Inside Partnering

At Sage FUTURE in San Francisco, I sat down with Dan Miller , EVP of Financials and ERP at Sage, to talk about how Sage is thinking about AI, ecosystem partnerships, and the future of ERP platforms. One of the clearest themes from the conversation was this: finance leaders are not resisting AI. They simply want transparency, accountability, and confidence in the outputs. For partner leaders, ISVs,...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit insidepartnering.substack.com At Sage FUTURE in San Francisco, Nancy Sperry , Vice President of North American Partner Sales at Sage, shared a practical view into how Sage approaches partnerships, co-selling, and AI enablement. The conversation focused on operational execution - how to help partners scale faster, create industry-specifi...

At Sage FUTURES in San Francisco, Gretchen O’Hara delivered a clear message to partners: the market is shifting fast - and the opportunity is massive. But despite the noise around AI, one thing hasn’t changed. Partners are still at the center of how businesses win. “The channel is one of the most important things because our partners are the ones that have the deepest industry expertise and are cl...

For years, partnerships with global systems integrators were often viewed through a narrow lens - implementation, services, and support. Rajiv Batra challenges that assumption directly. “A lot of times when we work with GSIs… there is a notion that it’s more focused on process consulting… I will say that’s not fully true.” Instead, GSIs are increasingly central to building differentiated, industry...

At AWS Global Partner Summit last week, a clear theme emerged: the next evolution of partnerships isn’t just better programs or more incentives. It’s intelligence embedded directly into partner teams’ workflows . In this episode of Inside Partnering , I spoke with Abhisheikh Lahoti , Director, AWS Marketplace and Partner Services and Jessica Rudy , Partner Experience Leader at AWS. Jessica and Lah...

Partnerships have always been important in enterprise technology. But according to Shobana Shankar , Head of ISV Sales for Data Analytics at Google Cloud, they are no longer optional. Partnerships are foundational to how modern cloud platforms deliver value to customers. In this episode of Inside Partnering , Shankar shares how Google Cloud approaches ISV partnerships - from joint business plannin...

One of the clearest themes from this conversation with Erica Hakonson is that partner strategy has to reflect where a company actually is in its lifecycle. Too many organizations copy a partner model that worked for someone else, without asking whether it fits their own stage, resources, or goals. Erica has lived this from multiple angles - advising partners inside the Microsoft ecosystem, running...

Partner-led growth often looks simple from the outside. List on marketplace. Enable co-sell. Build a better together story. But in practice, many ISVs stall long before they see predictable results. In this episode of Inside Partnering , Jen Dawson , Founder and CEO of SaaSNova, explains why. After years working inside AWS and supporting nearly a hundred ISVs, she has seen the same pattern repeat...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit insidepartnering.substack.com From the earliest days of DataMasque, Grant de Leeuw made a deliberate choice - this would not be a lightweight SaaS tool chasing fast adoption. The company was built to serve large, regulated enterprises where data privacy, security, and usability collide. Grant framed the problem clearly. Enterprises need...

Granite Telecommunications is a nearly $2B business serving multi-location enterprises and government customers across the U.S. and Canada. But if you listen closely to Charlie Pagliazzo , Vice President of Channels, the story of Granite’s growth does not start with revenue. It starts with partners. Charlie has been at Granite for more than two decades, including building the channel organization...

At AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, I had the chance to catch up with Masooma Naqvi , Vice President of Digital Services at HP , to talk about one of the most pressing challenges facing enterprises today - managing increasingly complex IT environments while still delivering exceptional employee experiences. The shift from office-first to remote, hybrid, and now partial return-to-office has permanently...

AWS re:Invent has increasingly become a signal for where enterprise technology is actually headed, not just what’s being promised. In this conversation from the show floor in Las Vegas, Pankaj Kumar , Global VP of Strategic Alliances and Head of the AWS Business Group at Kyndryl, shared a grounded perspective on what it really takes to move agentic AI from pilot projects into real production envir...

Leading Through Supply Chain Transformation Kelley Lear stepped into her role as CVP and GM, Global Alliances for Blue Yonder just four months ago, and she arrived at Microsoft Ignite with major momentum behind her team’s work. Fresh off winning Microsoft’s Global ISV Partner of the Year award, Blue Yonder is doubling down on AI innovation, ecosystem collaboration, and a platform vision designed t...

Introduction: A Moment of Acceleration The pace of change has become the defining characteristic of the AI era. As Marc Monday puts it, quoting Bill McDermott, “The pace of change has never been this fast and it’ll never be this slow again.” And inside ServiceNow’s rapidly expanding partner ecosystem, that accelerating change is creating unprecedented opportunity for partners. In this episode, I s...

Few leaders in the industry understand ecosystem transformation like Gretchen O’Hara , the longtime Microsoft executive, former Splunk channel leader, and now Executive Vice President of Strategic Partnerships & Business Development at Sage . In this episode, Gretchen shares her early impressions of Sage, why she joined, and how she sees AI reshaping partner opportunity across the world. This conv...

Scaling a Modern Partnership Function at Epsilon At AWS re:Invent, I had the opportunity to chat with Chandos Quill , Senior Vice President of Channels and Alliances at Epsilon, for a rich discussion about building a partnership discipline inside a global data and marketing technology organization. Chandos brings deep experience across data, ad tech, and marketing platforms - and her work at Epsil...

Jessica Alexander spent nearly nine years at CrowdStrike, architecting one of the most successful AWS partnerships in the software ecosystem - a relationship that has driven more than $2B in marketplace transactions. Jessica is now Founder and CEO of Skematic, where she’s encapsulating those learnings into an AI-powered platform designed to help ISVs navigate AWS programs, messaging, alignment, an...

At AWS re:Invent, I had the opportunity to sit down with Rick McConnell, CEO of Dynatrace, for a conversation that touched on observability, AI, partner ecosystems, and what it takes to build software that “just works” at global scale. Rick has led multiple high growth businesses throughout his career, and Dynatrace is no exception. But what stood out most in our discussion was the clarity of his...

At AWS re:Invent this week, AppDirect and Tackle.io made a major announcement in the “partner tech” world: AppDirect is acquiring Tackle to extend AppDirect’s $1billion marketplace business into cloud marketplaces. I had a chance to catch up with John Jahnke, CEO of Tackle , and Emanuel “Bert” Bertolin, CRO of AppDirect to dive into some details about the acquisition and how they see it impacting...

In this episode of Inside Partnering, I sat down with Sanjay Bhakta , Chief Product and Technology Officer at Condé Nast, live from AWS re:Invent. Sanjay leads all product, engineering, data, and enterprise technology across one of the world’s most iconic media companies. His team builds and operates the platforms behind brands like Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired, and more. Inside P...

Few leaders sit at the intersection of product, engineering, and hyperscaler partnership the way Deepak Arora does. As Global CTO for AWS Solutions and Head of Engineering for the MENA region at Publicis Sapient , Deepak brings a perspective that blends co-building with AWS, co-selling with field teams, and delivering AI-powered outcomes to customers on the ground. This conversation took place liv...

AWS re:Invent is always buzzing with energy, but this year’s conversations feel different. AI is no longer a concept - it is a driver reshaping the way partners build, modernize, migrate, and deliver solutions for customers on AWS. Few people sit closer to this transformation than Rohan Karmarkar , Managing Director for Partner Solutions Architecture at AWS. In this episode, Rohan breaks down how...

Tuesday morning’s live session from Las Vegas was packed with energy - and major updates from AWS that will shape the year ahead for partner leaders. Inside Partnering is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Asher Mathew and I walked through some key announcements, the implications for ISVs and GSIs, and the importan...

At AWS re:Invent, the energy is palpable - more than 65,000 attendees, sprawling venues and nonstop announcements. In the middle of that amazing energy, I had a fantastic conversation with Mona Chadha, a 13-year AWS veteran and Director of Worldwide Infrastructure ISV Partners. Mona’s perspective sits at the intersection of Marketplace, ISVs, AI innovation and co-sell execution. This conversation...

The Marketplace Moment at re:Invent On opening day of AWS re:Invent 2025, AWS Marketplace is rolling out one of its most significant waves of innovation in years. I sat down with Matt Yanchyshyn , VP of AWS Marketplace & Partner Services, to dig into the new capabilities that simplify discovery, pricing, and deployment - all centered around accelerating time-to-value. As Matt noted, his team has b...