Ecosystem Aces

They’re one of the largest ecosystems around: 300+ partners, 500+ integrations, and they’re still customer first? You bet they are. Sonal Uban , Director of Marketing, Global Technology Alliances at Fortinet , says the way you keep a machine like that going is you start with the customer pain points, and then work backwards. According to Sonal, that means putting the effort into the longterm strat...

How do you make a meaningful conversation happen with a customer? It’s certainly not enough to wait for inbound customers to just happen. You’re going to have to go outbound. Manoj Bhatia, Vice President of Channel Sales at Acqueon, says the best way to do that is by getting good data from an impeccable customer experience that can be used to effectively communicate to that customer’s needs. Throu...

Everybody is selling something, so what’s the best way to stand out? Have you tried giving it away for free?  That’s the business model that’s been so successful for George Drapeau, Senior Director, Global Partner Solutions & Technology, and his team at Red Hat. George’s team builds lasting success and relationships with clients by doing the unthinkable: listening to the community first. They star...

Last year, IBM’s CEO, Arvind Krishna made a bold commitment to invest over $1 billion in the IBM partner ecosystem. Since that time, the IBM ecosystem team has been rolling out a number of initiatives to make good on that promise. David La Rose, General Manager - IBM Partner Ecosystem, Sales at IBM, shares the inside view as he and his team are transforming partnering at IBM. With nearly 55,000 pa...

You catch more bees with honey, or so they say.  If your approach to partnerships is going down your list of needs and wants as you head into the meeting, you’re doing it all wrong. Your offer to an existing partner, or even a potential one, needs to be rooted in what that organization needs first. And according to today’s guest, Liz Fuller (a podcaster herself!), Vice President & General Manager...

Is driving your company’s sustainability plan a challenge or an opportunity? The answer you choose will say a lot about how your company will fare in the coming years as both industry and government make the switch, a switch by the way, that is definitely coming. Alec Saunders, Worldwide Sustainability Partner Strategy Leader at Microsoft, joins the show to discuss the vast amount of opportunity c...

Stop creating partner-first strategies! What??? It’s the reason we do what we do, right? Wrong. Your client is the reason you do what you do. Your partnerships need to originate with the client wants first if you want your program to have measurable success. Then, focus on your partners. It sounds simple enough, but Carola Cazenave, Business Angel, Business Advisor, Board Member, and most recently...

Do you ever have that feeling that the data is just… lacking?  It’s really not going to be possible to effectively serve all partners if the data just doesn’t serve the end goals. Part of that journey is transforming go to market by providing a robust 1st, 2nd, and 3rd party data plan. The best way to do that is ending the one size fits all product, and asking the simple question: how can this pro...

You can’t be everywhere all at once. But your partnership network can. A good ecosystem will not only increase your sphere of influence and knowledge, but will be cheaper, increase sales conversions, and extend retention rates. That’s why hearing what Mike Stocker, VP, Partnerships, RollWorks at NextRoll, Inc., has to say is important. Join us as we discuss: Delivering customer value with integrat...

Sometimes you just gotta break some glass. That’s just a sign that you’re moving fast.  For large, prolific companies, the ability to continually grow is predicated on the ability to continually innovate. If you don’t do this, the company will stagnate. That goes for partnerships in the public sphere as well. Libby Greco, Vice President, Alliances at Salesforce, talks about her many years of exper...

The easiest way to know whether a partnership is good is to make sure everybody gets what they want.  Sounds simple enough but the most promising thing any partners can do to be successful is having collaboration early on where stakeholders can be transparent about what works for them and what doesn’t. A great side effect of that is building and maintaining relationships for years to come. Richard...

In order for the ecosystem to function at its best it needs to include not one, but multiple partners.  The best way to do that is to work with partners who are willing to share the risk, innovate, and stay flexible for future technologies. Suresh Kumar Tulluri, Vice President & Global Head - Ecosystem Business Unit at HCL Technologies, talks in this episode about how to bring the customer along f...

Creating demand for your product is more than just selling a product.   You want customers to be the biggest advocates of your product. Having the right integration and partnerships at every level not only create a reliable service, but create fans who will take your products and run with them themselves.   Listen in as Akhil Kapoor, Vice President of Technology and Cloud Partnerships at New Relic...

The customer doesn’t just want to buy something. They want it to work. Traditional GSP transactions tend to focus too much on revenue, and not enough about integrating partners from all over so that the customer isn’t just buying something, but also using it. In this episode, Michael Bruchey, Global VP Partner Solutions at SAP, shares his insights on making happier customers who are more likely to...

Partnerships drive solutions.   If you have a goal to be everywhere, your business can get there by developing and nurturing real-world, end-to-end partnerships.   Today’s guest, Glen Straub, VP of Business Development at Foursquare, has scaled 550 different partnerships across data, products, sales, distribution, and markets.   Join us as we discuss: What to look for when you need a partner to go...

Ecosystem should be part of your product’s DNA…  If you build ecosystem into your product roadmap, your product becomes a snowball rolling down a hill, picking up momentum and benefiting every corner of your organization.   As more companies take note of the exponential, transformative power of ecosystems, today’s guest, Allan Adler, Managing Partner at Digital Bridge Partners, contends that we’ve...

Three different customers will each innovate in their own way. Within those three scenarios — Each will innovate with varying amounts of technology from SAP, Google, or a third party.   Because of this, refusing to partner could limit the customers opportunities, and therefore, your own profit.   Today’s guest is Henry Wagner, SVP, Google Practice at Lemongrass, who joins the show to explain the l...

In a world where a $200 billion cybersecurity economy is dwarfed by a $6 trillion dollar hacker economy, Zero Trust is a vitally important framework for staying safe online.  But it takes a lot of trust to build Zero Trust — because it’s partnerships leading the charge in the cybersecurity industry.  Today’s guest is Tony Zirnoon, Head of Strategic Alliances at Appgate, who joins the show to discu...

Partnerships are like ATMs.   If you want them to be beneficial to you, you need to deposit more than you withdraw.  That’s how today’s guest, Andrew Kim, Vice President of Business Development at ShipHawk, has been so successful spearheading the company’s pioneering partnership program.   Andrew joins the show to discuss: ShipHawk’s innovative and unconventional approach to partnering  Why partne...

The digital workspace looks a lot different than how workspaces used to operate — Today, ecosystems must coexist with others, each providing capabilities to the overall solution.   Think of how Blockbuster operated in comparison to the Netflix of today. Without these partnerships, each enterprise would crumble.  And that’s exactly what Lax Gopisetty, Vice President - Business Applications & Digita...

When you’re a fast-growing startup that wants to start a partnership or alliances organization, how do you get the attention of hyperscalers?  You bring them a strategic customer.  That’s exactly how Jackie Maldonado, AVP of Strategy - Cloud Alliances at Turing, approached it, and her organization’s subsequent success speaks for itself.   In this episode, she talks about the steps they took to arc...

In an age where everything is moving to the cloud, those who can migrate your data safely and efficiently are vital.  And for them, success means having strong partnerships with hyperscalers like Microsoft and AWS.  Just ask Chris Cochran, Vice President Cloud Strategy and Alliances at Data Dynamics, where alliances are helping him provide customers with everything they need for a successful migra...

Partnering is all about coming together to create more value than you can by yourself.  So, what’s better than a podcast dedicated to collecting the wisdom of the sharpest minds in partnering?  Partnering with another podcast with the same mission.  That’s why I joined Jared Fuller, Member of the Board of Directors at Cloud Software Association, on his podcast, PartnerUp, to share some of the most...

Not too long ago, bespoke products were all the rage.  Now, whatever isn’t “as a service,” soon will be.  The death of the SKU has arrived.  That’s something Ashley Speight, Co-Founder of Channelyze.io, has been thinking about for a long time. He joins the show to discuss what this means for partner ecosystems everywhere.  Join us as we discuss: How Channelize is giving visibility across the entir...

Whether it’s expanding to new markets or tackling crises… Everything is easier with the right partner by your side. Just ask Brian Allison, Vice President of Global Channels and Alliances at Snow Software, whose career has spanned everything from scrappy startups to leviathan corporations — and he has never seen one that couldn’t be improved by the right partners. Join us as we discuss: - How to c...