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106 - Rick Buijserd - The Power of the Marketplace · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Partnerships Unravel, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: My name's Alex Whitford and I'm the VP of Revenue here at Channex, and I'm very excited to welcome our special guest this week.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Rick, how are you doing?
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Hey, alex, I'm doing good.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Thank you for having me today.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really exciting to have you on.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: And for the uninitiated, who are you, where have you been and why should our listeners be listening to you?
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, of course.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: So I'm Rick, based out of the Amsterdam office of AWS, so I work at AWS as a Marketplace Development Manager, which basically means that I help our Strategic technology partners, or ISVs, building the marketplace and COSO motions into their day-to-day business right and taking full advantage of everything that AWS has to offer there.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, absolute pleasure to be here and share that story today, alex.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Well for our listeners.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Maybe this is a bit inside baseball, but we always have a prep call around what we're going to talk about on the podcast and I actually commented that I think you have one of the most interesting jobs that are going in sort of channeling business today, because I think you are managing a very complicated route to market, a very powerful route to market and everything in between.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Maybe to share some of that context, explain why it's so important for ISPs to build a sort of marketplace in their go-to-market strategy.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's, of course it's still very new, right, and that's also the beautiful thing of it.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: So I remember back in the day, right, I used to be a seller before I joined AWS, so I used to sell cloud software, which was super interesting to see all the moving parts and companies trying to digest the move to cloud and how we're going to do that.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: And after doing that for several years, for me it's like OK, what could be the next step?
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: And then I came across the marketplace like wow, you know the marketplace, as a consumer, I absolutely love to buy online.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: What if you can buy software online, right, and that was basically where the two worlds clicked, like, okay, so sales and marketplace, if you can do that together, that should represent a huge opportunity for a lot of the vendors.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: And that was basically where it started for me.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: But the marketplace started basically 40 years ago, right?
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: So where we started with, like, giving builders, like the e-commerce experience to get products from a marketplace and implement that into their you know, machine images and start using third-party software.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: And over the years it has evolved a lot, right, so we see that more and more customers are coming towards the marketplace.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: It's like a new era of digital native buyers that are taking on these key decision-making positions in procurement and they prefer e-commerce just like we do as consumers.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: So that's where the two worlds are coming together and we only see this grow.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: And, of course, over the years, we also had a lot of studies being done on okay, what is the impact of a marketplace and forrester did one.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: And then you see that you know, when software vendors are actually adopting the marketplace and putting it as part of their gtm, they see higher win rates, you know.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: They see faster sale cycles and they see increases deal size.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of value for for our technology partners to be become part of the marketplace, because it's like where the world's come together of buyers and sellers right, and that's what we're looking for I, I love that, right, because what you're talking about is the symptoms of improved velocity, improved deal size, improved conversion.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: But the reason those symptoms are happening is it's better for the customer, right, it's better for the end user.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: And, and your simple analogy of hey, I enjoy buying things online, the reason you do is because it's a really great experience, especially when done well, it just beats going to the shops.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Nine times out of ten.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: There are edge cases, right, um, but why would you go through all of that pain?
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And what we're, what we're seeing a marketplace try and solve for, is how do we get the best of both worlds, how do we get the best online experience while blending the consultative elements of dealing with either partners or sellers, and how do you fuse those worlds together?
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: absolutely.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Now, I think that that's spot on alec right, and it's, in the end, it's always about the customer, right, because you know that's where where our sellers go.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: If the customer is there, then the sellers will go, and it's the flywheel that we also see on the consumer side right, it's more sellers, more buyers, and it's the Amazon flywheel that we see come back.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Also, on the software side, of course software is different, right?
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Don't get me wrong.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: It can be very complex and it's logical that it's complex because it impacts how customers are operating or where they want to go in the future.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: So you can't compare it one on one.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: But yes, you know, you see the elements of influence coming towards the B2B world.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I certainly think.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, amazon is one hell of a business, right, and I just love as a sort of business nerd, and one of the reasons I love doing the podcast is I get to somehow get paid to speak to interesting people, which is a bit of a joke, but I just love the philosophy of Amazon, you know, the online web shop being a customer centric business.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Right, they are so customer focused.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: That's the ethos of everything they do and that philosophy has translated into the AWS business ethos of everything they do and that philosophy has translated into the AWS business and, unsurprisingly, both are wildly successful.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Because I think if you put the core tenant of how do we create the best customer experience, that just wins, because the market will eventually dictate that we must go there.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, and it's primarily also the way we operate at Amazon, right?
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: So 90% of what we do comes back from customer feedback.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Right, everything that we build is 90% is customer feedback and the other 10% is what we think.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Hey, we should look around corners.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: What could be next?
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Right, what could be the elements that they want, but they don't know what they want currently.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: So that's also the philosophy that drives Amazon, but it's also the philosophy that drives AWS and, of course, as part of it is also the AWS marketplace.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: So, rick, you mentioned that you were previously a salesperson, right, and you're selling software.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I'm interested from that characteristic you as a salesperson, how can you build marketplace into your go-to-market motion?
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Well, if you look at building a marketplace into your go-to-market motion.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Well, if you look at building a marketplace into your go-to-market, it's not a single thing.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: It's a lot of components that need to come together in building that foundation.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: First, in order to have a company accelerate on the marketplace.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: And over the years, we've learned a lot by working closely with the technology vendors that have been adopting the AWS marketplace from early on.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: You can think of the security vendors like a trend, crowdstrike and all the other ones that have been part of our ecosystem for quite a while.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: But basically, if we drill it down, we currently see like six critical characteristics of successful sellers and that's also how we call them.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: And it has to do with product selection, right.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: So you have to have the right products on the marketplace.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Otherwise, if you list product C from deep down in your catalog on the marketplace and you expect to have it drive enormous amounts of revenue, well, I can see there is a misconnection there.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: So listing the A products is absolutely mandatory, right?
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: See it as an addition to what you're doing right now and an enhancement of your current process.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: The second part is like you have to have commitment to it, right.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: If there is no commitment to it, it becomes very hard to actually drive it forward.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: And by commitment I mean leadership needs to buy in right, all the way up to CRO CEOs to say, hey, marketplace is a key priority for us.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: This is the way we want to drive it forward because we believe in that value.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: We see these accelerated deal cycles and these deals becoming bigger because we collaborate.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: The third one is really about sales alignment.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Sellers need to understand what it means and how does it work and how does it interfere or connect to the current process and how can you drive it and leverage it in your advantage.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: And and then you know, if you look at the fourth one, it's enablement right.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Um, train them because it's new right.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: And as a seller myself, it's like okay, I'd always try to remove as much noise from my sales cycles as possible.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: You might, you, you know, recognize all of that.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: It's like if I get more people involved, I can have less control.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: It's going to be harder, but in this matter, you know, we need to train the sellers of our technology partners, but also from our resellers and general partners.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Like you know, it's okay, right, we are here to collaborate.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: We are here to help you sell.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Right, because that's where we have our vested interest.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: And maybe a straightforward one.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: But being part of partner programs right, it's basic hygiene.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: But the more you invest in partner programs, for example with AWS, the deeper you get into our organization, the better we can build those better together stories and drive that value to end customer.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: And then, last but not least and this is always, you know I see people smile when I mention this is don't forget about operational excellence.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: Now, you can build a story around it.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: You can, you know, drive enormous better together stories.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: But you know, if you don't know how to execute it all the way from finance to operations, to deal desk especially deal desk you know it won't work.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: So you need to have, like, all these six elements in place and build upon that.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: That will be a foundation for success in the future.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: And to add to that, as final part right, and it's not a characteristic, but it's an absolute learning that I've seen myself.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Right, remove abstract, Remove as much abstract as possible from what partnerships actually mean.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: Right, because you can decide things on C-level, but the people down in the field actually need to know what it means.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Right, now we are partnering with AWS.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Great, it looks really good in the press, but what is it that it actually does for them?
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: How do they get value out of it?
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: So remove abstract from global to geo all the way down to country level, saying, hey, this is what it will do for you.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: I was on with a mentor of mine and he is C-level within a very, very, very large channel organization and he was talking to me about executive ideas right, hey, we're going to go on the strategic direction.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: And he went, alex.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: I won't use the exact word he used because we don't swear on this podcast, but he went, alex.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: We can sift between the strategies which are told to the market and the strategies which are actually being executed, because can you see it in someone's comp plan, like in the ground, feet on the street, does someone know that it's an accelerator or it's part of their KPIs or they are getting paid on it?
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Do they conceptually understand what they need to do on a day, week or quarterly basis to actually push that strategy forward?
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: And he said if it's not in there, it's not real Right.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: And, like you say, you've got to get it out of the abstract because it can be.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: You know, tim Cook, for Apple, can tell a great story, but unless the feet on the street actually know what they're doing, it's not real right.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: It's just a, it's just a conversation.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: So I love that around really diluting it, because that's what drives success and operational excellence and everything else it's the people doing the work.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: And I think compensation is always a key element, right?
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Especially if you talk to sales.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: You know we always mention it and always look at ISV.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: So how do you set up your compensation plan right?
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Does marketplace fit into it?
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: And if it doesn't, how can we make it fit into it?
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: Because you know it's a different way of doing things, but it needs to be part of the standard and normal behavior that we see with sellers, right?
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: So our listeners now are fully bought in the marketplace.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: It's the absolute way to go.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Now, one of the challenges around the marketplace is I imagine it's really really complicated.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: One of the challenges around the marketplace is I imagine it's really really complicated.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Right, we're dealing with ISVs, horizontal partnerships, vertical partnerships, channel partners, end users, consultants, distributors, everything in between.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: It could end up like the Wild West.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: It could end up being an absolute mess and turning everyone off.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: What are the real challenges about building that matrix of complexity?
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: So, yes, on one hand it can be super complex and it can be perceived as very complex, but in the end, you know, we are all there with one focus, right, and there's only one thing that's really, really important, and that's solving the customer's use case.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: It all comes back to that.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: So how can we indeed help each other to solve that use case right?
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: A marketplace is a vehicle that helps facilitate, right?
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: It's a way that customers can buy easily, you know and have you know an AWS, facilitate that transaction, doing the invoicing and making sure that the funds are collected and paid.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: But in the end, it's all about collaborating and learning from the customer.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: What is is the use case that you're trying to solve and what are the right solutions to solve that use case Giving options, giving selection and this is where we need these technology partners with their value.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: This is where we need those channel partners with the insights and understanding of how customers are actually operating.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: These nuances and everybody collaborating.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: That's where it becomes really interesting and we can drive that value for customers forward together.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: And I think that's the key word doing it together, because we all know resources are scarce.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: It's helping customers making the right decision, and that's what I firmly believe, and I think that's where this whole network, or this community of partners, will accelerate and grow over time.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Rick, whenever I speak to people from AWS, they are the most customer-focused individuals and sometimes, in the channel especially, it can be quite hard to be focused on the end customer focused individuals and sometimes, in the channel especially, it can be quite hard to be focused on the end customer because you spend your life actually talking to partners right, you spend very little of your time, or you might be speaking to ISVs.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: How does AWS foster a culture that's so obsessed about driving excellence towards the customer?
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: Well, it's part of our DNA, right?
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: So that's also the beautiful thing.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: You won't find anybody else within AWS.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: You will find everybody within AWS has this same part of the DNA that we are relentlessly focused on.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: How can we make the customer help right and help them succeed in the outcomes that they are seeking for?
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: And the beautiful thing is that you know there's this amazing quote from Jeff on this topic.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Like you know, there are so many advantages on having a customer-centric approach.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: The biggest one is that you know, customers are always beautifully, wonderfully, happily, dissatisfied, even when they report being happy.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: So customers always want something better and that's where the innovation can come from.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: How can we do better and better and better again?
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: And then internal processes is something second to it.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: It's not the important part.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: It's like, okay, how can we digest that use case and how can we solve it?
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: And then we need to find the right partners to do that right and build that mix and facilitate the way the customer really wants to do that business or build that new innovation that they can roll out to their customers.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I think that's one of the things that really makes me super passionate about working at aws, because, yes, you won't see that anywhere else, right?
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: It's not that you're focusing on internal processes.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: We call that day two and we don't want to be in day two, there's an awesome amount of humility and being part of one of the most successful or jeff bezos himself, right, one of the most successful people of all time and being like but you know, what's great about the customer is they hold us accountable for improvement, which is a.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: It's just an awesome philosophy.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Um, I think one of the values of a marketplace is that you know a customer can demand complementary solutions or wants complementary solutions.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Right, we are getting away from.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: You know, best of sweets, the.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: The way I was likened to.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: It is why the power of the iPhone is so good is because there's an app store and then there's lots of individual creators who make their app and they live and breathe that particular thing.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: And the customer, the user, gets the best experience because they get to buy from specialists.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: This is what you're building within the AWS marketplace.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Now, one of the functions of that is you need to be able to recommend complementary brands, complementary solutions.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: How does AWS help in those situations?
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, and that's, of course, where selection comes in right.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: So, first and foremost, you see, of course, natural alliances all across the world and for AWS it's important to have the broadest selection of potential solutions in the catalog that customers can make the right decision.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: And these naturalizes you've seen them like the CrowdStrike, Okta, Zscaler type of when we talk about security or when we look at the business applications, For example, Salesforce, Work, Gen, Genesis, those type of combinations.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: You see them within customers.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: But the most important part is it's again back to the use case what are we trying to solve and how are we going to do that?
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: And then it's not so much about us recommending that solution Absolutely not right, Because you need to understand first before you can recommend.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: And this is also where our channel partners and SIs this is my greatest have significant value.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: They are usually the key in solving the use case because they understand what the customer is looking for right and what they want for the future.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: What are they?
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: They trying to achieve because they're so close and they're a trusted advisor right, and in the end, that's all about, you know, giving out the right data points to the customer to make that informed decision right.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: We don't want to make the decision for them.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: You know they're very smart buyers, right buyers nowadays are super well informed and in combination with um you know, the expertise of specific system integrators, of channel partners, now they can make those different informed decisions really well based on the right data because I firmly believe that the channel is is really going to change, right?
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I think what we've seen over the last 15 years is that really big channel partners have won because they have the operational excellence, to use your terminology right.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: They've really built out their business and so they're very, very advanced in comparison to most partners in the world.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: However, I think that experience is going to change because aws and and businesses like yourselves are supplementing that operational excellence and they're allowing the trusted advisors to focus best on what they're best at, which is being trusted advisors, whether that's from a consultancy perspective or an engineering perspective, a post-sales deployment customization perspective they're focused on what they do best, which is to support the customer.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Where they've been unable to compete is we.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: We don't have 1,000 salespeople or 200 marketing people or 1,000 operational people that can transact billions of dollars in revenue, so we can't compete, and so, in some ways, end users are forced to buy from different parties because they need some of those supplementary services and where AWS, I think, is providing huge value to the marketplace, is actually leveling the playing field somewhat and allowing engineers to be consultants and really maximize that value, because some customers need that maximum customization and some don't right, and so that's where that flexibility becomes very, very important.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's automation, right, that's what we are looking for.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: It's like how can we make it faster and better due to automating the process?
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: And you know, one of my colleagues used to say, you know, it's a game of, if you look closely at the marketplace, sometimes it's just a game of portals.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: It's like, okay, what do you mean, right?
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Well, if you look closely, right, the technology vendor has a portal, the channel partner has a portal, the customer has a portal and they communicate over that.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Right, it's like, you know, creating an authorization, creating a private offer, a customer gets the agreement and accepts and that's done.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: Right, it's done within minutes.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: So it's all about automating those tasks.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: The core value sits.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: You know, how can we indeed help that, solve that use case?
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: Right, and be, you know, add value to that sales cycle and add value into now.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: What are we trying to solve here?
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Right, and and I think that's the beautiful part of of the marketplace as well right, that we remove that and focus on what really matters yeah, and and what I?
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: um, what I really like is you're removing the piece.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: That is important, but not where the value lies for the customer.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: The customer wants to understand why CrowdStrike, okta and Zscaler are such a great solution and does that fit in my unique case and what customization needs to happen to really make that solution sing in our premise needs to happen to really make that solution sing in our premise and what they care.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: What is important is, yes, we need to be able to transact that really quickly and we've got to make sure the cost is low and all the other pieces.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: But you know who doesn't particularly care about the engineer designing the solution and ensuring that the customization is there, and so you marry those two worlds together and we get people doing what I'm sure they love and enjoy doing the most, providing value while having the simplicity of operational excellence Absolutely Perfect.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: And then you spent a couple of years leading the AWS marketplace for Benelux and Central Eastern Europe.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Let me get that right, and what I'd love to get from your experience doing that is why has AWS been so invested in building that marketplace?
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: What are the specific benefits that you've seen?
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear some customer stories or some channel partner stories that you really saw.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, this made a difference.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, and that's good fun, right, because when I started, I remember the days when I actually needed to handhold customers, right, and it's like, yes, it's okay to click this button.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Right, the world won't go down, you know, nothing will happen.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: It's a transaction, it's a new way of doing it.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: So it was really, really interesting to see that evolution going this fast, especially if you look at where we are today.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Right, the core part is that you know, if you look at the average customer landscape, they have hundreds of different applications and this will bring a lot of value because these applications are all specific use cases and problems.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: But it can also bring complexity, so many different solutions in your environment.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: So with the marketplace, we really focus on providing the broad selection from trusted vendors.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: To get on the marketplace, you need to do stuff, so it's not that easy.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: There are some hoops you need to jump through, which basically means like okay, now we can mark that as a trusted vendor.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: And the second part it's about fast procurement with flexible pricing and terms, being able to buy the.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: About fast procurement with flexible pricing and terms, being able to buy the right solution with the right pricing and terms for the right use case, right, you don't want to buy, like a three-year license when you have, like, a project for a few months.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Right, you want to have pay as you go.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: But if you do want to get into a long-term agreement, you also want to be facilitated.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: So that's where the marketplace also drives the ability to pick and choose the right component.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: You know easy and fast, secure deployment.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: So where does it go?
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: What type of solution is it?
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: Is it SaaS?
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, we see a lot of SaaS, but there are also still a lot of solutions when it comes to containerizing or machine images or Gen AI.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: Right, there are so many different solutions that are out there in the market which we try to provide through the marketplace and different deployment options.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: And, last but not least, right, if you have all of these solutions, it's also about you know how can we reduce the risk.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: Governance, because there is so much shadow IT with a lot of our customers, because people are able to buy things right, either with their own credit card or through different methods, but what a lot of our companies are really looking at.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, how can we put that governance in place and make sure that our teams are buying the right solutions, that they are fed it and that it all goes through a central way for us as a customer to get the optimal benefits of buying.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: So those are really the four key pillars, right, and if you tie that back to research that we also had done by Forrester on the customer side, then you see streamlined procurement.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: How can we do that?
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: How can we make that faster?
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Vendor onboarding AWS Marketplace operates the invoicing.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: So how can we indeed produce that vendor onboarding workload?
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: The flexibility in licensing If you look at large amounts of different types of licensing, it can reduce the cost up to 10%.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: This is a significant amount.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: And, last but not least, right, it's also about um, the, the committed spends that our customers have with aws.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: So a lot of our customers who have been entered into agreements with aws are having cloud commitments, right, cloud budgets available to spend on the aws native service, but they can also leverage it to procure solutions to the marketplace.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: So that's where the cloud budget really comes back into.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: Hey, you know we can leverage that to procure third party solutions to the AWS marketplace and that's a very interesting lever for our customers to say you know, it's easier to find budget because we already have it and allocate that to solutions that will help them drive forward.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: So those are just a few of the components that I've seen over the years really driving that, that adoption, um, and if you, if you know, take that on top of what we see in changing buying behavior, then you like, you have like the perfect mix there going forward it must have been one hell of a journey to go from hey coaching partners.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Clicking this button is okay.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Now to see the relative maturity.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: I know AWS has huge plans for where the marketplace will ultimately end up with the relative maturity that you've seen happen over the last couple of years.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we still like to click the buttons together with the customer right it's, you know we are there to help you with the customer right it's, you know we are there to help you.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: We don't feel ourselves too big to do that, because we know that everybody's in a different phase of their journey and understanding and grabbing the full value of what a marketplace means to them.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Right, and how do you incorporate that into your procurement, your way of buying?
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Currently, there's a lot of new elements to it, and that's why we have our teams and we have our people to make sure you know that customers fully understand what's going on to make the right decision.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Is this something that they want to leverage or not?
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: awesome right.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Well, the name of the the podcast is partnerships unraveled, and we wouldn't be a partnerships podcast without asking for a referral.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: We like to ask our guests who they think we should bring on next.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: R Rick, I know you've got someone in mind.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Who should we have on?
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Now please invite Phil Soam right.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: He's my colleague and peer in the marketplace team in EMEA and he has some really great insights on how to connect the world of sales, especially MEDIC, to co-seller marketplace.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: You should definitely ask that question too.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Perfect, Phil.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: We're coming for you, Rick.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: It's been an absolute pleasure.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on and to our listeners, we'll see you next week.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: Thanks, alex.