The Evolution of the Cloud GTM Ecosystem & What's Next

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How's everybody do it?

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Good.

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How are you?

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Awesome.

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Thanks for being here.

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Day two of cloud go to market XP.

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Got some esteemed friends and colleagues and our friend Jack is an account down

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to our

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tornado.

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So we're hoping he can stay with us the entire unit of session.

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Very nice.

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Yeah, no doubt man.

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Stay safe.

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Thanks everybody for being here.

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Just quick housekeeping if you're here yesterday.

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You know the drill.

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If you weren't welcome.

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If you're having any troubles with the platform connectivity, anything else

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feel free to reach

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out at [email protected].

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We love the chat.

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There's a session, specific session, a public session, which kind of lasts all

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day and then

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a Q and A as well.

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If you want to message your friends directly, there's a capability for that.

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As well, we do have folks from tackle, folks from our partners and the ISP

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community watching

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the chat.

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My favorite answer is the ones that come from other ISVs that are navigated the

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same

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thing or have an opinion.

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So please ask questions and feel free to answer them as well.

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Share some best practices.

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If you need to duck out, take a meeting, buy a break, whatever, all the

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sessions are recorded.

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We'll make them all available at the end of the event.

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And finally, we love social.

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So share on social, grab some screen grabs, share what you learned, your

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favorite talks

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of the last two days and build some excitement.

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But we're almost trying to build as an industry together.

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So this morning's session is about the evolution of cloud go to market and what

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's next.

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I'll show you back.

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So I've been in and around this world for about 10 or 12 years now.

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And it's really been fascinating to see how it's developed and how the

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ecosystem of partners

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is developing around the cloud providers.

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And I'd like to thank Google Cloud, AWS and Zoom info for sponsoring the event

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and more

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importantly for participating in the event.

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We heard from all of New Year's today, we got some awesome feedback on their

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presentations

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and the learnings they shared with all of us.

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Today we're going to drill down of it.

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Yesterday was kind of more C-suite executive level.

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Today we're going to drill down in a little more of the how to's.

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What are the best practices?

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What can we learn from other customers and other partners?

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So if you're curious about what does maturity look like inside of my ISV from

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the earliest

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days to a bigger motion?

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If you're wondering what a data-driven approach is, if you saw Dylan's session,

2:54

he's closing

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keynote yesterday, there's an awesome view into what we're doing today with

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data, but

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more importantly, where we think we can go.

3:02

If you're talking to your CFO about sales efficiency and how to drive bigger

3:06

deals faster,

3:08

how to share a budget in a better way, today's the day for you.

3:13

If you're wondering about CoSEL, what does it mean for me?

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What does CoSEL mean at all?

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Is it a noun?

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Is it a verb?

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I hear all sorts of things.

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We'll be talking about that.

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There are some awesome sessions yesterday from AWS and Google around that.

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There are more sessions today.

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And if you're worried about operational excellence, like I did this for five

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deals or 10 deals,

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but how do I do it for 100 or 1,000?

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We've got some great things planned for you today as well.

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So I'm Sanjay Mehra.

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I'm the Chief Cloud Officer at Tackle.

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My team is the stewards of our relationships with the big cloud providers, and

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we work extremely

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closely with the clouds in our product organization to make sure as new

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capabilities come out

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from AWS, from Google, from Microsoft, that we bring it to life for ISVs.

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And with hundreds of ISVs and billions of dollars in cloud go to market, we've

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got a

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pretty good idea about what ISVs need, and we take that responsibility very,

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very seriously.

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So today I'm joined by four colleagues, Thomas, Kevin, Christine, and Jack.

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I'll give each of you a minute to introduce yourselves, your company, your role

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in the

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company, and just for fun.

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And I didn't prompt you guys on this.

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So sorry, but maybe share if you've got a favorite podcast or a favorite book

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that you're

4:29

listening to that you think the audience could benefit from.

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I'd love you to share that as well.

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Thomas, we'll start with you.

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Great to see everyone.

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Thomas Bush, I lead and co-created our ISV Go Global program at Do It

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International.

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We're a top global cloud partner in the space.

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And top podcast, put me on the spot.

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Recently, I got into plan to the gods.

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Highly recommend.

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Awesome.

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The best questions the one you're not prepared for, that keeps it fun in life.

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Yeah.

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It's kind of a layup, though, as long as you're doing something.

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Christine, how about you?

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Hey, everyone.

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My name is Christine Lee, and I am the VP of Global Partnerships at G2.

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You'll learn a little bit about G2 if you haven't heard of us in a few more

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minutes.

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Top podcast.

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So interesting.

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Recently, I've been really getting into a good morning ecosystem, ran by Brian

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Garvey

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and the HubSpot team.

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It's been as we start thinking about how do we scale our ecosystem and how do

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we work

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with solution partners.

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It's been a very informative podcast for me, too.

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Fantastic.

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And Kevin.

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Hi, everyone.

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My name is Kevin Crevel, the SPP of Global Partnerships at Dratte, Compliance

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Automation

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ISV.

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Favorite book is a book called Love Winds by a guy named Bob Goff, just about

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living

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a purpose-driven whimsical life.

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Just a collection of his stories that are pretty challenging for somebody who's

6:13

sitting

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at a desk all day.

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No doubt.

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And last but not least, Jack.

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Appreciate it.

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Yeah, Jack French.

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So I had our cloud practice at worldwide technology.

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So all things pre-sale, solution development.

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That includes marketplace and our managed consumption or resale business.

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I think for work, cloudcast is the podcast that I try to stay up on.

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And then, personal, this real survival stories I found myself listening to

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lately that has

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got me sucked in.

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Just crazy survival stories from people.

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Awesome.

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Yeah, thanks for sharing those.

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I listened to a podcast over the weekend.

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It was a Brené Brown unlocking us.

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I'm a ballator for the last four or five years in shit, I guess, named Esther P

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eralle, who

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talked about the real AI, which was artificial intimacy.

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And the one liner that resonated with me most was I have a thousand good

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friends, but

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none of them will take care of my cat.

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So I encourage you to turn into that one.

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All right, agenda wise, I'm going to set the stage a bit, talk about the

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perspective

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that I've seen over the last decade or so.

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Before coming to tackle three years ago, I lived inside of an ISV called Trend

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Micro.

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A multi-billion dollar global company and helped transform into SaaS and into a

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cloud

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go-to market strategy.

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And now I have the pleasure of helping hundreds of our customers do the same

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rather.

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Then I'll share a special announcement.

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We're rolling it out today, so you're on the first to hear it.

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And then we'll dive in with our guests and learn more about how they're helping

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ISVs

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build this new revenue channel.

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All right.

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So if we look back on the history, like 10 years ago, 2014, 15, 16, cloud go-to

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market

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and marketplace listing were kind of synonymous terms.

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And I remember executive meetings and boardroom discussions where a marketplace

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listing was

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like your badge of cloud validation.

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Like, I'm a cloud company.

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I have a partnership with Google.

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I'm in a marketplace.

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But we figured out that when you build it, they don't come and to see a buyer's

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wasn't

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knocking at the doorstep to consume that listing.

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And that sparked the broader adoption of CoSEL.

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Even though CoSEL programs had already existed, kind of this marketplace

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dynamic and the lack

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of buyer demand really sparked the new generation of CoSEL and the systems and

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the programs

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and the incentives that came along with it.

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But that brought this unbridled enthusiasm and a little bit of confusion.

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Like some ISVs said, I'm going to share all of my pipeline with the cloud

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providers and

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went with their hands out and said, I need help.

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Others said, I'm a little bit nervous.

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I don't understand.

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Maybe I also compete with the clouds in some way, shape or form.

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I'm only going to share deals where I know I need really specific help that are

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really

9:08

well qualified that I'm about to close and maybe I just need to find some

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budget.

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Others wrestled with new versus renewal.

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What should I share?

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A lot of CFOs were saying, I don't know if I want to share anything and take a

9:20

deal through

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a marketplace where back then you might be paying 13 to 20% in a listing fee

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today, 3%

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or less across all the major cloud providers.

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But a lot of confusion around what does this mean to my business?

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What does it mean to my margins?

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What does it mean to my traditional channel?

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And that's fun.

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This need for data, which most commonly is referred to as propensity to buy,

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which is

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what are the deals that are most ripe for cloud CoSEL?

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What are the deals that are most ripe for marketplace?

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And you started seeing this information feedback to ISVs so they could get more

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intentional

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about CoSELing.

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They could raise the fidelity of the data they were sharing.

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They could ask for help more specifically.

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So that was a lot of fun.

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And then we saw the transition as revenue went from 0% to 2%, 5% or 10% or 20%

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of revenue.

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Suddenly we saw the C-suite paying attention.

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And most importantly, we saw the CRO raising their hand and saying, I want to

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control that.

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This is no longer an experiment in my alliances team and part of my cloud

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partnership.

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This is a part of my revenue engine and maybe the most meaningful part of my

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revenue engine.

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And my revenue engine lives inside of the tools I already use, primarily my CRM

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system

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and primarily Salesforce.

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So it's actually we've done a ton of work over the last year, year and a half

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to make

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sure when we bring things to life with the cloud providers, we bring it to life

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with

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the tools that our customers already use.

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And when we talked to those customers, we found some commonality.

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And we found that tackle is one partner in that ecosystem, but there are

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actually many

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partners in that digital tech stack and that digital sales stack and partners

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driving

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real business transformation.

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So today, I'm extremely excited to announce Tackle's Cloud Go-to-Market

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ecosystem.

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We have three main goals.

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The first is to support our ISVs in every way we can alongside our partners to

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make Cloud

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Go-to-Market the preferred route to market for software companies.

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The next is to provide ISVs with the tools and expertise they need from the

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very earliest

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days of exploring Cloud Go-to-Market through an at scale motion that represents

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hundreds

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of millions of dollars.

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Or if you heard John's keynote yesterday, perhaps we'll see the first ISV do $1

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billion

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in annual sales through marketplace this year.

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And the last is to serve the cross-functional organization.

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We need to be a partner not just to the sales team, but to the product team in

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the back

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office and the ecosystem is designed to meet all of those needs.

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We've set up our ecosystem in four main pillars and we're going to hear about

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many of these

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today.

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The first is solution providers and technology partners, channels and resellers

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, and finally

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go-to-market services.

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We're really fortunate to have 11 launch partners today.

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Names and logos on the screen.

12:17

Hey, sorry.

12:18

Sanjay, I don't think you're sharing your slides.

12:22

I'm not sharing my slides.

12:24

Yeah.

12:25

That's a problem.

12:27

I can see my slides being shared.

12:28

All right, sorry about that, folks.

12:31

Let me figure out why I'm not sharing slides.

12:36

Thank you for calling that out.

12:42

Can you see that now?

12:43

There we go.

12:45

Gotcha.

12:46

Whoo!

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All right, so you're on a cloud GT and ecosystem slide with 11 logos?

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We are indeed.

12:53

All right, thanks, man.

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I appreciate that.

12:55

Sorry for the confusion there.

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I'm staring at a screen that's being shared.

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So we have 11 great partners to learn more about them.

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Visit the tackle website.

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We have some simple value props up there.

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And if you're interested in becoming a partner, we'd be delighted to talk to

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you.

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You can follow this link out on the website.

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Reach out to us.

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We can talk about how you're sharing or serving your customers, how we're

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serving ours.

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Make sure we have a great value prop to take to the market together.

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So further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Thomas and do it to talk about

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what we're

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doing together.

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We have a great solution providers as specialized organizations, helping ISPs

13:40

in cloud migrations,

13:42

satisfying applications, helping with cloud cost management, but fundamentally

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helping

13:46

the business transformation that's happening inside of software companies.

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So with that, Thomas.

13:54

Thanks, Sanjay.

13:56

And yeah, super grateful to be here, excited about what tackle's been doing for

14:00

several

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years, but especially where we're headed together.

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So for those of you who haven't heard of do it, I'm going to give just a super

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quick

14:10

high level.

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And as Sanjay said before, this is day two.

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So my hope is that we can get pretty quickly into, hey, what does this look

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like for us

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and what's some clear takeaways for you.

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So and do we've got three big pillars which are represented on the top with the

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solve advantage

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and navigator.

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So fundamentally, we provide best in class enterprise support advisory

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consulting.

14:34

Do it advantage is for those of you who might have known do it years ago, our

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primary business

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model back then was being a reseller.

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And we still lean into that today and provide a lot of value and cost

14:46

optimization.

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And then our third big pillar is the do it navigator.

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This is our cloud cost management tool, single pane of glass for multi cloud

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and ISV data,

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cost intelligence, and automated reporting so that you can take all of the

15:02

noise and

15:03

the cloud spin space and a granular custom way, create reports and intelligence

15:11

that

15:11

mean something to your business leaders.

15:14

So what I thought would be really helpful would be to talk about a couple of

15:19

the ways

15:19

that we see this cloud go to market ecosystem working really well.

15:25

And when do it began leaning in, we had a ton of partners that were all

15:32

valuable in

15:33

the ecosystem.

15:35

And that level two and level three maturity has been us realizing that there

15:40

are a couple

15:41

of key partners that have the perfect overlay and the perfect crossover with us

15:47

.

15:48

And we're always looking when we meet partners to think about how can we

15:52

address something

15:54

that's out of scope that's within their normal cadence or how could they

15:58

address something

15:59

for our customers that's slightly out of scope for our normal cadence.

16:04

So there's a hundred people that probably want to partner with many of you

16:10

today.

16:10

And a lot of these examples draw back on that core point.

16:14

So with tackle, for example, there's a lot of customers that might approach

16:18

tackle that

16:19

they might have a conversation with.

16:21

And in that discovery, they might realize that the app really isn't ready for

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marketplace

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or that the future state of the app is going to be much better suited for

16:30

marketplace than

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where they're at today.

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So that's where tackle might introduce customers to do it and say, hey, can you

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, before we

16:39

push on this marketplace thing, let's first address the app modernization.

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For anyone who's been deep in the AWS ecosystem, you'll probably have heard of

16:51

the ISV accelerate

16:53

program and a core component or prerequisite of that is the foundational

16:57

technical review.

16:58

So that's something to do with those all day long.

17:00

Like our senior cloud architects spend a lot of time in the AWS best practices

17:06

providing

17:07

context.

17:08

So this is another area where we kind of figured out that AWS or tackle others

17:12

might introduce

17:13

us to customers because we can help with that particular piece.

17:17

On the flip side, if you look in this kind of the second column of examples, we

17:21

're always

17:22

looking for ways that we can support this ecosystem.

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So on the second one, when our customers come to us and say, hey, how do we

17:30

level up our

17:30

marketplace go to market enablement?

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That's where we know that if you're not already being showcased in G2 or if you

17:38

're not already

17:38

leveraging some of tackles like data intelligence about propensity to buy with

17:43

your existing

17:44

pipeline, then that is going to be more actionable and more immediate return

17:50

than something that

17:51

do it might directly offer.

17:53

So as you're thinking about how to put these things into practice, it's super

17:57

important

17:58

to think about where are these specific crossovers where what you do best has

18:04

an immediate adjacency

18:07

that can both feed you and give you the opportunity to work with other partners

18:11

that all drive

18:12

this cloud go to market success.

18:15

So withdraw it a similar like on the left, you can see that within do it solve,

18:20

we'll

18:20

have a lot of security reviews, but at some point it actually makes a lot more

18:24

sense for

18:25

us to refer a customer to a piece of technology that can help automate their

18:29

compliance instead

18:30

of a do it effort that's a really technical advisory.

18:35

And similarly, if the Drought team gets asked a ton about security reviews,

18:40

that's maybe

18:41

AWS specific, but not compliance automation specific, they might refer

18:45

customers to us.

18:48

So let's jump over to the next page or next slide.

18:52

So some specific call to actions, what we've learned by doing this hundreds of

18:56

times with

18:56

ISVs globally is if you're pre marketplace, number one piece of advice is find

19:04

out from

19:04

your internal stakeholders and leaders, what is the information they need and

19:09

what is their

19:09

current perception of this effort so that you can go gather that information

19:15

and enroll

19:16

folks on to your cause.

19:18

So I know yesterday there was a lot of talk from the C level perspective, but

19:21

listen,

19:22

like almost everyone here is you're here because you're a high performer and

19:26

the cross

19:27

functional nature of go to market success in the cloud.

19:32

It is going to expose you if you're not enrolling your entire team in this

19:38

effort.

19:39

So number one takeaway here is like if you're technical team, if you're C level

19:44

, if they

19:44

don't have a shared vision for what we're up to, there's some very specific

19:48

things that

19:48

you can bring to them to help enroll them in this new vision, such as tackles

19:54

offer to

19:55

review, I think it's 250 or so leads for free just to show you the propensity

20:01

to buy through

20:02

the marketplace that you might not already have.

20:05

So if you haven't already captured that information or that gotten similar

20:08

information from G2,

20:10

you can take back to your executive team and say, here's why we really need

20:14

full buy in

20:15

and a cross functional team to accelerate this.

20:20

That's like day one activity when this session is over.

20:25

If you're post marketplace, say as I mentioned this before, but having a

20:30

conversation with

20:31

your CFO, even something about like clarifying the renewal strategy, like how

20:35

much faster

20:36

could your team execute on existing business and reduce churn by taking a small

20:43

hit on

20:44

maybe the feed that you'll pay through the marketplace, but ultimately your

20:48

velocity

20:49

is going to be substantially higher.

20:51

So my hope is that one of these things is a clear takeaway.

20:58

Usually when we go through these with our customers one by one, we'll identify

21:02

an immediate

21:03

opportunity that costs you nothing but has a exponential impact on your

21:08

trajectory for

21:09

the next quarter.

21:13

Back to you, Sanjay.

21:14

Awesome.

21:15

Thanks Thomas.

21:16

So one of the things that we predicted in our last state of cloud go to market

21:21

report

21:22

attack on was that today's cloud go to market is really driven by a lot of

21:27

incentives.

21:28

Buyers are in the center to drive down cloud committed spend agreements with

21:32

Google or

21:33

Amazon or Microsoft.

21:35

Sellers inside those cloud environments are in Senate with commission and

21:38

quarter retirement.

21:39

I as these are in Senate with special programs and MDF funds and everything

21:44

else.

21:45

But we actually think is cloud go to market continues to build to be a bigger

21:48

and bigger

21:48

percentage overall B2B B2B spend that the real true inherent values in this are

21:54

going to

21:54

come out.

21:56

And that's in becoming a massively efficient revenue channel.

22:01

And when we look at the tech stack around that, it's actually pretty robust.

22:07

And if you want your buyers to discover your products through a cloud and in a

22:12

marketplace,

22:13

what are you doing for buyer discovery?

22:15

How are you stimulating that motion?

22:17

Maybe ultimately you want to get to a PLG strategy.

22:20

If you're in procurement, how do you shave time off of vendor onboarding?

22:23

How do you shave time off of legal cycles?

22:25

There's some amazing tools out there to really optimize the entire the system.

22:30

So I'm thrilled to have Kevin from DRATA and Christine from G2 talk about how

22:36

their organizations

22:37

are helping ISPs maximize and accelerate this motion.

22:41

Cool.

22:42

Thanks, Ajay.

22:44

So, DRATA, like I said at the top of the session, DRATA is a compliance

22:50

automation SaaS provider.

22:52

We are really helping companies focus on if they've never achieved Sock 2 or

22:55

ISO or GDPR

22:57

HIPAA before, many other frameworks and then those that have that are trying to

23:01

better

23:01

maintain it on a continuous basis.

23:03

Effectively, for those of you who have used like a mint.com, rest in peace

23:08

because it's

23:09

no longer on the Intuit platform anymore.

23:11

But imagine with mint.com for budgeting, you're connecting your bank accounts

23:16

to be able to

23:17

pull in that data using Mint to continuously monitor to see how spending is

23:21

going.

23:21

And then you put in budget restraints and say, "Hey, if I go over $200 a month

23:25

in gas,

23:26

let me know.

23:27

I don't want to do that."

23:28

DRATA is very similar.

23:29

Your tech stack is your bank accounts, your controls that lead up to making

23:32

sure you're

23:32

compliant are your budget things just like Mint as, which is kind of serendip

23:36

itous our

23:37

VSPP product.

23:38

Sorry.

23:39

Came from Intuit.

23:40

He was actually the founding member of TurboTax Live on the product side.

23:44

And so what DRATA's built is it's really clean, very easy to use UI that today

23:49

is really

23:49

focused on helping companies become compliant for the first time or again,

23:53

better maintain

23:54

the existing compliance they already have.

23:56

And that kind of speaks to what we've done in the first three years of being in

23:59

the market,

24:00

already signed over 4,500 customers.

24:03

That has created a pretty big challenge for our finance team.

24:06

So actually, the impetus originally behind going into marketplace and getting

24:13

rolling

24:14

was driven by a number of factors, but finance surprisingly was a big one for

24:18

us because

24:19

trying to be able to manage all those contracts, especially for our average

24:23

customers.

24:24

A lot of them are in the Series A, Series B space.

24:28

They're not necessarily working with the channel yet and they're moving so

24:31

quickly that that's

24:31

something that we kind of work on getting them to it like the time of renewal.

24:36

So these customers are buying through marketplace.

24:38

Last year at ReInvent, they featured three companies on the CoSEL leaderboard.

24:44

It was MongoDB CrowdStrike.

24:45

The two of those I think combined for about $100 billion market cap and then D

24:47

RADA, which

24:50

we're no we're close to any of that.

24:52

But the reason for that is because we're actually using tackle and a lot of

24:56

what we're doing

24:57

that we'll talk about here in a second to be able to sell to these companies

25:00

who don't

25:01

even have a commitment.

25:02

So whereas that's been traditionally, hey, getting into marketplace, go up some

25:06

of the

25:06

boings and the USAAs that have committed spends with one of the cloud providers

25:10

.

25:10

98% I want to say of the transactions we use in marketplace are companies that

25:15

have no

25:15

committed spend, have never bought through marketplace at all, may not even

25:18

have a marketplace account

25:19

yet and are spinning those up to be able to work with DRADA.

25:23

So I just kind of talked about it at the top.

25:26

When you're thinking about working with these marketplaces with these cloud

25:29

providers, you're

25:30

either all in or you're not.

25:31

There's really no in between.

25:33

And so that's where DRADA has gone all in with AWS and become kind of where we

25:38

're at.

25:39

We'll go to the next slide that talks more about how we're leveraging tackle

25:42

for that.

25:43

If you go to the next slide here.

25:46

So my background, I was formerly at experience.

25:49

We got acquired by Palo Alto Networks.

25:50

I've seen how at a large scale things are done with these cloud marketplace

25:55

providers.

25:56

I think the challenge becomes that really to win, you've got to get the field

26:00

engaged.

26:01

You've got to get your sellers winning in the field with the AWS sellers or

26:04

Google

26:05

and Microsoft.

26:06

And so that means empowering them to do all that.

26:08

I have a team of two on my side that manage the AWS relationship, but the

26:12

challenge becomes,

26:15

even if you're, we did a thousand offers last year, we'll probably do 2,000

26:17

private offers

26:18

this year.

26:19

But even if you're doing a hundred or so, if your team is the one responsible

26:22

for getting

26:23

all those offers out the door, that's challenging.

26:26

One from a resourcing perspective, but two from the sales team is just not

26:29

doing it.

26:30

They're not actively engaging in it.

26:32

And so what we've used tackle to do a number of things, which is kind of start

26:35

with scaling

26:36

a marketplace.

26:37

We've used the sales force integration to integrate with our CPU system so that

26:42

it's

26:42

actually our sales team who's doing all the private offers, not the cloud

26:45

alliances team

26:46

under me.

26:47

And that's helped us really create scale really quickly.

26:50

It's got the team to buy in.

26:51

It's got the knowledgeable in what they're doing.

26:53

And then it allows them, because then we're using the co-sale integration with

26:56

tackle as

26:56

well, they say, Hey, let's have all of our pipeline getting pushed into ACE.

27:01

And so when there's opportunities where a sales rep at AWS has an actual

27:05

relationship

27:06

with that customer and is active with them, we're bringing them into the

27:09

opportunity to

27:10

help us with it.

27:11

And again, that's for the propensity to buy so that the whole top row really

27:13

ties together,

27:14

because it's very easy for us to then say, okay, we've got this propensity to

27:18

buy data.

27:18

It's medium or high in marketplace, which means they're spending enough that

27:21

they're

27:21

definitely going to have some type of account manager relationship with the AWS

27:25

side.

27:26

Those are the ones we're going to go focus on.

27:28

And again, you'd be surprised that a lot of us that have gotten into

27:31

marketplace historically,

27:32

we want to sell the Boeing, we want to go get that committed spend from some

27:35

large enterprise

27:36

customer.

27:37

There's a lot more companies out there now, and the 100 employees in up space

27:41

that are

27:41

really ready to go and doing a lot with AWS.

27:44

The other thing to keep in mind, I'm okay giving away our trade secrets at this

27:48

point,

27:48

because we're so far ahead.

27:49

I'm not really worried about that slipping.

27:53

For us, it's not about just winning the mind share against our competitors.

27:55

It's winning the mind share against the rest of you, right?

27:58

Because it's AWS can work with any vendor they want.

28:01

It doesn't matter about the space.

28:03

And so for us, being able to register all of our pipeline to become in some

28:06

cases 10 to

28:07

20% of some of these AWS reps pipeline has been massive.

28:11

But it's also because a lot of the reps we're going after, the startup and S&B

28:14

reps.

28:15

And nobody's asking for their time.

28:17

Everybody's asking for the enterprise reps time, which is fine if that's your

28:19

business.

28:20

Obviously, you want to pursue that as well.

28:22

But there's a big portion of the AWS sales team that nobody's trying to talk to

28:25

right

28:25

now.

28:26

And that's where we've really cracked it open.

28:28

Last year, we saw just over 400 net new opportunities sourced by AWS

28:33

undoubtedly.

28:34

You're going to get some AOs registered by then that aren't in fact net new.

28:38

You've already got existing business there.

28:40

We had over 400 this year.

28:41

We anticipate that being over a thousand.

28:43

And again, that comes from getting your sales team engaged.

28:45

Like our sales team is literally owns the relationships with the AWS sellers.

28:50

My team is facilitating that and helping manage and enable it.

28:53

But it's very much led in the sales side now and it's become for our sales

28:58

leadership

28:59

team, a primary value driver for what they're trying to do.

29:03

So again, like you talk about velocity, what we've been able to do very quickly

29:06

.

29:06

I don't think what we've been doing is that difficult when you're using tackle

29:10

because

29:10

of the resourcing that we have.

29:12

Again, I think the top three on the top row speak to what we've been able to do

29:16

there.

29:16

The automation again, like making this a very easy experience for the sales

29:20

team.

29:20

That's what it should be.

29:22

We've partnered with the two partners that you see on this call here, WBT and

29:26

do it.

29:27

We've done CPPOs with both.

29:29

So when you bring in the channel partner as well, it makes it even more dynamic

29:33

and more

29:33

impactful for the relationships you're doing.

29:36

But again, like this all goes back to, I think there's a lot of other channel

29:40

partners not

29:41

speaking that obviously not WBT and do it who have leaned in.

29:44

But folks who haven't bought into CPPO yet that have kind of viewed AWS as

29:48

competitive.

29:49

And it's not.

29:50

Very much a one plus one plus one equals 10 if you allow it to be.

29:54

And I think that's where we've got this massive channel ecosystem.

29:58

A channel partner source over 30% of our business as a company.

30:02

And so being able to get all that kind of under the AWS umbrella of what we're

30:06

doing

30:06

has been massive.

30:07

And again, tackles at the center of all of that to make sure that we're

30:10

facilitating

30:11

and not slowing anybody down on the sales side.

30:14

Awesome.

30:15

Thanks.

30:16

You always remind me that your native language is cloud go to market Kevin.

30:19

So it's awesome to hear the back.

30:21

All right, Chris, let's keep rolling.

30:24

Thanks.

30:25

Thanks, Andre.

30:26

And Kevin, congratulations on your 711 very positive reviews on G2.

30:30

Got us doing great.

30:33

All right.

30:34

So for those who haven't heard of G2, G2 is the largest B2B software and

30:39

services marketplace

30:40

in the world.

30:41

We have over 2.5 million peer reviews collected over the last few years.

30:49

We're going to spread across 150,000 product listings across 2100 categories.

30:55

And every year we host over 90 million buyers who have identified that they

31:00

have a problem

31:01

that they need to solve come to G2 to try and find a solution and product that

31:06

's right

31:06

for their business, create a short list of vendors, compare those vendors,

31:10

research your

31:11

pricing, and validate their decisions through these trusted verify reviews.

31:18

At the end of it, G2 is where you go for software.

31:21

And if you're a buyer, if you're looking for software, it's going to be where

31:23

you need

31:24

to go to do your research.

31:26

And how we work with marketplaces is a very symbiotic relationship.

31:32

G2 is where you go to discover and research.

31:35

And then you go to the marketplaces to complete your transactions.

31:41

And this is the reason why in our customer base, we have 100% coverage of cloud

31:47

100 businesses

31:48

and as well as Fortune 500 customers.

31:52

So we could go to the next slide, Jay.

31:56

Awesome.

31:57

Perfect.

31:58

And like as a marketplace listing ourselves, we've leveraged tackle throughout

32:03

our journey

32:04

to power us to where we are today.

32:06

And we're really excited about that.

32:08

I want to tell you a little bit more about how we all come together in this fly

32:13

wheel cloud

32:14

marketplaces.

32:15

So G2 at the core of our business starts with your customer voice.

32:20

Our goal is to amplify your customer voice so that it builds trust and

32:25

transparency in

32:26

the software purchasing process.

32:29

And so that as a buyer, they can feel really, really good about the purchase

32:32

decisions that

32:33

they're making.

32:34

So all starts with reviews on G2.

32:38

Now what we do with those reviews is through my team, we syndicate those

32:42

reviews across

32:44

a dozen cloud marketplaces.

32:46

I'll go into that in a little bit.

32:48

AWS, Microsoft Azure are a couple of cloud marketplaces that leverage just G2

32:53

reviews

32:53

to power their user and buyer engagements.

32:58

Next, as your reviews are driving traffic and discoverability to your brand on

33:06

G2, all

33:06

of those traffic turns into buyer-intense signals.

33:10

And those buyer-intense signals represent the 5% of prospects who are actually

33:15

in market

33:16

to buy today.

33:18

When you pair that, those powerful buyer-intense signals with tackles

33:24

propensity data to show

33:25

you who is actually likely to transact in the marketplace, you have a really

33:31

complete picture

33:32

of where your buyers are, who's ready, and how they purchase.

33:37

And lastly, as a base, all of this traffic, all of this data sits in our market

33:43

intelligence

33:44

platform that helps inform your business in their future go-to-market strategy,

33:50

helping

33:50

you yield more customers who will become future reviewers, who will continue to

33:57

drive more

33:58

traffic to your listings and continue to power your pipeline, and so goes the

34:04

cloud flywheel

34:05

that we continue to see.

34:08

Next slide.

34:09

So why we invest so heavily in cloud marketplaces is because we're seeing every

34:14

year, we're seeing

34:15

an increase in buyers going to cloud marketplaces as a preferred channel to

34:22

purchase.

34:23

We issue a buyer behavior research report every year.

34:29

This year ours will be coming out in June, but just as a sneak peek, we're

34:35

seeing over

34:36

the last year, we see a 5% increase, 5% point increase in the amount of buyers

34:44

who prefer

34:45

to go to cloud marketplaces to complete their purchase.

34:49

And a very large portion of that increase is coming from the C-suite executives

34:55

. So we're seeing that shift, we feel internally this is why we're listed on AWS,

34:59

this is why

35:00

we leverage tackle for our go-to-market as well.

35:03

And when we look at our review syndication, I talked about the 90 million

35:08

buyers that go

35:09

to G2 every year.

35:10

When we amplify those reviews across the cloud marketplace ecosystem, that

35:15

number doubles

35:16

to 180 million annual buyers.

35:20

More specifically, when we dig into the impact of having G2 reviews syndicated

35:25

into the

35:26

marketplaces, we're seeing, for example, with AWS, a 13% higher likelihood to

35:32

complete

35:33

a purchase on any listing in AWS that has G2 reviews syndicated.

35:39

So there's a power across the board when we all come together and help just the

35:45

same

35:45

way as an ISV would leverage tackle to build and scale your cloud go-to-market

35:53

operations.

35:54

You'll be going to G2 to help you with discoverability and building the buyer-

35:59

intensive

36:00

nose to drive that pipeline forward.

36:02

Awesome.

36:03

Thanks, Christine.

36:04

I have a pretty clear message.

36:05

If you're selling in a marketplace, work with your marketing team, create r

36:08

aving fans,

36:10

get a lot of reviews and increase the likelihood for a buyer to buy.

36:14

So that's awesome.

36:15

Thanks for sharing.

36:16

And finally, I'm going to toss it over to Jack French at WWT, an organization I

36:21

've admired

36:22

for a long time as a guy who's been running around in software and technology

36:26

for a couple

36:27

of decades.

36:28

It's been fascinating over the last six or seven or eight years to watch

36:33

traditional

36:34

channels or traditional resellers turn into cloud solution providers.

36:39

WWT was one of the first courageous partners to raise their hand to go on that

36:44

mission.

36:44

Accent the helm of it.

36:46

And I'm excited for him to share what it means for ISV.

36:48

He's in what the opportunity is for other channel partners as well.

36:53

I appreciate it, Sanjay.

36:55

Thank you.

36:56

And so for anyone not familiar with WWT, quickly on our practice and WWT as a

37:01

whole,

37:02

we are privately held headquartered in St. Louis, minority owned, 20 billion or

37:06

so on annual

37:07

revenue.

37:08

Six billion of that is international, so we truly are a worldwide global

37:12

service provider.

37:14

We manage billions of dollars of ISV spend and OEM spend every year.

37:20

And so as Sanjay mentioned, figuring out how to tackle the marketplaces and

37:25

make sure

37:26

that we were aligning with the cloud service providers years ago was extremely

37:29

important

37:29

for us.

37:30

I think it was mentioned yesterday in the keynote, sellers want to sell, rev

37:33

iers want

37:33

to buy.

37:34

And that was a leading philosophy of ours years ago.

37:37

For one, maybe even to protect our business, but two, just to make sure that we

37:41

were where

37:41

our customers needed us to be.

37:43

For my cloud practice, what we focus on is, and I think someone mentioned that

37:48

earlier

37:49

even in the comments, you know, cloud go to market isn't just about building

37:52

landing

37:52

zones and migrating VMs and having a cloud presence.

37:55

It really, at this point, is about integrating into all the different outcomes

37:59

that we provide

37:59

for customers across customer experience, automation, the cybersecurity, the AI

38:04

and data.

38:05

Cloud is an implementation point that is leveraged across all of these

38:10

different solutions.

38:11

So it's important for my team to make sure that we understand what are the

38:14

leading ISVs

38:15

and OEMs and solutions that we can leverage to build good outcomes for our

38:19

customers.

38:20

And, you know, WTT is about 30 years old.

38:22

They've got a long history of building longstanding relationships with partners

38:27

, with the number

38:28

one partner for dozens of different leading ISVs and OEMs.

38:32

And so making sure that our solutions are integrating with those partners to

38:35

provide

38:36

compelling and needed solutions for our customers is what we focus on.

38:41

You know, we primarily play in the enterprise space.

38:44

So, you know, 90 plus percent of the Fortune 100, Fortune 500, and then in the

38:49

public sector

38:50

in sled space, we have a pretty heavy presence.

38:54

So, you know, making sure that we understand the ecosystem of public, hybrid

38:58

and private

38:59

and how solutions can, you know, play across all of those different cloud

39:02

operating models

39:03

is important for us.

39:05

And one of the ways that we do that in the differentiator for WTT is leveraging

39:08

our

39:09

advanced technology center.

39:10

And so the next slide you'll see here that the ATC or advanced technology

39:14

center is a

39:14

differentiator for us.

39:16

It truly is a multi-site data center.

39:17

And so, you know, why would the cloud guy care about a data center?

39:21

But for us, every large enterprise customer is trying to figure out how to

39:25

integrate their

39:26

cloud strategy with years of investment that they've made with technology

39:30

solutions across

39:32

their technology landscape.

39:33

And so in the ATC, we can build these integrated solutions.

39:36

We can POC and POV them.

39:38

I can mimic migration strategies down to the firmware version that they're

39:41

coming off of

39:43

in this environment.

39:44

We've got connectivity to Equinox and all the major cloud service providers.

39:48

And this environment allows us to be more than just a reseller or more than

39:52

just a bar.

39:54

It's a place that we can truly show value added integrated solutions with our

39:59

cloud

40:00

service providers and our most trusted partners.

40:02

So in this environment, you'll find labs that customers can spin up and see

40:06

what, you know,

40:07

head-off or follow or whiz or whatever it maybe looks like integrated into

40:11

their solution.

40:12

Or we build custom environments on demand for our customers and our partners,

40:17

you know,

40:18

to see again what these integrated solutions look like.

40:20

We will use this lab to, you know, certify partners on cloud service provider

40:25

hardware.

40:26

So when Outpost was deployed, we were certifying partners for Outpost Ready,

40:30

you Anthos and Azure

40:31

Stack deployments.

40:33

And so again, if you're not familiar with the ATC or this is somewhere that you

40:36

think

40:36

that we could partner to help accelerate, you know, your eyes for your software

40:39

solution.

40:40

I'd be, you know, interested in discussing more.

40:44

But you know, as I go to the next slide here, yeah, and thanks, Sanjay.

40:47

It's okay.

40:48

So how do we leverage all those tools to really be impactful?

40:50

And you know, everybody I think before me has said it perfectly.

40:54

I mean, the marketplace was scary for a lot of our field prior to us building

40:58

some maturity

40:59

in the space.

41:01

And I had a regional manager tell me years ago that the cloud marketplace felt

41:05

like a

41:05

chainsaw that he could either take off his own leg or take down a bear with.

41:09

And he didn't quite understand how to leverage, you know, this powerful

41:12

component of the

41:13

marketplace.

41:14

He was scared of it, but he knew that he needed to figure it out.

41:17

And so what we've found is leveraging tackle data.

41:20

We're able to get much more proactive.

41:22

And when the field doesn't feel like they're reacting to last minute customer

41:25

demand to

41:26

shift to go to marketplace or, you know, can we procure this in a different way

41:30

?

41:30

It allows us to get much more strategic to build comfort with the field and to

41:36

show them

41:36

the true power that the marketplace can provide.

41:39

We've been able to transact partners in a matter of hours that we don't even

41:42

have paper with

41:43

because we can leverage, you know, the joint paperwork with the cloud provider

41:46

instead

41:47

of going through a six month onboarding process of some, you know, new solution

41:50

that maybe

41:51

we haven't worked with before.

41:52

And so all across the board, this ability to be more proactive, leveraging

41:57

propensity

41:57

data from tackle or, you know, marrying it with our pipeline data in order to

42:02

get out

42:03

in front of deals has created comfort, which just has exponentially grown our

42:08

business.

42:09

We did our first marketplace deal five or six years ago.

42:12

We're now on the high nine figures.

42:13

I don't see any, you know, slowing down, especially another Google and

42:17

Microsoft are both open

42:19

for the channel.

42:21

And without that propensity data, I don't know if we would be growing as fast.

42:26

In addition to that, you know, our relationship with our cloud service

42:29

providers early on felt

42:30

very competitive.

42:31

Our field saw them as somewhat of a threat.

42:34

And so getting our field comfortable with partnering with Microsoft Amazon,

42:38

Google,

42:38

the Oracle, all the major CSPs took some doing and having Salesforce

42:44

integration, having

42:46

a quicker line of sight to connecting with the cloud service provider sales

42:51

teams has

42:52

really helped us build trust and really kick off that flywheel of PO and AO and

42:57

everything

42:58

else that we want to see from the CSPs.

43:01

And so Salesforce integration, automation of deal flow, propensity to buy data,

43:06

it's

43:06

just been critical for us in making our field more comfortable with partnering

43:11

with the

43:12

CSPs and opening up, you know, that their pipeline to them and what they've got

43:16

going.

43:16

But also it helps us get out in front of these deals.

43:19

So we're layering on value added professional services.

43:22

We're just a transactional arm.

43:24

I don't think we're as valuable in the channel.

43:26

And so we need to figure out, you know, how can we get in front of these deals,

43:30

figure

43:30

out advisory, consults or jewelry or deployment services that we can attach to

43:35

each one of

43:35

these, you know, ISV integrated solutions to get more sticky and provide value

43:39

to customers.

43:40

So again, we're not just a transaction arm, but hopefully that helps.

43:45

And I know we're running on science.

43:46

Okay, back to you.

43:47

That's awesome.

43:48

Thanks to Jack, Christine, Kevin, Thomas, LoveHavenia today.

43:53

Really thrilled your inaugural partners in our ecosystem.

43:56

Thanks to the audience for being here to help us celebrate a project that the

44:00

team's

44:00

been working on for quite some time.

44:02

We're excited to bring it to life.

44:03

We're more excited about what we're going to do together and more partners to

44:08

come.

44:08

Enjoy the rest of the day and the content.

44:11

Next up is maturity model delivered by Patrick and Aaron, I believe an awesome

44:16

session.

44:16

You tuned and thanks for coming to Cloud GTM XP.

44:20

Have a great day.

44:21

[BLANK_AUDIO]

44:31

[ Silence ]