down and renewals as well as potentially a better customer experience if you do it well? [00:52:02] Greg Sarafin: Right. That’s my only point. You’re still gonna have channels and all this is gonna play out. But my point is start thinking about what is that balance? Because the calculus is gonna change a bit for a whole lot of reasons, including how channel will evolve, right? [00:52:16] Greg Sarafin: Right. And these mechanisms like marketplace, not other things. [00:52:18] Greg Sarafin: So I’m just, the only point I’m really trying to make to you is think carefully about your entire go-to-market calculus and realize that direct. Done correctly with this technology can be a much more powerful way to shape the future of your business revenue plus, [00:52:38] Janet Schijns: oh, and I just have to say, no. I’m so sorry. [00:52:40] Janet Schijns: I really do like you. But yet you have thousands of partners who sell seven to 13 solutions to the customer. You are one solution If you are thinking about your direct team, right? You’re one solution. Yes. I would really focus first on empowering and automating and streamlining in your partner community. [00:52:59] Janet Schijns: Because your direct sales team is much smaller. Um, and then you can apply what you learned in your partner community to your direct team. So I’m just gonna flip that on its head a little bit, um, because I think the efficiencies are more from your partner community that you can get them from your direct team. [00:53:12] Janet Schijns: And again, some 28-year-old that comes in and swears he owns Bank of America, doesn’t own Bank of America, the partner probably does [00:53:21] Vince Menzione: final answer. [00:53:27] Vince Menzione: And I wonder, but I have to keep us somewhat on time. Let’s do it. So, uh, I wanna thank each of you, uh, it was really a provocative conversation, which is what I was hoping for today. So we’re gonna have some more talk and then there was a question about marketplaces and ai, and I’m gonna ask one of either Microsoft or Google to answer that question for Jeff Chewy, who is in the live stream and asked that question. [00:53:49] Vince Menzione: Thank you. So thank you so much. [00:53:57] Vince Menzione: Thank you for joining this episode of Ultimate Partner, and if you haven’t done so already, mark your calendars. Ultimate Partner Live Spring is coming to Redmond, Washington on May 1st and second. This is going to be an incredible event like each of our ultimate partner events. This one is going to be just a little bit better than the one before. [00:54:18] Vince Menzione: We’re having incredible leaders from Microsoft industry leaders talking about co-selling. Marketplaces aligning to Microsoft priorities and more. You don’t wanna miss this event. Sign up today before seats run out. up today before seats run out.

Jay McBain Keynotes Ultimate Partner Winter Retreat What are the AI and Tech trends for 2025? Industry expert Jay McBain shows us the future. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this dynamic keynote, industry analyst Jay McBain unveils the seismic shifts reshaping the partner ecosystem, driven by the explosive growth of AI and the evolving customer buying behaviors. McBain emphasizes the staggering trillions of dollars being invested in AI infrastructure, highlighting the vast opportunities for partners to thrive in this new era. He stresses the importance of moving beyond traditional resale models, advocating for a focus on delivering comprehensive services and building strategic partnerships to capture the immense value within the growing service sector and the expanding marketplace. https://youtu.be/TmOg9VK6TKU?si=5h_K7c43_UY69sZC McBain further explores the concept of the “seven trusted partners” surrounding every customer, underscoring the necessity for vendors to engage these influencers to drive sales and market penetration. He details the rise of “micro-consumption” and agentic AI, forecasting a future where partnerships are paramount and traditional sales models are disrupted. The discussion highlights the critical role of data quality, the need for strategic alignment between partners and vendors, and the imperative for businesses to adapt to the rapidly changing tech landscape to achieve “ultimate partnerships” and long-term success. Key Takeaways: AI’s Massive Investment: Trillions are being invested in AI, creating vast opportunities for partners. Service-Centric Growth: Services are outgrowing products, making them a crucial area for partners. The Seven Trusted Partners: Customers rely on multiple influencers, not just vendors. Integration is Key: Millennial buyers prioritize product integration over brand loyalty. End of Resell: Traditional resale models are being disrupted by marketplaces and service-driven models. Micro-Consumption: New pricing models are emerging with agentic AI, changing how services are sold. Data Quality Matters: Effective AI and partnerships depend on high-quality data. Strategic Alignment: Partner and vendor alignment is crucial for success in the new tech landscape. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain insider knowledge from industry leaders shaping tomorrow’s digital world. Tune in now for an inspiring conversation that could redefine your business strategy! Register NOW to Ensure Your Hotel Rate !!! Register Today! TRANSCRIPT Transcript: Jay McBain Keynote [00:00:00] Jay McBain: AI is going to be very good for the hyperscalers. It’s gonna be good for their marketplaces. And if you wanna hook your caboose to a train that’s growing at 30% quarter in, quarter out for the next 10 years, here you go. [00:00:15] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, [00:00:20] Jay McBain: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together. [00:00:24] Jay McBain: Managed services will be one and a half times larger because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. [00:00:33] Intro: Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? [00:00:47] Intro: Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. [00:00:52] Vince Menzione: Welcome to, we Welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. On February 20th, 2025, a small group of industry leaders converged on Boca Raton, Florida to this same studio for Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat. [00:01:14] Vince Menzione: What followed was an incredible discourse on the tectonic shifts. And the rapid changes we’re seeing for partners. If you aren’t able to join us in person or on the live stream, we’re bringing this incredible session to you. What follows is a keynote session with Jay McBain, the industry analyst from Canals, talking about the trends and predictions for fiscal year 25. [00:01:41] Vince Menzione: This is my gift to you. All I ask in return is that you tell your friends, subscribe. Consider joining the Ultimate Partner community and hopefully join us at a Future Ultimate Partner event. I hope these sessions provide you the learnings you need to continue to achieve your greatest results. And now, Jay McBain. [00:02:02] Jay McBain: Thank you. Thank you. [00:02:06] Jay McBain: It’s great when you leave your, with your wife, Michelle, in the morning, drop off the kids, come to a great partner event. Could, could, could life get, uh, could life get any better? I wanna frame up the tectonic shift first in numbers, a little bit of trends and, and the way my brain works is kind of top down. [00:02:22] Jay McBain: Every time we’re given hundreds of billions here or trillions there, I, I kind of have to. Orient myself kind of at a North star. The best place for me, and it’s usually a channel analyst, wouldn’t talk about world GDP, uh, but here we are, 193 countries, uh, ran 105 trillion last year. The good news is, if, if those of you in channels of distribution, 75% of world GDP went indirectly. [00:02:50] Jay McBain: So for all of the dealerships, the agencies, the brokers, the resellers, the retailers, the franchisees. For the gas stations and the pharmacies, 297 sub-industries inside of this take advantage of channels, but not the reason we start with this. The reason is some of the numbers around AI and the tectonic shift are a material part of this. [00:03:15] Jay McBain: So when Microsoft talks about six and a half trillion dollars, this isn’t Microsoft’s cam. You see the word ecosystem in every quote. This is all of our opportunity. And we know in, in the world we live in, the rich get richer. You know, Microsoft moves from a $3 trillion valuation to a 10 trillion. So do most of them, or probably all the magnificent seven. [00:03:39] Jay McBain: We know that we’re gonna create a lot of wealth and, and we’re looking for opportunities for our businesses. We’re looking at opportunities for all of us who have chosen this profession on how to succeed in this really big environment, and not to be outdone. Open AI is talking about a $7 trillion build out of infrastructure in this next phase, this next 20 year era that we’re in. [00:04:02] Jay McBain: So again, pretty big numbers. When you compare that against World Trade, it makes up six or 7% and just to bring it home. For those of you that kind of were working back in the mid nineties, we used to joke that an internet month is like a year, and I’ll say that in ai. An AI week is now like a year I, I say that we wake up like Star Trek Captains now, and we ask for a damage report is the first thing we do. [00:04:32] Jay McBain: What happened in the last 12 hour news cycle, and by the way, if you start to look at 500 billion being committed, a hundred that’s been raised not to be outdone, France comes in at $112 billion. You know, we talk about open AI and the valuation there of a hundred billion. Talk about the four of the magnificent seven coming in and committing on their earnings calls. [00:04:54] Jay McBain: $325 billion of infrastructure. Build out the deep seek that, uh, Vince just mentioned that they built all of chat GPT for $1.6 million. Turned out not to be true. They caused Nvidia the largest one day drop in value in history. $700 billion was lost in value in one day. Until the next day when we found out that these folks are running 50,000 NVIDIA processors, spending billions to build this chat, GPT equivalent. [00:05:28] Jay McBain: So in this daily grind, this daily damage report that we get, we gotta take a little bit of a deep breath, but there’s already $2 trillion committed and raised against the seven. That is phenomenal. The companies that are gonna benefit most IE Nvidia are going to reach that $10 trillion valuation before. [00:05:53] Jay McBain: So not only are we talking channels and partnerships here, we’re talking about our 4 0 1 Ks or our RSPs, if you’re Canadian, and how you’re thinking about who wins in these type of environments. But just to go into perspective, again, the six and $7 trillion numbers are bigger than our entire industry. [00:06:13] Jay McBain: That’s been building for 50 years. Businesses and governments this year will spend $5.4 trillion on hardware, software, and services. In tech and telco. The way it breaks down, there’s about a trillion dollars in hardware. There’s about a trillion dollars in software, and there’s 3.4 trillion in services. [00:06:34] Jay McBain: So services are larger. Not only are they larger in number, but they’re larger in growth services are outgrowing products. Partners are outgrowing the vendors they work with almost in every product category. So this is the opportunity and as we start to look at where these opportunities are in this next cycle, this is the tectonic shift that we start talking about. [00:06:59] Jay McBain: So back to my dealerships and agencies and brokers. 70.1% of our industry still goes to through and with channels. If you happen to be in my cybersecurity, it’s 91.6% gets transacted that way. A key part of Ultimate Partner is obviously supporting the routes to market, the go to market that your industry, your companies within. [00:07:25] Jay McBain: I had a cybersecurity conversation 10 minutes ago, and while you can grow direct and build out product fit in a sales and marketing engine, that works. If you’re in a $97 billion opportunity, that’s 91% channel. You’re not gonna go much further. What got you there is not gonna get you further. So in this world though, there’s another part of this number. [00:07:45] Jay McBain: Last year, by the way, this number was 73.2. So if you wonder why this is going down, because a marketplace, by the way, is an indirect sale, all of the wonderful things Vince mentioned in marketplace is inside this number. It’s just another point of distribution. The big drop in the number is Nvidia. Nvidia is growing by triple digits. [00:08:07] Jay McBain: It’s the, you know, beneficiary of most of the trillions of dollars, a commitment, and it’s all going direct. So there’s no channel involvement in terms of a cash register. But there’s a secondary part of this, and this was kind of a blind spot that we had missed in our industry for a long, long time. I even called them shadow channels back in the day. [00:08:29] Jay McBain: And this idea that, you know, McKinsey would say there’s seven partners that are trusted in every mid-size customer and larger. So who are these other six people who are not cash registers? They don’t collect the customer’s money on behalf of a vendor. And for all of us who have ever ran channels, there’s this incredibly long, long tail of partners and we spent decades. [00:08:52] Jay McBain: Do we cut them off? Do we incent them? Again, we think that our competitors are winning over there and we’re not. It never was the case. We were just, we had, and I was at Lenovo and IBM, we had hundreds of thousands of inactive partners. Just because we’re trying to measure a fish by their ability to climb a tree. [00:09:11] Jay McBain: The partners never wanted to be a cash register. Sometimes they were forced, and that’s why they were on your active list at some point, but they were out doing other things. So this whole idea of surrounding the customer with the seven people they trust became something. And after living through a decade of sales kind of triggering in 1999 with Salesforce. [00:09:35] Jay McBain: Went into 1999, I was a salesperson going into Y 2K doing really, really well. Uh, but you think you were born to be a salesperson. You think you manage your territory with your gut at the end of the decade. It was a science. Your pipeline management, the tools, the sales tech stack, we entered into the decade of marketing, and I remember in 2009 being at cocktail parties, having CMOs joke that 50% of their marketing dollars were wasted. [00:10:02] Jay McBain: They just didn’t know which 50%. And that was really funny. In 2009 until midway through that decade, every 58-year-old CMO got replaced by a 38-year-old growth hacker, and they had 14,106 tools on their MarTech and ad tech stack to bring to the problem. When we exited the decade of marketing, it was a science. [00:10:25] Jay McBain: You knew where every nickel was going, and you had a hundred different ways to analyze it. So here goes everyone in marketing, everyone in sales, everyone in customer success, and everyone in product now realizes that they’re not gonna get to market in front of a new buyer without winning these seven partners. [00:10:45] Jay McBain: Quick story with, uh, Microsoft for example, we’re facing off to a massive competitor with huge first mover advantage with A-W-S-A-W-S had better product. AWS had better pricing. AWS had better promotion, and all Microsoft had in its legacy of 40 years was partnering. The culture had been built from the mail room to the CEO. [00:11:13] Jay McBain: What if we got two, three or four of those seven people to talk more about Azure than AWS? And that was the play that took them to the most valuable company in the world, and now 26 straight quarters. Of growing faster than AWS. You learned in college the four Ps and what companies are learning today, it’s really place doesn’t matter how good your product is or where you’re even priced, so the decade of the ecosystem takes off and you start to arrange all of these partnerships you need. [00:11:47] Jay McBain: As of January this year, we got a millennial majority buyer born After 1982, buys the most of the 5.4 trillion. Their number one criteria is integrations. Baby boomers and Gen X care about your service levels, your support levels, your price, your brand reputation. All that is thrown in the garbage. They’ll buy a product, 80% as good as the competitor if it works better in their environment. [00:12:11] Jay McBain: Integration. First, you need the tech integrations to win. They don’t buy best of breed. When I joined IBM in the early nineties, you couldn’t get fired for buying IBM. Now, I think it’s the opposite. You probably could. The fact of the matter is it’s best of breed. The average deal in the hyperscalers, the average deal in SaaS, the average deal in cyber, the average deal with the distributors today, td, Synex, or Ingram, is seven layers. [00:12:37] Jay McBain: And in integration, first they need all seven layers to work. You need the services, partnerships, the consulting, the design, the architecture, the implementation, the integration, the managed services. To bring all that together, you need the channel partnerships. Depending on what market you’re in, 70, 80, 90% of it might go through those. [00:12:55] Jay McBain: You need those routes to market built. You need the strategic alliances. It’s not just your platform you’re building at other times, you’re gonna be participating in other major platforms. Sometimes you’re layer one of that seven layer stack, you’re the million dollar part of the deal. Sometimes you’re the $10,000 add-on at layer seven. [00:13:14] Jay McBain: You’ve gotta be bifurcated. You’ve gotta build your platform while you’re working well with others. That’s your alliances. And then obviously the co-selling, co-marketing, co-innovation, co-development, co keeping that keeps everyone up at night is where we all are. So this is the new framework of partnering when there’s seven partners surrounding every single dollar within your tam, but vendors aren’t in the middle of this. [00:13:39] Jay McBain: The customer is, this is the way when you put the customer in the middle, that they think about it. There’s 28 moments in green before someone makes a considered purchase. Whether a million dollars in software or buying a car, it doesn’t matter. You move through 28 and mostly digital moments. 75% of millennials don’t want to talk to a human and they’re okay buying a car or okay buying a million dollars in software if they haven’t talked to a human all the way along. [00:14:07] Jay McBain: After the 28 moments, they’re building that seven layer stack. Again, how money changes hands has become the smallest part of, of their thinking. And then the fund starts in subscription and consumption models. Now in micro consumption, in gen ai, we are in this every 30 days forever. So the before, during, and after, and the hundreds of services that wrap around it, whether they insource it, do it inside or outsource it, 82% of end customers are now outsourcing more. [00:14:40] Jay McBain: Then they, um, insourced last year. So managed services, for example, I mentioned was one and a half times larger than the SaaS industry. Managed services is one and a half times larger than the hyperscalers all combined, and that’s just not three of them. That’s Alibaba. That’s Oracle, that’s IBM all the way down. [00:14:58] Jay McBain: This is a massive market in terms of how it all plays out. This is the six, seven, $8 multipliers, which we’ll talk about in a minute. So when Mark Benioff first kicked off Dreamforce with 180,000 people in the audience, he was, you know, very clear. I’ve, I’ve got all my customers here. I’ve got 223,000 partners here for a company that’s almost a hundred percent direct, convinced, 223,000 partners to join. [00:15:28] Jay McBain: I’ve got my employees here, what I call Ohana. And when you walk away today, understand that it costs $6 and 19 cents. For every dollar of Salesforce to get it to work as Salesforce just reaches $40 billion in sales, mostly direct. There is $240 billion to get it to work. Now, I don’t want any customer to outsource all of it. [00:15:51] Jay McBain: You have to have some internal skills to keep the lights on, but I don’t want you to insource it all either. You’re not gonna find the AI skills, you’re not gonna find the cybersecurity skills. You’re not gonna find the deeper skills you need in sales tech or MarTech. So you need to decide on your number. [00:16:08] Jay McBain: If you’re gonna outsource two of that $6 or $3, there’s probably some somebody literally sitting beside you that can do it bigger, better, faster, cheaper, and that’s the definition of Ohana, which he kind of stole from Hawaiian culture. You know, HubSpot, $5 and 80 cents. We’ve got all the big SaaS platforms, ServiceNow and Workday, and others kind of talking at this level of language. [00:16:33] Jay McBain: Again, these are mostly direct companies. Only 20% of SaaS is resold Google Cloud. We’re just writing the update to this. This was years ago, but the update’s gonna be about $7 and 5 cents. Microsoft is $8 and 45 cents, but spun in a way that we’re unlocking trillions. If you multiply that out by their revenue. [00:16:55] Jay McBain: And by the way, none of this is Microsoft dollars. These are all customer dollars. This has nothing to do with our program. AWS is $6 and 40 cents, and they break it down into minute detail of where those dollars go. And when you start to look at where this industry is between 20 and 30% growth and you project, you see the, the things are tipping up over the last top couple of quarters. [00:17:20] Jay McBain: AI is going to be very good for the hyperscalers. It’s gonna be good for their marketplaces. And if you wanna hook your caboose to a train that’s growing at 30% quarter in, quarter out for the next 10 years, here you go. But it happens in our traditional channel as well. So Cisco, I made a post yesterday, um, about this, but they went and kind of took, and they hired Microsoft’s channel chief and now works at Cisco. [00:17:45] Jay McBain: But Cisco isn’t the company you thought it was in in the 1980s. 1990s. Only 45% of their business is now send selling. Switches and routers and firewalls and things. 55% of their business is now recurring revenue. They made 287 acquisitions thanks to Michelle for that number 17 years at Cisco. But here we are, we’re at a 55% recurring company, third biggest cybersecurity in company in the world now with Splunk. [00:18:14] Jay McBain: So Rodney, you know, steps in and looks at 90% of incentives, the gross to nets inside their revenue, which is almost all channel. Goes to those people. The 45% are selling switches and routers, 90% of the money going to 45% of the audience. And they’re creating a point system that just even kinda like Microsoft did two and a half. [00:18:38] Jay McBain: We care about getting the customer to the dance. We care about getting them on the dance floor, whichever way, and then we care about keeping them dancing all night long. That’s the program and that’s the changes. And yes, partners are divided. I spent, uh, the day with the board of one of their biggest partners yesterday. [00:18:56] Jay McBain: Very concerned about what’s going on about this. If you happen to be in resell and you’ve been milking these margins for a long time and haven’t been building a multiplier business to go earn money around the cycle, you’re a little concerned. By the way, all their biggest partners are public companies, tens, twenties, $30 billion in revenue that rely on these dollars from Microsoft and Cisco. [00:19:20] Jay McBain: And Dell and Lenovo and HP and a lot of traditional client server companies. And look at the, and this is just in the last like 30, 60 days, the shrapnel is happening every day when Insight goes and buys. Vince mentioned not only Google’s partner of the year, there’s seven time partner of the year. People scratch their heads because this partner doesn’t do any reell, but does a wonderful job of selling $3 inside that Google. [00:19:49] Jay McBain: Multiplier, then they go and buy ServiceNow’s partner of the year. And then Joyce Mullen, who used to be Dell’s channel chief you thought was maybe a client server channel chief, she goes to Wall Street and says, the future of my $20 billion company looks a lot like that multiplier instead of margin. [00:20:07] Jay McBain: Insight outgrew Microsoft for three years on the stock market because the stock market lifted all $20 billion in value, even though they’re still 98% resell. It seems like their vision is somewhere else, which inspires Presidio to buy this year’s ServiceNow part of the year. You just saw CDW by AWS’s partner of the year. [00:20:29] Jay McBain: You know my time with the board yesterday, you can imagine the work we’re doing now with when you win a partner of the year at a big SaaS conference or a big hyperscaler conference, you take your piece of glass, you get your picture on stage. By the time you get back to your table, you’ve already got an offer. [00:20:45] Jay McBain: And so that’s what people are watching. Now they’re like flying to HubSpot inbound and they’re going to Marketo and they’re going to NetSuite and they’re just like, where’s the partner award dinner? ’cause that’s their m and a teams, that’s all they’re doing now. Because if we could go tell Wal, uh, that changes everything. [00:21:01] Jay McBain: Microsoft did a tour, uh, in fourth quarter going to all their biggest partners, tens of billions of dollars, and basically said, we’re turning the tap off this 23 complicated contracts that we have, these enterprise license agreements. Are gonna be down to one. And Sacha has been very public about, you know, software ate the world and now AI is eating software subscriptions and even consumption is gonna go down as these micro consumption agentic AI and other charges go up. [00:21:33] Jay McBain: There’s no way this is happening through two tier distribution. This is gonna happen on the Microsoft marketplace. It’s gonna be over the next 10 years. The two biggest Microsoft partners in the world are now together Software one and Crayon. Uh, are coming together. The biggest partner in North America Soft Choice just got sold to WWT over and over almost on a weekly basis. [00:21:56] Jay McBain: We’re seeing these moves now happen. So while we’ve talked about the end of resell for decades, it’s now here as your biggest vendors in your line card come to tell you that these changes are happening and the programs are gonna spread the money, like peanut butter. This is it. This is when a 10, 20, $30 billion company, if you sit on the board and you have fiduciary responsibility, you have to kind of roll up your sleeves and do some work. [00:22:20] Jay McBain: Now, you’ve kind of gotta mail it in now for 30 years, you’ve gotta do work. Salesforce helped us with this as well. In their state of sales, they go and talk to all the CROs and VPs of sales. 89% of salespeople in the world now are using partners every day for the ones that don’t, 11% that don’t 58% plan to within a year. [00:22:42] Jay McBain: If you add those two numbers together, that’s the magic 96% partner assist. What does Microsoft measure in all their deals? 96% partner assist. It’s happening here in every industry. In 2024, over half of the salespeople in the world missed their numbers. Tough year. For those that made their numbers, 84% point to partners is the reason why this is a surround environment. [00:23:10] Jay McBain: The numbers outta HubSpot in marketing are 84%. We, we we’re done convincing the world that partnerships are everything and getting those ultimate partnerships set has to be part of your evaluation, has to be part of your job role. And the flood in of partners is amazing. Every partner, you know, every professional services firm that comes out of other industries, 78% of digital agencies are now tech services. [00:23:37] Jay McBain: 81% of accountants are now tech services. I. You gotta go to page four of their website to see they’ll do creative work or do your taxes. They are tech services companies. Got 250,000 SaaS companies. We had over a million emerging tech companies now IOT, AI automation, blockchain, quantum self-driving cars, drones, metaverse, uh, 3D printers, whatever future you want to talk about. [00:23:58] Jay McBain: Over a million companies, 10 million people trying to get into that trusted spot. The seven trusted spots. So again, millions of companies, 20 partner types, tens of millions of people trying to get that trusted spot around the customer to earn that multiplier dollars. And now we’re hearing from the traditional channel people that grew up in the 1980s, grew up in the 1990s, from that August 12th, 1981, Vince, that August 12th, 1981 PC with Microsoft on it are now showing their vendors that they’re doing other stuff. [00:24:34] Jay McBain: Over half of them are charging the customer for consulting, design, architecture work. There’s no margins left to give it away for free. A third of them look like system integrators. 44% of them are developing software. That was a shocking number. These are VARs, you know, from going way back 10, 20, 30-year-old VARs that are using ai. [00:24:54] Jay McBain: They don’t have to hire developers anymore to build software. And they’re, uh, doing the managed services. So they’re doing 3.2 business models on average. So you can’t categorize a partner anymore. They’re trying to be in all the before, during, and after parts. The other part of the research just recently is now the number one thing partners are asking for from their vendors. [00:25:16] Jay McBain: You gotta recognize me for all this great work. I lower your cost to acquire customer. I close bigger deals faster, and I get you a customer for life until you can start taking all the work I do and put in against your own KPIs. Stop paying me just as a cash register ’cause I’ve never been that. And you know, your systems and your processes have never accelerated. [00:25:40] Jay McBain: Marketplaces growing at 82% compounded over the last five years and continue to grow. And I’ll show you why I think we might have under called this, but the underlying thing, we got to embed ourselves in the top 10 marketplaces in the world, the three hyperscalers. The big distributors, TD Cynics, Ingram, arrow, also PAX eight got to embed in Telco, so we got to look at the biggest 20. [00:26:04] Jay McBain: Uh, it was 20. We embedded in 10, but we think 50% of all deals will have partner funding in them. The gross to nets that would’ve been front and backend margins in a resale deal. The the vendors themselves are holding those numbers. True. They could have just gone and, uh, you know, reduced those and pay out 5% or something. [00:26:26] Jay McBain: Like they’re not, they’re keeping the 20% partner offers, which are the private offers. Multi-partner offers distributor sellers of record, and that 50% over time should become 96. So partners are winning inside these marketplaces. But take a look at this, if you want kind of a view forward in this new era. [00:26:48] Jay McBain: Ag Agentic ai, which is all the rush and all the rage on Wall Street, is coming out as a new model. You know, we knew what product billing and telco and tech looked like in the eighties and nineties. You know, Salesforce in 99 kind of disrupted, and then the SaaS industry brought in subscriptions and got everybody else to think about Subscriptions. [00:27:06] Jay McBain: Dell Apex, Cisco plus, Lenovo True Scale, HPE, GreenLake. Then the consumption model of the hyperscalers. We’re now moving into a new era, which is micro consumption. I’m gonna charge you $2 per conversation. I’m gonna charge you a dollar per resolution. I’m gonna charge you a dollar per outcome. I’m gonna charge you 50 cents per photo edited. [00:27:27] Jay McBain: We now have over thou a thousand pricing models because the boards of these companies have pushed them. Before you buy all these Nvidia chips and spend the billions in r and d that you’re trying to say, I need to see how you’re gonna monetize it. It’s not by subscription. They’re not by consumption, it’s by micro. [00:27:45] Jay McBain: And if you think $2 for this and a dollar for that is gonna run through traditional distribution and traditional ways. It’s not. It’s all marketplace. So watching this as a way forward, kind of AI view, 83% of the world’s business data sits on premises. I went and spoke at all three hyperscaler conferences this year, and all of the CEOs told their partners. [00:28:10] Jay McBain: They don’t have the room to forklift that data, nor do customers want it. More of the work is gonna be done at the edge in ai, whether co load or at the Edge Data center in terms of training and tuning. A lot of it sits your relationship with your bank, your relationship with your airline, your relationship with your government probably sits on a mainframe that was installed in the sixties or seventies. [00:28:33] Jay McBain: That storage is not gonna be where the data lake is created and Snowflake or Datadog is gonna be put on top of it. That opportunity for compute storage and networking is gonna happen more at the edge. But let me kind of create the tectonic shift here. If you go back 20 years on the Fortune 552% of companies no longer exist. [00:28:55] Jay McBain: If you go forward from today, 50% of today’s Fortune 500 are not gonna exist in 20 years, half. So when somebody writes the book on failure and they blame the board, they blame the executives. They didn’t see this coming. They didn’t see the turns of the crank. You know, whatever the book says, you kind of look back and say, what and how. [00:29:23] Jay McBain: If you go back on our industry, I mean, if you were there in the seventies with Telco in with some of the legendary software, or August 12th, 1981. But as the channel built into millions of companies and tens of millions of people over the course of time, a strange thing, if you overlay it, it happens in eras. [00:29:44] Jay McBain: There was a 20 year client server era that never went away. I mentioned we still have a trillion dollars in hardware, but it hasn’t grown pretty much in 10 years or more. Cisco hasn’t grown a nickel of revenue in 10 years. There’s still a $50 billion company that Chuck took over 10 years ago from John Chambers. [00:30:04] Jay McBain: All the rest of the companies are pretty stagnant on revenue. The cloud era triggering SaaS into the hyperscalers created another 20 year era. Do you remember the richest people in the world? Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell turned into Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, tens of billions turned into hundreds of billions. [00:30:25] Jay McBain: We create a new era, 20 year era here that’s gonna create the world’s first trillionaires. Elon Musks will probably be the first, but we’re gonna create a whole set of trillionaires in the next 20 years. The good news is from edge to cloud, 80% of the processing of AI is gonna sit on your smartphone or your AI pc. [00:30:46] Jay McBain: They want more of the model to be out there and not when you ask the weather the Super Bowl score. You know, it’s not gonna have to like to Siri or Alexa. It’s not gonna have to go back to the network every day for the most common things. The other thing is the data. 83% of it sits at the edge. A lot of this is from edge to cloud. [00:31:06] Jay McBain: The closer it is to the edge, the better it is for partners in a lot of cases, especially traditional partners. So this is that inflection point we’re at. For those of you, again, that have worked a long time in this industry. You’ll know that AI isn’t new, but March of 2023, when our neighbors and friends who are not tech people got to see the poetry, the music, and the deep fakes, the first thing they came is asked us as tech people, did we just light up Skynet? [00:31:36] Jay McBain: And we quickly, in March of 2023, had to figure out an answer and an opinion of whether we did or not. Is Arnold Schwarzenegger gonna come back and, you know, start shooting things up? Yes. When I joined IBM, you know, back in the nineties we were just getting ready to play Gary Casper off and chess and that deep blue computer. [00:31:53] Jay McBain: There’s never been a grand, uh, defeated by a computer until then, and since then, there’s never been a grand that can defeat a computer. It was a turning point. Google went and beat go the game, and then years later, which was a generative AI problem, IBM beat Jeopardy. If you remember Watson up against Ken Jennings. [00:32:15] Jay McBain: Again, that’s a two part problem. You’re kind of asked a question or, or given the answer. You’ve got milliseconds whether to press the button or not. That millisecond’s, a brute force compute goes back to the deep blue. You press the button or not binary. Once you press the button and Alex addresses you, you’ve got about four seconds to get the answer and frame it up as a question. [00:32:42] Jay McBain: Which is now a generative AI problem. You gotta read the internet cover to cover and you’ve got four seconds to come up with something smart. So since that time, and you know, Watson walked away with that, that was in 2011. So, I mean, this is, you know, a long time coming, but here we are, the first couple of years though, we’re coming up on the two year anniversary next month, and I’m gonna say that the results have been ordinary. [00:33:10] Jay McBain: All the GSIs who ought to have been the ones out consulting building this new future, reported about 3% growth in an industry that was growing at 8.3. They disappointed investors. They disappointed everyone. We overestimated the first two years, but were underestimating 10 while we’re talking about agentic AI today and all of us becoming better and more efficient with copilots and. [00:33:36] Jay McBain: Agent fours and other things on our shoulder. The 10 year vision is our relationships change with our airlines, our banks, our governments. We never go back to where we were. The that the apps on your phone start to melt away when the world becomes headless. Your copilot works with their copilot, you know, you end up upside down on a runway in Toronto. [00:34:00] Jay McBain: You know, you’re already your co-pilot’s working with Delta to get you free flights for life. Thank God everybody made it out. Okay. Generative AI itself from a partner. We’re not talking 7 trillion now, but there’s over $158 billion and a 59% compounded growth, one of the fastest services growth opportunities in our entire market. [00:34:22] Jay McBain: And understanding exactly where those are is important. As we frame up partnerships, we build this ultimate partner that’s taking their services. Working with the 250,000 SaaS companies on agentic ai, working with the Snowflake, Datadog, Clouderas, working with, um, all the layers of data and then whatever we can work on the $7 trillion infrastructure build out closer to the edge. [00:34:49] Jay McBain: So this is a kind of a four stage ultimate partner game in ai. Kind of a couple last things I’ll leave with. Is the innovation in AI inside our channel tech stack is growing as well. One of the big problems on this tectonic shift, on this inflection point is we had a whole bunch of partner PRM through channel marketing incentives and things that supported the old model, the two tier model, the reell model. [00:35:17] Jay McBain: We didn’t have a lot of things that could measure, monitor, manage in a reliable, repeatable, scalable way. All these other six partners in what they did, ’cause they didn’t collect money. I couldn’t get a distributor sales out report to measure that, but we have five new islands of innovation, hundreds of entrepreneurs raising billions of dollars to go solve this in the future. [00:35:43] Jay McBain: Our tech stacks are growing and we’ve got several in the room here that are doing amazing things in terms of creating this future ultimate partner game, and this has been kind of a joy for me over 30 years in this industry. I love the psychology of influence and my favorite book was Malcolm Gladwell, the Tipping Point, reading chapter two about Paul Revere reading about the law of a Few. [00:36:08] Jay McBain: I wonder if our industry worked the same way. Are there really a hundred super connectors like Paul Revere that, you know, create all this change and create things to tip? But if you ask people back to March of 2023, we all had to get smart really fast. Do you know that 12% of us love podcasts? Only 12. But when there’s tens of millions of people, it’s still millions of people. [00:36:32] Jay McBain: It swayed the US election, the Joe Rogan. You know, the week before there’s 121 podcasts that people listen to. That’s it. There’s 35% of us that love to go to events like this, press the flesh, have lunch, have dinner, you know, kind of work. You know that networking. There’s 352 events this year that we’re being invited to. [00:36:53] Jay McBain: But as you go around the 15 spheres of influence, this is everything. There’s only a thousand watering holes total that tens of million people come into to be influenced if the company you work for is not obsessed with intercepting this ’cause. You’re not gonna hire channel account managers to go recruit a hundred thousand partners, convince two or three outta those seven to say nice things about you. [00:37:20] Jay McBain: You’re gonna have to get them at the point of their influence. Some of them love peer groups, some of them love sitting on a board of an association. There is people that still read the 106 channel magazines around the world. You see them behind the scenes here. There are people that get influenced all the way around. [00:37:36] Jay McBain: We got some of the best channel consultants in this room, so this is it. And when you talk about channel marketing, when you talk about the kind of the future of this galactic tectonic shift. How do you do this the best? And maybe your product is only 80% as good, and maybe it’s not the cheapest, and maybe your Super Bowl ad wasn’t the best. [00:37:57] Jay McBain: But if you solve for this, you solve for the ultimate partner. Thank you. [00:38:02] Vince Menzione: Thank you for joining this episode of Ultimate Partner. And if you haven’t done so already, mark your calendars. Ultimate Partner Live Spring is coming to Redmond, Washington on May 1st and second. This is going to be an incredible event.[00:38:18] Vince Menzione: Like each of our ultimate partner events. This one is going to be just a little bit better than the one before. We’re having incredible leaders from Microsoft Industry leaders talking about co-selling marketplaces, aligning to Microsoft priorities and more. You don’t wanna miss this event. Sign up today before seats run out.

Jon Yoo, CEO of Suger, Joins Ultimate Partner What is the future of B2B sales in the new landscape of marketplaces and AI? Jon Yoo, CEO of Sugar, joins us to discuss the evolution of B2B sales and the rise of hyperscaler marketplaces. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ https://youtu.be/q_81pmJct2Q Jon Yoo shares his insights on how companies like Snowflake are leveraging these marketplaces to drive significant revenue and streamline operations. Discover how Sugar is empowering businesses to embrace a consumer-like buying experience, simplifying complex deployments, and automating workflows for greater efficiency. Jon also delves into the future of B2B sales, highlighting the growing importance of AI and microtransactions. Learn how Sugar is staying ahead of the curve by investing in AI-driven solutions and catering to the needs of both buyers and sellers in this rapidly changing landscape. Key Takeaways: Hyperscaler marketplaces are transforming B2B sales: Companies are increasingly leveraging these platforms to drive revenue and streamline operations. Sugar is simplifying complex software sales: The company is bringing a consumer-like buying experience to B2B by simplifying deployments and automating workflows. AI is playing a crucial role in the evolution of B2B sales: Sugar is investing in AI-driven solutions to enhance efficiency and provide valuable insights. The mid-market presents a significant opportunity for growth: Sugar is focused on empowering mid-sized companies to leverage the power of marketplaces. A unified approach to sales channels is essential: Sugar enables businesses to manage all their sales channels, including direct sales and marketplaces, seamlessly. The buyer side of the marketplace is often overlooked: Sugar is addressing this gap by providing tools and insights to empower buyers. Partnerships remain crucial in the B2B landscape: Sugar recognizes the importance of collaboration and is working to enhance co-selling and bundled offerings. Continuous learning and adaptation are key to success: Jon Yoo emphasizes the importance of staying intellectually curious and embracing new technologies. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain insider knowledge from industry leaders shaping tomorrow’s digital world. Tune in now for an inspiring conversation that could redefine your business strategy! Registration NOW Open!!! Register Today! TRANSCRIPT Transcription: Jon Yoo Audio Episode [00:00:00] Jon Yoo: But I think the most untapped potential is in the mid market space where, you know, maybe one of the kind of players who worked at, you know, one of these mega enterprises that we’re doing that has tremendous success goes to work at, you know, a smaller company, as I mentioned before, and they’re bringing that motion, that playbook. [00:00:18] Jon Yoo: to drive marketplace for them. I think that’s very interesting. [00:00:23] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We believe, we refer to these as the tectonic shifts. [00:00:29] Intro: All the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together, managed services will be one and a half times larger. [00:00:34] Vince Menzione: Because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. [00:00:41] Intro: Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized, and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out first what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. [00:01:01] Vince Menzione: Welcome to or welcome back to the Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione, your host. And my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. Today, I’m excited to be joined in the studio by a leader who’s leading some of the change we’re seeing in this world of marketplaces and hyperscaler co selling. [00:01:20] Vince Menzione: John Yu is the CEO and co founder of Sugar, an innovative company that’s helping leading some of this incredible change and growth, and I’m excited to have him here in the studio. [00:01:31] Jon Yoo: John, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me Vince. And by the way, what a great event last night. [00:01:36] Vince Menzione: Thank you. The whole day was amazing. [00:01:38] Vince Menzione: So for those of you who haven’t watched or listened, we have the Ultimate Partner Winter Retreat is on our YouTube channel as well as this. So I encourage you to go there and watch what an incredible session. So many great leaders in the room, including yourself. Well, we, I feel privileged to get to know you a little bit better these last couple of years. [00:01:56] Vince Menzione: Uh, we met, I think it’s almost two years now. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, you were just kind of at the early stage of, of starting up sugar. Right. Yeah. Kind of like two garage kind of thing, but it was really, you were very at the early stage and I really want to spend some time learning about you, your company, your journey, and where you hope to take this market. [00:02:15] Vince Menzione: So I thought we’d start there. Like what was the inspiration behind Sugar and talk, talk to us about that journey to this role as the co founder and CEO of Sugar. [00:02:23] Jon Yoo: Yeah, definitely. So I guess if I rewind it back all the way, you know, I, I’ve wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was 16. So my, my first job, I don’t know if I told you this, but, uh, first company was around like led technology of, can you print these like, uh, display chips, so to speak on a pliable surface. [00:02:42] Jon Yoo: Turns out no one actually wants. Uh, a fricking phone screen on your, like, ski jacket. Uh, so that’s always like, you know, they say a founder is like first, you know, product is, you know, based on technology and then you work your way backwards to the problem. And in this scenario, you know, we really started with the problem. [00:03:00] Jon Yoo: And part of that came from my time at Salesforce, where we saw just how complex these systems can be and workflows can be when you start to expand to multiple channels. But it’s really my co founder and CTO, Changjun, who had the idea and really felt the pain deeply. So, you know, he worked on, he was at Facebook for a bit, was at, you know, worked on AI at Google for a little bit. [00:03:20] Jon Yoo: And then he ended up at Confluent, where he was the tech lead of their marketplace product, you know. And they were doing 40, 50 percent of their revenue through, through these hyperscaler marketplaces. I mean, they were feeling the pain. They had roughly 10 engineers and, you know, tens of ops people, whether in the U S or offshore that was actually helping to, to manage this channel. [00:03:42] Jon Yoo: And so he really felt the pain point, um, deeply and thought, Hey, not everyone has to The, the payroll, you know, to, to go hire 10 engineers and multiple house people to manage this. So why not? It’s very complex. It’s super complex. Yeah. [00:03:56] Vince Menzione: And for those of our listeners or viewers who don’t understand, tell us a little bit more about what Sugar’s mission is and what you, your organization does. [00:04:03] Jon Yoo: Yeah. I mean, super high level. It might sound a little, you know, cliche, but we really want to bring a consumer experience to B2B sales. And we see that these hyperscaler marketplaces is really the best wedge. Uh, for us to, you know, kind of see this, you know, marketplace like activities where, you know, I, I always wondered why can I go on amazon. [00:04:24] Jon Yoo: com and pick up, you know, cameras here or, uh, bed sheets and be able to compare different products, uh, as any consumer does. And, you know, like the, the one click purchase now, and you can have it delivered to your door. Uh, we really want to bring that experience into. You know, if you want to deploy a database, for example, how can you actually do that with one click of a button, uh, where all the procurements, the deployment is, is handled through these marketplaces. [00:04:49] Jon Yoo: And so amazing benefits. We want to bring it and democratize it to like every single B2B software company in the world. [00:04:56] Vince Menzione: Very cool. You know, we talk about at Ultimate Partner, we talk about the tectonic shifts, incredible change and transformation going on in our world, right? Our lives are shifting weekly. [00:05:05] Vince Menzione: It seems, right. We talked about. Uh, deep seek moment that is already past us and, uh, Stargate and all the investments that are going on. Just, just the way the world is rapidly changing. We also talk about marketplace moment quite a bit. Oh yeah. And the role of the hyperscalers. And I still feel that a lot of organizations come at this thing called partnership at it from the wrong angle. [00:05:27] Vince Menzione: And they miss the fact that I say three sets of rails, and maybe it’s more than three sets of rails, but the hyperscalers really with the level of investment. The hundred billion dollar type of investments annually that they’re making each in this world and then driving it around marketplaces that this is a moment that I feel that not enough people are embracing the right way. [00:05:49] Vince Menzione: Would you agree? [00:05:50] Jon Yoo: I would think so. Um, it’s not like, like, for example, with AI, you know, there’s a chat GPT moment where everyone just saw the value. I mean, I mean, it took you 15 minutes to start playing with it, to realize what the possibilities are. And the tectonic shift was immediate. I think marketplace, um, shift or like adoption has been a lot more gradual. [00:06:10] Jon Yoo: I mean, of course this exploded over the past couple of years, but these hyperscaler marketplaces have been around for 10, 12 years. Um, but it’s really only in the four, the past four or five years where you start to see, you know, the marketplace moments where you have companies like Confluent, you know, there has been earnings reports of like CrowdStrike doing so much. [00:06:30] Jon Yoo: I mean, Snowflake, one of our customers was. The first across a billion dollars in AWS marketplace revenue alone. And so I think we’re starting to get to the early majority. Um, we, I’ve seen it personally over the past two, three years where, you know, in the past, it used to be like the, the top, like a hundred companies are doing majority of the marketplace transactions. [00:06:50] Jon Yoo: And we’re actually seeing a ton of early stage startups, you know, growth stage startups that are actually. Starting to really adopt marketplace and, you know, drive all their upsells and renewals through it for all these benefits. Not just like commit drawdowns, but actually leveraging, you know, the speed of delivery or the fact that you can have flexible billing and you don’t have to worry about, you know, debt collections. [00:07:11] Jon Yoo: If someone goes out of business or some, you know, or they don’t want to pay. And so. It’s been super exciting to see that gradual evolution, and hopefully we can play a huge part in accelerating that adoption. [00:07:20] Vince Menzione: I’m glad, I want to tease out what you just said here too, because I wanted to emphasize this. We had this moment where five companies crossed a billion dollars aggregate in transactions, right? [00:07:32] Vince Menzione: And it looked like we were on a greater path, but when you peel back on some of those, it was really the fulfillment, right? They were private offers, these were big contracts, uh, and they were just taking it through fulfillment, uh, through marketplace. To burn down on the commitments. Yeah. But it wasn’t this organic thing. [00:07:49] Vince Menzione: Yep. And you, what you’re discussing now is this, like, how do you organically get at it? Yep. How does a company that maybe is just, uh, just got to product market fit? And they’re taking their product to market and it’s a great product. And how do they utilize the marketplace to drive awareness, to drive buying behavior and for that, those customers burn down, I guess. [00:08:09] Vince Menzione: And I think that’s what you’re talking about. [00:08:10] Jon Yoo: Yeah. I mean, talk about like the moment of marketplace. I actually think that, um, you can kind of break it up into a couple of pieces. I mean, private offers coming in really led to major adoption. I think you’re starting to see the hyperscalers, uh, really think about the PLG emotion. [00:08:25] Jon Yoo: How do you actually. You know, drive like trials and POCs and discoverability really through these marketplaces. And, you know, if I pick, you know, a new functionality, for example, AWS came out with like the buy with AWS functionality where, you know, you can actually, um, embed like the little button into your exact website where you’ve already constructed the website to capture all the foot traffic. [00:08:50] Jon Yoo: And so it’s kind of taking the power of marketplace. Uh, what’s the right word? Like everywhere? Yeah. Extending it. Exactly. Extending it. Instead of actually just curating this storefront where you have to drive for traffic too. And so we get very excited about that. So I, instead of saying like age of marketplace, I’d actually say like age of marketplace PLG, because that’s, that’s the future that I get super excited about. [00:09:13] Jon Yoo: Not just, you know, draw down on, on, uh, cloud [00:09:15] Vince Menzione: commitments there. So you just had a seminal moment, I would say. Congratulations. You’ve raised 15 million series. A, uh, how do you plan to utilize the funds and how are you thinking about your growth? Hmm. Uh, [00:09:29] Jon Yoo: carefully, uh, so that we don’t run, you know, they always say the CEO’s job is to make sure you don’t run out of money. [00:09:34] Jon Yoo: Um, so I, you know, we’re certainly not just like going out and, you know, Buying you didn’t get a Lamborghini. Yeah, absolutely not. Absolutely. We put it all on Bitcoin. I know. Yeah. Um, [00:09:45] Vince Menzione: that might’ve been a good thing a few months ago. [00:09:47] Jon Yoo: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Uh, that’s a whole nother story. I might need a cocktail for that. [00:09:53] Jon Yoo: But, um, You know, we really think about it as investing in R and D. Um, we’ve, I think we have semblance of product market fit, but that’s costly evolving rates. Competitors catch up. The cloud providers aren’t, aren’t stopping anytime soon around, you know, making their own kind of native experience better. [00:10:10] Jon Yoo: Um, and so we’re, you know, we’re going to try to hire a ton of engineers and we are already doing so, uh, to invest. Not just in our core product offering around Marketplace and CoSell, but invest in a lot of AI use cases that we’ve been thinking about for the past two years. We just haven’t been able to, you know, there, there’s all these table stake functionalities that we need, we need to like set the foundation for. [00:10:31] Jon Yoo: Um, and then there’s so many other things around the buyer side of Marketplace because, you know, you talk about, okay, how do we, you know, I think we can shape seller behavior, but it, you know, sellers want to meet the buyers where their budget is and where the ease of transaction is. And I think there’s some level of. [00:10:48] Jon Yoo: Market disequilibrium, where it’s a lot easier for sellers now that sugar’s around and some of our competitors, you know, but the buyer side is still very ignored, so to speak. Um, you know, when, when we talk to our customers who are trying to sell into a mega enterprise, they always talk about, man, it’s really difficult to find, you know, who the right. [00:11:07] Jon Yoo: Like budget owner is, or who the right person who can actually accept the private offer. They struggle with figuring out, you know, let’s say you’re a Walmart and you have. 10 billion committed across the three cloud providers. How do you know which cloud to procure through? Um, if they have 10 different business units, do they have specific, you know, budget for, you know, third party purchases through these cloud commitments? [00:11:30] Jon Yoo: Um, it was the approval workflow because that also sits outside of, you [00:11:33] Vince Menzione: know, kind of their direct approval because you have to go through the procurement process that might be very, especially in a Walmart, exactly. A whole different building than the campus. [00:11:41] Jon Yoo: Exactly. Um, and so we really want to bridge the gap and. [00:11:44] Jon Yoo: And ultimately, once we are able to fulfill both sellers and buyers, we’re able to provide a lot more data and insights, uh, you know, that kind of fulfills the vision of what we’re looking for, of how do we recommend, you know, what type of products to purchase or bundled offerings, et cetera, et cetera. [00:11:59] Vince Menzione: Yeah. When you described to me too, you know, this is why co selling is so important, right? Because they become your Sherpas in a way, because if you are a buyer, You’re working with a cloud provider, absolutely relying on your account executives, your account, their account executives are then relying on the partner tech team and their own organization that are then crossing over to the partner and trying to navigate this journey, which can be very complex. [00:12:25] Vince Menzione: And what you’re saying is you’re going to streamline some of that process. [00:12:27] Jon Yoo: Absolutely. We’re not, you know, similar to like this whole provocative death of SaaS. We’re not saying death of CoSell, you know, with, with this, we’re really talking about how do we evolve what CoSell looks like, you know, beyond just. [00:12:38] Jon Yoo: Hey, let me just go share a thousand offs and hope the spray and pray approach that, you know, a lot of people talked about yesterday. How do we actually make it a lot more intelligent, you know, based on some of these buying behaviors and account mapping and whatnot? Yeah. [00:12:50] Vince Menzione: So provocative question. You’re at the first to market, right? [00:12:52] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Some people call them enablers or marketplace platforms. Yeah. Uh, you came at the problem after a couple other solutions were out there. How did you think about the problem differently? Yeah. And how do you uniquely solve for it today? I [00:13:06] Jon Yoo: mean, first and foremost, we Have tremendous like respect for our competitors and competitions get, you know, it deflates prices and it makes us better, makes us move faster. [00:13:17] Jon Yoo: And I certainly tried to use that to motivate the team around like, Hey, if we’re not moving 10 X the speed of some of our competitors who have a lot more funding, we’re screwed. Um, but you know, I think we have a lot of second mover advantage because. We got started after a lot of these APIs were available and, and, you know, based on changing his experience from Confluent, he knows where a lot of the skeletons are buried, and so we were able to rearchitect it from the ground up to be very API first. [00:13:42] Jon Yoo: So what I mean by that is, you know, I think about it as, Hey, let’s unify all the channels. So an offer is an offer, regardless of whether it’s through AWS or direct or GCP, et cetera. And what that allows you to do is you can build a workflow on top of it. Where you can trigger a series of actions based on any events from marketplace, regardless of which partner it was. [00:14:06] Jon Yoo: And so like, you know, if you, if you kind of talk about, Hey, we can do bi directional lead sync or send offers or, you know, recognize revenue. It’s not that hard and a lot of people can do it. And that still requires a ton of manual effort by different teams. And I think about like in the life cycle of a transaction, there’s like, you know, opportunity management. [00:14:27] Jon Yoo: So like there’s co sell, you know, product that really helps with that. The entire quote to cash process of how do you actually, you know, have an AE that, you know, co sells, but all, or, you know, as part of a co selling motion, but also has to go figure out the account ID, blah, blah, blah. Uh, have a handoff to deal desk or ops or whoever’s managing that process to send an offer. [00:14:47] Jon Yoo: And then, you know, once the offer is sent, like there’s a level of workflows of, you know, reaching out to the end customer, making sure internal teams are aligned. And then once the offer gets accepted, like there’s a bunch of system things that needs to happen, whether it’s updating a field in Salesforce, uh, sending the metadata to, you know, your ERP solutions like we, or NetSuite a lot, uh, so that they’re not double invoicing the end customer. [00:15:11] Jon Yoo: And so all this work, all these workflows are things that, um, people do manually today. I was going to say, well, manual process. Yeah, [00:15:19] Vince Menzione: it’s very, the complexity is astounding. Actually, you described it. [00:15:22] Jon Yoo: Totally. I mean, it’s, there’s whole like products and companies built around these processes and none of them extended to marketplace. [00:15:28] Jon Yoo: And so how do we actually, you know, just sending an offer, for example, uh, is really the beginning part of a very. Long, complex process. And so based on that offer, how do we trigger everything so that people don’t actually have to do manual work? And again, just focus on selling and not having these like siloed operations team having to, you know, send a hundred private offers, you know, in the last day of the month or quarter and freaking out because. [00:15:56] Jon Yoo: You know, we’re having to like enable all of them to even understand what a private offer is and things like that. I think that’s the key to, to removing the adoption and, um, or sorry, removing the barriers to adoption of marketplace. [00:16:08] Vince Menzione: And then I think I heard you say, like, you streamlined it and it’s sort of like one set of tools and then the APIs and signals all come into the one set of tools versus maybe building out on AWS and building out on Google, then building out on Microsoft app. [00:16:23] Jon Yoo: Yeah, totally. Um, it’s, you know, we always talk about like unified experience, um, because the experience that I had with Salesforce was just every new channel has different APIs or requirements or policies, or oftentimes different teams working them. And then there’s usually a team that sits horizontally across these channels, whether it’s IT or ops that are just like pissed off, you know, to be frank, you know, and the sales people don’t care. [00:16:48] Jon Yoo: They just want to close the deal. Absolutely. And so, you know, while we actually serve. Sales and partnership people like frontline, you know, facing customer facing partner facing folks, the, the real power users we found of our product are kind of the, the unsung heroes, so to speak, like deal desk and rev ops. [00:17:04] Jon Yoo: Yeah. [00:17:05] Vince Menzione: And those are the people that have to deal with the complexity all day long. Exactly, exactly. The tough jobs. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, a lot of talk about AI and how AI is going to help us. And then also these, uh, microtransactions and AI, agentic AI. What trends do you see or foresee in the future as this world evolves around marketplaces? [00:17:25] Jon Yoo: Yeah, I mean, couple things. One is, uh, I start with, there’s a lot more self hosted deployments that we’re seeing. So, you know, you think about pure SaaS where it’s all running in your cloud and then like hybrid SaaS or, you know. Uh, whatever else, but we’re definitely seeing a lot more where, you know, the control plane might be running on X cloud, but then they have agents running in the customer’s VPC and because people are very, um, like guarded with their data, you know, we talked a lot about data security and governance yesterday. [00:17:57] Jon Yoo: And so that’s certainly a big piece that we’re seeing around marketplace. Like, you know, AWS, for example, there’s a lot more AMIs and containers that were. You know, getting asked to, to help with, for our customers. It’s a lot more complex to be frank with you than SaaS, but we’re also the only player in the market that’s doing it today. [00:18:12] Jon Yoo: Um, the second part that I’d see is more and more companies earlier on, um, like a lot of these startups. I mean, we came out at Y Combinator and we see AI agents is like 60 percent of every cohort, if not more. And they’re actually having a seminal moment around being able to break into enterprises. So maybe five, 10 years ago, not very common that these. [00:18:35] Jon Yoo: You know, early stage startups to enterprises. Now you have things like companies going from like 1 to 12, 1 to 50 million ARR, um, selling these eight. We’ll see how sustainable that is. Yeah, that’s wild. Yeah. That’s pretty wild growth. Yeah. But they’re leveraging marketplace earlier and earlier in their journey versus a couple of years ago where. [00:18:52] Jon Yoo: They might wait until they get to a certain level of maturity, uh, to actually leverage marketplace. So I think it’s very, very, um, it’s just awesome that, that people are deciding, Hey, we’re going to be marketplace forward from the get go. And there’s actually, you know, as adoption of this channel grows and people move jobs here and there, we’re seeing a lot more of, let’s say some grizzled veteran who have seen what marketplace at scale looks like. [00:19:17] Jon Yoo: They go work at a smaller company. And immediately the first thing is. I want to turn on marketplace because I had such great success. And so this cross pollination across different companies and different segment lines is, I think, a really good thing [00:19:30] Vince Menzione: overall for the industry. Yeah, it’s good for the growth of all. [00:19:33] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And I still come back to the 420 billion in durable cloud budgets. And yeah, so underutilized. That helps. It’s a huge number. It’s the TAM is incredible. So you talked about some customers. I was kind of interested from a partner or customer because the partner. We talk about the word partner and partners are actually customers of yours. [00:19:50] Vince Menzione: And you mentioned Snowflake. I’m just kind of interested on Snowflake because they’re, they’re evolution. They’re a huge player. They’re a platform company. Mm hmm. Like what did they, what did you see from them and what have you seen from the best of the best that you’ve worked with? [00:20:03] Jon Yoo: Yeah, it’s, they, they certainly invested a lot into the tooling. [00:20:06] Jon Yoo: So they had a teams like aligned to, I mean, when you get into an enterprise, it’s not just Snowflake, but almost every company that we see verticalized around, around different clouds. So you have an AWS Alliance team, Azure Alliance team, GCP Alliance team, and then separate teams. Yeah. But then there’s a partner ops team that usually sits horizontally across all hyperscalers. [00:20:27] Jon Yoo: But even then they might have like kind of a business partner relationship. And, you know, what I saw Snowflake do is they invest a lot in automation. Um, so they built a lot of the tooling in house before we came in and just seeing the level of sophistication of like custom objects they created, uh, flows they created, um, is you kind of need that at that scale. [00:20:49] Jon Yoo: Yeah. And so when we talk to some companies who want to learn, you know, cause they always come in and saying, Hey, I want to learn what. X, Y, Z is doing that’s working out so well, right. I think one advice that I give all the time is just have the right tooling that best fits where you are in the maturity curve of marketplace. [00:21:07] Jon Yoo: So, you know, I’ll give you an example. Some people, you know, are very mature and they come in and they don’t have any automation set up and they have like 30 ops people. Literally going into the respective cloud portals, uh, which I’m just going to say it sucks. It’s terrible. Uh, no offense. Uh, and yeah, and you know, they have to have these business partner, like kind of subject matter experts, because if you’re very familiar in AWS console, but you’re not very familiar in Azure and GCP, does that mean that they should have to learn like three different consoles and Update everything in their own internal system as well. [00:21:45] Jon Yoo: So there’s a tremendous stress that it puts on those teams to scale. But then there’s also the flip side where certain companies come in and, you know, they, they see the power of our workflow builder and they’re like, we want to automate this, this, this, this. And I have to kind of, you know, say, hold, hold your horses. [00:22:01] Jon Yoo: Let’s, let’s get a couple of transactions first. You know, we can do it manually. Uh, and then we can start to automate away each pieces because. The way that I think about kind of, you know, not necessarily the world, but product is it’s a supply chain. It’s like, uh, I think about it as a flow chart of, Hey, um, let’s chart out exactly what the flow is. [00:22:20] Jon Yoo: And then one by one, we’ll, we’ll automate that away, depending on, you know, the level of impact or how much frictionless this process can get. And some people just want to come in and do the whole thing. And it’s like, it is not worth my time, your time, anyone’s time until we get the initial. [00:22:36] Vince Menzione: Well, we get, get an old conversation about process and process engineering. [00:22:41] Vince Menzione: And the fact of the matter is you, if you start inventing the process before you’ve actually taken through and shaking it out, you’re really not, you’re, you’re gonna have to go do it again anyway. Yeah. [00:22:50] Jon Yoo: It’s a, a lot of people in this industry talk about playbooks. Um, what’s the right co sell playbook or marketplace operate? [00:22:57] Jon Yoo: Like what does good look like, you know, effectively. And that’s where, you know, right now it does require some discovery, uh, for us to really tease out what is your float today and what’s the ideal state. I think as we evolve our workflow offering, we’ll be able to provide basically like a library or template of plays and temp, uh, you know, yeah, like plays that they can, they can choose, or they can, you know, describe in natural language, what they expect the float to look like, and all these notes can snap into place, or, you know, they can just pick out of. [00:23:30] Jon Yoo: You know, a list of automation that they want, that’s most common that we see as good looks like, and that hopefully should, um, make not just our own cost of service go down, but also provide a lot quicker time to market around the value offerings that we, we provide. [00:23:46] Vince Menzione: So you came in as the CEO and co founder, right? [00:23:49] Vince Menzione: You had a, you had a co founder who had, who understood the problem. What did you do from a startup perspective? Like, how did you think about it as the CEO coming in? What layer did you bring of the observability and change into the process? And then, and then what is the outcome been different maybe than where it was from the beginning? [00:24:09] Jon Yoo: Yeah, uh, I think the first interesting learning was, Hey, listening is valuable. Cause like with any startup or with any, you know, company just starting, usually starting the S and B space and then you move up markets and. That was kind of a goal from the get go, because when we actually started working with a lot of these earlier C startups, they, they want us to want to use us for listing. [00:24:33] Jon Yoo: But then, you know, we realized like we’re not getting the best feedback because they use our tool like once a month if they need to do a transaction. And yeah, you know, yeah, they give me a call and he’s like, well, a few a year. Yeah, exactly. And so then we, we. You know, went over to kind of the mid stage, late stage startups and, you know, volume starts to take up and they start to use our product more. [00:24:55] Jon Yoo: But it’s really when we started to work with like fivetrain, for example, that was doing not just a ton of, you know, marketplace private offers, but a ton of public offers, which we always shared a vision around like, Hey, this PLG motion, but also like billing and metering because they, you know, bill on a consumption based model. [00:25:12] Jon Yoo: And, you know, they had like a 10 tack Google sheets, uh, to. Like massage the usage of ads to, to actually convert to the right billable metric or billable output. Um, and so I’d say that that’s one, just kind of the decision to move up market. The second piece was coming from Salesforce. I, you know, one of my projects briefly was to kind of be the internal PM or like a PM for the internal business tools. [00:25:38] Jon Yoo: Um, like North America, like, like, uh, sales tooling initiative or whatever. And. I realized that people just do not want to ever leave like Salesforce, or, you know, if you use HubSpot HubSpot, um, those are not just a system of record, but it’s also where people like have all the reporting, they really operate their entire business out of. [00:25:59] Jon Yoo: And so the, the first like immediate action that we took outside of CoSell, which is what we learned from our space. Like everyone that does marketplace also CoSells. is we have to have the best native app experience, um, you know, so that people can work the way that they like, where they work. And so we immediately came out with a Salesforce app and we’ve just been iterating on that since the, the last. [00:26:20] Jon Yoo: Do direct interaction or. Exactly. And, and the last, you know, kind of piece that we learned was we thought that having just these being API first, like these unified APIs would. Um, be really helpful for a company like Confluent that has all these engineers who want to leverage these APIs. Turns out no one actually wants to use our APIs. [00:26:41] Jon Yoo: They just want us to do the work for them, which is why we actually, it was painful, but you know, for about six months actually worked on building the workflow refactor entire backend so that I can actually support this. Uh, that was painful, but you know, frankly, we kind of called it initially the improvisation tool because. [00:27:01] Jon Yoo: When we started working with these larger volume, you know, players, they would just come to us with XYZ features and Change and I are just like, holy shit. Like if we just keep building these features for these customers that all vary depending on their Salesforce setup or workflows, we’re screwed. Like it’s going to be a Frankenstein product. [00:27:19] Jon Yoo: Um, and so let’s build something that can abstract all that away and make it customizable to, you know, each respective custom, uh, companies and their very specific [00:27:28] Vince Menzione: workflows. So I have a pyramid, we don’t have the slide here, but I have a pyramid slide. And I talk about the very top of the pyramid being some of the largest software companies in the market. [00:27:39] Vince Menzione: And you can recognize some of the snowflakes up there and Google, uh, Cisco and some of the other real super giants. Yeah. And then there’s kind of the next layer down, which is sort of like the 750 to a thousand software companies. And then there’s sort of this mid market. Where do you see the growth? And then this down below, obviously the digital natives and some startup organizations, but where do you see the growth in that period? [00:28:04] Jon Yoo: Mid [00:28:04] Vince Menzione: market. Mid market. [00:28:05] Jon Yoo: Yeah. I mean, enterprise is not going anywhere, but I mean, if they’re already doing 30 to 50 percent of their revenue through these hyperscaler marketplaces. It’s kind of hard to grow that much more beyond that, but I think the most untapped potential is in the mid market space where, you know, maybe one of the kind of players who worked at, you know, one of these mega enterprises that we’re doing that has tremendous success goes to work at, you know, a smaller company, as I mentioned before, and they’re bringing that motion, that playbook, uh, to drive marketplace for them. [00:28:35] Jon Yoo: I think that’s very interesting. Um, and then. My, my, my hope is that as, you know, there’s a gentic AI and, you know, as companies start to convert to more of like a consumption outcome based billing model where, you know, cloud marketplaces have historically been very powerful in, and a lot of these consumption, you know, pricing models, uh, that they’re going to adopt it more and more, both in SMB and mid market. [00:28:59] Jon Yoo: Um, and so very optimistic about that future. But of course, we’re still, I think our product generally does best with companies with high volumes. [00:29:09] Vince Menzione: And you mentioned you’re putting a lot of the money investment into engineering. How do you think about the go to market strategy? What are you doing there to build awareness around sugar, uh, you know, deliver the right outcomes, revenue perspective for the company. [00:29:22] Jon Yoo: You know, we’ve been super fortunate to have just tremendously talented people join our company. Um, not just on the engineering front, um, but on the go to market side as well. So. You know, they’re all in on kind of sugar and this vision for the future. And it’s funny, like I was saying, like CS is actually the hardest role to, um, enable customer success. [00:29:48] Jon Yoo: Customer success is so hard to enable because, and we have, in my opinion, the best in the industry, but they. Have to learn so much across three clouds, across all the different modules, not just within our product, but like, you know, different programs that are going on at these respective clouds that are also always changing, you know, but from a go to market perspective, it’s really about like selling the vision around like workflows, we just help you accelerate revenue because you can access this amazing marketplace, um, with all these benefits and we help that, that access be very seamless and embedded into your core workflows that you already have today. [00:30:25] Jon Yoo: Um, but the other piece is like cost efficiencies. So it’s not just top line, but bottom line of, you know, do you want to go down this like complex path of a confluent where they have 10 plus engineers working on this, uh, for multiple years and it’s not like a one time set up and go. Um, and so we’re certainly investing a lot more there as well. [00:30:43] Jon Yoo: And not just around awareness of like sugar, but awareness of our space. Um, because I think. You know, we really want to become a thought leader, like, you know, some of the incumbent players out there who have been paving the way for us in many aspects. And, um, we can’t just make it all sugar, sugar, sugar. [00:31:00] Jon Yoo: It has to be about, you know, the cloud partnerships and marketplace. [00:31:04] Vince Menzione: So where do you see this going? Like the journey has been amazing. Uh, the next few years, is it, is it three years? Is it five years? Like what, what are the outcomes you hope to achieve? What’s the vision? [00:31:16] Jon Yoo: Well, this is getting recorded. So, you know, we want to IPO, uh, you know, and, and do this for 10 plus years. [00:31:21] Jon Yoo: Okay. Um, you heard it here. Yeah. Uh, it’s not about calendars. We’re not trying to, you know, be like a cashflow positive or of course we want to be cashflow positive and profitable, but. Um, we’re really reinvesting all of our growth back into the product, um, because we, we don’t want to just stop at marketplace and co sell. [00:31:38] Jon Yoo: Um, we want to make it like interoperable across every channel. Um, so that could be direct channel as well. Um, and what is unique about us is twofolds. Like one is we’re not just about us, but the space. Uh, one is we have the chance to work across. Every persona that touches, you know, uh, a stage in the life cycle of a transaction. [00:31:59] Jon Yoo: And so whether that’s at the opportunity stage with sales and partnership people, uh, throughout the whole quote to cash process, deal desk and rev ops, and the finance gets very involved around rev rec. And so there’s going to be different parts where we can go horizontal across all channels, not just marketplace and co sell, which we get very excited about. [00:32:15] Jon Yoo: But as I mentioned, um, the buyer side is the part that is super exciting to me because it’s untapped. There’s no one really playing that space. Uh, I’m sure competitors will rise, but that’s honestly good for the entire industry, so we welcome that. But the ultimate like, you know, vision that I see that, that I get very excited about is, um, that consumer experience to B2B sales. [00:32:39] Jon Yoo: And if you talk to any CIO of a company, they don’t buy the ROI analysis that sellers are putting in front of them. Or if they do buy it, it’s kind of murky, you know, and if you want, I’m a data nerd, so how do you actually bring a very data? Oriented approach, a very programmatic approach to procuring software. [00:32:56] Jon Yoo: Well, you know, if similar to how I can like buy or like be able to compare different products and all the feature specs, et cetera, where I can do a free trial and get like six different sheets, test it out and then return it with 30 day policy, I would love to be able to do that for a B2B where, you know, the business owner, their unit owner, um, is able to outline a PRD or the requirements that they want. [00:33:23] Jon Yoo: Uh, set a budget for POC across X, Y, you know, and we were able to provide the insights around, Hey, these are the couple of products that, you know, uh, people have purchased that fit these requirements and they can actually set a budget, you know, against those, you know, and that’s part of the things that we’ll, we’ll uncover with the buyer side. [00:33:39] Jon Yoo: Very cool. And, you know, once they actually trial it using our metering engine, they can actually define the outcome that they want to see and meter against that outcome to determine what is the product they should choose the best. And then we can send all this data. Around the outcome to price, you know, ratio to the CIO, CFO, CEO, so that they can make the best decision. [00:33:57] Jon Yoo: Um, and that’s super cool in my opinion, but we’ll see if we can get there. And I think it’s really about sequencing the product lines versus trying to do it all at once. How [00:34:07] Vince Menzione: do you layer in the partner ecosystem into this conversation? Cause I also, as, as you were describing this to me, I was thinking about the different partners along the journey that are part of the, you know, Jay likes to talk about the 28 moments. [00:34:20] Vince Menzione: And you know, you have partners on the front end, maybe doing consulting work. You have other organizations that are coming in as trusted, maybe it’s an SI, maybe it’s some other partners. And then there’s the solution, which in effect, isn’t usually just one solution. Totally. A lot of times it’s like grass security. [00:34:35] Vince Menzione: I’ve got data. Uh, I’ve got Kubernetes, other things I’m layering like Kubernetes and other things that I’m providing here. And maybe two or three. Yeah. And then I’m stitching it all together. Maybe I have an MSP on the back. How do you think about that layering into that discussion you just described? [00:34:53] Jon Yoo: Yeah, partnerships are not going anywhere and they are going to be the tip of the spear in driving this. So just because we provide any recommendation doesn’t mean that that’s it. You have to actually drive that outcome with the hyperscalers, for example, or, or, uh, You know, one of the big things that we see kind of trend or, you know, trend in this industry is like bundled offerings. [00:35:12] Vince Menzione: Yeah, that’s [00:35:12] Jon Yoo: right. So all the, you know, different cloud providers are realizing, okay, how do we factor in services or how do we have two different ISVs go to market together, you know, in this motion with these bundled offerings? And so partners are always going to be kind of at the intersection across. I think someone yesterday mentioned like, uh. [00:35:31] Jon Yoo: Partnerships, the intersection of like tech and relationship or something like that. Yeah. And I, I think that’s so true. Um, and if you see that this bundled offering of X and Y are going really well together, you’d expect the partners to be at the forefront of actually driving a, a joint go to market together. [00:35:47] Jon Yoo: Yeah. And of course with, uh, the top providers as well. Yeah. It’s exciting times we live in. Yeah, totally. Uh, it’s hard to see. What the future will look like completely. And I think every week to week, as we’re talking about before it changes, but, um, it’s super exciting. [00:36:03] Vince Menzione: So for our viewers and listeners today, they want to learn more about working with you, partnering with you, or maybe. [00:36:09] Vince Menzione: Uh, deploying sugar as a solution for their company. How do they do so? [00:36:14] Jon Yoo: Yeah. You know, reach out to me, you know, John at sugar. io, you know, John, without the H sugar with an E, uh, it’s like, say classy San Diego now, um, you can go to our website and, you know, just reach out to us, but, but truly I am all over my email, so reach out to me directly if you want to, uh, to join the growing team or of course, uh, leverage our [00:36:33] Vince Menzione: product. [00:36:34] Vince Menzione: And we have some rapid fire questions. I had some questions I want to ask you today before we, before we break. Uh, so what book is most influenced your work? Hmm. [00:36:44] Jon Yoo: Um, I do two pieces. Um, one is, um, like hard things about hard things. I think it’s a title with, by Ben Horowitz, you know, that’s kind of a very well known startup book, but. [00:36:59] Jon Yoo: You know, it kind of details the, the story of how everything can go wrong at a startup. And, and it does usually, it does, it, you know, the power might go out. Yeah. But you know, it’s painful. And when I think oftentimes, like when you’re from the outside looking in, everything seemed like it’s going smoothly, but internally it sometimes freaking sucks. [00:37:26] Jon Yoo: And, and you have to have uncomfortable conversations or handle crises or. You know, everything seems to be breaking. And so how do you actually keep a level head around it all? Um, and not, you know, lash out or be bannock or, or all these things. And just realizing like, this is part of the journey and this is not anything new. [00:37:45] Jon Yoo: Like every other company goes through some of these hardships. And also when you see some of the crazy stuff that happens in that book, it really tames what we’re going through in some regards. And so I’m like, okay, I always have a saying with the team. Uh, The toughest challenge is always ahead of us. So I’m not even worried about this at the moment. [00:38:03] Jon Yoo: Um, the, the second book is another cliche one a little bit, but atomic habits. Atomic habits. Yeah. It’s, uh, James Cleary. I have a tendency to just want, my eyes are bigger than my stomach in many regards. And I have all these like grandiose plans for myself and how to operate, but, you know, really thinking about how do I create this compounding behavior and. [00:38:26] Jon Yoo: That’s also very similar to building a culture at a company. You know, if, if you have a view on this is what greatness looks like and being a well oiled machine, like it, that doesn’t happen overnight. And so how do I set some of the structure and cadence in place so that we can start to build on that culture by, you know, building block by building block, same thing goes for product development, right? [00:38:49] Jon Yoo: Like, yeah, here’s the ideal state, but if you try to do it all at once, you’re. You’re, you’re usually going to come out with a pretty crappy product. Right. And so changing really believes in iteration, like little by little and just shipping it, you know, without like too much, like hand wringing. And, and, you know, we’ll learn pretty quickly and we’re going to iterate and fix any bugs or, or things like that. [00:39:10] Jon Yoo: So John, what’s one ABI you can’t live without? Honestly, uh, maybe it’s advice, but coffee, I have to have coffee when I wake up in the morning where I am just, you know, cause during the week I’m averaging like four hours of sleep and I just need, we have Celsius in the office, but I’d say, um, two, two real habits. [00:39:30] Jon Yoo: One is I try to get some exercise in, even if it’s 10, 15 minutes, I’ve been, I haven’t been the best about it over the past couple of years. Um, but I, I found that the, my, my mood and. My ability to think clearly does fluctuate a lot based on whether I just get my body kind of moving somewhat active. And so I try to bike to the office, I bike back, and so that’s, you know, 45 minutes to an hour. [00:39:53] Jon Yoo: Um, just You’re exercising. Somewhat. Yeah. Yeah, trying to. What about the sleep? Let’s talk about the four hours. Does it feel like that’s enough? Uh, but I try to catch up on sleep on Fridays and, uh, the weekend. As long as there’s not like a wedding or something. But, uh, it’s a The second piece, by the way, I’m pretty good at operating, you know, without sleep, but it’s certainly something where, uh, I can be a little bit more cranky, you know, if I’ve had like consecutive nights of, of, uh, pretty late nights of work and say the second habit, I always need to do this of, um, the night before the next day, I always review kind of my calendar, figure out what’s really important, figure out what I want to get accomplished that day. [00:40:37] Jon Yoo: If I just wake up and I have to go immediately into a call with like, One of our European customers and I’m like foggy and you know, you’re just in back to backs over and over again by, by, by like 4 PM you’re just like, I have no idea what I actually did. Uh, I was just a zombie work, uh, working through, so I’m trying to be very deliberate by reviewing that same thing with like going into a new week, right? [00:40:58] Jon Yoo: Uh, on a Sunday night, just making sure I know exactly, you know, what the, the goal for that week is. Um, and I try to, we’re trying to set better, you know, similar cadence with all of the leadership team on our team, uh, as well. Yeah. [00:41:11] Vince Menzione: Well, by reviewing the night before your subconscious mind works on it. [00:41:15] Jon Yoo: Oh, yeah. [00:41:16] Vince Menzione: They say that that helps. It helps in terms of like thinking through the problem and getting a solution before you start. [00:41:22] Jon Yoo: Totally. Or like, you know, if I know I’m walking into an important meeting, I have to do some mental prep of like, what are the three things that I really want to get accomplished out of this meeting? [00:41:31] Jon Yoo: If I just walk into it without having even like two minutes to think about it, [00:41:35] Vince Menzione: you’re, you’re, you’re just lost. You’re cold. Yeah. So is there a quote or a mantra that you, that inspires you? [00:41:43] Jon Yoo: Yeah, I, you know, I, I, there is a lot of moments from my days at Salesforce that was, I was so lucky to work with some phenomenally talented folks. [00:41:56] Jon Yoo: Um, and each kind of manager or boss that I’ve had have imparted some wisdom. So I remember, uh, my first manager was Mackenzie. Uh, I was probably a pain in the ass to, or a pain in the butt to, to, uh, deal with this angsty kid who, who wanted to accomplish a lot and do cool things. But she always said, John, like, I think she got frustrated at just all the different products I wanted to work on. [00:42:19] Jon Yoo: She goes. It’s, it’s a Venn diagram, you know, there’s a Venn diagram of what the company and the team needs. And then there’s a Venn diagram of like, or the circle of what you think is cool. You have to play in that little overlap or what the company needs and suck it up, you know? And I try to bring that type of mentality to our team as well, because we, you know, our chief of staff for him, for example, is incredibly ambitious and incredibly talented. [00:42:41] Jon Yoo: And so I always say two things for me, one thing for you, uh, but all three needs to be something that helps the company move forward. Um, I had another manager, Nick, who then this, I think about this every day of, um, you know, motivation is incredibly powerful, uh, and, but it comes and goes and discipline is what gets you through the day. [00:43:01] Jon Yoo: Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, even if you don’t want to do something just like. You know, being disciplined about doing it is, is, and, and setting that like muscle memory is something that is incredibly important. And then finally, sorry, I know you asked for one quote, but I’ll do the whole chronology. [00:43:20] Jon Yoo: My old boss at Salesforce also was Denise Dresser, who is now like the CEO of Slack to have done amazing things, uh, since then. And, uh, you know, she said, uh, she really preaches radical candor. And so I’ve seen her just be incredibly. Like straightforward, uh, and honest with her direct reports around, Hey, this is what, you know, good looks like and asking very tough questions of why this has been done or not been done. [00:43:51] Jon Yoo: And it’s never emotional. It’s very like facts based object, uh, objective. And so I try to bring some of that into, man, into the team as well. [00:43:59] Vince Menzione: It’s good, especially in the startup world. Right. We have to quickly get to the solution to the problem. Yeah. Dilly dally in it. And you talked about like powering through the problem. [00:44:08] Vince Menzione: Like just power through, I think you talked about motivation, but that also helps with motivation, right? Cause when you power through an issue, like even when you don’t, when you don’t want to go do it, you get to the outcome and that kind of propels or helps motivate you to, to continue to do those things. [00:44:24] Jon Yoo: Oh yeah. It’s just a muscle memory. And I always say like, we have to get more at bats. And once you do, once you solve like one very problem, um, the next problem doesn’t seem as hard. Or. It doesn’t seem as daunting if the challenge is higher. So very cool. [00:44:39] Vince Menzione: So I have a favorite question. Okay. I asked this of almost all my guests. [00:44:42] Vince Menzione: It’s a favorite of mine and, uh, you’re hosting a dinner party, John. Okay. Um, you can host this dinner party anywhere in the world. We could talk about locations. It’d be very interesting to hear your point of view on that. And you can invite any three guests from the present or the past, this amazing dinner party. [00:45:00] Vince Menzione: Whom would you invite and why? [00:45:04] Jon Yoo: There are so many. Um, when I was young and I would answer this, or I guess I’m still young, but you know, in my teenage years, yeah, in my teenage years, I’d always joke like Kim Jong-un because yeah, it’s such a interesting character around, um, fascinating. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. In some ways, , but in reality, I’d say number one would be my, um, my, my grandfather and my mom’s side, who, who, who passed away, uh, my grandfather. [00:45:31] Jon Yoo: Um. You know, many years ago and I, you know, growing up in the U S I didn’t get a chance to spend too much time with him, but I later learned after he passed of some of the crazy stories that he’s dealt with. So, you know, when, when Japan, like colonized Korea, for example, you know, it was in Japan, he got shipped to Japan for a little bit and then actually had to go to a concentration camp up in Serbia or, uh, yeah, or no, not Serbia. [00:45:57] Jon Yoo: Um, what’s the tundra, the frozen tundra. I don’t know the, oh, uh, yeah, Russia where they said, yes, I need to Siberia, Siberia. Yeah. Siberia. And he actually walked back from Siberia, uh, barefoot back to Korea. It took him like many, many months and just showed up in my grandmother’s doorsteps, like thin as a stick with long hair. [00:46:20] Jon Yoo: Uh, I would love to just learn about what type of will it took and how that shaped them as a person for any like hardship down the road. Um, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I want to write like an autobiography about, or not a biography about that. Very cool. Um, I think one of my favorite people is, uh, Jon Stewart. [00:46:38] Jon Yoo: Yeah. I think he’s a, uh, has such a wide range of, of expert, you know, not expertise, but just topics that he can engage in incredibly intellectually curious. And I think I’d be able to. Like ask so many questions or you know, so witty. I want to be Jon Stewart. He’s a funny guy. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly and then Final one is it’s kind of a funky one, but Jim Carrey. [00:47:06] Vince Menzione: Yeah [00:47:06] Jon Yoo: he’s I saw an interview where he talked about how there’s this face that you put on for everyone and there’s who you are internally and And when you’re an actor or like people kind of pigeonhole you into a specific image, you know, there’s such a hard pressure to live up to that image or be that person when they meet him in person. [00:47:26] Jon Yoo: Um, and not saying I have, I have, I’m like two face where there’s like me, personal John, and then there’s like professional John, but you know, that’s definitely converged more and more as work has become more of my life. And so, you know, one of the things I want to talk to him about is just how do you maintain kind of your self identity and who you are? [00:47:46] Jon Yoo: Even if it clashes with what you need to be in a professional setting, um, or as a CEO of a company. And so I think those are pretty [00:47:54] Vince Menzione: interesting topics. Yeah, because we do have to have a persona in the business world. It might be different than our kind of personal. [00:48:00] Jon Yoo: Yeah, that’s [00:48:00] Vince Menzione: right. [00:48:01] Jon Yoo: Well, everyone has it. [00:48:01] Jon Yoo: Everyone has like the phone voice. Yeah. Or the podcast voice. Yeah. Yeah. It’s very nice by the way. Yeah. I feel your battle voice. [00:48:09] Vince Menzione: Where are we hosting [00:48:09] Jon Yoo: this [00:48:10] Vince Menzione: dinner? [00:48:11] Jon Yoo: Ooh. Um. I mean, anyone that’s gone out with me knows, uh, I’m a big Korean barbecue guy. Okay. So we’re going to be in Seoul at one of my favorite Korean barbecue spots. [00:48:22] Jon Yoo: It’s a little dingy hole, hole in a wall. And, uh, we’re just going to grill some pork belly and, and, uh, you know, beef and have some soju and just talk about life. All right. I’m kind of [00:48:33] Vince Menzione: come join you. Yeah, absolutely. That’d be, that’d be a lot of fun. Meet your granddad, uh, Jim Carrey and Jon Stewart are two amazing individuals. [00:48:40] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So it’s really cool. So, you know, we are living through an amazing time of change and transformation. And we are in 2025 and really the early first quarter of the year. What would you say to our viewers and listeners to help them optimize for their success this new year? How do they need to lean in? [00:48:57] Jon Yoo: Specific to marketplace or just in general, [00:49:00] Vince Menzione: just [00:49:01] Jon Yoo: in [00:49:01] Vince Menzione: general. [00:49:03] Jon Yoo: I’d say, uh, just being intellectually curious and tinkering around. So we’re going through such a rapid evolution in technology and a lot of the. Adoption in like your day to day work setting, for example, uh, because enterprise adoption generally is much, much slower than consumer adoption. [00:49:25] Jon Yoo: And so tinker around with all these different tools that are out and figure out like what the art of the possible is. And just being very curious about that mentality, I think is super important for you to understand what the value of this technology and how it can change the world, um, like me, myself, like I play around all the time with like chat, GPT, clod, like, you know, perplexity to figure out like. [00:49:47] Jon Yoo: Where does the system break? How can it actually enhance my productivity? Um, I mean, just the other day, this is such a stupid use case, but I wanted to like recreate a slide and, you know, I didn’t want to go ask someone on our team to do it. So, and I haven’t written Python in like years, but like just asking Chachapik exactly how I do it, was able to do it in 20 minutes. [00:50:07] Jon Yoo: And now any other kind of work that, you know, I want to be able to do that with, I can leverage this like little snippet of code that, you know, GPT gave me. Or like creating images, for example, for LinkedIn, then there’s so many different applications and you have to tinker around with it to understand what’s possible and what’s not. [00:50:23] Vince Menzione: So I recently downloaded cloud and perplexity. I’m kind of curious. Cause I’ve been using chat GBT, which is your favorite. Chat GBT. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty cool. I [00:50:32] Jon Yoo: think partly cause I just use it for most. Um, but yeah, they’re all pretty good. You know, [00:50:38] Vince Menzione: you can’t go [00:50:38] Jon Yoo: wrong. [00:50:40] Vince Menzione: John, so excited to have you here today. [00:50:43] Vince Menzione: Thank you for making the trip from San Francisco all the way here to Boca Raton, Florida. And, uh, so glad you get to spend time with our viewers and listeners. I want to thank you for your support and partnership. Thank you for joining the Ultimate Guide Department. [00:50:54] Jon Yoo: No, thanks for having me. It was such a blast. [00:50:57] Jon Yoo: Um, I always, as I mentioned, learn something new at all these events and It helps that Boca Raton is phenomenal, you know, and the venue and everything was phenomenal. So I really appreciate your partnership. Appreciate you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Perfect. Appreciate [00:51:10] Vince Menzione: you. Thank you. Thank you, John. And thank you to our audience at ultimate partner. [00:51:15] Vince Menzione: We strive to bring you great leaders like John to help you achieve more. If you like our podcast and like watching us on YouTube. Please tell your friends about us and hit the subscribe button on either Spotify, Apple, or our YouTube channel. You can also follow along on TheUltimatePartner. com to learn more about our events, our podcasts, and our community. [00:51:40] Vince Menzione: Together, let’s spark the ecosystem.know. It’s incredible. I know, I just gotta find, you know, block out some time to be able to visit it, but that’s probably where I would hold it.

Dai Vu, Google Cloud Marketplace Leader, Joins Ultimate Partner “2023 was the year of experimentation and POCs. 2024 was identifying specific use cases in production. Now 2025 is going to be the year of agents.” – Dai Vu Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ https://youtu.be/2DsMB9mx1LM?si=eEhvuMersxAwV5O0 Dai Vu, Managing Director of Google Cloud’s Marketplace and ISV Go-To-Market programs, joins Vince Menzione on the Ultimate Partner podcast to discuss the exciting evolution of cloud marketplaces and the rise of AI. Dai shares his insights on Google Cloud’s explosive growth, its unique approach to partnering, and the strategic importance of the marketplace in today’s cloud landscape. He also delves into the transformative potential of AI, particularly the emergence of AI agents, and how Google Cloud empowers its ecosystem to drive innovation in this space. Tune in to discover how Google Cloud Marketplace facilitates customer choice, streamlines procurement processes, and fosters deeper collaboration between partners and customers. This episode offers valuable advice for software companies and service providers looking to leverage the Google Cloud Marketplace to scale their go-to-market strategies and thrive in the rapidly changing world of cloud computing and AI. Dai also shares personal insights on his career journey, his definition of mastery, and his approach to leadership, making this episode both informative and inspiring for anyone interested in the future of technology and partnerships. Key Takeaways: Adaptability and flexibility are crucial for success in the rapidly changing world of cloud computing and AI. Google Cloud Marketplace is a strategic priority for Google Cloud, serving as the route to market and driving significant revenue. Google Cloud differentiates itself through higher-layer services like data analytics and AI, fostering customer stickiness. The marketplace is evolving to facilitate outcome-based solutions, enabling partners like SIs to participate and drive business value. AI, particularly AI agents, is a major focus for Google Cloud, and the company is leaning on its ecosystem to drive innovation in this area. Google Cloud emphasizes a “first party equals third party” approach, prioritizing customer choice and providing a consistent experience. Partners need to view the marketplace as a strategic investment and build a compelling “better together” story with Google Cloud. Product-led growth and AI are transforming the marketplace experience, enabling smarter search, discovery, and solution deployment. Registration NOW Open!!! Register Today! TRANSCRIPT Transcription: [00:00:00] Dai Vu: Well, it’s interesting. The narrative, uh, of, uh, AI has been like 2023. It was like the year of like experimentation and POCs. And then 2024 was around, um, identifying specific use cases in production. And now 2025 is going to be the year of agents. [00:00:19] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts. [00:00:25] Intro: All the hyperscalers in the world. If you add them all together, managed services will be 1. 5 times larger [00:00:30] Dai Vu: because it is the Customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models [00:00:37] Intro: until we have data quality. The effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. [00:00:44] Intro: Can you figure out first what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. [00:00:57] Vince Menzione: Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzio and your host and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. [00:01:06] Vince Menzione: At Ultimate Partner, we’ve been talking about the tectonic shifts in our world and our lives, the role of hyperscalers and co selling, and this marketplace moment. And today I’m thrilled to have in the studio, Google Cloud’s leader for marketplaces. Dai Vu serves as the Managing Director of Google Cloud’s Marketplace and ISP Go To Market programs and joins us here in the studio. [00:01:32] Vince Menzione: Dai, welcome to the podcast. Thanks. Thanks for having me here. I am so excited to have you here in Boca Raton, Florida. We call it the genesis of the ecosystem, uh, and uh, I was really thrilled to have you join us for our event. Yeah, yes. Great event. Uh, tough to get down here, but glad I made it. Yeah. I make the trip the other way quite often and uh, it’s a long trip. [00:01:55] Vince Menzione: So, so excited to talk to you more about Google Cloud. Uh, I thought maybe first we’d spend a little time on you, your career trajectory and your current mission and role. [00:02:05] Dai Vu: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, I, uh, I am the global business leader for Cloud Marketplace and ISV go to market initiatives. And, uh, So my team’s charter is really just to grow the ecosystem business through Marketplace. [00:02:18] Dai Vu: And, uh, so I have teams that are responsible for the P& L, uh, business development, partner engineering, and onboarding, uh, partner and platform strategy, deal compliance, uh, incentives, uh, co sell initiatives and, and, and more. So, um, and I’ve been in this role for about three and a half years. Uh, this is my third role at Google. [00:02:39] Dai Vu: I’ve been at Google for over 10 years. Well, well done. Yeah. So it’s been, uh, it’s been a, it’s been a great journey. Uh, and, uh, before this current role, I spent four years in the product group. So an area in the business called the. Application monetization platform. So this was around, uh, bootstrapping and growing our Kubernetes serverless developer platform, um, multi cloud initiatives with Anthos. [00:03:03] Dai Vu: Uh, and then before that, I, I actually started in the ads business, one of the ads. And yeah, yeah, it was, uh, But it was more like ads infrastructure. So we did, I was in a product management role within ads and commerce that focused on things like, uh, business process automation and workflow automation. And so that was a good, uh, landing spot, uh, for, uh, within Google and cloud had not yet quite matured. [00:03:26] Dai Vu: It was, I was joking. It was called, uh, Google for work at the time. Google for work. That’s right. I remember that back in 2014. And, uh, and if you kind of look, you mentioned trajectory, if you kind of look at what I’ve done in previous, uh, I’ve had a number of different, uh, functional roles across a number of different, uh, areas. [00:03:43] Dai Vu: Like I guess, You know, I’ve done product management roles at IBM, um, uh, systems group. Uh, I was at Microsoft. I think we overlapped a little bit. I was, I was basically the, um, lead product manager for Hyper V within Windows server. Yeah. I remember Hyper V. Yeah, exactly. And I’ve also had roles in a sort of ecosystem at SAP business development. [00:04:04] Dai Vu: And then, uh, I’ve also done some strategy consulting with BCG and McKinsey. And, uh, yeah, you know, as you mentioned, it’s, it’s kind of like an interesting trajectory because I’ve done a lot of different functional roles, meaning that I haven’t been like, like an ecosystem person, but, you know, in my entire career, I’ve done a lot of product. [00:04:22] Dai Vu: Uh, and, uh, you know, I think the one thing that’s been constant is I’ve always been in something around B2B and enterprise tech. And I tend to focus on, uh, businesses that are scaling. So kind of bringing new disruptive technologies to the market, figuring out how we can, uh, scale that to, you know, multi billion dollar, you know, triple digit year over year growth, that type of stuff. [00:04:44] Dai Vu: And, uh, and I think one thing that I think I like about my role is my current role is it has a little bit of everything, meaning that you do a little bit of product, you do a little bit of partnering, you do a little bit of sales, you do a little bit of like strategy. All these different. Like functional roles I’ve had in my career have kind of led me to a role like this. [00:05:03] Dai Vu: So, uh, I think that’s kind of me and that’s how I make sense of it. [00:05:06] Vince Menzione: Well, from my perspective, it’s, it’s a fascinating, exciting role and you sit, you sit in a very exciting spot, right? We talk about this marketplace moment and you’ve been at it three and a half years, which is a long time in this marketplace moment. [00:05:19] Vince Menzione: Google cloud has been at it for, since 2017 ish. Uh, fantastic growth. I was hoping you could tell, tell us a little bit more about that growth trajectory. Yeah. Yeah. [00:05:30] Dai Vu: So, uh, so I joined Google cloud in, uh, Q4, 2017 and, um, and what happened was in February 2018, we actually disclosed our, uh, revenue for the first time. [00:05:43] Dai Vu: It was more of a one off. Right. Yeah, exactly. And at that time it was a 1 billion a quarter, which was like a 4 billion run rate back in like, uh, you know, Q1, uh, 2018. Fast forward to our most recent announcements in terms of our earnings, where we are basically a 48 billion run rate business. So you’re looking at 12 X, right? [00:06:03] Dai Vu: 12 X, right? So, uh, in a period of seven years, which is amazing, right? And, uh, and of course we’re profitable now. I think our operating, um, uh, profit was 2. 1 billion, which was 142 percent year over year. Our backlog is close, close to a hundred billion now. And so it’s been amazing to see this, this growth over, over this timeframe. [00:06:23] Dai Vu: And, uh, you know, what I really have been very excited about moving cloud is I think we’ve always been sort of a great technology and platform in terms of engineering and products, you know, like things like, um, you look at our sort of global network infrastructure. Uh, you look at some of the things that we’ve been trying to do to get people to adopt higher layer services. [00:06:44] Dai Vu: Think about like. You know, data and analytics and BigQuery, uh, you know, the long history we’ve had with AI and ML, um, uh, and, uh, you know, Kubernetes, uh, higher layers of compute. And so the idea that, hey, we’re going to enter cloud, but when I try to do things a little bit different, right, this isn’t just about competing on, uh, storage and compute, which is a little bit harder to differentiate. [00:07:07] Dai Vu: And, uh, you know, I think what we’ve been doing is trying to change the. How consumption model, right? It’s instead of like compute hour or terabytes per month, it’s, it’s things like, you know, higher layer services and microservices, things like that. So it’s kind of extended into this AI era that we’re getting into. [00:07:26] Dai Vu: So I think that’s, what’s been very exciting. And, and I think, uh, you and I had a chat earlier about this, which is. We only grew, uh, I think 30 percent year over year, which is still faster than, yeah, faster than all the other competitors. But what’s interesting is. Uh, our workspace business is not growing as fast as our core Google cloud platform. [00:07:44] Dai Vu: So if you were to remove it, which we don’t break out, our growth would be an apples to apples compared to AWS and Azure would be even much, much, much bigger. Right? So, so I think it’s, uh, it’s been an amazing growth and, uh, very exciting to the same area that we’re getting into. [00:08:01] Vince Menzione: So what do you attribute to the growth? [00:08:02] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Is it taking market share away? Is it new services? And he’s talking about microservices as well with AI. [00:08:08] Dai Vu: Exactly. So I think that’s part of it. I think, you know, the fact that we are bringing something that’s a little bit different in terms of higher layer services and creating this sort of stickiness with customers, I think that’s number one. [00:08:19] Dai Vu: The second thing is, I think it took a little while for us to build out our go to market organization. So it wasn’t like, say like a Microsoft where, you know, you had all these resources in the field on day one because of the legacy, uh, sort of on prem business. We had to build that a little bit over time, and I think that really started to accelerate when, uh, when Thomas Kurian came on in early 2019. [00:08:38] Dai Vu: So, between building out the sales organization and sort of, you know, building a lot of the infrastructure, I think that, that growth has continued to, uh, to drive us quite a bit. So I think, again, it’s a combination of our unique tech, high level services, and then building out the go to market organization. [00:08:53] Dai Vu: Does this allow us to sustain this group? [00:08:55] Vince Menzione: Yeah, I always remember because I’ve had conversations with Google leaders for many years now about the engineering side. The prowess in engineering is incredible. Uh, and then getting, uh, maturing as an enterprise organization. That’s what you’re referring to. And I remember in the early days too, because I’ve been a fan and friend of Tony Savoian, SADA. [00:09:13] Vince Menzione: And I’ve been with him on that journey as well. And, uh, he was actually front loading, I would say, helping the organization along during those earlier days. [00:09:21] Dai Vu: Yeah. I mean, you could argue, uh, you know, folks like Tony and Sada, you know, they, we’ve kind of, you know, somewhat outsourced our sales organization in the early years. [00:09:30] Dai Vu: Yeah. So, and before we, before we built it out and, uh, but now, you know, I think we have that critical mass and scale, which, you know, has driven the growth, but gives us that infrastructure to continue that growth and trajectory. [00:09:42] Vince Menzione: So I’ve been in the room. I’ve been got had the privilege of speaking at one of your events in New York City a couple years ago. [00:09:47] Vince Menzione: I think you were there. Yes. I’ve also been in the room at some of your other events since we got to participate in your marketplace forum. Yes. And you know, there’s a palpable excitement, I would say, in the room. And I love the way that you and your organization have leaned in here. And I will say, I’ve been critical of other organizations for not leaning in the same way. [00:10:08] Vince Menzione: So I want to maybe spend a moment here. Like, what do you believe you’re doing uniquely or differently? Like I’ve observed it and I’ve talked to some of your leaders, but I want to hear from you. [00:10:17] Dai Vu: Yeah. I think there are a couple of things to call out here. I think, first of all, I think, uh, you know, cloud go to marketing COSA. [00:10:23] Dai Vu: We, you know, we, we’ve been doing that for a few years now, but I think if you go back maybe two years ago, we, you know, we had marketplaces sort of like a preferred. Route to market in terms of co sell and their ecosystem. And then we establish it as the route, meaning that all the incentives, all the field compensation, all the, uh, time to value benefits is all driving to marketplace. [00:10:45] Dai Vu: So I think that was a very intentional decision we made two years ago. I forgot to mention, when we talked about the quarterly earnings, we had Sundar actually mentioned, um, in his opening statements about cloud, about talking about how. Uh, customers are purchasing billions of dollars annually to a cloud marketplace. [00:11:01] Dai Vu: So the shout out, uh, kind of like really punctuated the, uh, the growth that we’re seeing. Yeah. So it’s big. Um, but I think what we’re doing is, I mentioned, we’ve invested a lot in the platform, right? So if you kind of think about the things that we’ve innovated, uh, it’s like removing some of the friction in terms of the customer and partner buying process. [00:11:19] Dai Vu: It’s enabling. Uh, in new pricing and billing models, like upfront multi year prepay. We launched last year, it’s unlocking new solution categories, right? We, you know, we, uh, you know, in the last 18 months we’ve introduced commercial large language models from Mishcrawl, Anthropic. Uh, and cohere and, and, and anthropic. [00:11:38] Dai Vu: And, and the idea here is that we want to sort of enable a very broad and comprehensive set of solutions available on marketplace data, uh, uh, data sets, commercial data sets from like Equifax and Dun Bradstreet. Uh, the other area is, uh, business apps, right? So that’s another area where we have a onboarded workday and service, service now, and these are solutions that historically would not be things you would think they’d go through marketplace, but. [00:12:05] Dai Vu: We’re making very intentional, uh, partnerships where they’re seeing cloud go to market and marketplace as a way to sort of grow their business. And of course, you know, about all of the incentives we align with our end customers in terms of, in terms of, uh, commit drawdown, we, we pay our reps and, you know, partners are consistently telling us that when they go through marketplace to our very tangible benefits in terms of. [00:12:28] Dai Vu: You know, faster meal cycle times, higher win rates and larger deal sizes. So, so it’s not just, you know, private offers has driven a lot of the growth and we’re consistently seeing deals that are in the, you know, tens of millions of dollars in total contract value. In fact, we’re doing, you know, multiple, uh, nine digit, uh, deals. [00:12:46] Dai Vu: So that’s over a hundred million total contract value over the last year or so. So, um, yeah, so it’s, uh, it’s all in. Uh, and we continue to invest, uh, people, resources, incentives across the board. So you’d be kind of think of all the different players, you know, involved in how do you get. Our ecosystem software into a customer environment, whether it’s a sell and services partner and ISV and in customer, our field reps, all the financial and time to value benefits are just highly aligned in what’s that’s prescribed. [00:13:16] Vince Menzione: I got to interview some of your partners at your event in Seattle back in October. I think it was right. And I, that is a consistent theme. And it was, what was unique about it for me is that you had ISVs, traditional software companies. Uh, but you also had reseller partners, uh, you had the traditional ones like CDW in the room, which I, you know, kind of the old school partners and they’ve embraced working with you and, and the recognition, uh, time to value, uh, uh, bigger deal size, greater influence on the opportunity, like work, working through the Google organization, working with your sales organization. [00:13:51] Vince Menzione: Uh, they, they saw that as a critical success factors for them being working with you and the organization. I saw that time and time again. Absolutely. Absolutely. I also felt like when I’ve interviewed Chelsea on the podcast, uh, she’s an incredible leader. Yes. I feel like you put like, uh, we’ll call it maniacal focus on the execution piece. [00:14:09] Vince Menzione: Maybe you could talk a little bit about that as well. [00:14:11] Dai Vu: Yeah. So I mean, so first of all, I’d mentioned about the resources. So we have scaled up our, uh, resources in the region. So this is all about helping partners. Uh, you know, create pipeline and close deals. And, uh, Chelsea, for example, is a good example where she is highly aligned to our sales team. [00:14:27] Dai Vu: So that’s more like a regional, uh, sort of go to market focus. We also have, um, specialists who are aligned among name partners, but on the regional side, we are, you know, whenever an end customer and a sales rep need to opportunistically identify an opportunity on marketplace and an ISB solution, uh, we are there to support the deal, right? [00:14:46] Dai Vu: And so I think that’s one piece. We are very big on metrics. So we have these, uh, you know, pipeline reviews. We have these, um, uh, specific, uh, numbers as it relates to, um, Marketplace revenue and also what we call ratable revenue, which is basically, yeah. Well, what that basically means is, uh, we enable upfront multi year prepaid deals and, and what that does is it spreads, uh, the payments, if you will, across the term, because that tends to be a lot more aligned to the consumption that we see. [00:15:17] Dai Vu: Uh, which, you know, fundamentally is a big part of the marketplace value proposition and a business model, which is we collect the rev share. But ultimately what we’re doing is we’re seeing these solutions drive up consumption, both in the partner tenant and the customer tenant. [00:15:30] Vince Menzione: You talked about the cloud commitments piece and I, not everybody who is watching or listening today understands that component. [00:15:36] Vince Menzione: I talked about it quite a bit. Obviously, we talked about this incredible TAM that’s available because your, your teams are being very effective at going at, and I like to talk about the C suite and the board making these decisions, right? The CEO, the CFO really are the ones aligning to sign the contracts and make the commitment for the organization. [00:15:55] Vince Menzione: And then that’s available for, for, for burndown essentially, right? And for these organizations to tap into those budgets. [00:16:01] Dai Vu: That’s correct. [00:16:01] Vince Menzione: Um, I think that’s an important piece, but how do you, how do you help them identify that or maybe drive against that? [00:16:08] Dai Vu: Well, I mean, I think the, the, the customer benefit here is that customers are willing to make larger commits. [00:16:13] Dai Vu: And as they make larger commits that get more favorable discounting on those first party services. They get access to other incentives, whether it be general GCP credits or, you know, migration funds and, or our professional services funds. And so, the benefit here is that we are, uh, enabling customers to draw down on that commitment dollar for dollar through solutions to Marketplace. [00:16:34] Dai Vu: And it’s effectively de risking that commitment. Okay? But not only that, what ends up happening is as you move workloads to the cloud, there are solutions that are naturally things that you want to procure through Marketplace, whether it be security or database analytics. And that has been traditionally our biggest categories on Marketplace because these tend to be things that enable those workplaces to move to the cloud in the first part. [00:16:56] Dai Vu: Yes. And so I think what we’re seeing now is that customers are basically making large commits and then consolidating a growing cloud budget. And seeing what they can put in terms of like ecosystem and third party solutions as part of that growing cloud budget. And we talk about [00:17:10] Vince Menzione: the seven seats to the table all the time. [00:17:12] Vince Menzione: We had Jay with us yesterday and that’s where we’ve got, we got the term from Jay and we’ve been using it ever since. Thank you, Jay. Uh, but really that’s exactly what you’re describing, right? The customer is sitting at the center. [00:17:22] Dai Vu: Yes. [00:17:23] Vince Menzione: Uh, they’re at the dashboard, right? And they’re saying, we need a security solution. [00:17:27] Vince Menzione: We need data. We need all these other solutions. And third party solutions as well as Google cloud solutions and pulling it all. They’re stitching together the solution. [00:17:36] Dai Vu: Absolutely. I mean, listen, our, uh, you know, you say the customers at the center, we, uh, facilitate choice. We have an open platform, you know, we want customers to have the right workload on GCP and whether it’s a first party service or an ecosystem solution, we let the customers decide they’re in the best position to determine what. [00:17:54] Dai Vu: What’s best for their, uh, for their business needs and their environment. And, um, and I think that’s, that’s one of the things that has made us successful on the, on the, on the, on the partnering front, which is we take a very, what I call like a first party equals third party approach, which is, you know, how we think about marketing, promoting. [00:18:12] Dai Vu: Distributing, procuring, consistency between first party and third party, and we leave it up to the customer to design. [00:18:18] Vince Menzione: I love that. I love that. You know, one of the biggest criticisms, we talked about this yesterday, in fact, at our event. Uh, if you haven’t watched the event, by the way, you can watch the event on YouTube. [00:18:27] Vince Menzione: It’s still, we’re still live streaming it. But, uh, we talked about the fact that a biggest criticism in the marketplace is today is, I would call it underutilization. In other words, it’s mostly like private offers. Yeah. Big deals that we already knew about, right? So, you know, we talked about the big guys like CrowdStrike and Splunk and others that quickly got to a billion dollars or more. [00:18:48] Vince Menzione: And a lot of that was taking their existing book of business and moving it to a marketplace. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, what are you seeing there? Cause there’s criticism that we’re not really scaling some of the smaller digital natives or even the mid, the mid market, even upper market ISVs or software companies. [00:19:03] Vince Menzione: What, what is, what would you say to those critics? [00:19:05] Dai Vu: Yeah, I think, first of all, we have to assess, is that a true statement? And, uh, it is fair, meaning that a big, uh, a big part of the marketplace growth has been what we call the channel shift, if you will. Right. Just going from like partner paper to marketplace. [00:19:18] Dai Vu: Uh, but first of all, if that, if that is the case, we do find that there’s a lot of benefits of that too, because I think number one, what we see is when you renew, uh, on marketplace, you tend to manage the churn and the renewal rates a lot better. Uh, the expansion opportunities are greater. So I think there’s a lot of, uh, interest for the ISV to basically drive these renewals to marketplace. [00:19:39] Dai Vu: And then of course, serving your customers better too, which is, you know, they want to sort of draw down their, uh, I’ll commit, they get faster time to value, they have solutions that are validated. On GCP and well integrated, so it’s serving their customers better. And then we have other sort of platform benefits that provide some efficiency, if you will, in terms of, um, things like auto renewals. [00:19:59] Dai Vu: So the, the ISVs can manage that quite a bit better. Now, what I find interesting is that, um, we, one of the things that we’ve been trying to improve in the last year and a half is better telemetry in terms of, um, uh, you know, who’s sourcing video. Okay. Is that, you know, partners for us or Google source. And then the other pieces around what the, uh, incremental ACB is for the solutions that are renewed through marketplace where the expansions are. [00:20:24] Dai Vu: And, and, uh, you know, I think what we’re doing now is we’re getting better visibility into this. And at some point in the future, you can imagine that we’ll start to, uh, you know, put metrics against our reps to. Identify net new pipeline and net new deals or incremental ACB. In the meantime, I think our reps are doing quite a good job of engaging in these opportunities and adding value, regardless of who’s sourcing the deal, whether it be you conducting a workshop or, you know, supporting a POC or. [00:20:54] Dai Vu: Making the right connections in the accounts. And there’s a lot of value that they’re adding regardless of who’s sourcing the deal. But then more and more, we’ll see, uh, our reps, uh, identifying, uh, new opportunities for our partners. And of course, the other piece that we didn’t talk about is, uh, product led growth. [00:21:09] Dai Vu: So I don’t know if we touched on that yesterday, but yeah, yeah. So product led growth is, is, is I think, uh, an interesting, um, discussion because that’s in some ways the original promise of Marketplace, which is you can just, you know, go on Marketplace, you can search, you can discover, you can try, buy. And I think there are a lot of things that suggest that this is going to grow quite a bit, right? [00:21:30] Dai Vu: I think number one is. Um, AI and automation, hyper personalization. So now you can do things like smart suggest, you can have very intelligent search, you know, natural language. Like, Hey, I’m looking for solution that, yeah, those ability. Exactly. Exactly. So we are, we were actually putting quite a bit of investments to enable a product led growth. [00:21:50] Dai Vu: So again, this is, think of this as a, you know, primarily customers who want to land like a smaller deal, like a, like a, like maybe a free trial or a small. And then over time they can just expand the opportunity. And we’re doing things like improving search, both cloud console and marketplace. That’s number one, we’re improving, uh, analytics. [00:22:09] Dai Vu: So if you’re, if you want to drive like a campaign through a marketplace listing, you can measure the effectiveness of that campaign through like different stages of the, of the funnel. And then we’re also doing things going back to my first party equals third party is how can we surface third party solutions within a cloud console context? [00:22:26] Dai Vu: So like, uh, like, uh, scenario. Yeah. Like to give an example, suppose you’re a. A developer or an ML practitioner and you’re in Vertex ai. Okay. And you know, you’ve selected a, a model from model guarded and suppose now you want to, uh, uh, purchase and deploy a, uh, a vector database. Right. We should be able to surface in context. [00:22:46] Dai Vu: So not hunch out to marketplace. Exactly. You’re right. While you’re in. Yes. Yeah, exactly. So we’re surfacing these ecosystem and third party solutions in context for the customer and allowing them to, again, commercial. Uh, deploy, um, in, you know, uh, seamlessly without having to go to a different, uh, interface. [00:23:04] Dai Vu: So again, this, this is blurring the lines between first party and third party. Yeah. [00:23:07] Vince Menzione: I mean, it’s taking some of the core strengths of Google as an organization from search and Yes. And really at the forefront of AI. Yes. Let’s just discuss that. Like, Yeah. Maybe they didn’t lean in first, but leaned in right after us and, and, you know, I feel like it’s. [00:23:21] Vince Menzione: It’s a neck and neck there, right there. I mean, in terms of, in terms of the growth. [00:23:24] Dai Vu: Yeah, no, no, absolutely. So I think this, this, this is a, again, this will start off as a, you know, uh, where a lot of the developer focused or open source where they, you know, people like Mongo, Confluent, Elastic, those will start. [00:23:36] Dai Vu: But I think this will extend to other solution areas. And uh, so I think this is going to be, this is going to take off and we’re investing quite a bit in this area. Yeah. Let’s talk more about AI. [00:23:44] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about agentic AI. [00:23:45] Dai Vu: Yeah, yeah. And [00:23:46] Vince Menzione: agent AI. [00:23:47] Dai Vu: Yeah, yeah. [00:23:48] Vince Menzione: And the autonomous enterprise. How is Google planning to capture this opportunity? [00:23:52] Vince Menzione: And what are the implications for this ecosystem that we live in? [00:23:56] Dai Vu: Well, it’s interesting. The narrative, uh, uh, AI has been like 2023 was like the year of like experimentation and POCs. And then 2024 was around, um, identifying specific use cases and production. And now 2025 is going to be the year of agents. [00:24:13] Dai Vu: Okay. And we do see a huge opportunity for customers to deploy agents, whether it be to AI. Uh, you know, handle complex transactions or improve customer experience or improve operational efficiency. And I think the opportunity here is we’re going to lean on our ecosystem to drive that innovation and monetization. [00:24:33] Dai Vu: Tell us more about that. Well, when you think about it, um, you know, our partners brings very specific domain expertise, right? Maybe they know. Uh, uh, sort of a business process really well, or a vertical really well, right? We provide the platform and tools, right? Like we have, um, uh, agent builder, right? Agent builder is, you know, being able to leverage things like our enterprise search capabilities. [00:24:56] Dai Vu: It’s being able to, um, uh, create, uh, sort of connections and calls to LLMs, as well as connecting to data sources. And of course, Marketplace will be the primary place for our customers to search, purchase, and deploy agents for our ecosystem. In fact, uh, we, we announced in November last year, uh, this initiative called AgentSpace, uh, within Marketplace, which is, uh, where customers can basically search agents that are, you know, deployable on Vertex AI and leveraging any third party LLM that’s running on GCP. [00:25:28] Dai Vu: And so I think this is going to be big, I don’t know if it’s going to be the, like the death of SAS, but we do think hundreds, maybe thousands of agents, uh, will be, uh, will be coming to market. And again, that could be within an application to improve the overall experience, or it could be sort of the standalone, uh, agents that, uh, that our partners can, can monetize. [00:25:50] Dai Vu: So I think this is a. So this is a big area and again, we’re going to lean on our partners in the ecosystem to drive a lot of that innovation. [00:25:57] Vince Menzione: I love that. And it struck me when you were talking about, uh, verticals and industries, I was thinking about healthcare. Yeah. I was thinking about financial services. [00:26:06] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Uh, Chris Sakolowski has been a guest here multiple times. Yeah. Nooks and no crisps. And thinking about like outcomes, driving outcomes and intelligence really helping to streamline all those processes around the back end of this. [00:26:17] Dai Vu: That’s correct. I mean, that’s another, uh, area that I think Marketplace is going to help facilitate because, you know, historically Marketplace has been a very sort of like, uh, you know, product SKU focus and ISV focus, uh, uh, catalog, but, you know, over time and, you know, you’ve seen, we make the steps to enable other partners to participate in Marketplace, whether it be resellers or services partners, we actually just, uh, made professional services, a formal solution category by Marketplace. [00:26:44] Dai Vu: So now if you have the sell and services partners involved, You can start to think about things like how can we drive business outcomes as opposed to purchase products, right? And, um, and you can start to define things like pre integrated solutions, which combines like an SI with their unique services and vertical expertise with a core, a couple core ISVs, as well as a large language model and maybe some core data and put this together to sort of drive some meaningful outcome. [00:27:10] Dai Vu: So I think the. The evolution of marketplace will be, how do we take all these sort of like one off complex transactions and put it in a way to create sort of a very seamless discovery, deployment, and procurement process for these solutions. So this like the, a pre packaged solution, is that the way you would say it? [00:27:26] Dai Vu: Well, there could be a couple of ways we could, it could be like a pre packaged super SKU, right? That could be, uh, uh, or it could be a, you know, multi vendor private offer where sell and services partners could piece it together. But I think part of what we talked about was help customers. Understand what these pre integrated solutions are. [00:27:43] Dai Vu: And we have an initiative called, um, industry value networks. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that value networks. Yeah. So industry value networks is just that, which is we are basically identifying these predefined pre integrated solutions with the combinations of our. Uh, services partners, core ISV partners, and, uh, leveraging, uh, AI, ML data, and so forth. [00:28:04] Dai Vu: So, like, one example is we have something called, um, uh, automated AI underwriting solution from our, one of our partners, Quantify, that is leveraging one of these ISV solutions called Uncork, uh, with a sort of like a low code, no code solution. So. They’re predefined. This is the idea of customers can find these things and, uh, purchase and deploy in a very sort of like, uh, low risk because they’re sort of like pre integrated and it’s just so forth. [00:28:29] Dai Vu: So marketplace, again, I think will be the facilitator for these type of, uh, [00:28:34] Vince Menzione: solutions. What about the go to market aspect of that? Is there, are you doing anything to accelerate that so that there’s awareness around these solutions? Cause this is new information for our audiences. Right. I think it’s really fascinating that what you’re doing. [00:28:45] Dai Vu: Yeah, so I would say right now we have some basic things on the marketplace, which is, you know, there are ways for, like, for example, if you go to a, uh, a solution listing, there are related SKUs. So, like, for example, if you go to like a core product listing, like say MongoDB Atlas, there are professional services SKUs that are related to that SKU, right? [00:29:05] Dai Vu: I think what we want to do is going back to how we think marketplace is going to evolve is really think about this. Sort of AI and, uh, and, uh, you know, natural language processing to say, Hey, I’m looking for a solution and we can surface the set of SKUs that, that would sort of make up that sort of pre integrated solution. [00:29:22] Dai Vu: Now that’s a little bit further way out, but these are the type of things that I think we’d want to innovate now. Industry value networks are available today. I think we have somewhere in the orders of like 40, uh, IVNs defined with a number of different partners. Is it like super SKUs? Uh, yeah, they have to deploy. [00:29:37] Dai Vu: You have to purchase them separately and the SI can help cobble them together. But over time you can see where marketplace can help remove some of that friction, both from a discovery in purchasing and deployment perspective. Fascinating. Yeah. [00:29:49] Vince Menzione: So for our viewers and listeners that maybe are struggling because I do think that not everybody knows right they there’s a path There’s a journey right AWS was In first, I would say, right? [00:30:01] Vince Menzione: And then some others have said, like, well, where do we go next? How would you help them? Like, what would you say to them to be more successful? What do you typically say to them on their journey to help them be more successful with cloud? [00:30:13] Dai Vu: Yeah. I mean, I would say, you know, when it comes to sort of cloud go to market and marketplace, I would say that they have to view this as a very, uh, strategic, uh, investment, meaning that, uh, they have to be intentional what they do, meaning that, uh, getting listed on marketplace is very easy. [00:30:30] Dai Vu: Uh, but. You know, that doesn’t going to equate to, uh, pipeline and deals. Uh, so you got to invest and for some of our partners, it may be a, uh, multi year journey, uh, depending on, you know, how they, how, how much do they want to accelerate it. But I think the key point is that you can view this as a side project or an experiment, because that’s going to be sort of like a self fulfilling outcome. [00:30:52] Dai Vu: But I think, you know, I think the way I would think about it is first and foremost, your solution has to have, uh, be built on GCP. It has to potentially leverage advanced services, some of the advanced AI, BigQuery, data analytics, security. And I think you have to have a very strong better together story. [00:31:12] Dai Vu: Like why is the combination of Google Cloud with your solution better than alternatives? Um, you have to remember we have like thousands of listings on Marketplace. We have 300 first party services and Uh, it’s, you have to stand out, right? And, uh, and, uh, uh, you know, our reps are always trying to find the best way to serve their customers. [00:31:31] Dai Vu: So if you have a compelling solution and you have a track record, they will find and work with you. Right. Um, I think there are other things I would also point out, which is like making sure that you have the right executive focus internally in terms of like what, you know, ideally should be sort of led by the CRO we’ve talked about, you know, how do you shift from like Alliance led sales go to market to more of a CRO and sales led. [00:31:54] Dai Vu: And then making sure that you have the right, um, you know, operational capabilities in place, you know, whether it be, um, uh, you know, like a private offer deal desk, uh, you know, or, uh, making sure you have the right policies, whether it’s like price neutral, comp neutral, and then making sure that, uh, you enable, uh, your sales rep to talk about marketplace and how to drive solutions to marketplace and talk to their customers about it. [00:32:19] Dai Vu: But ultimately it becomes one of these things where you, you build on the success, right? You have to share pipeline, you have to register your deals and you’ve got to lean in initially, right? Don’t try to, you know, do a shotgun approach where you register every single deal and hope something sticks. It’s more around pick the, pick the industry or customer segment or vertical where you’ve had success, lean in, get those first few deals. [00:32:42] Dai Vu: Uh, get some compelling customer references, shout at the rooftop with your internal stakeholders at Google. They’ll hear about it. And that’ll kind of build on top of that. So I think it’s, it’s one of these things where you have to get alignment, have the better together story, lean in, figure out how to work best with our Google cloud reps and you can build. [00:33:00] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I like to say you build the flywheel, right? You, you find a point or a focus area and you land it there and then you build your brand and story and you start to build the flywheel for success, right? Just think about it that way. So some great, uh, uh, uh, and also I, I think maybe for some of our viewers and listeners, or maybe you aren’t on Google cloud today. [00:33:20] Vince Menzione: Yeah. What would you say to them and who should they reach out to to get started? [00:33:24] Dai Vu: Yeah. So I think number one is, uh, if you have a, a, a field sales rep, an FSR who’s assigned to you, uh, from an account perspective, I think they can give some specific, uh, guidance on, on where to get started. I think that’s number one. [00:33:36] Dai Vu: And the, and the beauty is we have these, uh, consumption models and commit agreements that start very low, meaning that you don’t have to make a huge upfront investment. Initially, I think we had our cloud commit contracts. The minimum threshold was, I think, 10 million, uh, like, uh, 2 years ago. Now it’s like 100 K. [00:33:52] Dai Vu: Oh, we also have, uh, what we call these flex agreements where you don’t have to make any commitment, you just basically consume. And then based on your consumption, you can get the, uh, GCP credits to sort of offset, uh, some future spend there. And then we also have a number of resources that support, um, uh, the, uh, the field sales rep, which is, you know, how to think about, uh, how to architect your solution on GCP, especially if you’re coming from on prem or another cloud provider, uh, which is best guidance. [00:34:21] Dai Vu: And of course, um, You know, marketplace, I would say is, is, is something you need to think about as, as you scale your go to market. I would say that, you know, make sure you have, you know, pricing and product market fit before you get listed. But, you know, once you have those things in place. I think there are some good opportunities to, to scale your go to market working with us. [00:34:41] Vince Menzione: And then there’s some engineering challenges for some that don’t have the technical chops in house. And then we have some enablers. [00:34:47] Dai Vu: Yes, that’s great. [00:34:47] Vince Menzione: We have organizations like Sugar, who was at our event yesterday. That’s great. That can help, help you along with that journey. [00:34:53] Dai Vu: Yeah, yeah. In fact, again, if you make a commitment, uh, as part of your commit, there are incentives and those incentives can be used to pay some of these integrators like Sugar and Tackle and Workspan. [00:35:05] Vince Menzione: Very cool. So we’re living through interesting times. I mean, I talk about the rapid change and transformation. I was talking about this tectonic shifts We’ve been seeing and this year alone. I mean we got off to a grand start in terms of shifts, right? We had we had Stargate. We had deep seek. I calls it the deep seek moment. [00:35:22] Vince Menzione: It’s already it’s already past us now I’m not even talking about it any longer What would you say to our listeners and viewers on how they can optimize for their success this year? [00:35:31] Dai Vu: Yeah. Yeah. [00:35:32] Vince Menzione: And kind of navigate through the change, right? Cause things continue that way. [00:35:35] Dai Vu: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would say a couple of things. [00:35:38] Dai Vu: Well, first of all, on the marketplace front, if you’re not thinking about marketplace, if you’re not thinking about cloud go to market, you know, you have to start looking into it. Right. So, I mean, uh, the world is moving to marketplaces and. At minimum, it needs to be part of your playbook. I mean, it may take some time to sort of scale up, but, uh, figure out how to get listed on marketplace and scale your cloud go to market. [00:35:56] Dai Vu: That’s one on the AI front. I say you have to embrace it. Um, you know, this is an interesting area where, you know, I think a combination of looking at things like how can you improve your overall customer experience, uh, how can improve your overall product experience. I think these are, you have to invest in understanding how you can leverage AI to just improve your product overall. [00:36:18] Dai Vu: It doesn’t have to be a standalone product, right? Could be sort of a, like a co pilot or agents that you build into your application and, uh, and again, uh, drive better outcome for your customers. But then also scaling, making sure that you, uh, skill up on the latest AI technologies and Google path. And make sure you hire the right folks, especially if you’re in the, uh, selling services side. [00:36:37] Dai Vu: Um, so making sure that you have the, the, the right folks that you hire and skill up, uh, and I think just given some of the change that you mentioned, I think you also have to be open to being very adaptable and flexible because things can shift very quickly. Right. And, uh, so I think embracing some of these changes and being very. [00:36:57] Dai Vu: Deliberate about how you want to sort of approach and, um, and sort of, um, uh, operate in this environment will be [00:37:03] Vince Menzione: very key. I love the adaptability. We can talk about AQ, which is the adaptability quotient. It’s more important than the EQ combined today, especially today. Right. So some rapid fire questions. [00:37:15] Vince Menzione: I like to ask some of our guests. What book has most influenced your work? [00:37:19] Dai Vu: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so a book maybe 20 years ago, um, uh, good to great by Jim Collins. Uh, yeah. So I, you know, I read that, um, you know, shortly after it was published, right. The graduate from business school and I apply certain concepts, whether it be like the flywheel or doom loop and in some cases, but just, I think the key point around, um, Greatness is not about luck or circumstances. [00:37:44] Dai Vu: It has to be very intentional and a set of very disciplined things you need to do. So, uh, that’s something I’ve leveraged over the years. That’s a great book. [00:37:50] Vince Menzione: It’s on, it’s on my bookshelf. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I love that book. [00:37:53] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:37:54] Vince Menzione: What about one habit that you can’t live without? [00:37:58] Dai Vu: Well, one habit that I’ve been doing is, uh, I get up very early, uh, so probably like 5 a. [00:38:06] Dai Vu: m. every single day, and, uh, I’m kind of in a bit of a routine where I think it’s a combination of work, I get some very focused because I’m, that’s like my highest energy of the day, uh, and I also know that once, uh, you know, the, the core working hours start, it’s like impossible to focus on anything. So it’s making sure that I tackle like two or three things that are very difficult, right? [00:38:27] Dai Vu: It’s kind of like eating the frog if you’re familiar with that, right? So I, I, I, I focus on that. And then I also have a routine from a health perspective where I, I ride my bike to work every day. So I’m trying to, you know, get up early. Get maybe an hour, two hours of work in and then bike to work. So I’m kind of like fresh from the day. [00:38:42] Dai Vu: So that’s something that I love is the bike, right? The bike ride is about 18 minutes. It’s about, uh, six and a half miles. It’s mostly flat. Uh, I hate to say it’s an e bike, so it’s kind of cheating, but it’s, uh, yeah, but, uh, but yeah, that’s okay. [00:38:58] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So is there a quote or mantra that inspires you? [00:39:04] Dai Vu: Yeah, I think it’s, uh, I think it was Steve Jobs who said this, which is, uh, in order to be great at something, you have to love what you do. [00:39:11] Dai Vu: Uh, and, uh, where this resonated with me was, uh, in between my, uh, Uh, first and second year of business school, I was, uh, I was an intern at Goldman Sachs where, uh, I basically, um, worked, I think, close to a hundred hours a week and I was quite miserable. And, uh, this was right during the height of the, the, the first e commerce wave. [00:39:31] Dai Vu: And we, uh, the summer associates had a, had a lunch with Hank Paulson, who was the CEO at the time. And they were kind of challenging him to say, Hey, back in the days, investment banking is how you can make money. But now you can make money with all these, um, Uh, startups. Uh, and, uh, I think what Hank said at the time was he said, um, you know, you gotta look, we’re all good at what we do, but in order to be great, you have to be passionate about it. [00:39:55] Dai Vu: And if you’re here for the money. You know, you’re not going to be successful. So it’s something that I do revisit every few years to make sure that, um, you know, I love what I’m doing. Cause if you’re not, then, you know, life is too short. I love that. [00:40:07] Vince Menzione: What do you love most about what you do? [00:40:09] Dai Vu: You know, I think honestly the, what, what I like best is all the things I, all the functional areas that I have to sort of look after. [00:40:16] Dai Vu: So I, I, I feel like I’m operating like a GM, right? The overall business goal, the profitability, and then making sure full ownership around how the business is successful. It’s just looking at all aspects of the business, which from a broad business perspective has been, you know, one of the most rewarding, um, jobs in my career. [00:40:34] Vince Menzione: Yeah, it’s an incredible remit. Yeah. It really is. So what is mastery? [00:40:39] Dai Vu: Yep. You know, mastery is just having, you know, deep domain expertise in a particular area. It’s, uh, uh, a commitment to continually learn and improve. It’s, um, it’s also to our earlier point of being adaptable and flexible because, uh, things change. [00:40:57] Dai Vu: You master something, but then the world changes or something like that. So I think those are, uh, some of the things I think about. Um, so just, uh, Just a focus on excellence and continual learning. [00:41:08] Vince Menzione: Very cool. So, I have a favorite question. Yeah. I ask almost all of my guests this question. So, Dye, you’re hosting a dinner party. [00:41:16] Vince Menzione: Yes. And you can invite anyone from the present or the past to this amazing dinner party. Yes. And we could even talk about where you would host this dinner party if you’re inclined to do that. Maybe you’re in Boca, maybe in San Fran, but maybe another location. [00:41:29] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:41:29] Vince Menzione: Who would you invite and why? [00:41:32] Dai Vu: Well, I think, um, one person I would invite is my father. [00:41:37] Dai Vu: Uh, he, uh, he actually passed away about 11 years ago and, uh, but he’s always been an inspiration, uh, uh, in my life in a sense that You know, he was, uh, a fairly successful, uh, uh, military leader, uh, in, in, in, in, in Saigon. But during the fall of Saigon, he left everything there. We, uh, were refugees of the war and we came here with basically nothing. [00:41:58] Dai Vu: And 74. 74, exactly, exactly. And, um, the way he, uh, went about, um, was, Hey, my focus now is just making sure that all the opportunities are there for my, my children, which was myself, my younger brother, and four older sisters. And, uh, that’s how he, that’s how he lived his life, so his sacrifice and his focus on making sure he provided for, um, for his kids has been a huge inspiration for me, so he would be there. [00:42:23] Dai Vu: And then I guess, maybe I would host it, probably be in Saigon, Vietnam, which is where I was born, but sadly I have not been back. You have not been back. I’m not here. It’s beautiful. I know. It’s incredible. I know, I just gotta find, you know, block out some time to be able to visit it, but that’s probably where I would hold it. [00:42:37] Dai Vu: And then, you know, the other folks I would invite are people who I think would be very, uh, entertaining, people who would be involved in very engaging discussions. So a couple of folks that come to mind is maybe like Jon Stewart. You know, I find him very witty and humorous and, uh, also for very provocative conversations. [00:42:55] Dai Vu: And then maybe another one could be like, uh, Serena Williams, uh, who, you know, one of the greatest athletes of all time, uh, lives down here, by the way, lives in Jupiter. Well, she spends half her year in Jupiter, Florida, so, oh, I didn’t know that. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, that would be interesting conversation to hear about some of her great triumphs in her career, but then she also has passions outside of sports like, uh, like fashion and, and philanthropy. [00:43:17] Dai Vu: So, I think. You know, having a very sort of engaging, witty, and thought provoking discussions. I think that would be an interesting group [00:43:24] Vince Menzione: of people. That would be very fascinating. Maybe I’ll come along to bring dessert or something. How’s that? I’d love to meet your dad. He must have some incredible stories. [00:43:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:43:33] Dai Vu: Yeah. He lived a, he lived a, he lived a full life and, um, you know, and I think, uh, would be great to, uh, have dinner with him with my guest. [00:43:41] Vince Menzione: Well, I really enjoyed our time today, Dai. So great to have you. Make the trip out here to Boca for our event yesterday and to be here today in the studio with our viewers and listeners. [00:43:50] Vince Menzione: And I just want to thank you for your support of Ultimate Partner and for being an amazing guest for our audience. Well, thank you, Vince. It’s been great being here and I look forward to work with you on a new basis. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dai. Thank you for watching and listening this episode of The Ultimate Partner. [00:44:04] Vince Menzione: You know, at Ultimate Partner, we strive to bring you great leaders like Dai to help you achieve more. And if you like what we’re doing here, please like, and subscribe to the podcast. Tell your friends and visit our website, the ultimate partner. com. You’ll learn more about our newsletter events and our amazing community together. [00:44:25] Vince Menzione: Let’s spark the ecosystem.

Join Ultimate Partner’s 8th Anniversary Episode. “This is the era of the fastest technology transformation in history.” – Nicole Dezen, Microsoft Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ https://youtu.be/rxlbjXPSM2s?si=sFyBTfxZP_-jt4E0 As we celebrate our 8th anniversary, we’re excited to bring you something truly special. Prepare for an epic video and audio compilation featuring some of the most impactful interviews and insights from the past year. This compilation is a treasure trove of wisdom from the brightest minds in the partner ecosystem. The future of business is shaped by three unstoppable forces: AI, marketplaces, and the evolution of partnerships. We’re thrilled to feature top industry leaders in this special anniversary episode, including Microsoft’s Nicole Dezen, Cisco’s Rodney Clark, and EY’s Greg Sarafin. They will share groundbreaking insights on how AI drives innovation, how marketplaces are transforming go-to-market strategies, and how customer-centric partnerships are unlocking sustainable growth. Whether you’re looking to stay ahead of AI trends, optimize your marketplace strategy, or future-proof your partnerships, this episode delivers the insights you need to thrive in 2025 and beyond. Join us as we reflect on the journey and look forward to a future filled with possibilities. Thank you for being part of our community; your support has been invaluable. Mark Your Calendars Now TRANSCRIPT Anniversary Audio MP3 Vince: [00:00:00] What’s the key to driving exponential growth and innovation in today’s fast paced digital landscape? To commemorate our podcast anniversary, we’re diving into some of the most insightful episodes from the past year, focusing on three transformative themes. AI Trends to Watch in 2025, Harnessing the Power of Marketplaces, and How to Unlock Sustainable Growth. Vince: Let’s dive in and master the future together.  Vince (2): We believe this time is like no other. We believe, we refer to these as the tectonic shifts.  Jay: All the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together, managed services will be one and a half times larger.  Rodney: Because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. Niti: Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized, and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized.  Mike: Can you figure out first what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose [00:01:00] and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. Vince: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. Well, we’ve been on a tear this year, as we took this podcast from a spare bedroom to a full production studio. And I’m so grateful for your support and the incredible guests that have made our over 250 episodes possible. Vince: Three topics continue to dominate our discussions. AI, marketplaces, and effective partnerships. And with over 50 amazing interviews and our live events, we’ve been fortunate to have some of the industry’s top leaders share their insights in our deep dive on AI trends for 2025 will revisit discussions on how AI is reshaping businesses. Vince: ensuring security and meeting evolving customer needs. Our all star lineup includes [00:02:00] Nicole Deason, chief partner officer and corporate vice president, global partner solutions at Microsoft, as she talks about the immense partner opportunities and innovations brought forth by the recent advancements in AI. Vince: My good friend, Rodney Clark, senior vice president, partnerships, and small and medium business at Cisco, who says it’s essential to put the customer at the center of everything as shifting customer expectations and buying behaviors necessitate rethinking partnership models and enabling partners to connect seamlessly. Vince: Jay McBain, Chief Analyst at Canalys, as he highlights the fast growing tech industry and the need to focus on high growth areas. cybersecurity services and a I to achieve significant growth rates. Finally, Ducks Raymond Cy, chief brand officer at AvePoint, who shares the importance of investing internally to embrace a I [00:03:00] preparing customers and partners to optimize their data and developing a I powered industry solutions to address specific customer needs. Nicole: This is the era of the fastest technology transformation in history. You know, if you think about previous technology shifts, whether it’s shift to mobile, shift to cloud, shift to the internet. You know, the, the platform shift and the transformation shift to AI is just so exciting, and the, the fun of my job is I get to work with partners to help them build solutions, services, IP, delivery practices. Nicole: On our, on our AI platform, helping them enable customers to participate in this incredible innovation.  Vince: You know, I’ve been chronicling the shifts. I call it the tectonic shifts we’ve been seeing, right? And it really started before COVID, right? We talked about transformation was happening at a pretty good. Vince: Pace. Uh, COVID really accelerated things. [00:04:00] Satya said seven years of transformation in seven months. Our lives have changed dramatically. We don’t even recognize that any longer, right? Or the way we operate, the way we work, all those things have changed. Uh, but to your point, like the last 18 months have been an astounding rate of change. Nicole: Yeah,  Vince: we go back to the A. I. Moment. It was November of 2022. And then last year, Satya took us through a master class, right? With chat, G. B. T. Open A. I. Microsoft leaned in in a big way here. We can’t have a conversation today without talking about the importance of A. I. Can you expand on this immediate opportunity here for partners? Nicole: Absolutely. It is really an exciting time. And you’re right. The last 18 months has just been this drumbeat of new innovation, new capability. And with every single one of those announcements, there’s partner opportunity that’s come with that. And it’s, it’s thrilling, truly thrilling.  Vince: We make the same type of decisions about buying technology that [00:05:00] we do about buying a vehicle. Vince: Absolutely. Where we talk to the seven or eight seats at the table, our friends, our trusted. To make those decisions. And this is why partnering is so important now and ensuring that all those seats at the table are your trusted as well. Those are the organizations that you go to market with that are surrounding your customers. Vince: I want to talk about that now and how, how you’re viewing this. I know you know about this and you’re bringing it, infusing it into Cisco.  Rodney: Yeah, well, it’s important that all of us put the customer at the center of this. It’s because it is the customer buying behavior or the shift in, in, in customer expectation. Rodney: That has created a need for all of us to rethink our models on 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, [00:06:00] they need the assurance that things are going to be connected, protected, and distributed. Rodney: Uh, and secure. Yeah. 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, I. T. 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. Rodney: T. system that they then use to connect it to you. their overall commerce cloud. It can be a number of things, but for us at 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 Jay McBain from Catalyst. Rodney: And we talked about the number of organizations, like a midsize organization typically has seven [00:07:00] 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. Rodney: And we’ll evolve so that we’re making those logical connections and creating a scenario where we’re basically 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.  Vince: So let’s talk about 2025. Vince: I mean, we’re here now. I mean, I can’t believe that this last half of the decade went so fast. Mm hmm. What, what’s on the crystal ball? What do you see?  Jay: Well, the numbers speak volumes. The world economy is probably going to grow about 2. 6 percent next year, GDP wise. It’s at 105 trillion right now. The tech industry is going to grow by 8. Jay: 2%. So more than triple what the world economy. [00:08:00] It will again for the 10th year running be the number one fastest growing industry, attracting even more professional services folks and people interested in these multipliers. But inside that 8. 2 percent growth, we keep asking partners. You know, what are they going to focus on to, no one wants to grow at 8%. Jay: No. You know, everyone wants to grow at double digits and there’s, you know, certain partners out there looking at triple digit growth next year. So what they want to anchor on is those parts of the market, the buyer, the industry, you know, the geographies, the segments, the product sets that are going to grow by significantly more than eight. Jay: So the trifecta that’s being built in kind of what we’ll call that core channel, uh, that’s been around 40 years. Is cyber security continues to grow by double digits while it grows by close to 10%, cyber services grow at 13 and managed security services grows at 15. Makes sense. So again, you’re growing one and a half times faster than, [00:09:00] um, than the vendor. Jay: So in the services market, you know, next year will be about a 5. 4 trillion industry globally, uh, in all of tech and telco, uh, hardware makes up a trillion. Software makes up a trillion, services make up three trillion. So, in that scenario, services are outgrowing products. Partners are outgrowing their vendors. Jay: Very interesting. And what they’re trying to do is hook their caboose to the vendors that, you know,  Vince: are growing the fastest. Talk more about how you’re infusing AI into your business and how you’re thinking about the future growth and opportunities.  Dux: As, as we discussed, right, there’s AI. But specific to us, you know, there’s really Three things we’re doing today that we think will help us grow and maximize this AI opportunity. Dux: So first, we’re really investing internally, equipping app pointers to embrace AI. I’m not just talking about devs. I’m talking about devs to business teams, you [00:10:00] know, accounting, finance, marketing, and we’re, you talk about drinking the Kool Aid, we’re all in. Like what’s so cool is we use CoPilot, uh, are one of my finance colleagues. Dux: He’s, he’s like the most power user I know, but it’s awesome. Because to us, sure, we can sell AI related products, but the mindset has to change. That’s right. This is just a totally different way of working, thinking, and coding. And it changes every day. It does. It does. And for example, prompting is important. Dux: While AI is cool, it’s really not that smart yet. Yeah. You have to give proper prompts, right? So that’s the first thing we’re doing. We’re investing internally, making sure we’re adopting our mindset. will really embrace AI and, uh, how we can benefit from it. Second is to a lot of customers, it’s still a novelty, right? Dux: It’s new, but we need to help them prepare their data.  Vince: They’re building their muscle too.  Dux: They are. I mean, everybody’s excited, right? [00:11:00] But at the same time, people don’t realize is. It relies on data, and we all know that if you lift the hood under the covers, everybody’s a digital hoarder. Their data estate is a mess. Dux: And the good news is. It’s that draw, that empty draw, that junk draw. That’s right. Well, I don’t know if you’ve seen the show Hoarders. Yes, that’s exactly what it is. Exactly what it is. People don’t want to admit it, but, but that’s what we’re seeing, right? A lot of organizations are piloting co pilot and then suddenly they realize, Hold on number one. Dux: How come it’s pulling. Information from 20 years ago, or number two, we’re seeing information we’re not supposed to.  Vince: Yeah, that’s, that’s a big issue, right? That’s right. That’s right. You don’t want people to see what the CFO’s compensation is. Yeah. You don’t want them to be able to see the secrets of the organization hasn’t released yet. Vince: Right. Microsoft went through an internal challenge with a, with a press release. 100%. That wasn’t ready for release. And then everybody saw it ahead of time. Yeah. Just this year.  Dux: And, and just so you know, it’s not, it’s [00:12:00] not about people being malicious. Yeah. It’s just that there’s so much information. People don’t know what’s out there. Dux: Are the permissions set up right? So what we’re doing from an AI perspective, is not only we’re equipping customers, but also partners to get their data prepared, secured, and optimized.  Vince: As we examine the value of marketplaces, we’ll also explore how changing buying behaviors, the dominance of hyperscalers, and innovative routes to market are transforming customer outcomes and business growth. Vince: You’ll hear from Cisco’s Rodney Clark, emphasizing the importance of enabling partners to leverage various routes to market, such as managed services and integration services through marketplaces to offer secure networking and AI solutions. Jason Rook, Senior Director, Product Marketing at Microsoft, who talks about leveraging the channel partner sales model and the Microsoft commercial marketplace to capture new opportunities in the enterprise space. Vince: Aaron [00:13:00] Figer, strategic advisor to Tackle. io and Sanjay Mehta, former chief cloud officer at Tackle. io, as they highlight the evolving marketplace dynamics, where customers seek solutions from multiple ISVs, wrapped with services, driving significant growth in B2B marketplaces, with larger, more complex deals around the world. Vince: As well as Greg Sarafin, Global Vice Chair, Partner Ecosystems at EY. Who stresses how AI and platform business models are democratizing value creation, reshaping industries, and fostering the emergence of new business models on a global scale. You’re hitting the nail on the head here about getting the partner ecosystem engaged in this whole marketplace opportunity. Vince: Do you want to expand on that?  Rodney: Yeah, we, we have to get them involved and engaged. A big part of my business here at Cisco, uh, is in something that we call routes to market. What are the routes to [00:14:00] 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? Rodney: Managed services for our ecosystem is big because our customers are needing and wanting more integration services, especially as they get involved and engage in things like AI. Uh, a route to market could be, hey, does this, uh, do we involve at scale, uh, a distributor who goes through, you know, a second tier of reseller? Rodney: To get to a point solution, a route to market could be something like, Hey, the ISV as the actual primary integrator.  Vince: Yes.  Rodney: Uh, 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? Rodney: Some of it is in just the core, uh, uh, you know, relationship building. Three way between. an AWS, Cisco, and said partner. Some of it [00:15:00] is in getting our partners really, really enabled on our core technology. In order to drive something through a marketplace transaction, uh, transaction, Cisco is double downing, uh, double, uh, doubling down on, on networking and security. Rodney: 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 Marketplace. We’ve got to get our partners really enabled on AI. Yes. And, and, and what it means to be a Cisco AI partner so that they can participate in this opportunity that is Marketplace. Rodney: 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.  Vince: We talk about the mid market, the 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 in buying behavior. Vince: All the things that are happening, [00:16:00] right? The dominance of the hyperscalers, 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 a Microsoft, Amazon, or Google, right? Vince: 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 agreements, the people that have been surrounding their organizations for years and years and years, these trusteds. Vince: And they’re not necessarily somebody at the ISV. So what are you doing to accelerate and capture this opportunity?  Jason: 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 [00:17:00] about Marketplace as a product and within Marketplace, there’s 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. Jason: We’ll call them a channel partner to go sell Marketplace or an ISV app through Marketplace. And the one is the CSP motion. I mentioned that that’s been around for a long time. I remember when we. When we instituted  Vince: CSP.  Jason: Yup. And that ability to attach that third party app has been there only recently. And when I say recently, two and a half years ago, February, 2022, we launched the private offer functionality with that. Jason: So now you can do a custom deal. The channel 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. That functionally allows. Any Microsoft partner to sell an ISV application through marketplace into an enterprise customer, which where it gets really interesting because the enterprise space we have customers that have cloud consumption commitments, right? Jason: And they can use those commitments to [00:18:00] purchase ISV apps. So when I say any partner, it really. Like we designed that feature with an incredibly low bar 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 MPN ID, which you can get one of those. Jason: I have one. Yeah, you have one of those. So you can go transact the deal today. We should do it. Let’s go decorate somebody’s Mac.  Vince: Yeah. Well, what’s important here too, is that it means that Microsoft is going to do the direct billing to the customer.  Jason: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So you don’t have to collect. Microsoft’s going to do the collections. Jason: Microsoft’s going to pay you on defined terms. I mean,  Vince: and they’re going to pay you on time, on time, and it might come early with a discount. Firstly, can’t do it alone. We all know that partnerships are important to everybody. Even those of us in the technology side of partnerships. Uh, and then, and then the fact that this journey is, uh, evolving and the role of channel we thought was going to, this is going to kill the channel. Vince: No, it’s invigorating. It’s sparking the ecosystem. It’s sparking  Sanjay: the channel. In fact, you can see in marketplaces, we’re going from single [00:19:00] 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. Sanjay: Probably wrapped with some services that potentially come from a channel and might need to buy it with credit terms, or maybe it needs to be metered. You’ve been  Vince: working with some of the largest ISVs. I want to, I want to go back on this moment and this kind of this, uh, really the evolution of where we are moving from the brochure, brochure where, to where we are today, a hundred billion dollar. Vince: Potential by 2026 is tackles call. Yeah, whether it’s 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. Yeah, it’s interesting.  Sanjay: The first pick a number of 3000 ISVs to marketplace were mostly infrastructure vendors. Sanjay: What we’re seeing now is more and more business application providers. Salesforce announced late last year that they teamed up with AWS to go through the marketplace. [00:20:00] Um, Uh, we do a lot of work with Zoom Info. 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. Sanjay: A 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. That’s right. You hear about data marketplaces and ML marketplaces. So I think we’re really. You’re 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: We’ve seen deal sizes go up. So there are a lot of myths around these things. Like it’s only really startups selling to small customers. Not true, right? It’s also the biggest company. It’s also the biggest companies in the world and also the biggest buyers in the world and all around the planet, right? Sanjay: Marketplace is not a U. S. phenomenon anymore. It’s a global phenomenon. The best ISVs in terms of performance are doing 50 percent in the U. S., maybe 25 percent or so in Europe. Another 25 percent in ANZ and APAC. Uh, so we’re seeing that we’re seeing bigger deals like in the early days, it was 20, 000 transactions, 40, 000 transactions. Sanjay: Now we’re seeing [00:21:00] 100 million transactions. So the, 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 percent of global B2B commerce went through these channels last year. We think 100 billion might be under called in 2026. Sanjay: We’ve seen massive acceleration in marketplace throughput, um, 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: The emergence of marketplaces, which will be a hundred billion dollars according to Tackle. Vince: io by the end of 2026, might happen actually sooner. We had five companies go to a billion dollars last year. Yeah. So it’s crazy what’s happening in terms of the change. What would you say about what we’re seeing right now?  Uh, I’d say buckle up. Buckle up. Um, you know, uh, I think we’re in a tech time. I think we are in a tectonic shift. I think it caught the first tremor was cloud [00:22:00] when we democratize democratized the globalization global access to infrastructure at a near zero cost to get started. We did something really important in tech. And now I think AI and it’s still early, but I think AI Changes everything. Yes it changes uh The type of value you can create for your customer You know, it’ll fundamentally I think it’ll fundamentally even shift industries. I think industries that we don’t even know about will exist and other industries that Did exist will become suppliers to those industries. Like I think there’s going to be I can’t  Vince: Every company is going to be a platform company or they’re going to  be,  Vince: we used to say tech company, but I really think that everybody’s changing the models are changing dramatically. Vince: Yeah.  And, and, you know, you know what my favorite platform platform company is. What’s that? RYOBI. RYOBI. Go to Home Depot. Oh yeah. Those yellowish greenish [00:23:00] tools with the batteries. That’s a platform. That is a platform company. That’s a platform model. Absolutely. I, I am stuck on that platform. I have more damn yellow tools than you can, anybody ever should. You’re locked in. And I’m locked in. Locked in. I’m on that platform. And so yes, I think the concept of platform business models creates stickiness. and ease, right? They’re easy and they’re sticky. And so they’re really effective models. Now, not every business will be a platform business or have a platform business, but you will, you will, I think, see that business model be the predominant winner in, uh, unless it doesn’t make sense for a particular use case, right? Vince: We’ll also uncover key strategies to unlock sustainable growth and innovation, highlighting the shift from traditional sales models. to dynamic trusted advisor roles that will create unprecedented opportunities. We’ll learn from Cassandra Golston, [00:24:00] CEO of PartnerTap, as she and I discuss the shift from vendors to trusted partners and the importance of automating co selling to drive business growth. Vince: EY’s Greg Serafin goes on to detail the importance of strong risk and controls, frameworks, regulatory compliance, and efficient operational structures in forming successful partnerships, managing complex deals and maintaining transparency to achieve sustainable growth. Janet Shine, CEO and co founder of JS Group. Vince: Emphasizes the need for a trust driven ecosystem, stressing that true partnerships involves treating partners as part of the team, integrating multiple parties seamlessly, and focusing in on commercializing innovation within the ecosystem. Finally, the one and only Dr. Michael Gervais, founder of Finding Mastery. Vince: Who discusses the critical intersection of high performance well being, [00:25:00] emphasizing the importance of investing in the psychological well being. Of employees to drive sustainable growth and create an environment where they can both thrive personally and professionally. Getting rid of the old mindset within the organization, the old CRO. Vince: Right. That used modern marketing like Marketo and Aliqua and HubSpot, and then relied on an SDR, BDR, and a, and a seller at the end of it, that, that, that. That playbook goes away,  Cass: right? 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. Cass: Um, and, and so. It’s all, so there’s this shift, right, from vendor to partner, and the partner actually oftentimes has that trusted advisor relationship,  Vince: so. Well Microsoft got [00:26:00] it early, right, so I had it in the DNA of Microsoft, but Microsoft even struggled in the early days. And look at them, the most  Cass: valuable company. Cass: In the  Vince: world.  Cass: Exactly. Yes. Everyone’s looking to Microsoft going, what are they doing? And I have a little secret to tell you Vince that even at Microsoft, everybody’s operating on spreadsheets when we’re talking about co selling. And this is where, you know, we talk a lot about, um, 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. Cass: 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, [00:27:00] it’s, 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. Cass: 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 tab have come out, um, you know, and we’ve been around since 2016 building and, you know, enterprise ready for scale. So it’s, it’s, it’s such an exciting time that we can move these companies from, you know, these random backs of co sell, which we call everyone’s. Cass: Sending spreadsheets around and trying to do this top of funnel activity. Um, and now with automation, with a platform where you can identify securely share account opportunity, date [00:28:00] data, align, um, drive white space plays, drive upsell cross sell plays, drive multi partner plays where you’re engaging top of funnel. Cass: It’s yeah, that’s. That’s, that’s where we’re  Vince: going to, yeah, that’s where we’re talking ecosystem, which is why we, we use the term spark the ecosystem. I love  Cass: that.  I was very fortunate to, you know, you don’t usually say you’re fortunate when you have an internal audit, but I had three internal audits over the course of seven years. And each one I was glad for, because when people would say, well, is your data accurate? Yeah, I’ve, I passed internal audit three times. Nice.  Vince: Nice.  Right. I love it. Um, internal audit is your friend. Third line of defense is actually your friend. Um, in many instances, particularly when you’re trying to do something where people have disbelief. So the other piece here is we’re a regulated entity, right? Right. Again, we go back to that. We have the great privilege of creating transparency in public markets, but that is also creates a lot of regulatory, uh, [00:29:00] hurdles that we need to work through in order to do partnering. And uh, correctly so, by the way, uh, so I have to also provide for an adequate first line of defense. Right. To make sure that we don’t cross any regulatory boundaries. And do something that would harm our clients and harm our enterprise. So I also, that’s one of the less, you know, interesting and fun things, but it also contributed to us creating real structure because we had to have a really strong risk and controls framework, really good processes, great transparency. We, I mean, we, you know, I’ll give you an example. We had a private equity firm acquire, uh, uh, an entity that we had a relationship with, and because that private entity firm, uh, was restricted, because we audited some of the other entities in the fund, we had to terminate the relationship with this particular firm. Yep. And. We were able to [00:30:00] demonstrate to the firm. We had hundreds of resale contracts and you know local country addenda You know how there’s a lot of paper a lot of commercial paper a lot of activity in these relationships We knew where every single contract was in every single country and we could show a plan to Shutting all of that down within the transaction window fantastic, right and that’s for 10 basis points Well, you’ve you created an engine We created an engine because you know, and this is the engineer in me. That’s right. Right building PCs. I’m a dealer I’m a deal person. I’m a deal maker. I think you can tell that the My my oxygen is when I go out and do a flywheel deal with a microsoft or a dell or a service now Right flywheel deals are like I love them But I also know that at some point I won’t be able to do them if the cost yeah And the complexity drags it down. The ops have to be right. Ops  Vince: have to partner. Ops have got to be any organization, right? The ops have to be right. So partner needs to be [00:31:00] a standalone organization or thought of that way. That’s  right.  Vince: And get your own ops, right?  Yet it doesn’t own sales motions. The revenue function owns sales motions. It doesn’t own product. Product owns product, right? It doesn’t own any of these things, but it creates the framework. And the processes to let them all come together and not even know they’re coming together in a sense, because it’s just, which is how we do it. Right. And when people are just like, like, they don’t even think about it, then, you know, you’ve, then, you know, you’ve crossed that chasm and now that organization is unlocked to be able to take that journey. You know, I talk about things like mindset,  Cass: commitment, trust,  Vince: and execution is four areas. When we talk about this CPO role that I think we need a lot of work here.  We need a lot of work.  Vince: Uh, go back to Greg and Greg, you’re getting a lot of kudos here today, but I think about the ability that we talked about the influence strategy and the ability to be credible, to have trust. Right.  Vince: With that [00:32:00] leader, that partner leader. Correct. It cannot be the person who was the channel chief last week, now just changing their title.  Well, and that’s, we’re seeing that, right? We’re seeing people say, Hey, let’s do that. And what I’m trying to explain to explain or help the C suite and the board, I sit on several boards, right? And having that conversation, being asked to present to other boards, being asked to be an advisor to a board on this topic is, it’s not about routes to market.  Vince (2): That’s right.  That’s been true. Not to say you’re not going to have routes to market. Right. Of course you are, but your strategy for partnering is not about routes, routes to market. It’s about commercialization of innovation.  Vince (2): Yes.  How will you commercialize innovation amongst your ecosystem? And that starts with a trust ecosystem. So who will you treat as a partner? And this gets them every time as well and as poorly as you treat your own employees. Wow. Because a good partner should be a part of your team. Vince: Yeah. What’s the answer you get when you ask that question? We  can’t do that. Right. Then you’re not ready. You’re not [00:33:00] ready. You’re not ready. Right. Right. So how do you make that happen? How do you make it so that your partners, I want people to be confused about who works for which brand. Yes.  Vince: Yes. This is right. Vince: This is the joint value proposition. True  integration. Right. And it’s multiple parties. That’s right. And so what we’re seeing now is some heroes. We’re starting to see the alliance manager who has long been tasked with this.  Vince: Yeah.  Webbed, weird, fuzzy roll, fuzzy roll, press releases and product releases and trying to manage one of your biggest. Customer slash partner slash developer slash slash they’re starting to rise up as heroes because this kind of nebulous territory has been something that they’ve, they’ve broken their teeth on, right? And they do have a little more ability to work in the gray zone and that’s the key. The channel chief, a lot of times, and some of them will retrain, some of them will retrain and be fine. I have no doubt of that. There’s always the exceptions, but the rule is. The channel chiefs have been in a black and white arena for a long time.  Vince: And a lot of it is the [00:34:00] vendor partner role or vendor channel role, which is more one sided.  Correct. And I am not, so that the audience hears me, not saying that the channel chief role goes immediately away tomorrow overnight, because that would be a primary function. Right. It’s a primary function. It’s like, it would be like saying your direct sales leader’s role is going to go away. Of course, that’s not going to go away. So any significant route to market that you have is still going to have a. sales leader,  Vince (2): right?  That makes sense. It’s the layer above that. It’s the understanding that you could be in a, in a sale, right? There could be 37, as I mentioned earlier, partners. And so in that scenario, you don’t get to be in charge. And this is the hardest conversation I have because the C suite is so used to. We’re going to let the channel sell that product. We’re going to give the channel this discount or give the channel this commission. We’re going to block the channel. Always my least favorite discussion from key accounts because we own them. News alert. No one owns an account. [00:35:00] Want the audience to hear that. But those tenants,  Vince (2): right?  They don’t work in a partnering world and this is where my sales world,  Vince: this is where the shift in mindset and it’s  very hard because then, and especially my friends in the European markets, right there, they don’t like stories. Americans like stories, right? Storytellers, they want like metrics and measurements and like, how am I supposed to measure that? And what I say to them is, look, I read your last 10 press releases where you made an announcement with whoever and your metrics already are messed up because I took your last 10 press releases and then I went and talked to your head of sales. And I said, they announced 10 things. Ooh, with IBM, we’re doing this. We’re doing this with Microsoft. We’re doing it all over the news. How many sales did you make? Not very many.  Vince: Goose eggs. Goose eggs. Yeah.  And so you’ve been doing these press releases, you have been in effect partnering, you haven’t figured out how to commercialize that. Vince: That’s right.  And that’s where the alliance leader, the  Vince: chief revenue officer, the CFO, that’s where everybody, so this [00:36:00] is that whole influence strategy, corraling that whole group together in the right And if you  really want to see everybody’s eyes roll, then you start to talk about, okay, so advocates. Who might be your advocates? Who else is there? Who else should you partner with? Some of them are very unnatural. They’re not who you would naturally think. And who are your detractors? And they’re like detractors. What do you mean? Do you not think the CISO is a detractor for you sometimes or whoever their security consultant is a detractor for them making progress? Vince (2): That’s right.  Oh yeah. And how about the website guy? Whoever’s running their website and e commerce, do you not think the website e commerce provider is not a detractor for your service? You’re saying we could put chatbots in, they have their own approach to it. Your call center application, your CKAS application fails. Do you really think they like you when they just did a web campaign and they’re getting judged on ROI? You have detract natural detractors. So partnering is not just about the positivity, right? It’s also about the negativity and how do you manage the negativity? How do you lower the noise and the friction in the system? Vince: So, uh, we could riff all [00:37:00] day here on this topic. I mean, we can talk about mindset, execution, uh, executive commitment. Cause that’s, this all ties into this. And we divorce some of this from business, right? We think about this as maybe health related. We don’t, we don’t bring it into the room in the corporate world in a way, but you did, in fact. Vince: And I want to come back to a time when you got to work with us when I was part of the pilot program. I remember you walking around the room that day, and you were coming, we were like in small groups, and you were walking around and checking in on us. And you said, Hey, yeah, I’m going to be meeting with Satya Nadella next week, like first time, right? Vince: You hadn’t worked with the leadership team. That’s right. Yeah. And so we were already in, I think we were in Northern Virginia at a really nice resort doing this. This thing that we were doing around high performance with you, um, and then, you know, flat, uh, fast forward now, right? It’s, uh, over 10 years. I think it’s been, has it been 10 years? Vince: It has,  Mike: yeah.  Vince: And, uh, Microsoft was at a very different point in time, but Satya [00:38:00] seemed to embrace what you were doing in a big way. And I thought maybe you’d spend a few moments here because a lot of what you just mentioned from a personal performance he took into the corporation. And he asked you to help him align it to his executive team, his leadership team, and embrace around this big mission, their vision for Microsoft at the time. Vince: I thought maybe you’d spend a moment there because I think it sets us up for the rest of the conversation. So Satya  Mike: is, I think, one of, if not the, um, most meaningful CEOs of our time right now. So, and I don’t say that because, um, of the working relationship, but the way that he values, the human experience and the solution slash product. Mike: Um, and, and he’s not wanting to extract the best out of people for. Wall Street or for a better product, he is [00:39:00] fundamentally committed to invest in his people in a way that I hadn’t seen before. And so when we first sat down, um, the idea was how do we create for the 224, 000 people at Microsoft, how do we create an experience for them while they’re here that they will feel like this was an incredibly enriching part of their life? Mike: Maybe the most meaningful part of their professional career, like how do we create that environment? And the simple. The simple, reflective answer was like, let’s invest in their psychological well being for greater performance. Okay, so wait, how do those two things cross? I want to introduce a phrase, um, which is high performance well being. Mike: High performance well being. What does that mean? So it’s not, we used to believe that high performance began where wellness ended. And that was something we all swallowed in the elite sport world. You really want to be a high performer. Hey, there’s some sacrifices that [00:40:00] you have to make, like, are you really up for it? Mike: We were wrong. We were flat out wrong. And high performance well being, the combination of those two words. is the intersection that I’m most fascinated by. To commit to mastery, we need to have a sustainable growth arc. And that sustainable growth arc with as much progression and agitation for growth that you can have requires a base of well being for higher performance. Mike: And what does that base consist of? Uh, it’s basic recovery, connections with other people, and mindfulness a la awareness practices. So that’s kind of the base of awareness. Uh, We are majoring in the minors, if you will, for much of the best practices for people to be better. So what do I mean by that? The big rocks are the major components. Mike: Eating right. I mean, [00:41:00] it’s not cool, you know, to get the salad with the light vinaigrette or whatever and while everyone else is grabbing like the really tasty stuff. You’ve got to be really committed. In those moments, because you want something. Um, sleep. There’s so much I want out of life. There’s so much that you want out of life. Mike: But shutting it down to get your 7. 4 hours or your 8. 2 or whatever the amount of hours that suit you well. It’s a really important, difficult thing to get in. And a world that is on and your second shift starts at like 845, you know, cause you haven’t answered an email yet. Cause you’ve been jammed with, with meetings and preparing for the family, you know, meals or whatever it might be. Mike: I’m trying to get a little gym time in and the third variable is making sure that your, your carriage is fit to manage the stress required to live a great life. Um, and then the last practice is to knowing, [00:42:00] knowing how to use your mind to eloquently adjust. It’s all the curve balls that come up in life. Mike: And so those are the big rocks for well being and then you can layer on top of it a psychology for high performance. And so that’s, I didn’t answer your question about Satya, but he wanted to make a fundamental commitment to helping people know how to use their mind well. They’re already really smart. Mike: Intellectual horsepower, as you know, is through the roof. They’re systems thinkers. They’re trying to solve complicated stuff. It’s a complicated internal ecosystem. They are truly the multinational of multinationals. And, um, so he said, right, but we need to go from know it all to learn it all. We need to know how to use our mind to be great learners. Mike: And if you want to have a, any type of culture, you can put in any fancy words. Satya chose growth mindset. You want any of those fancy words. [00:43:00] that matter to you and your organization. My proposition is you must train people’s minds to deal with the stress that comes with that aspiration. Because it’s under the moments of stress that we find out what we’re really made of. Mike: I agree. Do we become prickly, scratchy, irritated, intolerant, frustrated, or do we stay graceful, do we stay connected, do we stay in a learning mindset, in a solution mode? And if you don’t have the psychological skills to stay in those high heat moments, well, people will never know what they’re capable of, is kind of an easy idea, I think, to understand. Vince: Thank you for watching and listening to The Ultimate Partner. We’ve been on this journey together for eight incredible years. And we have exciting plans ahead for this year, including four live in person events. We’d also love for you to get more involved in our community, and here’s how. Vince: Keep watching and listening to our podcast [00:44:00] on your favorite podcast channels. Or on our new YouTube channel and join our thriving community, the ultimate partner experience. You can do so by subscribing to our free newsletter at the ultimate partner. com or become a member to our exclusive ultimate partner experience community.Vince: Well, you’ll have access to other leaders and all of our gated content from events and more. Let’s continue to unlock growth and innovation together.

Jason Graefe joins Ultimate Partner “What took cloud 15 to 20 years will happen in 5 years with AI. The pace of advancement is absolutely astounding. The software companies who will come out in front are the ones experimenting early, staying curious, and thinking beyond their current constraints.” miss this high-impact conversation on thriving through change!” – Jason Graefe Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ https://youtu.be/7gjHC2jKXd4?si=5ikd9uhxiCW6T3em In a revealing conversation with Microsoft’s Corporate VP of ISV and Digital Natives, Jason Graefe shares unprecedented insights into how AI is revolutionizing software development and why the next five years will be transformative for the industry. Key Insights from Microsoft’s Leadership After witnessing the first demo of GPT-4, Graefe recognized that a fundamental shift was occurring in technology. “What took cloud 15 to 20 years will happen in 5 years,” he declares, highlighting the unprecedented pace of AI advancement. With 23 years at Microsoft, including seven years working directly with CEO Satya Nadella, Graefe brings unique perspective to how software companies can position themselves for success in the AI era. He emphasizes three critical lessons learned from Nadella’s leadership: Systems thinking is essential for operating at scale Curiosity drives innovation and learning Empathy balanced with strong leadership creates transformative results The Rise of Agentic AI Graefe reveals a significant shift from chatbot-focused AI to agentic AI architectures, where multiple AI agents work together through partner-to-partner interactions. This evolution demands software companies think differently about their strategy and partnerships. “Software companies need to be able to interact and engage in a partner-to-partner motion much quicker than they have in the past,” Graefe explains, highlighting how workflow automation will increasingly rely on multiple integrated AI agents. Advice for Software Companies For organizations navigating this rapid transformation while maintaining current operations, Graefe emphasizes: The importance of early experimentation with AI Need for clear leadership direction on AI integration Focus on responsible AI deployment with security and safety at the forefront Reducing friction in partner engagement processes Looking Ahead As Microsoft moves into fiscal year 2026, Graefe’s focus is on making Microsoft the partner of choice for software development companies. He emphasizes the need to: Reduce friction in partner engagement Improve program accessibility Enhance value delivery through the platform Support safe and responsible AI deployment Bottom Line The message is clear: AI transformation will happen faster than cloud adoption did, and software companies need to start positioning themselves now. Success will come to those who maintain their current business while actively experimenting with and implementing AI capabilities. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain insider knowledge from industry leaders shaping tomorrow’s digital world. Tune in and transform your cloud marketplace approach! For more insights and detailed discussions, tune in to the full episode of The Ultimate Partner. Subscribe to stay updated with the latest trends and strategies in technology partnerships. SIGN Up for the Live Steam – Feb 20, 2025 Ultimate Partner Boca Winter Retreat Sign Up for the Live Strean NOW!

Regina Manfredi Joins Ultimate Partner LIVE in Dallas “Adaptability is the ultimate competitive edge in a rapidly shifting tech landscape. Regina Manfredi shares powerful insights on AQ (Adaptability Quotient), bold partnerships, and modern selling strategies that drive success in today’s evolving market. Don’t miss this high-impact conversation on thriving through change!” Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ https://youtu.be/FibSmm-moLc?si=qXczpNRL1RRQOzl2 This Fireside Chat from Ultimate Partner LIVE in Dallas was so good we had to share. Join me for this interview with a true partnership leader, Executive VP, and General Manager @ Crayon US as we explore their pivots to thrive during these tectonic shifts. We explore the Adaptability Quotient (AQ) concept and its rising importance over IQ and EQ in the tech-driven, post-COVID world. Regina Manfredi, Executive Vice President of Crayon, shares her insights on adaptability as a new superpower. Regina discusses the dramatic shifts in Microsoft’s partner incentives towards cloud-first and services-first strategies and how Crayon’s focus on customer and partner ecosystems aims to navigate these changes. Emphasizing the need for modern selling techniques, Regina highlights Crayon’s investment in both its people and technological infrastructure. She also touches on the critical role of partnerships in delivering optimal IT solutions and customer experiences. As organizations face the complexities of AI adoption, the episode underscores the necessity of adaptability and collaboration in achieving transformational success. 00:00 The Importance of Adaptability Quotient (AQ) 00:59 Introduction to Crayon and Its Mission 02:42 Challenges and Changes in the LSP Community 04:48 Adapting to Microsoft’s New Incentive Structure 05:16 Building a Strong Partner Ecosystem 08:48 Infusing Fun and Human Connection in Business 10:30 Modern Selling and Customer Engagement 16:17 Investing in People and Technology for 2025 18:06 The Role of AI and Infrastructure in Business 23:25 Final Thoughts and Advice for 2025 Don’t miss this opportunity to gain insider knowledge from industry leaders shaping tomorrow’s digital world. Tune in and transform your cloud marketplace approach! For more insights and detailed discussions, tune in to the full episode of The Ultimate Partner. Subscribe to stay updated with the latest trends and strategies in technology partnerships. SAVE THE DATE – Feb 20, 2025 – Limited Seats Available for the Ultimate Partner Executive Winter Retreat For details and to reserve your seat

Wondering How to Navigate Cloud Marketplaces for Ultimate ISV Success? “When you have the alignment across the C-suite, and even if it’s a small business, at the highest level of the organization, they can be well aligned with the ecosystem in a way that’s going to benefit them,” says Justin Murphy, CEO, CloudAtlas. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Get ready for an insightful journey in this episode of “The Ultimate Partner” with host Vince Menzione and CloudAtlas CEO Justin Murphy. They delve into the essential strategies ISVs need for cloud marketplace success, exploring Justin’s fascinating transition from simplifying enterprise procurement at SADA to leading Cloud Atlas. Discover the transformative role of marketplaces and co-selling, and learn how top-down commitment, strategic planning, and C-suite alignment drive unparalleled success. Uncover the challenges and opportunities within different cloud providers and understand the pivotal role partnerships play in the tech industry. https://youtu.be/nEpz_OAphCA?si=jSK8fQVb9kQajx2P As Justin highlights, “Applications will be available across all clouds, and leveraging marketplace products can drive the consumption that cloud providers want to see.” This forward-looking perspective emphasizes the necessity for ISVs to adapt and strategize for long-term success in the cloud marketplace. Key Takeaways Market Opportunity: Learn about the immense opportunity in cloud marketplaces and how to leverage it. For instance, Justin mentions that leveraging marketplace third-party products can significantly drive cloud consumption and benefit cloud providers. Strategic Planning: Discover the steps to create a successful go-to-market strategy and address any gaps. Justin discusses the importance of understanding the product and identifying onboarding, sales, and technical gaps to build a comprehensive strategy. Co-Selling Benefits: Understand how co-selling and leveraging marketplace commitments drive growth and opportunities. Justin highlights that even large partners like hyperscalers and managed service providers find co-selling essential to success in the complex enterprise market. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain insider knowledge from industry leaders shaping tomorrow’s digital world. Tune in and transform your cloud marketplace approach! For more insights and detailed discussions, tune in to the full episode of The Ultimate Partner. Subscribe to stay updated with the latest trends and strategies in technology partnerships. SAVE THE DATE – Feb 20, 2025 – Limited Seats Available for the Ultimate Partner Executive Winter Retreat For details and to reserve your seat

A Reis Barrie Masterclass on Ultimate Partner® I asked Reis Barrie, CEO of Carve Partners and an expert in co-selling, to join us in the Boca Studio for this Masterclass to propel your success as a Microsoft Partner. Subscribe to our Newsletter:https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX:https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Join Vince Menzione for an inspiring conversation with Reis Barrie, co-founder of Carve Partners, as he shares his journey from healthcare to tech and his mission to simplify Microsoft partnerships. From pivotal career moments to leading packed workshops at the Ultimate Partner Executive Summit, Barrie delves into the art of aligning joint goals with organizations like Microsoft to drive revenue, co-marketing opportunities, and operational efficiency. Discover how mastering sales, operations, and marketing fundamentals helps partners avoid distractions and achieve long-term success. https://youtu.be/-2SCIfBz7ng?si=MV6l-vURDTUiqSSa Barrie also addresses the common pitfalls of Microsoft partnerships, emphasizing the need for alignment across teams, building a solid operational foundation, and translating “partner speak” into measurable enterprise value. With insights on navigating Microsoft’s complex ecosystem, Carve’s evolution into a revenue-focused consulting firm, and leadership lessons drawn from Patrick Lencioni and Bruce Lee, this discussion offers invaluable strategies for scaling partnerships while staying focused on what truly matters. Watch now for actionable advice and inspiration! Key Takeaways: Operational Alignment: Streamlining processes and integrating tools like Microsoft Partner Center ensures seamless collaboration and visibility across sales and marketing efforts. Focus on Fundamentals: Mastering core areas—sales, operations, and marketing—helps organizations maximize their Microsoft partnerships while avoiding distractions from overly complex initiatives. Importance of Collaboration: Aligning goals and leveraging expertise across departments reduces inefficiencies and drives partnership success. Leveraging Microsoft Tools: Platforms like Azure and methodologies like MSEM enhance co-selling efforts and strengthen relationships with Microsoft’s sales teams. Value of Operational Support: Dedicated resources for operations ensure profitability, build trust, and maintain credibility within partnerships. Scalable Partnership Models: Transitioning from high-touch services to scalable frameworks enables long-term growth and sustainability. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain insider knowledge from industry leaders shaping tomorrow’s digital world. Tune in now for an inspiring conversation that could redefine your business strategy! For more insights and detailed discussions, tune in to the full episode of The Ultimate Partner. Subscribe to stay updated with the latest trends and strategies in technology partnerships. SAVE THE DATE – Feb 20, 2025 – Limited Seats Available for Ultimate Partner Executive Winter Retreat Contact us for details and to reserve your seat – [email protected] Keywords: Microsoft partnerships, partner collaboration, sales alignment, operational efficiency, partnership strategies, Azure deals, Carve Partners, ISV success, Microsoft ecosystem, partnership pitfalls, sales engagement, joint goals, marketing alignment, enterprise value, partner operations, MSEM framework, cloud budget, deal tracking, customer consent, scalable partnerships, co-marketing benefits, partnership alignment, revenue generation, organizational goals, partner readiness, sales workflows, leadership philosophy, Microsoft tools, operational support, competitive collaboration.