Podcasts about channel partners

RabbitRun and Crexendo Expand Recurring Revenue Opportunities for Channel Partners, Podcast , RabbitRun offers an integrated platform that brings together Always-On Internet, enterprise-class SD-WAN, cybersecurity, voice survivability, POTS replacement and business continuity. The goal is to help businesses remain connected and operational when internet connections, networks or other critical infrastructure fail @ Doug Green “There's a tremendous opportunity for partners to deliver more value, improve customer retention and create new recurring revenue streams.” RabbitRun has joined the Crexendo Ecosystem Vendor Partner Program, giving Crexendo, NetSapiens and channel partners new ways to deliver resilient connectivity, business continuity and managed network services to their customers. In this Technology Reseller News podcast, RabbitRun Founder and CTO Pat Saavedra discusses the partnership and the opportunity it creates for MSPs, service providers and telecom resellers. RabbitRun offers an integrated platform that brings together Always-On Internet, enterprise-class SD-WAN, cybersecurity, voice survivability, POTS replacement and business continuity. The goal is to help businesses remain connected and operational when internet connections, networks or other critical infrastructure fail. For channel partners, Saavedra says the opportunity extends well beyond simply selling another connectivity product. Partners can use RabbitRun to address real customer concerns surrounding uptime, security and operational resilience while creating new sources of recurring managed-services revenue. As more business applications move to the cloud, internet connectivity has become essential infrastructure. A failed connection can interrupt voice services, payment processing, customer support, remote access and other core operations. RabbitRun is designed to identify network problems and move traffic to an available connection, helping businesses continue operating with minimal disruption. The platform also gives partners greater visibility into customer networks, allowing them to identify performance issues, manage connectivity and provide ongoing support. That creates a more proactive relationship in which the partner is helping protect the customer's business rather than simply responding after something goes wrong. The conversation also explores the growing importance of voice survivability. Businesses may have backup internet connections but still discover that their voice systems fail during an outage. RabbitRun helps partners address that gap by protecting both data and voice communications as part of a broader continuity strategy. POTS replacement represents another opportunity. As traditional analog lines become more expensive and difficult to maintain, businesses need alternatives for services such as alarms, elevators, fax machines and emergency communications. RabbitRun enables partners to incorporate those requirements into a modern managed connectivity offering. By joining the Crexendo Ecosystem Vendor Partner Program, RabbitRun becomes more accessible to a large community of service providers already delivering communications through Crexendo and the NetSapiens platform. Saavedra says this gives partners an opportunity to expand the value of their existing customer relationships. Rather than competing only on voice seats or connectivity pricing, they can provide a broader solution built around reliability, security and business continuity. For MSPs and communications providers, the message is straightforward: protecting the customer's ability to remain connected can become both an essential service and a meaningful recurring revenue opportunity. Learn more about RabbitRun and its participation in the Crexendo Ecosystem Vendor Partner Program.

Unlocking billions in cloud marketplace revenue. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ This powerful panel discussion featuring leaders from Google, Tackle, and dbt Labs dives deep into the explosive growth of cloud marketplaces and the radical shift toward AI-driven go-to-market strategies. With hyperscaler backlogs nearing half a trillion dollars, the conversation unpacks how top-tier organizations are transforming their compensation models, aligning executive buy-in, and navigating the complexities of co-selling to capture committed customer budgets. From the rise of AI agents acting as metered SaaS to the essential operational investments required to scale marketplace revenue from 10% to over 50%, this session provides an actionable roadmap for software companies ready to dominate the 2026 partner ecosystem. https://youtu.be/LSj49f5FEII Key Takeaways Hyperscaler backlog commitments represent a massive, nearly half-trillion-dollar addressable market that completely changes the budgeting conversation. Successful marketplace selling requires complete executive alignment, right down to the CFO, and strategic adjustments like spiffing sales teams for marketplace transactions. The AI category is experiencing staggering 18x year-over-year growth, forcing companies to pivot toward an “agent-first” go-to-market model. Shifting from traditional channels to cloud go-to-market demands a multi-year, intentional investment in operations, people, and technology. System integrators are evolving into software companies as they build orchestration agents to manage fragmented, end-to-end workflows. Leveraging cloud commitments bypasses standard 12-15 month budget cycles, allowing for significantly faster deal closures and larger initial lands. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Google Cloud Marketplace, hyperscaler backlog, cloud commitments, co-selling strategies, AI agents, metered SaaS, product-led growth, rev ops, B2B sales transformation, ecosystem shift, channel strategy, system integrators, Deal registration, private offer APIs, digital transformation, software procurement. Transcript: Insight to Revenue- The State of Cloud GTM [00:00:00] Dai Vu: These are all things everyone has to do to get to that first five to 10 deals, and then 10, 20, 30% of your business through Marketplace. [00:00:09] Vince Menzione: You can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way Hyperscalers are partnering, how AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:21] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and each week I sit down with leaders at the intersection of technology. Partnerships and outcomes. The voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. [00:00:43] Vince Menzione: It is the strategy because being in the room changes [00:00:46] John Janke: everything. Let’s start. [00:00:52] Vince Menzione: And we have an incredible session. The way that we wanted today to, to, to start the day up was like, let’s talk about what’s happening right now and let’s get three leaders in this space to come up and talk about the world and how it’s a rapidly evolving. So I want to invite to the stage dvu from Google is a great friend of Ultimate Partner. [00:01:14] Vince Menzione: Are you guys ready? Are you guys micd up already? Okay, good. Good. John Yanke, the CEO and Founder of Tackle, and Sean Todo, who is an incredible leader with DBT, but also an old friend of mine. We worked together on Microsoft Days. Good to see you gentlemen. Thanks Sean. Great to have you with us. [00:01:37] John Janke: They stuck me on the side ’cause they said I’d block the screen if I sat in the middle. [00:01:41] Shawn Toldo: You still block it a little bit. [00:01:42] John Janke: And that picture’s from like 1985. I, I, we do have to get that. I had way darker hair. It was, uh, 10 year, 10 years at a startup. Makes you turn white. [00:01:52] Shawn Toldo: Mine’s the exact same right now. So it’s all good. [00:01:55] Shawn Toldo: Mine’s AI generated. Yeah. [00:01:57] Vince Menzione: Well, you know, guys, I just took it all off at that point, you know, it’s like good. Yeah, but you lose enough of it. You pull it out over the years. Yeah. So, uh, some really exciting times. Uh, you, we gotta spend some time at you at our breakfast. That’s right. A couple weeks ago. [00:02:13] Dai Vu: A lot of folks here, too. [00:02:14] Vince Menzione: A lot of folks that are here were at that breakfast, and I thought we’d spend a few moments with you talking about all the exciting things that have been happening at, at Google. I mean the, yeah, the businesses just to, first of all, the numbers were house. Outstanding. Congratulations. [00:02:28] Dai Vu: That’s right. [00:02:28] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:02:28] Vince Menzione: Really, some really great numbers. Commitments are off the charts. [00:02:32] Dai Vu: Yes. [00:02:32] Vince Menzione: Crazy off the charts. [00:02:33] Dai Vu: Yes. [00:02:34] Vince Menzione: Yes. Uh, and then there’s a lot happening in this little world called ai, which makes a ton of sense. Yep. I was critical about Google in the beginning because you had all the assets, but Microsoft leaned in first. [00:02:45] Vince Menzione: Uh, but now it’s like things have evolved, uh, quite a bit since those first days. Absolutely. In, in November of 2022. So, uh, take us through a little bit. Let’s, let’s go through [00:02:56] Dai Vu: it. Yeah. I could talk for quite a bit of time because obviously we came out next, yeah. At the end of April, and then we had our earnings announced, but shortly thereafter. [00:03:03] Dai Vu: But, but real quick on next, uh, for folks who attended, uh, you know, the way they framed, uh, the discussion was they showed this AI integrated stack, and that’s how they frame the keynote because we position ourselves as being the only vendor that provides this. Fully integrated stack from custom silicon all the way to the apps and agents. [00:03:23] Dai Vu: And a lot of the announcements were, were focused in those areas. Um, uh, I won’t go through the, the long list, but I think the big ones coming out of next were, uh, certainly the eighth generation TPU we announced, so we actually split this into two specialized chips for training and inference. Uh, so that’s, uh, that was a big piece. [00:03:41] Dai Vu: Uh, but the big one that we announced was this, uh, Gemini Enterprise. Uh, agent platform. So think of it as the comprehensive platform for companies to basically build scale, govern and optimize their agents. And of course, once they have that, they can bring that into, uh, what we call a Gen Gemini enterprise app, which is really the front door for AI for. [00:04:03] Dai Vu: All customers and all employees to manage a mix of agents, um, as part of their daily workflow. And, uh, and a big part of it is, you know, certainly they’ll have some custom agents, but we think a lot of the agents will come from the ecosystem. And obviously there was a big announcement around what we’re doing there. [00:04:21] Dai Vu: Um, and in fact, one of the things that’s interesting is this shows the evolution of, of marketplace in our, in our partnership, which is we’ve taken a lot of the marketplace experience. And brought it into Gemini exp uh, Gemini Enterprise app, right? So search, discovery, uh, the ability to invoke agents, uh, in context. [00:04:39] Dai Vu: I think that’s gonna be very powerful as we think about the evolution, uh, of, of go to market. And then the last thing maybe I’ll highlight is this, um, is. 750 million, uh, investment fund that we’re gonna drive with the broad partnership. So this cuts across all partner types, global system integrators, uh, uh, you know, AI, pure plays, uh, ISVs, uh, the big management consultants as well, uh, because we recognize that partners are gonna be critical to drive business transformation with our end customers. [00:05:08] Dai Vu: So we’re investing around things like. Technical enablement, access to our product teams, access to our FDE for deployment engineers, and then a lot of incentives to drive usage and deployment. So, um, so a lot of, a lot of activity and obviously the ecosystem’s gonna be very critical for us to drive that impact’s. [00:05:25] Dai Vu: Fine. And the last thing, I know we’ve going on and on fine, but the last thing I’ll just mention is just on the earnings announcement, uh, Vince touched on the backlog, so people have been tracking Yeah. Two quarters ago. We were 155 billion on the backlog, and then a quarter later we were 240 billion. And then in the last quarter, just recently, 462 billion. [00:05:46] Dai Vu: So obviously that’s a, a massive signal of customer intent, but more importantly, it’s a, it’s, it’s a addressable market for this ecosystem to go after as well. [00:05:54] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Almost a half a trillion dollars. Yes. In commitment. So a lot, a lot of reason why we should be on the marketplace. [00:06:01] Dai Vu: Absolutely. Absolutely. [00:06:02] Vince Menzione: Um, each of these gentlemen have some things to talk about as well, about their companies and the exciting things that have been happening. [00:06:08] Vince Menzione: I’m gonna start, John, I’m gonna start with you because Tackle has, has transformed quite a bit since the last time you were on stage with us. I thought maybe introduce the company. Take us through the transformation and then we’re gonna do the same thing with Sean with his organization. [00:06:21] John Janke: Yeah. Thanks. Uh, thanks Vince. [00:06:23] John Janke: Great to see everybody. Uh, John Yanke, GM of Tackle at App Direct. So the big news there is Tackle was acquired in Q4 by a company called App Direct, and I think the why behind this app, direct Powers, marketplaces, they run 400 marketplaces around the world for telcos, for ISVs, for system integrators, channel partners. [00:06:42] John Janke: And we were talk like, when you build a marketplace and diagnose this, stocking the shelves is actually really hard. Uh, and we were talking to them about how could we connect the dots between the hyperscaler marketplaces, the iscs we support, and these additional routes to market. Uh, and that became more strategic and we ended up joining forces in December. [00:07:00] John Janke: And since then, the other part that’s really hard when you build a marketplace is how do you generate demand? Uh, so four weeks ago we acquired a company called Partner Stack. And Partner Stack does affiliate content. They have an affiliate content platform that allows you to connect with 150,000 content providers to be able to start to tell your story to drive leads to. [00:07:23] John Janke: Marketplace. So we think there is a tremendous opportunity to continue. We’re in the earliest days. I think the, you know, Jay, I was with Jay at Channel Partners a few weeks ago and he is like, we under called it, he didn’t say this on stage yesterday, but he is like, uh, the 82% growth. He’s like, we totally under called it. [00:07:40] John Janke: Uh, and I think just listening to dies commit level increase mm-hmm. Reinforces the fact that we’ve under called it. But I also think we’re at this tipping point in the market where all of the new capabilities coming out, we have to all rethink our better together stories. So I think the challenge to all partner leaders, it’s like, how do we. [00:07:58] John Janke: Figure that out. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a fun time. As we transform the way we worked. We wrote the first helping people kind of list, launch and sell through the marketplaces. And now to be able to take that to the next level to hopefully unlock the next a hundred billion of marketplace throughput. [00:08:13] Vince Menzione: And are we at a hundred billion? [00:08:15] Vince Menzione: ’cause that was the number, right? [00:08:16] John Janke: I mean that’s, that’s, that’s the number that’s talked about. I mean, we’re seeing the data signals we see, I mean, we will process 20 billion plus this year. Uh, and that number’s growing faster than Jay’s stated number. So I think we’re excited to see where this year lands. [00:08:30] Vince Menzione: We’ve come a long way from three years ago and we all got on stage and talked about marketplaces together. Right. It’s been, it’s been amazing. And then Sean, let’s talk about DBT. You’ve had some excitement. I know some things maybe we can’t even talk about yet on stage. [00:08:43] Shawn Toldo: Uh, yeah, go ahead. [00:08:44] Vince Menzione: No, I was saying I, I could, I’ll pre-announce things, but No, I’m just, uh, tell, tell us about DBT for those who don’t know in the room, sure. [00:08:49] Vince Menzione: Mean Yeah, that might help. [00:08:51] Shawn Toldo: So, uh, Sean Todo, I lead the partner business at DBT. I’ve been here about 18 months. Um, DBT really started as an open source tool. That help data engineers be successful in SQL transformation with cloud data warehouses? Right. And so back even to the Redshift days now into what I would call more the BigQuery, snowflake, Databricks fabric led days, um, DBT is the tool of choice amongst the data engineering community in terms of how they wanna drive SQL transformation. [00:09:21] Shawn Toldo: And so more recently, we kind of jumped into this kind of paid world. Which is why we needed to bring in additional experience leadership around go to market product, sales, et cetera. And so when I walked in the door, one of the things I noticed really quickly was we were running on AWS, which was great. [00:09:40] Shawn Toldo: We were doing some AWS marketplace stuff. We were running on Azure in Europe only. And one of my first strategies was we have to be everywhere, right customer. We have to meet customers where they are. And so we, uh, made some major investments to be on Google Cloud platform to then be able to really take advantage of marketplace, to then really be able to take advantage of the co-sell opportunities that exist in the field from a day, day-to-day AI perspective with Google. [00:10:07] Shawn Toldo: And it has been a hell of a ride. We launched on, uh, Google Marketplace in July of last year. We went to Google next and we were Google Partner of the Year. Wow. For data and analytics in a very rapid way. We’re now in three, uh, data centers around the, the world. So we’re here in the us, we’re in Frankfurt, we’re in uh, uh, UK as well. [00:10:30] Shawn Toldo: And so it’s been a pleasure to work with D and the broader team. Because the enablement we’ve had and the support we’ve had from that group has really helped our growth be up and to the right. The data point I would give is that when I walked in the door, we were 10% of our business from an A RR perspective was transacting through marketplace. [00:10:48] Shawn Toldo: Last quarter we cracked 40%. Whoa. We will be at north of 50, uh, next quarter. [00:10:53] Dai Vu: Wow. [00:10:54] Shawn Toldo: The other piece that Vince was talking about is we’re getting ready to merge with a company called Five Tran. And so there will be a new company name at some point down the road. Uh, pay attention on June 1st for a public announcement around that merger. [00:11:06] Shawn Toldo: Uh, but we’re really looking forward to what we’re gonna be able to do with folks like DI and the Google team as well as others in the ecosystem. Um, ’cause I think in this data world that we’ve played for so long. This trusted foundational element of data and what it’s gonna mean to context in the AI world. [00:11:23] Shawn Toldo: We’re in a very interesting place to really continue our growth rate at a high level. [00:11:28] John Janke: Yeah, that maybe just a comment something there. Start there. I think we, we used to hear people say we wanted to be strategic with cloud, go to market and get to say 10 or 20% of revenue. I think this like 40, 50%. Yeah. Th that’s where people are setting the bar these days. [00:11:43] John Janke: Yeah. So the numbers are getting really crazy. Yeah. Uh, and people are showing up and being like, I have to go big. Mm-hmm. So a huge change over the last few years. [00:11:52] Vince Menzione: Yep. What’s the experience you’re seeing as well? I mean, it, it was a huge amount of buzz at next. [00:11:57] Dai Vu: Yeah. I mean, so interestingly, um, you know, typically when, when people get started on the, on the marketplace in Cosal journey, I always try to caution them and say, this is, uh, this is like a multi-year. [00:12:07] Dai Vu: Yeah. Uh, process. You have to be very intentional. You have to invest. It’s not gonna be a thing where you just list and, and, and, and, and, and sort of this channel opens up. So in some ways, Sean is describing an acceleration that is not common, right? Uh, so they’ve done, we’ve done some amazing things together and we hope to keep that acceleration going. [00:12:22] Vince Menzione: What does that require, by the way? Is it engineering resource? I mean, there’s, I talk about executive commitment and maniacal focus. Yeah. But it’s all those things, right? [00:12:29] Shawn Toldo: Well, all of it. But we went to a QBR in Austin, and I put up a slide and I said, we have to do this. And everybody in our ETE agreed. So when you have a chief financial officer that’s bought into the partner business. [00:12:43] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. And I guess qualifying coming into this role at this company, I qualified the C-level staff. Uh, like are they really serious about partner or not? And it’s one of the reasons I took the role. So I think executive commitment was one thing. I think the second thing is we were really well supported, um, by the Google team across the board, right? [00:13:02] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. So folks, Indy’s team that we would work with regularly on, these are the things you need to do to have an effective marketplace offering. Here’s what you need to do operationally with folks like John and team and others that are in the market, right? That helped us a ton to be able to scale. And then the other thing that we did is we changed comp. [00:13:20] Shawn Toldo: So from our VP of sales levels down, we have a 5% kicker for everything that goes through marketplace. [00:13:26] Vince Menzione: Hear [00:13:26] Shawn Toldo: that everyone. So as soon as we incented the sales team, I love that, right? We, we created the foundation on the partner side, but then from top down on the sales side, they were all in. And as a result of that, the question would become, okay, which marketplace stage two sales cycle are we gonna go use? [00:13:42] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:13:43] Shawn Toldo: Who’s the right partner to go partner with? And then my team is reaching out to make sure that co-sell connection happens. [00:13:48] Vince Menzione: That is such a best practice, Sean, to, because there is, as a seller out in the field and we talk about, you talk to John, talks about rev ops all the time. But getting rev ops eng getting the field engaged in the right way. [00:14:01] Vince Menzione: ’cause it feels like it’s more work for them. ’cause they have to think, they have to have more conversations with their customer about their cloud commitments and things like that. Mm-hmm. And then getting them incentive to do the right things. The right behavior. [00:14:12] John Janke: Yeah. It’s a strategy process. People, technology problem. [00:14:17] John Janke: Yeah. It’s not just some flip API automation, go list something if you don’t like that top down view. I think the other thing. Like there’s a, there’s a theme in startups where VCs fund second time founders. I think Sean and team have done this before and they took a lot of learnings over the years and reapplied them, which I think helps them go faster. [00:14:36] John Janke: It’s like that second time. Yeah. Second time cloud go to market Founder theme. [00:14:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Yeah. Um, so we could talk about the platform and all the changes there on the. The, the commitments and everything. Mm-hmm. Uh, what separates ISPs generating real incremental revenue on your, in your marketplace? What, what do you see? [00:14:58] Dai Vu: Yeah, so I mean, I, I think there are a couple things. Number one is, uh, the, the foundation has to be, uh, this better together story, uh, with Google Cloud. Um, so this idea that what, you know, what do you bring, what does the Google platform bring and how does that drive impact with customers? And I think this is the reason why Sean and DBT Labs has been very effective. [00:15:16] Dai Vu: ’cause our field recognized they, they can recognize that better together story and communicate it to their customers. So I think that’s the foundation. For everything. Right. And I think as you get started, uh, you know, we do tell partners that they probably need to lean in a little bit, uh, in terms of focus, uh, you know, pick a vertical, a customer segment, um, you know, a geography where they’re particularly strong and, you know, get that momentum going. [00:15:39] Dai Vu: And once you do that, the field knows about it and starts to pull you into deals. Um, so I think that’s the other big opportunity. And then the other thing I just mentioned. Which, uh, the panel already touched on, which is be very intentional around all the things you need to do to invest. Whether it’s like, uh, you know, the business functional alignment, uh, the policies around like, uh, pricing and, and comp, uh, making sure you have the operational capabilities. [00:16:02] Dai Vu: These are all things everyone has to do to get to that. First five to 10 deals, and then 10, 20, 30% of your business through marketplace. And not to, not to top you Sean, but our very top partners are driving 80 to 90% of their business on marketplace. And in fact, some of these partners are actually only marketplace first, uh, uh, because they started out that way. [00:16:21] Dai Vu: Obviously it’s the bigger challenge if you have an existing channel, you’re trying to shift that. But, uh, the aspiration to be more marketplace focus, uh, is up there. [00:16:28] Shawn Toldo: So I just set a new goal for the business plan for me. So that’s exciting. I love it. Looking forward to seeing you in six months on that. [00:16:35] Shawn Toldo: It’s good. [00:16:36] Vince Menzione: I love [00:16:37] Dai Vu: it. Work together on that. [00:16:38] Vince Menzione: Well, di I’m just gonna add, add this because I, I got to see operationally with some of the things you do. Mm-hmm. You, you have an overlay organization. [00:16:45] Dai Vu: Yes. Yes. [00:16:46] Vince Menzione: And so you put accelerants in place within your own organization Yeah. To drive the ISVs into the, into the lines of business. [00:16:54] Vince Menzione: Right. You have, you, you do some of that to accelerate. [00:16:57] Dai Vu: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think this is somewhat unique. I don’t, I don’t wanna speak to the other [00:17:00] Shawn Toldo: hyperscalers, [00:17:01] Dai Vu: but we do have, um, uh, you gotta know the field roles, right? [00:17:04] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. So [00:17:04] Dai Vu: obviously at Google Cloud in the regions, we have, uh, ISV sales specialists who are effectively quoted on marketplace revenue, right? [00:17:12] Dai Vu: So they’re a hundred percent focused on that. And, uh, in addition to that, uh, we also have these, uh, co-sell teams, partner teams where, you know, opportunistically if there’s an opportunity, uh, in a, in a, in a particular area. This team is responsible for connecting the regional sales leadership, uh, the regional, uh, sales teams with, with the partner on the opportunity. [00:17:32] Dai Vu: So there’s a lot of things we’re doing to sort of accelerate that. And of course, the foundation for all this is, you know, our, our, you know, registering deals. And as you definitely get started on that, it’s very important to be very mindful around when you register deals. Uh, be very clear around what the ask and the engagement is with the field reps. [00:17:51] Dai Vu: But once you have that going and get the right rhythm, it becomes sort of a natural way to sort of register all your deals and get that engagement. And then, um, and then maybe the last thing I would say is it isn’t always the sales specialists. It’s, you know, the FSR, our field sales rep as well as our customer engineers are also very motivated. [00:18:08] Dai Vu: To work, uh, with, uh, with our partners because they know that this, you know, whether it be solution completeness or it’s part of a bigger workload or helps unlock greenfield opportunity, they really are motivated to engage with the partners. [00:18:21] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:18:22] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. I’ll just add, I’ll just add to that statement too. I think, um, it’s one thing to have a story as it relates to. [00:18:30] Shawn Toldo: Google Cloud and what you do with marketplace. It’s another thing to have a story in terms of how you impact data and analytics in our world. And there’s a set of specialist sellers inside of Google mm-hmm. That really care about us because we drive a lot faster consumption of big query. And our ability to tell that story across the world effectively has really created a pull now. [00:18:54] Shawn Toldo: And so I, I would say it’s almost, you know, back to, you know, being 12 years at Microsoft and watching kind of that. Phase and how that went. As we went to the cloud and we picked specialty areas, um, Google is doing that as well and they’re doing it extremely fast in a very, very productive way with partners. [00:19:12] Shawn Toldo: And so, you know, I’ll get comments from like Levi who runs west in north region for us, and he’s a, he was at Google next and he was like, I, I gotta, I, I just gotta go to bed. I’m tired. Like we wore him out over two days with their sales team and gave him a host of follow ups and actions related to specific sales areas as well as specific accounts. [00:19:34] Shawn Toldo: And I think that’s the other thing that, um, Google’s done a good job of, but we’ve pushed and we’ve had to work really hard to earn that seat at the table. To help make those people successful from a comp perspective inside of Google as well. [00:19:45] John Janke: Yeah, and this is a huge failure zone for partners with the clouds because they think enablement’s a one and done thing. [00:19:51] John Janke: Like I did a training for the field and I told them the better together story. That doesn’t work. Like you have to literally. Have consistency around this message every day. Oftentimes you need experts who can partner with your reps to give them the confidence. ’cause they may be able to ask the first line question, but someone asks a follow up and they fold up ’cause they know your product. [00:20:11] John Janke: That’s right. They don’s don’t understand all of the nuances of Google and the clouds and the questions that may come back. But if you do that well, it is a huge unlock. [00:20:20] Vince Menzione: Talk about the coaching you provided on the tackle side of that as well and kind of helping. Through this maturity model? [00:20:26] John Janke: Yeah. I mean we, we, over the years, I mean we started as a pure SaaS company and over the years our customers would consistently ask us for more help and we would struggle to figure out how to do that, and we had to invest in services and we actually acquired a company. [00:20:42] John Janke: Five years ago now, that was the foundation. Aaron Feiger, who’s in the room. The core consulting was the foundation of our services business. And that continues to evolve with us. And you know, we see customers at scale saying, I wanna operate my cloud, go-to market really consistently, and I want you to do all the backend operations so my teams can be outselling our products, selling the better together value with Google and others, and not have to figure out how to run the machinery. [00:21:09] John Janke: So we’ve invested a lot there. We have services around strategy, like how to help people think about their business strategy and translate it into a better together story and able to get executive buy-in. And then we have coaching, which is really a phone, a friend, because I think these things get complicated. [00:21:24] John Janke: And I had a customer who was doing the largest deal in their company history. It was the end of the quarter and it was Friday, and they’re like, this is going to be the most complex transaction we’ve ever done and we have no idea how to do it. Our team gets on the phone with them, they work through, what are you selling? [00:21:40] John Janke: How are you selling it? Is your listing set up the right way? Can we actually create all the offers? In a way you have confidence to execute. ’cause those are failure modes. You try to build a cloud, go to market business, and you mess up the largest deal in the company. On the last day of the quarter, uh, that’s something you can’t recover from. [00:21:55] John Janke: So we try to really wrap support around our customers to help them have the confidence to grow. [00:22:02] Vince Menzione: Di you’ve seen tremendous growth in marketplace. Mm-hmm. We don’t publish the numbers specifically. Yeah. We kind of try to figure it out on the back end, but [00:22:09] Dai Vu: Yep. [00:22:09] Vince Menzione: I know you’re accelerated. Your, your marketplace numbers are astounding. [00:22:13] Dai Vu: Yes. I can share some numbers, if that’s [00:22:15] Vince Menzione: okay. Please. Yeah, let’s go. [00:22:18] Dai Vu: So, um. I would say that for a few years now, we’ve been talking about growth. So we’ve been consistently, uh, you know, north of a hundred percent year over year growth. Uh, for the last few years we’ve been processing, uh, what I say, uh, billions of dollars, uh, annually and, uh, uh, millions of transactions. [00:22:36] Dai Vu: And again, that’s for a few years now. Now for 24 to 25, that full year we also doubled. Wow. Uh, which is, uh, which is amazing when you think about the scale in which we operate. But more importantly, if you look at specific category areas, right? So, you know, historically, marketplace has always cater to, uh, those solution pillars that are tied to cloud migrations, like, uh, like security and data and analytics. [00:22:59] Dai Vu: And those continue to be very strong areas for us. But the biggest growth area is, uh, is in the areas of business app. So obviously, you know, the, the ServiceNow workday, uh, Salesforce of the world, as well as the AI category. So one number that we threw out next was 18 x. Year over year growth for the AI category. [00:23:17] Dai Vu: Wow. So in one year now, a lot of it is models, right? So foundational models with our, with our ecosystem. But a lot of that is around agents. So this whole agent go to market model is gonna be, continue to grow and it’s gonna be a huge focus area for, for the coming years. [00:23:32] Vince Menzione: Fantastic. Yeah. Fantastic growth. [00:23:34] Shawn Toldo: Yeah, and, and I’ll add, Diane and I talked about this at Google next. This is a. Very complex thing for DBT, where today we sell seats. [00:23:42] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Yeah. [00:23:43] Shawn Toldo: To data engineers. [00:23:44] Yeah. [00:23:44] Shawn Toldo: And now we have all these agentic things that are hitting our engine. And di and I are talking and we’re like, okay, so how does this work in an ag agentic marketplace? [00:23:54] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. Kind of a scenario. And what should we build? Where should we play it? ’cause we’re gonna spin the meter in a different way, so to speak. [00:24:01] Dai Vu: Yep. [00:24:01] Shawn Toldo: And so candidly, we got stuff to figure out related to that. Um, I think what’s been fascinating for DBT is our partner ecosystem changed overnight. So now it’s like I talked to x.ai on Monday. [00:24:15] Shawn Toldo: Mm-hmm. We got time with open AI on Thursday and we have a call with Anthropic and our, uh, CEO and co-founder and uh, chief Product Officer next week. [00:24:26] Vince Menzione: Mm. [00:24:27] Shawn Toldo: We don’t have anybody managing those partners. [00:24:29] Vince Menzione: Right. [00:24:30] Shawn Toldo: Today our focus is on managing the large, uh, hyperscalers plus Snowflake and, uh, Databricks. [00:24:36] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. [00:24:36] Shawn Toldo: And then the SI ecosystem and some tech partners. So we’re having to like, to your point on Agile yesterday. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Like we’re having to change our strategy, operating model and organizational model to support that. And candidly, we don’t have all the answers yet, so we have a lot of things to figure out fast, which is a little bit scary. [00:24:54] Shawn Toldo: And challenging, but it’s also a huge opportunity we have to kind of embrace and get into. Yeah. [00:24:59] Vince Menzione: And they’re figuring out as well. ’cause they’re, they’re new to partnering as well. Yeah. As organizations [00:25:03] John Janke: and these AI agents. I think to demystify for a lot of people, and what Sean said is totally right. [00:25:08] John Janke: They’re disrupting everyone’s business model. But in reality from a marketplace standpoint, they’re metered SaaS. This is a thing that’s existed for a long time. Yeah. They look like product-led growth products. There is a lot of patterns around how product-led growth products work in marketplace. Mm-hmm. [00:25:24] John Janke: But you have to bring your business strategy, your product and pricing strategy to those two categories. Metered SaaS and product-led growth. Put that all together to get cross-functional alignment. So we are seeing like. A lot of people get tripped up here and it really does go back to more of the company strategy, product strategy questions, and a lot of partner leaders are not in the room for those conversations. [00:25:48] John Janke: So I think at, at this point in time, as you see big pivots with the partners to go all in on agents, you have to go elevate. Those discussions to be like, what is our plan here? ’cause I, I mean, pricing and packaging will be the thing that trips almost everyone up. [00:26:02] Dai Vu: If I could, if I just build on what John John mentioned, um, so I do agree. [00:26:06] Dai Vu: P it looks a lot like POG, but, uh, but the difference I think is POG has. More historically been in like the data and developer space, now it’s like the general business user, right? So this idea that you want a business user to be able to search and discover, um, agents that could actually be part of their like everyday workflow is going to be very critical. [00:26:26] Dai Vu: And uh, you know, I do think that when we think about the ecosystem building agents. Uh, you know, a lot of the ISV partners aren’t necessarily gonna own end-to-end workflows, right? They’ll, they’ll have a very specific, uh, domain and scope area, but you have to enable yourself to be orchestrated and managed by, you know, orchestration agents or, or, or meta agents that are gonna span end, end workflows. [00:26:49] Dai Vu: And sometimes that includes system integrators and, and others who can stitch that, that automation. So I think, I think that’s, that’s one piece of it. But the other area that I think is gonna be different is, um. There’s going to be a lot of agents. I mean, literally you’re gonna have a very fragmented set of, uh, uh, of players, right? [00:27:07] Dai Vu: It’s not just gonna be the incumbents, it’s gonna be a lot of disruptors and, and, and, and startups. And so the, uh, for the incumbents in the room, it is a mandate that you need to, to innovate because if you do not identify and go to like an agent first, go to market model. Uh, you’re gonna be, you know, disintermediated. [00:27:25] Dai Vu: Somebody’s gonna go build an agent that’s going to leverage you as a dumb database. Um, and they’re gonna own the workflow. So you have to, you have to push the, the, the, the limits here. And I think it’s creates a big opportunity for everyone in this room. [00:27:39] John Janke: I’m going off script. I’m curious. Let’s do it. I’m curious on your take on the system integrators. [00:27:44] John Janke: ’cause I think this, this puts like they’re all, a lot of them are creating agents for people and I think that’s turning them almost more into software companies than they’ve ever been. [00:27:53] Dai Vu: They are, and I think they’re, you know, obviously they’re being, uh, impacted from like, you know, typical like, you know, SOW you know, time and materials type type business models. [00:28:02] Dai Vu: But I do think they play a big role because a lot of the system integrators are bringing, um, you know, vertical and business process expertise. And, um, like I said, I said before, a lot of the ISVs are not gonna necessarily have big enough scope in their area to own end-to-end workflows. And that’s really the promise of agents, right? [00:28:20] Dai Vu: You really need. This cognitive, you know, reasoning, planning, executing across end to end workflows. And I think, you know, the system integrators are gonna bring that capability either, either through, you know, these custom, uh, orchestration or meta agents or if they’re able to productize that and bring that to a model, they can also sort of go through the marketplace model as well. [00:28:41] Dai Vu: So who knows is how it’s gonna evolve. But you know, we’ve always been talking about. Marketplace being a broader opportunity for all partner business models. And I think that will extend to not only, uh, you know, traditional sort of, uh, sell and services partners, but also some of these system integrators as well. [00:28:58] Shawn Toldo: If I could comment on that, please. Yeah. I, I was in London two weeks ago and we did an SI partner day. Mm-hmm. We had 25 sis in a room, probably about 50 people. We had no, um, hyperscalers or cloud data warehouse providers. And when we started talking about open data infrastructure. The role that they can play. [00:29:17] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. [00:29:18] Shawn Toldo: Cross platform in a cost efficient manner for customers and the advisory orientation of that. They all leaned in and we, we stopped talking and they started talking. [00:29:28] Vince Menzione: Right. [00:29:28] Shawn Toldo: So they’re all facing this kind of same problem, which is actually causing a little bit of a shift, I think, in how they think about, I’m a Databricks partner. [00:29:38] Shawn Toldo: Uh, you sure you wanna do that? [00:29:39] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:29:40] Shawn Toldo: So this, this whole thing that’s kind of evolved in the last six to 12 months, when you kind of pick one horse to ride, I, I would tell you be cautious about what that means. You may pick a horse to lead with mm-hmm. But you’re gonna have to flank yourself a bit in terms of other providers that can help you be successful with that, that that partner you’re gonna roll with. [00:30:00] Vince Menzione: So you’re suggesting data vendor agnostic. [00:30:04] Shawn Toldo: I’m suggesting you really have to think about your strategy. Yeah. Because I think the AI, AI disruption is gonna make you think about that strategy. [00:30:13] John Janke: Yeah, I mean there’s, someone mentioned anthropics First Partner Summit. I was not there, but I’ve heard from a bunch of people were there. [00:30:20] John Janke: You know, they had a hundred partners in the room. 95 of them were system integrators. Five were technology companies, the three Clouds, Databricks and Snowflake. Like if you just think about the, the one of the major disruptors in ai, ISVs, were not in the mix. So I, I think, are they trying to disrupt all of us? [00:30:40] John Janke: Uh, do they need us? And they haven’t figured out how to work with us. I, I think. It’s, it’s, [00:30:44] Vince Menzione: and I’ve heard they only have five people in their partner organization, so I just, it’s, [00:30:49] Shawn Toldo: it’s 11 now, but it’s 11, [00:30:51] Vince Menzione: so it was five [00:30:51] Shawn Toldo: last growing fast in the, in the new company I have 50. So like, to put it in perspective, they have to make some pretty big priority. [00:30:59] John Janke: Yeah. And everyone’s been there a hot second, [00:31:00] Vince Menzione: like, right, exactly. Yeah, they, well, we will talk about the learnings we’ve had over the years, getting to where they need to get to. It’s exciting times. We got a lot to talk about here. Um, I, you know, we have about 15 minutes. I I, I want to kind of gauge, ’cause we could talk, we, we have a few things we could talk about, I could ask about, but I want to see if there’s an, like, an interest in opening up to the room for questions. [00:31:25] Vince Menzione: ’cause I feel like we’ve got a very interesting group here. [00:31:28] Shawn Toldo: You got a hand here? [00:31:29] Vince Menzione: Uh, are there hands that wanna Yeah, there’s some people that wanna ask some questions. So Yeah. We have a mic? Yeah, [00:31:37] Dai Vu: we have [00:31:37] Shawn Toldo: a mic. We, [00:31:37] Vince Menzione: we [00:31:38] Shawn Toldo: got one here. [00:31:38] Vince Menzione: We got one here. One here. Thank you. Sorry we went off script, but [00:31:44] Shawn Toldo: that’s fine. [00:31:45] Vince Menzione: It’s fine. [00:31:45] Dai Vu: Off [00:31:45] Vince Menzione: script. Better is good. [00:31:46] Shawn Toldo: I’m sure you planted the questions outta anyway. It’s okay. We [00:31:48] Vince Menzione: did, we did. [00:31:55] Audience Guest: Okay. All Eva, Sean Lightner, quick question to your, uh, increase on the marketplace, and you said you spiff the salespeople by fifth percent. 5%. Mm-hmm. So, and that obviously drives a very large adoption of, uh, marketplace transactions. How are you accounting for the margin you’re losing on, uh, you know, going through the marketplace? [00:32:14] Audience Guest: And also have you done analysis? I’m sure you have, how much is, uh, shape shifting or shifting from existing versus incremental? [00:32:22] Shawn Toldo: Yeah, it’s a great question. Um, um, lemme make three points. Number one, the backlog statement makes the margin statement not matter. So do you wanna play in that space where a customer’s already bought or not? [00:32:36] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. Or do you wanna force a budget conversation that you have to drive on your own in a direct model? That to me, I think it was 484 4 62 [00:32:43] Dai Vu: 4 6 [00:32:44] Shawn Toldo: 2. [00:32:44] Vince Menzione: That’s new Tam available to you? [00:32:46] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. That, that’s just with one. Right. And we are, we are, uh, running on four marketplaces. So that just increases our tam and makes our, our sellers lives easier. [00:32:55] Shawn Toldo: So on that piece, yes, there’s an expense, but we believe it’s right for growth. So there’s a balance there. Um, I think the, and then the second part of your question again. Sorry, [00:33:05] Vince Menzione: shapeshift. [00:33:05] Shawn Toldo: Oh, shift. We, we actually don’t think we would’ve won the business. So if I go back to our Q4 and I can probably point to three or four deals that went, um, Google Marketplace, we would not have won those deals because we couldn’t have created the budget cycle and that quarter. [00:33:23] Shawn Toldo: To make it happen. Generally a budget cycle is gonna take anywhere from 12 to 15 months. Bingo. Because of the spend that was available to us, we were able to close it in that quarter, and we had the largest Q4 in company history. [00:33:35] Vince Menzione: That is such an important point. I’m sorry. [00:33:37] Dai Vu: Okay. [00:33:38] Vince Menzione: But I, I just wanna, that is such an important point of the budget cycle. [00:33:42] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:33:43] Vince Menzione: Being a year to a year and a half versus being able to tap into a commitment that’s already been made. Yeah, so I just emphasize that [00:33:51] Dai Vu: I was, I was just gonna add real quick, even, even when we see sort of a, uh, a channel shift renewal, which is, you know, it’s on partner paper and it moves to marketplace as part of the renewals, we do consistently see that the, uh, renewal rates on marketplace and the incremental a CB on the expansion and new opportunities tend to be better when it’s on the platform marketplace than than offline. [00:34:12] Dai Vu: And that’s why partners choose to continue to drive renewals on marketplace at a reduced to rev share. But uh, because they see that that growth, [00:34:20] John Janke: we, we, sorry. [00:34:22] Shawn Toldo: We see that as well. Yeah. And I would also make the statement on our land business, when we go through marketplace, we are two x higher across marketplaces. [00:34:30] Shawn Toldo: We’re three x higher with them. [00:34:32] John Janke: Yeah, I think separate new from renewals and then instrument deeply. [00:34:37] Shawn Toldo: Yeah, [00:34:38] John Janke: go proactively talk to your CFO and your head of rev ops to understand their mindset. Because I was with a billion dollar seller a couple weeks ago, their CFO still creates friction in the process, even though they’re selling a billion dollars through these channels. [00:34:52] John Janke: But when they broke it down, their deals are three times bigger. They do them faster. They use more components of the product, which I thought was a really cool one. So customers who buy this platform, many component platforms through a marketplace, end up using six components of the product. Versus a normal land customer who uses two increases gross in net retention. [00:35:12] John Janke: So you have to get to the point where you have the data and you can tell that story real really clearly to your finance team to get support ’cause that they will trip you up if you don’t get them on board. [00:35:23] Vince Menzione: And you’re saying there’s friction in that company. I’m just kind of curious ’cause a billion dollar company. [00:35:27] John Janke: There’s a billion dollar marketplace seller [00:35:29] Vince Menzione: market marketplace company. That’s what I meant. Yeah. But, but the fact that this, their CFO friction, like, is it, is it because they’re not doing a good enough job or? [00:35:37] John Janke: Uh, in, of educating, I, the root of the question is from this person is, would they win without it? [00:35:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:35:45] Shawn Toldo: Oh, and is it worth the three points? [00:35:46] John Janke: Right. It’s, it is And, and I think some pe like to me, it’s the cheapest channel in the world. Yeah. Like with committed budget and people to support you winning. Like the, that formula, the math is so simple. [00:35:57] Shawn Toldo: Yeah. For, for a company of our size to go to like the classic resell ecosystem, I gotta walk in with 30 points. [00:36:02] John Janke: Yeah. [00:36:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:36:03] Shawn Toldo: It, it’s an illogical conversation. Outside of public sector and growth, you know, geos around the world. And so I, I’ve been lucky to have a CFO that I haven’t had that challenge with, at least at DBTI should say. [00:36:19] Vince Menzione: Really great insights. I think we have, we have another hand up here. [00:36:28] Audience Guest: Yeah. Thanks Susan. The question is for Dai. Uh, my name is Latif Hamani. I’m the founder of Partner System ai. Um, so what we’ve done is we’ve built a, a co-sell AI agent mm-hmm. That your partners can use to Yeah. Reduce all the friction in the co-sell with you. Uh, the questions that I have is, I guess I should back up, so XAWS Madison with a very large alliances, and then I worked, went on the other side. [00:36:55] Audience Guest: For software companies, and even though I had an operational team, I was spending two to three hours on on the keyboard, right? Mm-hmm. Deal registration, emails that can’t be automated, et cetera. So the question that I have for you is, I’d love for you to validate that. You know, unless you are one of the big companies, one of the big enterprises, if you go to the lower end of the enterprise or the mid market, uh, would you validate that there is a challenge? [00:37:20] Audience Guest: There’s a lot of friction for a smaller company. Mm-hmm. Uh, ’cause these marketplaces are complex. Yeah. The cosell is complex. Uh, that there’s an opportunity to really break down that friction with some automation and ai. [00:37:33] Dai Vu: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, we have already been, uh, part of the journey to remove some of the, uh, the friction as part of that selling and purchasing journey. [00:37:43] Dai Vu: Uh. We’re not quite there yet. But, uh, we’ve done things like we have, uh, you know, private offer APIs. We, uh, we have co-sell, uh, registration automation. Um, you know, we have tools like, uh, propensity to buy, tooling to help, uh, partners do, uh, more targeted efforts. Um, but the a i piece is still coming. Um, so I think, uh, the idea here is that we have launched a number of agents as part of our, um. [00:38:08] Dai Vu: Uh, part of our, uh, Google Cloud Partner network, partner hub. Uh, so these are, uh, agents that are gonna do a bunch of things to help partners as part of their workflow, but we’re gonna extend this to the marketplace and ISV area as well. Uh, so I think there’s a lot of opportunity. So, uh, I know there’s probably a lot of feedback in friction, uh, in, in certain parts. [00:38:29] Dai Vu: So we can, we can go tackle together. [00:38:32] Vince Menzione: Hey. There you go. There was a little [00:38:34] Dai Vu: plug [00:38:34] Shawn Toldo: there for tackle. Exactly. [00:38:37] Dai Vu: Uh, and I wanted, and just to be clear, I want to take a look at it from the end to end, uh, uh, flow, right? It shouldn’t just be just marketplace. It should be all the way from like, you know, top of the funnel, demand generation, all the way to like post transaction follow up. [00:38:51] Dai Vu: So we really need to take a look at, at the, the end, end flows and figure out a way we can remove some of that friction [00:38:56] Vince Menzione: three sense. [00:38:57] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:38:59] Vince Menzione: Any more questions [00:39:00] Audience Guest: back here? Hey. Hey guys. This, this is a really good discussion. Uh, di this question’s primarily, uh, from, I’m interested in the hyperscaler response. [00:39:09] Audience Guest: Yep. Uh, but all of you, uh, can you talk about the patterns or say more about the patterns between. Um, the consumption of just platform capabilities versus industry workflows. Mm-hmm. And how industry where I, I mean, I, I, my sense is that industry workflows are becoming more [00:39:27] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:39:28] Audience Guest: Uh, the easier thing for enterprises and SMBs to buy. [00:39:33] Audience Guest: Yeah. Especially SMBs, I think. Um, but say more about those patterns that you’re seeing develop and kind of what is. Uh, who are, where, where are those kind of, where is the demand being driven? Is it, is it, yeah. The search and discover in the marketplace, or is it being led by field sales of mm-hmm. Either GCP or partners? [00:39:55] Dai Vu: Yeah, so let me, I’ll mention a couple, a couple areas where, where it’s growing. So I think number one I mentioned before about some of these large horizontal business apps that we’re partnering with, right? Um, and, uh, and of course the fact that we’re, we’re, we’re transacting them through marketplace is, is a huge. [00:40:14] Dai Vu: Evolution from a few years ago. So who would’ve thought you would be buying like, you know, a hundred million dollars a CB deals, uh, through, through marketplace with like a Salesforce or a ServiceNow workday. But it’s happening now. And to be clear, all these. Horizontal business app. They’re not doing this in a very, you know, opportunistic, transactional way. [00:40:32] Dai Vu: They basically see marketplace and cloud go to market as a strategic growth lever for them. So that’s one big area. So from just a pure large deal perspective. Okay. Then you mentioned before around sort of corporate and SMB. Well, we find that a lot of the big opportunities are mostly around as they scale their business, uh, they’re not necessarily looking for things in the traditional sort of infrastructure space, but they’re looking for, you know, full SaaS applications to help scale their business, right? [00:40:58] Dai Vu: So it would be CRM, finance, hr, these types of solutions to become very attractive for some of this, uh, downstream market. And then lastly, as I mentioned before, which is, uh, when we think about this gentrification and owning, um. Uh, driving, uh, this business process and vertical, the ISVs become very important along with the services partners who bring that domain expertise to drive the end to end workflow. [00:41:25] Dai Vu: So I think that’s gonna be increasingly important. So those are three areas I think we need to watch out for. We. Okay. [00:41:30] John Janke: Maybe one thing, like as the cloud commit grows inside of companies, it’s shifted from being an engineering department, IT department budget line item to a corporate finance budget line item. [00:41:40] John Janke: Typically one of the top five to 10 expenses in a company. So that has shifted. Who is thinking about optimizing? The cloud commit with marketplace contracts. And that opens, that’s really opened up the avenue in addition to like these biz apps, vertical apps players. Yeah. Like having success. So I, I do think even inside your own company, evaluating where your cloud commits are, who owns them and are they thinking about the intersection of marketplace? [00:42:06] John Janke: ’cause I, I think it’s smaller companies, they’re still figuring it out. I run into engineering leaders who still own the commits, uh, but in medium to large companies. Very different. [00:42:16] Vince Menzione: Really good point. Because it, you know this, the optics change dramatically, right? This large commitment is now at the board level, [00:42:23] John Janke: right? [00:42:23] John Janke: And then you do have to teach your sellers as a vertical or business application player how to ask that question. ’cause the first resistance everybody says is, oh my, my person, my stakeholder, we. Manufacturing vertical application provider talking at an event last week, and they’re like, the shop floor manufacturing owner doesn’t know anything about the cloud commit. [00:42:43] John Janke: But if they ask the question, be like, Hey, do you guys have a strategic relationship with Google? Would it be easier to buy our product on the bill? Eight out of 10 times they get a yes. So [00:42:52] Vince Menzione: which is why the 5% comes in And that really accelerates the conversation happening. Yeah. We’ve got three more minutes. [00:43:01] Vince Menzione: Um, if we don’t have any other questions, I ha I have one for each of you really about the maturity model and partners are in the room that are not committed yet, right? We’ve talked about some very significant DBTs doing some incredible things, right? So we, there’s maybe a sense that like we, you, you are working with the be the biggest and the best out there, but what about everyone else that’s in the room that maybe isn’t committed yet? [00:43:23] Vince Menzione: And maybe they’re in motion, but they need some help and advice on what to go do next. What? What would you say die first? [00:43:30] Dai Vu: So they’re early stage, [00:43:31] Vince Menzione: early, early stage or not, they’re not on board yet. They’re not, yeah. They’re not with you yet. [00:43:35] Dai Vu: Yeah. So I’ll, I’ll go back to my earlier comment, which is that as you go into the journey, just be very intentional about what you need to do from an operational, investment people, uh, technology perspective. [00:43:47] Dai Vu: Uh, because it could be, it could be a multi-year journey. Um, uh, so I’d say go into it with the right expectations as opposed to thinking it’s going to be some accelerated six month thing that Sean has been driving here. It’s, he’s the outlier. [00:43:59] Shawn Toldo: But, but the reason for the outlier, [00:44:00] Dai Vu: yeah. [00:44:01] Shawn Toldo: And just to add to the intentional point Yeah. [00:44:02] Shawn Toldo: Is, you know, hire the right people. Right. So, somebody told me a long time ago, uh, hire slow, fire fast. That’s a really, really, really good principle that I take. Mm-hmm. I don’t like the fire part, obviously, but just for context, I, I am very lucky to have a great set of leaders that we were able to add people in. [00:44:24] Shawn Toldo: When I walked in the door, we had a person that was leading the Snowflake and AWS partnership. I had nobody on GCPI had nobody on Microsoft. I had nobody on Databricks. And then we made prioritization decisions on where we’re gonna go next. And so we hired people that had the experience and could drive the outcome in the right way. [00:44:43] Shawn Toldo: But we were very thoughtful about when we made those decisions on a quarterly basis, not a daily basis. So who you’re gonna bet on and then who you’re gonna put in the seat to make that bet come to life, I think is a really important thing as well. [00:44:58] John Janke: Yeah. [00:44:58] Vince Menzione: John, you worked with the be biggest and the best out there, so Yeah, sorry. [00:45:01] John Janke: Well, I think there’s the, like there’s the bottoms up and the tops down. Like seven years ago, this was all bottoms up. It was a partner leader who thought launching a marketplace would be good and they would go figure out how to do some deals and then sell their way up. Today there’s a lot more top down where people get it. [00:45:17] John Janke: But you can evaluate top down pretty fast. ’cause if you go talk to your CEO, you talk to your head of product, you talk to your CFO, and they have an allergic reaction to these concepts. You know, you have to go bottoms up. But there also are success story examples in every single ISV category that exists. [00:45:33] John Janke: Like this is not just security and data and DevOp like the, I think the ServiceNow. Salesforce workday. Examples are really great, like the marketing tech examples, more and more business of vertical apps every day. So I do think you can look at those people who’ve been successful. Maybe they’re your competitors, maybe they’re people you aspire to be and reference them as you’re trying to figure out how to do top down. [00:45:55] John Janke: But like you need both. You can’t win long term unless you get top down and bottom up aligned. [00:46:01] Shawn Toldo: And, and when I, when I would go ask for resourcing, I would always get the question, do, could you go faster with more? And I’d say, no. Gimme the one or two humans here, let me go prove it out and I’ll come back. [00:46:13] Shawn Toldo: So there’s a little bit of a strategy in doing that, that you’re gonna get more over time when you’re, you know, very measured in how you go ask for investment and resource. And so I would just add that point also. [00:46:27] Vince Menzione: Was, was hiring a significant component of your executive commitment, Sean? I mean, [00:46:33] Shawn Toldo: yes. So when I walked in the door at DBT, we had eight people in the partner organization. [00:46:38] Shawn Toldo: Today we have 25, and that was 18 months ago. But that did not happen. I didn’t go in and ask for, you know, that 16 people. Right. I asked over time in a very measured way with, you know, the programs and strategy team, like, what can we also support? You don’t want to bring somebody in to go do something and you don’t have the programs and operations side to support it ’cause they’ll fail. [00:47:01] Shawn Toldo: So we’ve been very thoughtful about how we’ve done that as well. [00:47:04] Vince Menzione: Die from you. I know you had something. [00:47:06] Dai Vu: No, no, no. I, I was good. [00:47:08] Vince Menzione: What is the one thing that people in this room need to go better and differently? Is there one, is there one specific thing other than what we’ve already discussed, did we miss anything? [00:47:16] Dai Vu: No, I would just, the whole identification. So obviously, uh, identifying this is not just like slapping a chat bot, but more around thinking all the things we talked about, product commercials, but also go to market where it’s agent first, where you can surface your agent in a workflow like Gemini Enterprise app. [00:47:34] Dai Vu: That’s gonna drive high alignment with how we work and go to market with Google. [00:47:38] Vince Menzione: Awesome. [00:47:38] Dai Vu: Yeah. [00:47:40] Vince Menzione: Wow. Good stuff. Yeah. Very good session. [00:47:44] Dai Vu: Thank [00:47:44] Vince Menzione: you guys. What do you think? Everyone? Thank you very much. [00:47:47] Shawn Toldo: Thanks for listening to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. [00:47:50] Vince Menzione: If today’s conversation resonated, share it with a partner leader in your network. [00:47:55] Vince Menzione: Subscribe where you listen, and head over to the ultimate partner.com. For show notes related content and the resources for this episode. And if you haven’t already, now’s the time to register for the Ultimate Partner Live Event in Reston, Virginia, [00:48:11] John Janke: October 26th through October 28th. [00:48:14] Vince Menzione: Until next time, keep showing up in the rooms that matter because being in the room changes everything [00:48:22] I.

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Christina Tubb, Americas Director of Regional Alliance Managers at Ping Identity. With a career spanning theoretical physics, private equity, consulting, and channel leadership across ten countries, Christina brings a wide-lens view of what it takes to build partnerships that connect vendors directly to end customers.Christina opens with a philosophy that runs counter to how many people think about channel: partnerships are a way to get closer to end users, not further from them. When partners handle the pieces they're built for, vendors get the room to focus on what customers actually need. That principle sharpens with a global lens. For a US multinational, the nuanced requirements of customers in every country and vertical are almost impossible to grasp without local partners who translate the market for you. Christina calls it thinking globally and acting locally, and nowhere does it land harder than in the channel.From there, the conversation moves into what Christina learned running channel in Asia. Markets without friction stop innovating, she says, and Asia's density and diversity is a crucible that forces builders to move faster. Bringing that lens to the Americas, she highlights just how much automation, adaptation, and intentionality matter even in a single large market. The conversation then turns to identity in the AI era. With deep fakes rising and traditional markers of recognition losing reliability, digital identity is heading toward verified trust, and channel partners are central to how that plays out on the ground.Christina closes on the mindset that has anchored her whole career: follow curiosity as your north star. It won't guarantee an illustrious career, but it will guarantee real enjoyment and growth, especially in a moment where the security industry is being redefined week by week._________________________Learn more about Channext

By Doug Green “We're a partner-first company. It is in our DNA,” says Patrick Sheehan, Vice President of Channel Development and Distribution at Intermedia. In this episode of Technology Reseller News, recorded for the CCA community, I spoke with Patrick Sheehan, Vice President of Channel Development and Distribution at Intermedia, about a new approach to helping channel partners grow recurring revenue while reducing operational complexity. Intermedia describes itself as an intelligent cloud communications provider, bringing voice, video, messaging, contact center, collaboration and related services into one seamless, AI-powered platform. Sheehan noted that Intermedia supports thousands of partners and more than 150,000 businesses, with a strong focus on helping partners look good and keeping customers happy. The central topic of the conversation was Intermedia's Co-Op Partner Model, a program designed for partners who want to retain control over customer relationships and pricing, while Intermedia handles many of the back-end operational burdens that can slow growth. For many partners, cloud communications, AI, Microsoft Teams integration, and contact center services represent significant opportunities. But traditional models can also add complexity to billing, taxation, collections, support and administration. The Co-Op model is designed to remove much of that friction. With Co-Op, partners can maintain ownership of the customer relationship while Intermedia provides the operational infrastructure behind the scenes. That allows partners to focus on selling, serving customers and expanding existing accounts into new recurring revenue streams, with the potential to earn up to 2X more in profit compared to traditional models. Sheehan also discussed where partners may be leaving money on the table. Existing customer relationships often contain opportunities for voice, collaboration, AI-enabled communications, customer experience tools and Microsoft Teams-related services. By simplifying the path to offer those services, Intermedia is encouraging partners to revisit accounts they already know well. The conversation also covered Intermedia's broader partner-first strategy, including its focus on customer service, technical support and reliability. Sheehan highlighted Intermedia's ninth consecutive J.D. Power recognition for assisted technical support, along with the company's financially backed 99.999% uptime service-level agreement. For partners that have not engaged with Intermedia recently, Sheehan's message was direct: the opportunity has changed. Cloud communications is no longer just about replacing phone systems. It is about helping customers modernize communications, improve customer experience, adopt AI-enabled tools and create more flexible ways to work. The Co-Op model gives partners another way to participate in that opportunity without having to rebuild their own operations. Learn more about becoming an Intermedia partner. Read more about Intermedia's Co-Op program.

TRN caught up with Anant Kale about the evolution of AppZen, its channel program and the growing role partners play in helping organizations manage increasingly complex financial and operational data. Kale outlined how companies are looking beyond basic automation toward tools that can surface insights, improve compliance and provide greater visibility into spending. He also discussed the opportunity for channel partners to act as strategic advisors and add value helping customers integrate new technologies, streamline processes and extract more value from their data. The conversation highlights how AI-driven financial operations are becoming a larger part of enterprise modernization efforts and determine.

Jason Byrne, SVP of Marketing at Crexendo, spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, during the Channel Partners Conference & Expo about the company's growth strategy, brand evolution, and continued momentum in the channel. Byrne highlighted Crexendo's strong positioning in the cloud communications space, driven by its NetSapiens platform and a partner-centric model that empowers service providers to build and scale their own offerings. He emphasized that marketing plays a critical role in supporting partner success, helping them differentiate in a crowded market and effectively communicate value to end customers. “Our focus is on enabling partners to grow—both through technology and through strong, consistent messaging,” Byrne said. The conversation explored how Crexendo is investing in brand awareness and partner enablement, providing tools and resources that help partners accelerate sales and expand their reach. By aligning marketing initiatives with partner needs, the company is creating a more cohesive go-to-market strategy. Byrne also noted the importance of community within the Crexendo ecosystem, where partners collaborate, share best practices, and contribute to ongoing innovation. This collaborative approach strengthens the overall value of the platform and helps drive sustained growth. As discussions at Channel Partners continue to focus on differentiation and partner-led growth, Crexendo is positioning its marketing and platform strategy as a foundation for long-term success in the evolving cloud communications landscape. Learn more about Crexendo: https://www.crexendo.com/

Mark Lindsey, Analyst and Engineer at ECG, spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, during the Channel Partners Conference & Expo about how AI is transforming call intelligence and post-call workflows for businesses and MSPs. Lindsey described ECG's approach to capturing and analyzing conversations, turning voice interactions into structured data that can be immediately acted upon. By leveraging AI, ECG enables automatic transcription, summarization, and extraction of key action items from calls, helping organizations streamline follow-up and improve accountability. “We're turning conversations into actionable intelligence that can be shared and used instantly,” Lindsey said. The platform goes beyond simple transcription by organizing insights into clear outputs such as summaries, tasks, and next steps. This allows teams to quickly understand what happened during a call and what needs to happen next, reducing manual effort and improving operational efficiency. The discussion also highlighted how these capabilities benefit MSPs and channel partners by enhancing customer engagement and internal workflows. By automating routine tasks and providing clearer visibility into communications, organizations can improve productivity while delivering a better customer experience. As conversations at Channel Partners continue to focus on AI and automation, ECG is positioning its solution as a practical way to bring intelligence and structure to everyday business communications. Learn more about ECG: https://www.ecg.co/

Grant Kirkwood, CEO of Contrivian, spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, during the Channel Partners Conference & Expo about the company's vision for resilient connectivity through multi-constellation satellite and hybrid network architectures. Kirkwood explained that Contrivian is addressing a growing need for reliable, always-on connectivity by combining Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks with terrestrial infrastructure into a unified, software-defined platform. This approach allows enterprises and service providers to deliver connectivity that mirrors the resilience traditionally associated with fiber networks. “We're bringing terrestrial-grade resilience to LEO by unifying multiple networks into a single, intelligent platform,” Kirkwood said. The company's platform integrates multiple connectivity options—including satellite, fiber, LTE/5G, and broadband—into a cohesive ecosystem that can dynamically route traffic based on availability and performance. This architecture is particularly valuable for mission-critical environments where downtime is not an option. The discussion also highlighted how Contrivian enables partners to shift from selling connectivity components to delivering outcomes. By abstracting the complexity of multi-network environments, partners can offer reliable, high-performance connectivity solutions without managing multiple vendors and contracts. As conversations at Channel Partners continue to focus on next-generation connectivity and network resilience, Contrivian is positioning its platform as a key enabler of seamless, intelligent infrastructure for enterprises and service providers. Learn more about Contrivian: https://contrivian.com/

By Doug Green “We find good people for good people.” At the Channel Partners Conference & MSP Summit, I spoke with Keeley Davis, VP of Global Strategy & Growth at Solvo Global, about a growing challenge for MSPs and channel partners: how to find and scale talent in an increasingly competitive and global market. Solvo Global operates across 33 countries, giving it a broad footprint to help companies access talent both domestically and internationally. While many MSPs still rely on local hiring or informal networks to fill roles, Davis pointed out that the market is shifting. Companies are now more open to nearshore and offshore talent models as they look to control costs, improve scalability, and keep up with demand. For many smaller, family-run MSPs and channel businesses, hiring often begins informally—through referrals, personal networks, or word-of-mouth. While that approach can work in the early stages, it becomes a limitation as companies try to grow. Solvo Global positions itself as a more structured and scalable alternative, helping organizations move from ad hoc hiring to a more strategic talent acquisition model. The company supports both U.S.-based recruiting and global staffing, meeting organizations wherever they are in their growth journey. For companies not yet ready to fully embrace global talent, Solvo can start with domestic placements. For those ready to expand, the firm provides access to international talent pools that can augment teams across functions. A key driver behind this shift is the broader conversation around AI and automation. As businesses invest in new technologies, they also need the right people to implement, manage, and support those systems. In many cases, global talent becomes a practical way to bridge that gap quickly and efficiently. For MSPs and channel partners, the takeaway is clear: talent strategy is becoming a competitive differentiator. Companies that can access and manage global talent effectively will be better positioned to scale, serve customers, and compete in a rapidly evolving market. Learn more at: https://solvoglobal.com

Shiraz Hasan, Vice President of Channel and Distribution at AT&T Business, spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, during the Channel Partners Conference & Expo about the company's evolving partner-first strategy and its commitment to driving growth through the channel. Hasan emphasized that AT&T Business is focused on simplifying engagement for partners while expanding the range of solutions they can bring to market. By aligning internal resources, streamlining processes, and enhancing partner support, the company aims to make it easier for MSPs and channel partners to sell and deliver AT&T services. “We are building a partner-first model that makes it easier to do business with us and grow together,” Hasan said. The discussion highlighted the breadth of AT&T Business offerings, including connectivity, mobility, and advanced networking solutions, and how these can be combined to address complex customer needs. Partners are increasingly looking for integrated solutions that deliver both performance and flexibility, particularly as enterprises continue their digital transformation journeys. Hasan also noted that the channel is a critical growth engine for AT&T Business, with ongoing investments in tools, training, and enablement programs designed to help partners succeed. By fostering closer collaboration and providing greater visibility into opportunities, AT&T is strengthening its relationships across the partner ecosystem. As conversations at Channel Partners continue to focus on partner enablement and new revenue opportunities, AT&T Business is positioning its channel strategy as a foundation for long-term growth and innovation. Learn more about AT&T Business: https://www.business.att.com/

Tony Puopolo, GM of Digi Managed Solutions at Digi International, spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, during the Channel Partners Conference & Expo about how IoT, 5G, and managed services are creating new growth opportunities for channel partners. Puopolo explained that Digi International is focused on delivering end-to-end connectivity solutions that combine hardware, software, and managed services. These integrated offerings simplify deployment and management for customers operating in distributed and mission-critical environments such as utilities, transportation, and industrial applications. “Our goal is to make connectivity simple, secure, and scalable for partners and their customers,” Puopolo said. The discussion highlighted Digi's latest innovations, including advanced 5G-enabled platforms designed to support edge computing and real-time data processing. By combining networking, compute, and security capabilities into a single solution, Digi enables organizations to reduce complexity and improve operational efficiency. Puopolo also emphasized Digi's channel-first approach, noting that partners play a critical role in delivering these solutions to the market. By offering managed services alongside technology platforms, partners can create recurring revenue streams while addressing customer needs for reliable, always-on connectivity. As conversations at Channel Partners continue to focus on IoT, 5G, and edge innovation, Digi International is positioning itself as a key enabler for partners looking to expand into high-growth connectivity and managed services opportunities. Learn more about Digi International: https://www.digi.com/

Peter Galanis, Founder and CEO of Fortavera, spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, during the Channel Partners Conference & Expo about how MSPs can scale more effectively through structured strategy, operational discipline, and execution. Galanis explained that many MSPs struggle to move beyond incremental growth because they lack a clear framework for scaling their business. Fortavera works with service providers to align leadership, operations, and go-to-market strategy, helping them transition from day-to-day firefighting to long-term, sustainable growth. “Growth doesn't happen by accident—it requires a disciplined approach to strategy and execution,” Galanis said. The conversation highlighted how MSPs can improve performance by focusing on key areas such as sales processes, operational efficiency, and leadership alignment. By building repeatable systems and focusing on accountability, organizations can scale without losing control of their business. Galanis also emphasized the importance of shifting mindset from working “in the business” to working “on the business.” This transition allows MSP leaders to focus on strategic initiatives rather than being consumed by daily operations. As discussions at Channel Partners continue to center on growth and differentiation, Fortavera is positioning itself as a strategic partner for MSPs looking to accelerate their development and build more scalable, resilient businesses. Learn more about Fortavera: https://fortavera.com/

Jason Beal, President, Americas at Exclusive Networks, spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, during the Channel Partners Conference & Expo about the company's channel-first approach to cybersecurity and how partners can capitalize on growing demand for advanced security solutions. Beal explained that as cyber threats continue to evolve, organizations are looking for specialized security solutions that go beyond traditional offerings. Exclusive Networks focuses on delivering a curated portfolio of best-of-breed cybersecurity technologies through a partner-led model. “Our entire business is built around enabling partners to bring world-class security solutions to their customers,” Beal said. The discussion highlighted how Exclusive Networks supports partners with not only technology but also services, training, and go-to-market resources. This enables MSPs, VARs, and service providers to expand their cybersecurity capabilities without needing to build deep expertise in-house. Beal also emphasized the importance of specialization in today's market. As cybersecurity becomes more complex, partners who can differentiate themselves with advanced solutions and expertise are better positioned to win and retain customers. As conversations at Channel Partners continue to focus on security, AI, and partner growth, Exclusive Networks is positioning itself as a key enabler for partners looking to build scalable, high-value cybersecurity practices. Learn more about Exclusive Networks: https://www.exclusive-networks.com/usa

AudioCodes at Channel Partners: From Voice Infrastructure to Cloud Integration Platform, Podcast By Doug Green “We're not focused on one platform—we're focused on integration and flexibility across all of them.” At the Channel Partners Conference in Las Vegas, I caught up with Paul Hunsucker and Mitch Hirschkowitz of AudioCodes to talk about how the company has evolved—and where the opportunity lies for channel partners today. AudioCodes is one of those companies that nearly everyone in telecom recognizes, but its identity has shifted significantly over time. What began more than 30 years ago in the early days of VoIP—building media gateways, session border controllers (SBCs), and voice infrastructure—has now evolved into something much broader. Today, AudioCodes positions itself as a SaaS platform company focused on managing and integrating UCaaS and CCaaS environments. Rather than competing as a single-platform provider, the company is leaning into a multi-platform strategy—certified across ecosystems like Microsoft, Cisco, and Zoom—giving customers and partners flexibility in how they build and manage communications environments. That shift reflects a larger industry trend. Enterprises are no longer standardizing on a single vendor. Instead, they are assembling communications stacks that span multiple platforms, carriers, and applications. The challenge—and opportunity—for partners is making those environments work seamlessly. AudioCodes is targeting that exact problem. The company's platform approach allows partners to deliver integrated solutions while still giving customers the freedom to choose their preferred UCaaS or CCaaS provider. It also enables enterprises to retain elements of control they previously had in on-prem environments—such as managing SBCs or bringing their own carrier—while benefiting from the scalability of the cloud. For MSPs and channel partners, this creates a clear path forward. Rather than selling a single solution, the opportunity is to become the integrator—the trusted advisor who can stitch together platforms, ensure interoperability, and deliver a consistent user experience. Visit www.audiocodes.com

Zack Schwartz, Chief Sales Officer at Trustifi, spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, during the Channel Partners Conference & Expo about the rising threat landscape in email security and the opportunity it creates for MSPs. Schwartz explained that email remains the primary attack vector for cyber threats, with increasingly sophisticated phishing campaigns now powered by artificial intelligence. These attacks are harder to detect and more convincing than ever, creating significant risk for businesses of all sizes. “Over 90% of cyberattacks still start with email, and AI is making those attacks more effective,” Schwartz said. Trustifi provides an email security platform designed specifically for MSPs, offering tools that are easy to deploy, manage, and scale across multiple customer environments. The platform includes advanced phishing detection, encryption, and data loss prevention capabilities, enabling partners to protect both inbound and outbound communications. The discussion also highlighted how MSPs can leverage email security as a core service offering. By deploying solutions like Trustifi internally and then extending them to customers, partners can both strengthen their own security posture and create new recurring revenue streams. As cybersecurity continues to be a top priority at Channel Partners, Trustifi is positioning its platform as a critical solution for MSPs looking to address modern email threats while expanding their service portfolios. Learn more about Trustifi: https://trustifi.com/

Jordy Cohen, Senior Director of Partnerships at Chrono Innovation, spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, during the Channel Partners Conference & Expo about how custom software development is enabling MSPs and channel partners to deliver more differentiated solutions. Cohen explained that many organizations are constrained by off-the-shelf software that doesn't fully align with their operational needs. Chrono Innovation works with partners to design and build custom applications that integrate with existing systems while addressing specific business challenges. “Every business has unique requirements, and custom development allows partners to deliver solutions that truly fit their customers' needs,” Cohen said. The conversation highlighted how MSPs can leverage custom development as a strategic differentiator, moving beyond standard service offerings to deliver tailored solutions that drive higher value and deeper customer relationships. By working with development partners like Chrono Innovation, MSPs can expand their capabilities without needing to build in-house engineering teams. Cohen also emphasized the importance of collaboration between technical teams and business stakeholders to ensure that custom solutions align with both operational goals and user expectations. As discussions at Channel Partners continue to focus on innovation and differentiation, Chrono Innovation is helping partners unlock new opportunities by delivering customized, integrated software solutions that address real-world business challenges. Learn more about Chrono Innovation: https://www.chronoinnovation.com/

Simon Davis, VP of Marketing at RoboForm, spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, during the Channel Partners Conference & Expo about the growing importance of password management and identity security for MSPs and their customers. Davis emphasized that weak and reused passwords remain one of the most common vulnerabilities in enterprise environments, making password management solutions a critical component of modern cybersecurity strategies. RoboForm provides tools that help organizations securely store, generate, and manage credentials across users and devices. “Password security is still one of the easiest ways for attackers to gain access, and it's one of the easiest problems to fix with the right tools,” Davis said. The conversation highlighted how MSPs can incorporate password management into their service offerings, both to improve their own internal security posture and to deliver added value to customers. By deploying centralized credential management and enforcing best practices, MSPs can reduce risk while creating new recurring revenue opportunities. Davis also noted that as organizations adopt more cloud applications and remote work models, the need for secure identity management continues to grow. Password management solutions serve as a foundational layer in broader security strategies that include multi-factor authentication and access control. As discussions at Channel Partners continue to focus on cybersecurity and risk mitigation, RoboForm is positioning its platform as an accessible and effective way for MSPs to strengthen security and expand their service portfolios. Learn more about RoboForm: https://www.roboform.com/

Carrie Richardson of Fox & Crow Group spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, during the Channel Partners Conference & Expo about how MSPs and channel partners can build more effective demand generation strategies and accelerate growth. Richardson emphasized that many MSPs struggle with consistent lead generation and often rely too heavily on referrals or ad hoc marketing efforts. Fox & Crow Group focuses on helping partners build structured, repeatable marketing programs that generate qualified opportunities and support long-term business growth. “MSPs need a predictable way to generate demand, not just occasional wins from referrals or one-off campaigns,” Richardson said. The conversation explored how successful marketing strategies for MSPs combine clear messaging, targeted outreach, and consistent execution. By aligning marketing efforts with business goals and customer needs, partners can create a more sustainable pipeline of opportunities. Richardson also highlighted the importance of understanding the customer journey and tailoring messaging to different stages of the buying process. This approach helps MSPs engage prospects more effectively and convert interest into revenue. As discussions at Channel Partners continue to focus on growth and differentiation in a competitive market, Fox & Crow Group is helping MSPs develop the marketing discipline needed to scale their businesses and build stronger customer relationships. Learn more about Fox & Crow Group: https://www.foxcrowgroup.com/

By Doug Green “We provide a real alternative to the hyperscalers—with more personality and a true partnership approach to the channel.” At the Channel Partners Conference MSP Summit, I caught up with Tim Mandell of Leaseweb to discuss how the company is positioning itself for MSPs and channel partners looking for more control, flexibility, and partnership in their infrastructure strategy. Leaseweb, now a 28-year-old company, operates as a private, sovereign-by-design infrastructure provider. That distinction—private and sovereign—was central to our conversation and reflects a broader shift in how enterprises and partners are thinking about cloud and infrastructure. Unlike publicly traded hyperscalers, Leaseweb emphasizes independence. “We don't report to the street,” Mandell explained, highlighting the company's ability to focus on long-term customer outcomes rather than quarterly earnings pressure. That independence translates into more flexibility for partners and a willingness to engage in tailored, relationship-driven solutions. From a services standpoint, Leaseweb offers a full stack of infrastructure options, including colocation, private cloud, public cloud, bare metal servers, storage, and content delivery. The goal is not to compete head-on with hyperscalers on scale, but to provide an alternative that prioritizes customization, transparency, and partner alignment. For MSPs and channel partners, that positioning creates opportunity. As Mandell noted, Leaseweb is actively investing in the channel, attending events like Channel Partners to better understand partner needs and refine its go-to-market approach. The company is focused on being vendor-agnostic and enabling partners to build solutions that fit their customers—rather than forcing them into rigid architectures. The concept of “sovereign infrastructure” also resonates in today's environment, where data control, compliance, and jurisdictional concerns are becoming more important. Enterprises are increasingly asking where their data resides, who has access to it, and how it is governed. Leaseweb's model allows partners to address those concerns with greater precision. At the same time, the conversation reflects a broader industry trend: the growing demand for alternatives to hyperscaler dominance. While public cloud remains critical, many organizations are rethinking a one-size-fits-all approach and looking for hybrid or specialized solutions that better align with performance, cost, and compliance requirements. For the channel, this creates a clear path forward. Providers that can offer flexible infrastructure options—combined with strong vendor relationships—are well positioned to differentiate in a crowded market. Leaseweb's message is straightforward: be a partner, not just a platform. And in a market where MSPs are looking for both technical capability and business alignment, that approach may resonate more than ever.

By Doug Green “Tax compliance isn't just a regulatory issue—it's becoming a critical part of how service providers scale globally.” On the opening day of Channel Partners Conference & Expo in Las Vegas, I caught up with Spencer Lee of Telin to discuss an often-overlooked issue in unified communications: tax compliance. Lee, my first guest of the show, framed the conversation around a growing challenge for service providers and channel partners operating across borders. As UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS offerings expand globally, tax exposure—particularly indirect taxes tied to communications services—is becoming more complex and harder to ignore. Telin positions itself as a channel-first provider, delivering the underlying infrastructure partners need to go to market. That includes SIP trunking, hosting, hardware, and integration support—essentially a bundled backend designed to simplify deployment for partners in the unified communications space. But increasingly, that backend must also account for compliance. As Lee explained, providers entering new markets often underestimate the tax implications tied to telecom services. These aren't traditional corporate taxes—they're jurisdiction-specific telecom taxes, regulatory fees, and compliance requirements that vary widely by country and even region. For channel partners, this creates both risk and opportunity. On one hand, failure to properly account for telecom taxes can lead to penalties, billing complications, and margin erosion. On the other, partners who align with infrastructure providers that manage these complexities can accelerate global expansion without taking on that burden directly. Telin's approach is to abstract much of that complexity away from the partner. By handling infrastructure, interconnection, and compliance considerations within its platform, the company enables partners to focus on customer relationships and service delivery. The conversation highlights a broader trend emerging across the channel: as communications becomes more global and software-driven, operational details like tax compliance are moving from back-office concerns to strategic differentiators. For partners attending Channel Partners this week, it's a reminder that winning in UCaaS isn't just about features—it's about everything behind the scenes that makes those services viable at scale.

What we cover Start with brokers, not against them. The typical "tech disruption" approach frames brokers as rent-seeking middlemen.  Nick's counterargument:  Brokers fill a trust role that no website can replicate They touch roughly 70% of small-to-mid-size business health plan sales They will pick up the phone (how many millennials and Gen Zers can say that? Certainly not I) Brokers will also tell your product team what's missing. All of those "oH, MemBeRS woN'T bOOk USer IntErvIeWs wITh mE" Product Managers should probably be talking to brokers If you don't have rate relief, you have nothing. Rate relief is the one question brokers are being asked by their clients, day in and day out. If you can't show that your plan is cheaper for at least 40% of groups, the conversation doesn't start. Nick's heuristic: if the broker doesn't have price, they have nothing to sell, no matter how elegant the technology. Therefore: focus on steerage. The difference between the cheapest and most expensive MRI in Austin, TX is roughly 8x. If you can build a plan that guides people to the lower-cost option for non-emergency shoppable services, you've found the actual lever. Nick's starter heuristic: for all non-emergency hospital claims, do you have an alternative good spot to send members to next time?  Then simplify until it hurts. Decent spent four years before it could credibly sell the Zero Plan: “if you do what the plan wants you to do, it costs you $0 outside your monthly contribution.” That is the level of simplicity you need to actually break through to the decision maker at your prospects. The HR person who has to make this decision once a year and really doesn't want to be in this conversation needs a message that lands in one sentence. This also helps brokers sell (remember rule number one). Brought to you by Stedi - Stedi is the modern healthcare clearinghouse. They're the new way to verify insurance, submit claims, and track claim payments. http://stedi.com/demo For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email sales@outofpocket.health Find Nick nsoman@nice.healthcare nick@decent.com Nice Healthcare: https://www.nice.healthcare/ Decent: decent.com Exciting upcoming events in the OOP world We have a Hackathon in SF from Apr 17-19. We're full on Hackers, but you should definitely come to Demo Day and see what people built. I built an app for people to lend Oura Sleep/Readiness Points to each other… at 10% Daily Compounding. I'm calling it “Oura Farming”. I guarantee you there will be 10x better ideas than that at Demo Day Timestamps 00:00 Intro: Why Tech People Fail in Healthcare (With Nick Soman, Former CEO of Decent) 09:47 Tip #1 — If You Can't Sell to Brokers, You Have Nothing 19:17 Reframe Brokers as Channel Partners, Not Middlemen 29:06 Make It Simpler. Then Simpler Again. (The Story of the Zero Plan) 34:53 The Secret Weapon: Steerage (And Why an 8x Price Spread Changes Everything) 43:56 Narrow Networks, Broker Trust, and Building Something You'd Put Your Own Family On

Jim Cahill's podcast conversation with Emerson's Knut Riegel explores what “proximity to the customer” looks like in practice, and which leading indicators signal a healthy service ecosystem.

Charlene Ignacio of Fornix Marketing spoke with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, during the Enterprise Connect conference about Beyond the Box, a CRM platform designed to help MSPs and channel partners better manage customer relationships and business operations. Ignacio explained that many service providers struggle with fragmented tools and processes when managing sales pipelines, customer engagement, and service delivery. Beyond the Box addresses this challenge by providing a platform tailored specifically to the needs of the channel, allowing MSPs to manage leads, automate workflows, and maintain better visibility into their business performance. “Beyond the Box was built with the channel in mind, helping partners streamline operations while maintaining strong relationships with their customers,” she said. The platform is designed to integrate CRM capabilities with operational workflows, helping organizations align their marketing, sales, and service functions more effectively. This integration can help partners improve customer engagement while simplifying the management of ongoing client relationships. During the conversation, Ignacio emphasized that effective CRM systems are becoming increasingly important as MSPs grow their customer bases and expand their service portfolios. By adopting tools that are purpose-built for the channel, partners can improve efficiency and scale their operations more effectively. As conversations at Enterprise Connect continue to highlight the importance of digital transformation and operational efficiency, solutions like Beyond the Box are helping channel partners build stronger, more organized customer engagement strategies. Learn more about Fornix Marketing: https://fornixmarketing.com/ Learn more about Beyond the Box: https://www.btbcrm.ca/

This episode of In Case You Missed It is brought to you by ESET Canada. ESET’s Women in Cybersecurity Scholarship is now open for 2026, with three $5,000 awards available to women pursuing careers in cybersecurity. Applications close April 8. Learn more and apply. On this episode: Channel profits in freefall. A new global survey from Omdia found that nearly 60% of channel partners expect Q1 profits to decline by double digits. Revenue is slightly more encouraging, but costs are rising faster than partners can pass them through. Hardware vendors are refusing to hold pricing until shipment and in some cases cancelling orders after POs have been received. If you haven’t stress-tested your quoting and procurement processes, that conversation needs to happen now. Check Point plants a data sovereignty flag in Canada. Check Point Software launched a dedicated Canada data region for its CloudGuard Web Application Firewall, ensuring all configurations, logs, and security data remain within Canadian borders. For partners navigating data residency and CLOUD Act conversations, this removes a common objection and adds another signal that global vendors are recognizing the Canadian market demands more than just a sales office. Canadian partners on the CRN MSP 500. CRN’s 2026 MSP 500 list included several Canadian companies: WBM Technologies out of Saskatoon on the Elite 150, Bulletproof (a GLI company) on the Security 100, Nucleus Networks on the Pioneer 250, plus appearances from Arctiq, Converge, and Premier Cloud. ESET Women in Cybersecurity Scholarship. ESET’s Women in Cybersecurity Scholarship is open for 2026, with three $5,000 awards for women in Canada pursuing cybersecurity careers. Now in its 11th year, the program has supported 14 women in Canada with more than $50,000 in funding since expanding here in 2021. Last year’s Trailblazer Award recipient, Constance Prevot, is now a working SOC analyst while finishing her degree at Concordia. Deadline to apply: April 8, 2026. Remembering Rob Megaw and honouring Fawn Annan. The Canadian channel lost Rob Megaw, president of Compu-SOLVE Technologies in Midland, Ontario, who led the company for more than 30 years — from its beginnings as a local ISP and PC repair shop through its evolution into a managed services provider. Our condolences to his family and the Compu-SOLVE team. And CIOCAN announced the CanadianCIO Fawn Annan Memorial Award, recognizing women in IT leadership whose work reflects Fawn’s enormous contribution to Canada’s technology community. Nominations are open. Read Full Transcript Welcome to In Case You Missed It from ChannelBuzz.ca. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca. Today is Monday, March 16th, 2026. Let’s get your week started right. This week’s In Case You Missed It is brought to you by ESET Canada. ESET’s Women in Cybersecurity Scholarship is now open for 2026, with three $5,000 awards available to women pursuing careers in cybersecurity. Applications close April 8th. Learn more and apply at eset dot come slash ca. ESET – protecting progress. If you needed a single data point to explain the mood in the channel right now, Omdia may have just provided it. A new global survey from the analyst firm found that close to 60 percent of channel partners expect their Q1 profits to decline by double digits compared to last year. Less than a third predict that profits will grow at all. The revenue picture is slightly more encouraging – 45 percent expect Q1 revenues to increase year over year, and about a third are forecasting double-digit revenue growth. But there’s a dangerous disconnect between topline and bottom line, and the reason is straightforward: costs are rising faster than partners can pass them through. Hardware vendors are increasingly refusing to hold pricing until the point of shipment, and in some cases are cancelling orders even after a purchase order has been received. If you’re locked into contractual pricing with a customer, you quoted a price, the vendor changed theirs, and you’re absorbing the difference. Layer in Middle East conflict pushing oil prices higher, component shortages showing no signs of easing for at least another 12 months, and the downstream effects on cloud providers, MSPs, and SaaS companies all being forced to raise their own prices – and Omdia’s Alastair Edwards warns the risk of channel bankruptcies is set to increase dramatically. If you haven’t stress-tested your quoting and procurement processes for a world where vendor pricing is no longer reliable, that conversation needs to happen now. Check Point Software launched a dedicated Canada data region last week for its CloudGuard Web Application Firewall. All configurations, logs, and security data generated by Canadian customers using CloudGuard WAF will now stay within Canadian borders. This is a data sovereignty play, and the timing isn’t accidental. Data residency is becoming a real differentiator in how Canadian organizations evaluate security vendors. Whether it’s regulatory pressure, customer demand, or the reality that storing data with U.S.-headquartered cloud providers carries CLOUD Act risk, the partners who can have an honest conversation about where data lives are the ones winning deals. For Check Point partners, it removes one of the more common objections. And in a broader sense, it’s another signal that global security vendors are recognizing that having a data region in Canada actually matters to this market. CRN published its annual MSP 500 list last week, and several Canadian companies made the cut. WBM Technologies out of Saskatoon landed on the Elite 150 – now in its 75th year and still reinventing itself. Bulletproof, a GLI company based in New Brunswick, made the Security 100. Nucleus Networks, which has expanded from Vancouver to five cities across Western Canada, appeared on the Pioneer 250. Arctiq, Converge, and Premier Cloud also showed up across the three categories. We don’t dwell on awards lists on this podcast, but the MSP 500 is one of the few that gives Canadian partners real visibility alongside the larger U.S. players. If you’re building your practice and wondering whether you’re on the right track, it’s worth looking at who made it and asking what they’re doing that you could learn from. Since our friends at ESET Canada are sponsoring this episode, it’s worth flagging something they’re doing that goes beyond product. The ESET Women in Cybersecurity Scholarship is now open for 2026, with three $5,000 awards available to women in Canada pursuing careers in cybersecurity. The deadline to apply is April 8th. This is the 11th year of the program.  Since 2021, ESET has supported 14 women in Canada with more than $50,000 in scholarship funding. Last year’s Trailblazer recipient, Constance Prevot, is now a working SOC analyst while finishing her degree at Concordia. If you know someone who should apply, point them to eset.com/ca. Link’s in the show notes. Finally, two moments from the past week that remind us this industry is built by people, not just products. The Canadian channel lost Rob Megaw last week. Rob was the president of Compu-SOLVE Technologies in Midland, Ontario, and had led the company for more than 30 years – from its early days as a local ISP and PC repair shop through its evolution into a managed services provider. That’s the Canadian channel story in miniature, and our condolences go out to his family and the Compu-SOLVE team. On a more hopeful note, CIOCAN announced the CanadianCIO Fawn Annan Memorial Award, recognizing women in IT leadership whose work reflects Fawn’s enormous contribution to Canada’s technology community. Fawn founded the CanadianCIO of the Year Awards and the CIO Hall of Fame. Nominations are open, and we’ll have a link in the show notes. Those are some of the things we were paying attention to last week.  This week on In The Channel: Zero Networks goes all-in on the channel and why Canadian partners should pay attention. Barracuda’s Merium Khalid walks us through their latest threat report. And Jeff Collins from WanAware makes the case that you’re hitting every SLA metric and your customer still thinks you’re failing.  For ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt. Have a great week, and I’ll see you in the channel.

Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, interviewed Will Morey, Managing Director of Gamma Business, to discuss the next phase of the global PSTN switch-off and what it means for service providers, partners, and enterprise customers. The conversation focused on the transition from legacy copper networks to IP-based communications and the growing importance of execution as the deadline approaches. Morey explained that the industry has moved beyond awareness of the PSTN shutdown and is now firmly in the execution phase. For many partners, the challenge is no longer understanding that migration must occur, but rather how to transition large numbers of customer sites without disrupting services or damaging long-standing relationships. Businesses still rely on traditional lines for critical applications such as alarms, payment terminals, and other infrastructure that cannot always be moved quickly to IP. To help partners manage this complexity, Gamma developed Edge Migrate, a platform designed to analyze customer estates, plan migrations, and coordinate transitions across both Gamma and third-party services. The goal is to simplify the operational burden for partners while protecting recurring revenue streams and ensuring continuity of service during the migration process. Morey also highlighted an often overlooked aspect of the PSTN transition: some environments are not yet ready for full IP voice. In those situations, interim connectivity solutions can keep essential services running while organizations address network readiness and modernization requirements. By providing these transitional capabilities, partners can continue supporting customers while guiding them toward long-term digital infrastructure. Ultimately, Morey emphasized that the PSTN switch-off represents both a challenge and an opportunity. Partners that act early, leverage migration tools, and maintain close engagement with their customers will be best positioned to turn the copper sunset into a moment of growth rather than disruption. Visit https://gammagroup.co/

Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, interviewed Dayton Turner, VP of Solutions Engineering, and Chris Burgy, SVP of Corporate Development at Ooma, to discuss the accelerating transition away from legacy copper lines and the growing opportunity for partners to address the POTS replacement market. The discussion focused on the ongoing retirement of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and the operational challenges organizations face as they migrate critical services from traditional analog lines to modern connectivity solutions. Turner explained that many businesses still depend on POTS lines for applications such as elevators, alarm systems, fire panels, and point-of-sale terminals—systems that were originally designed around the reliability of copper infrastructure. As telecom providers continue phasing out these legacy networks, organizations must identify alternative technologies that maintain reliability while supporting modern connectivity requirements. Burgy emphasized that the transition represents a significant opportunity for channel partners and service providers. Many enterprises and small businesses are only beginning to understand the scope of the copper shutdown and the operational impact it will have on their infrastructure. This creates demand for partners who can evaluate existing deployments, recommend migration strategies, and implement replacement solutions that ensure continuity of critical services. The conversation also highlighted how wireless and IP-based solutions are increasingly being deployed to replace traditional analog lines. These technologies enable businesses to maintain connectivity for essential systems without the limitations of legacy copper infrastructure, while also improving manageability and scalability. For partners, the key is combining technical expertise with proactive engagement to help customers navigate the transition before service disruptions occur. Ultimately, Turner and Burgy stressed that the copper sunset is not simply a network upgrade—it is a structural shift in telecommunications infrastructure. Organizations that begin planning now will be better positioned to maintain operational resilience, while partners who guide customers through the migration will play a critical role in the next phase of enterprise communications. Visit https://www.ooma.com/

Can you land enterprise clients like Marriott and Panasonic without a massive sales team? Dima Syrotkin, founder of Panda Training, reveals his strategy for hacking enterprise sales: partnering with consulting firms who already have the trust (and the golf buddies) to close the deal for you. In this interview, Dima and Sean discuss why firing middle managers is a mistake, the reality of "AI shrinking companies," and why getting SOC2 and ISO certifications was the best $20k he ever spent. Dima also shares his personal struggle with defensiveness as a CEO and how hiring an angel investor full-time forced him to confront his own ego. Check out the company: https://pandatron.ai

Tresic emerged from stealth with breaking news: the launch of Tresic Intelligence Cloud, a new add-on platform designed for CSPs and channel partners to layer AI-driven insights, automation, and coaching on top of existing UCaaS and CCaaS services. In a conversation with Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, Robert Galop and Kevin Nethercott said the timing is deliberate—service providers have spent two decades building the UCaaS/CCaaS/CPaaS foundation, and now have the opportunity to monetize intelligence on top of it. The core idea is to unlock the “dark data” inside everyday business conversations—calls, meetings, video, email, and more—then convert it into actionable outcomes like follow-ups, alerts, and performance improvement. “If I'm a business owner, the holy grail for me is if I knew what all of my customers were thinking and saying about me,” Nethercott said, framing how conversation intelligence can improve products, service, pricing, and strategy when delivered in a secure, privacy-respecting way. Tresic positions the Intelligence Cloud around three common business gaps: limited visibility into churn and compliance risk, missed commitments that never make it into systems of record, and the need to coach and improve frontline performance in sales and support. The company says it has packaged these capabilities as ready-to-deploy “co-pilots” that can be enabled quickly—avoiding the long, complex deployments that often slow AI projects. Galop emphasized the approach is meant to assist workers, not replace them, noting the platform is designed to fit into existing workflows with minimal training. For the channel, Tresic's pitch is also economic: by bundling add-on packages per location and per user, providers can move from selling “just seats” to selling higher-value intelligence services—often approaching 2x (and potentially more) revenue per customer relationship. Tresic also highlighted partner readiness, citing integration work—including a partnership mentioned with NetSapiens Crescendo—as part of its effort to make onboarding and activation simple for service providers and their customers. Learn more at tresic.cloud.

Eliza Lochner is a seasoned marketing leader with experience spanning Fortune 500 companies and high-growth startups. She leads global marketing for Airbnb's real estate development partnerships and new supply initiatives, including the Airbnb Friendly Apartments program, which helps renters earn supplemental income while giving property owners transparency, controls, and new revenue opportunities. Passionate about building human connections that fuel business growth, Eliza focuses on partnerships at the intersection of housing affordability, flexibility, and real estate innovation.(01:30) - Airbnb-friendly Apartments (02:55) - Addressing Housing Affordability(04:34) - Owner & Property Manager Controls(06:28) - Program Success & Expansion(09:25) - Impact on Resident & Investor Attraction(14:24) - Revenue Sharing & Incentives(18:56) - Building Trust with Property Managers(21:14) - Blueprint - The Future of Real Estate - Register for 2026: The Premier Event for Industry Executives, Real Estate & Construction Tech Startups and VC's, at The Venetian, Las Vegas on September 22nd-24th, 2026. As a friend of Tangent, you can save $300 on your All-Access pass(22:05) - Channel Partners & Distribution Strategy(24:00) - Boutique Hotels Partnerships(25:45) - Major Events: World Cup and Olympics(29:43) - Future of Airbnb Friendly Buildings Program(31:26) - Collaboration Superpower: Michelle Obama & Eumaeus (Wiki)

Doug Green, Publisher of Technology Reseller News, spoke with Ty Kircher (NSP Practice Lead, Cellhub) and Dennis Napoliello (Head of U.S. Sales, MultiLine at Movius) about a problem every mobile-first organization runs into: separating personal and business communications on one smartphone—securely and compliantly—without forcing employees to carry two phones. “The MultiLine solution gives enterprises control without forcing users to carry two phones.” Cellhub has been working with vendors like Movius to build an ecosystem of partners (including carrier T-Mobile) that helps channel partners deliver innovative mobile solutions to end-users. Movius addresses the security gap in employee-to-client voice, messaging, and collaboration by offering Secure Communications as a Service. MultiLine™ is designed for hybrid and mobile work: users maintain two separate lines on one device, each secure, compliant, and dedicated—with separate features like voicemail—and with multi-channel communications documented per line. This eliminates the need for separate phones/numbers for Teams, personal use, social media, and apps like WhatsApp or WeChat—Movius consolidates multi-channel communication into one unified, secure ecosystem. That's a strong differentiator for solution providers selling into healthcare and financial services, where organizations must ensure communications compliance with regulations like HIPAA and FINRA, including on personal devices, and across verticals such as government, transportation, and education. MultiLine is positioned as an AI-driven, mobile-first approach that unifies communications and collaboration. Cellhub is also coordinating with a roster of vendor partners to bring unique mobile and wireless computing products and services to market, including initiatives with Tri Cascade, SkyMirr, and its PC-as-a-Service program with Lifetime EndPoint Resource. Reach Cellhub at www.cellhub.com or email Ty Kircher at Ty.Kircher@cellhub.com. Contact Movius at www.movius.ai or reach Dennis Napoliello at Dennis.Napoliello@Movius.ai. Software Mind Telco Days 2025: On-demand online conference Engaging Customers, Harnessing Data

Today, our guest on The PARTNERNOMICS® Show is Jay McBain, Chief Analyst at Omdia. Jay McBain is an accomplished speaker, author and innovator in the IT industry. Named Channel Influencer of the Year by Channel Partners Magazine, Top 40 Under Forty by the Business Review, Channel A-List by CRN, Top 8 Thought Leader by Channel Marketing Journal, Top 20 Visionary by ChannelPro, Top 25 Newsmaker by CDN Magazine, Top 50 Channel Influencer by Penton, Top 100 Most Respected Thought Leader by VSR Magazine, Global Power 150 by SMB Magazine, and Top 250 Managed Services Executives by MSPmentor. Jay is often sought out for keynotes, thought leadership and future industry guidance. He has spent his 30-year career in various executive channel sales, marketing, strategy roles within IBM, Lenovo, Autotask, ChannelEyes, Forrester, and now Canalys. Jay is the chief analyst for global channels at Canalys - the world's leading analyst firm with a distinct focus on channels, partnerships, alliances, and ecosystems. Jay has led several communities at CompTIA including Vendor Advisory Council, Managed Services Community, Advancing Women in Tech and Emerging Tech. He is also a board member of Channel Partners, Channel Vanguard Council, Ziff Davis Leadership Council, and CRN Channel Intelligence Council. As a futurist, and long standing member of the World Future Society, Jay is a recognized expert in the future of channels, alliances, partnering ecosystems and the study of emerging go-to-market models. An avid blogger, community, and social media expert, he has developed an innovative channel tech stack highlighting the importance of channel data and automation. Jay has lived in Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Raleigh, Albany & Boynton Beach. He actively gives back to the community and been on the board of the United Way, National Cristina Foundation, and Junior Achievement. Key Insights: Services Now Outpace Products In Growth, Making Partner Ecosystems Essential For Scale Millennial Buyers Prefer Integrated Best Of Breed Stacks And Avoid Traditional Sales Motions Ecosystems Determine Winners, As No Company Succeeds Without Alliances, Integrations, and Services Partners Deals Are Shaped By Twenty-eight Buying Moments and An Average Of Seven Influencing Partners LAUNCH Provides Leaders A Clear System For Building Profit-Focused Partnership Programs Around These Moments A Small Percentage Of Partners Produce Most Results, So Leaders Must Recruit Broadly And Invest In Proven Performers   ********* Are you a partnering professional wanting to earn industry certifications and badges to showcase on LinkedIn? We will give you the first course and certification for FREE ($595 value)!

We've brought Kelly Battaglini, back from her recent episode on product marketing to dig more into product launches. Connect with Kelly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kbattaglini/

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Cisco's channel partner ecosystem has undergone a profound transformation following a series of announcements at its 2025 Partner Summit in San Diego. The core focus of said announcements is enabling partners in an era of artificial intelligence (AI) via edge computing and Splunk. This significant shift is driven by new AI and edge offerings (Cisco Unified Edge and Cisco IQ), which promise to provide partners with fast-tracked time to market for next-generation, Cisco-powered solutions. This move is a seismic change to how partners operate, shifting the focus from traditional hardware sales to integrated, outcome-focused solutions with AI at the center of it all. The networking giant further backed the evolution with substantial commitments in marketing spend and major investments in partner education and enablement to build expertise in AI and security. All this is set to be formalized in the upcoming Cisco 360 Partner Program, launching in 2026. We sat down with Technology Reseller News Senior Technology Reporter Moshe Beauford, who offered his expert perspective on the Cisco partner news.

Jay McBain is the Chief Analyst for Global Channels at Canalys, recognized worldwide as a leading voice on partnerships, ecosystems, and the future of go-to-market models. With 30 years of experience at IBM, Lenovo, Autotask, ChannelEyes, and Forrester, he's been named Channel Influencer of the Year and featured on dozens of top industry lists. A futurist and community leader, Jay has served on multiple CompTIA councils and advisory boards for CRN, Channel Partners, and Ziff Davis. He's a sought-after keynote speaker and blogger whose insights shape how technology companies build and scale their partner ecosystems. Resources:  Website: https://www.jaymcbain.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/omdia/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaymcbain/

 In this UC Today interview, host Kieran Devlin speaks with Benny Matityahu, VP of Unified Communications & Collaboration at AudioCodes, and Roy Wizeman, Director of UCaaS Platform & Solutions at AudioCodes. Together, they unpack the challenges and opportunities facing channel partners as they navigate a fast-changing market defined by multi-UCaaS adoption, voice connectivity complexities, and AI-driven value-added services.Channel partners today are balancing customer demand across multiple UCaaS platforms while also being asked to deliver more advanced services. In this discussion, Benny and Roy explain how AudioCodes' Live Platform is designed to simplify that journey, remove barriers to multi-UCaaS growth, and create space for innovation with AI.Watch to discover:Why channel partners are embracing multi-UCaaS strategies to meet customer demand for flexibility.How AudioCodes Live Platform streamlines voice connectivity, migration, and interoperability across vendors.Real-world examples of partners scaling recurring revenue by layering AI-powered services such as contact center, transcription, and meeting insights.Where the partner opportunity lies as UCaaS commoditises and value shifts toward AI-enabled solutions.Next Steps:

In this episode of UC Today, host Kieran Devlin sits down with Steve Forcum, Director of Marketing and Program Management at SIPPIO, to explore how the company is helping UC channel partners navigate today's evolving market. As economic uncertainty grows and traditional UC sales slow, SIPPIO offers a compelling blueprint for partners to drive growth, tap into new verticals, and simplify voice deployments across Microsoft Teams and Zoom. If you're a UC channel partner looking to stay ahead, this is one conversation you don't want to miss.What if you could turn Teams or Zoom into a seamless calling experience without complex integrations or added costs? In this insightful video, Steve Forcum reveals how SIPPIO empowers channel partners with the tools, knowledge, and flexibility to do just that—while scaling faster and smarter.

"PC-as-a-Service makes fast, secure deployments possible without having to contract with a series of vendors for devices, connectivity, support, and replacement services — all with a competitive, predictable monthly payment," says John Tonthat, CRO of Cellhub, in a new Technology Reseller News podcast. Cellhub, a premier primary agent in T-Mobile's Channel Partner program, has teamed with Lifetime Endpoint Resources (EPR) to introduce a first-to-market PC-as-a-Service (PCaaS) program. Powered by T-Mobile's industry-leading 5G network and anchored by Lenovo® ThinkPad™ devices, the program is designed to give MSPs and solution providers a full-stack, fixed-price computing environment to deliver to end-users. Key features of the program include: Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 6 laptops – ready-to-go, preconfigured Built-in 5G connectivity – 75 to 125 GB/month for mobile-first access Embedded security agent and remote wipe – enterprise-grade protection 24/7/365 help desk support – powered by distributor D&H Distributing Advanced exchange – replacement devices shipped before the old ones return Fixed 36-month pricing – predictable IT costs in volatile markets Microsoft 365 + Copilot – AI-enhanced productivity Tonthat explains that Cellhub's mission is to represent and advance T-Mobile solutions, but this launch also positions the company as a systems integrator and lifecycle enabler for MSPs. By unifying connectivity, devices, support, and software in one bundle, PCaaS helps partners offer a premium 5G-enabled workplace while creating new streams of recurring revenue. The program is aimed squarely at small and mid-sized businesses, helping them gain enterprise-grade computing power without the burden of upfront capital expenditures. “Cellhub is thrilled to provide a superior, comprehensive 5G solution that can accelerate outcomes for small businesses, especially those who might not be able to maintain their own in-house IT teams,” Tonthat adds. Listen to the full conversation with John Tonthat of Cellhub on Technology Reseller News. Connect with Cellhub & John Tonthat John Tonthat on LinkedIn cellhub.com Cellhub on LinkedIn Cellhub, a premier primary agent in T-Mobile's Channel Partner program, is working with asset lifecycle management provider Lifetime EndPoint Resources to launch a first-to-market PC-as-a-Service (PCaaS) program for the channel, powered by T-Mobile. This end-to-end 5G connectivity solution provides high-performance Lenovo® ThinkPad™ computing devices connected by T-Mobile, the largest 5G network, bundling 24-hour help desk services, advanced exchange services, and Microsoft Office 365 and Copilot for the devices. Cellhub considers PCaaS a next-gen model for comprehensive device lifecycle management in the channel, positioned to drive the category forward. The PCaaS program is delivered over a 36-month term at a competitive (and tariff-resistant) monthly recurring fee as opposed to an up-front capital expenditure. PCaaS allows MSPs to offer a fully-managed, set-price computing bundle, complete with cutting edge 5G connectivity, Lenovo-branded devices,  “always-there” support, and expedited exchange of devices when issues arise. It's ideal for a variety of modern workplaces, especially companies whose employees are distributed among different locations, like visiting nurses services or attorneys' offices, translating to reliable, consistent connectivity with minimal downtime and long-term optimized computing.

JSA TV caught up with Warren Reyburn, COO of White Label Communications, to discuss their expansion into CPaaS, a new partnership with InfoBip, and a major brand refresh on the horizon.Stay tuned for updated messaging, a new website, and exciting innovations in CPaaS & CCaaS!

Great catching up with Dan Balderrama of Zenlayer on JSA TV about their channel-first approach and how they're empowering partners to expand globally. By simplifying global connectivity and integrating AI-powered networking and compute solutions, Zenlayer is helping businesses scale efficiently in high-growth markets.

In this episode of JSA TV, Mike Padula, VP of Wholesale, Education & Partner Sales, and Lyle Parratt, Channel Manager at Conterra Networks, join us to discuss the newly launched Channel Partner Program. This program is designed to empower partners with exclusive resources, expert support, and opportunities to grow their business. Mike and Lyle also share how Conterra's comprehensive solutions help partners meet the changing needs of their customers, as well as how Conterra differentiates itself in the market. Finally, they offer insights into the future of the channel space and how Conterra is positioning itself to stay ahead of key trends, ensuring continued growth for its partners in the competitive telecom and tech industries.

Following his extensive travel throughout Asia, Inflect's CEO Mike Nguyen stopped by JSA TV at Channel Partners 2025 to discuss APAC digital infrastructure trends, his key takeaways from GTC in San Francisco and what's on the horizon for his digital infrastructure marketplace, www.inflect.com.#ITInfrastructure #ITStrategy #NetworkOptimizationABOUT INFLECT:Inflect's cutting-edge online tools and advisory services empower customers to quickly discover and procure digital infrastructure tailored to their specific business requirements. They enable a holistic, neutral view of the internet infrastructure industry so that professionals can get actionable data to make better, faster decisions.

Live from Channel Partners, Jackie Steinberg, DartPoints' Channel Chief, discusses DartPoints' expanding channel presence, the impact of AI on data center demand, and new opportunities for partners in an evolving digital ecosystem. Don't miss out on this exclusive interview uncovering DartPoints' strategic advancements.

In this episode of Tech Sales Insights, Randy Seidl is joined by Dave and Joe O'Callaghan, co-founders of Vation, about their journey and experiences as a father-son duo in the tech industry. They discuss the importance of go-to-market strategies and what leaders can learn from the innovation ecosystem. Sponsored by Sandler, a sales training provider, the discussion delves into the significance of sales training, especially for first-line managers, and explores the evolving roles of technology leaders. Joe and Dave share insights on the challenges emerging tech companies face, the importance of execution and humility, and the growing role of AI and data security. They also highlight the importance of cold calling, the shift in sales training needs, and the evolving skill sets required in the tech industry.KEY TAKEAWAYSFirst Father-Son Duo: Episode features Dave and Joe O'Callaghan, co-founders of Vation Ventures, discussing their father-son dynamic. Business Focus: Highlight on go-to-market strategies from the innovation ecosystem. Importance of Sales Training: Emphasized by Sandler, focusing on training necessity due to promotions during COVID. AI and Security: Special focus on AI trends and the importance of secure AI. Channels and Relationships: The enduring importance of trusting relationships in the channel for effective advice and sales. Cold Calling: Seeing a resurgence, combined with high-quality, AI-supported research. Mentorship and Humility: The fundamental value of being humble, inquisitive, and learning from great mentors. Innovation and Execution: Balancing innovation with execution in today's rapidly evolving technology landscape.QUOTES"Innovation is hard. Innovation at scale is really, really hard." "Humility and inquisitiveness are key in driving innovation and leading teams." "The only person that likes to hear you talk about yourself is your mom." "Distributors can lean into orchestrating everything from Dataiku to Cisco Meraki for a comprehensive solution."Find out more about Dave & Joe O'Callaghan through the link/s below:Dave O'Callaghan's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveo4/Joe O'Callaghan's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeyocallaghan/This episode is sponsored by Sandler. Sandler is a world leader in innovative sales, leadership, and management training. For more than 50 years, Sandler has taught its distinctive, non-traditional selling system and highly effective sales training methodology, which has helped salespeople and sales managers take charge of the process.

Ross from Houston faces a common challenge in channel sales: how do you create brand preference for your product when you're selling through distributors who carry multiple competing lines and competitors who undercut your price? His company builds industrial dust-collection equipment and ducting, but they don't sell direct—meaning they rely heavily on distributors, contractors, and engineers to choose their brand over cheaper alternatives. Below, you'll find key insights on how to drive more “pull-through” sales to your channel partners and convince every stakeholder—from designers to installers—to pick your product. Why Pull-Through in Channel Sales Matters When you sell through distribution, you lose a lot of direct control. Your product is on the shelf (literally or figuratively) alongside competitors, and the distributor or contractor can often steer buyers toward any brand they choose. Pull-through happens when the end user, contractor, or engineer specifically requests your brand—making your distributor the middleman who fulfills the preference you created. Educate & Collaborate With Specifiers Ross' sales team already does lunch-and-learn sessions with engineering firms. Those engineers create the specs that contractors must follow, so if your product is “baked in” early, that's a massive advantage later when the contractor goes shopping. But the real test comes when the contractor or installer sees a cheaper alternative on the distributor's line card. Key Steps: Educate engineers on the deeper value and functionality of your product, so they'll insist on it in their specs. Collaborate with contractors. Even if they're not the final decision-maker, they can heavily influence whether your premium line or a cheaper knockoff is chosen. Brand Preference vs. Price Objections The toughest hurdle for a premium brand is the classic price objection. If the competitor's line undercuts you, how do you prove your extra value? Unearth the Real Cost of Going Cheap. Show specifiers and end users the Total Cost of Ownership—that cheaper or less-robust solutions can lead to higher maintenance, safety issues, or inefficiencies down the line. Highlight Success Stories. Gather testimonials or case studies from buyers who saved time, boosted reliability, or lowered total cost of ownership by choosing your brand. Create Tools and Guides. Develop clear documentation or ROI calculators that help buyers see beyond sticker price—especially useful if the distributor's rep isn't fully equipped to present your value. Dealing with the Distributor as a Gatekeeper You can do all the contractor or engineer training you want, but if the distributor's inside salesperson steers a buyer to a cheaper product, you still lose. That's why building the distributor relationship is non-negotiable. Action Items: Train the Distributor's Sales Reps. Show them exactly how to pitch your brand's advantages, from installation ease to long-term reliability. Reward Them for Advocacy. If possible, offer spiffs or incentives when they successfully sell your line. In some cases, highlight how your product can reduce their support headaches and returns, making their life easier. Co-Sell on Big Deals. Bring major opportunities to the distributor, or volunteer to go on key calls together. When you help them close deals, they become more loyal to you. Get Proactive and Strategic One pitfall in channel sales is that your rep can become just a “help desk” for the distributor—always fixing problems instead of actively driving new deals. But a proactive approach can turn that support into a competitive edge: Offer On-Site or Virtual Coaching. Whenever the distributor or contractor hits a snag, your rep steps in, demonstrating expertise. This builds trust and brand loyalty. Balance Support with Hunting. While your reps should help, they also need time to create demand among engineers, contractors, and end users. If their entire day is spent resolving small issues, they'll miss bigger opportunities. Combine Marketing and Sales Efforts To truly differentiate your product, marketing must work hand-in-hand with sales. You need targeted content—white papers, case studies, videos, ROI calculators—that highlight your product's unique benefits. Ensure your sellers share these assets during lunch-and-learns, in prospecting emails, or at trade shows. Possible Tactics:  Webinars. Showcase how your product solves real problems more effectively than DIY or cheaper alternatives. Distributor Portal. Provide easily accessible resources (FAQ sheets, training modules) that help the distributor's reps pitch your product with confidence. Customer Spotlight Videos. Interview customers who switched from cheaper knockoffs to your premium brand—and never looked back. Putting It All Together Ultimately, it's about controlling the narrative and making sure every stakeholder sees the bigger picture. You've got to hammer home: “Sure, there's a cheaper widget over there. But ours wins on performance and total cost of ownership.” If you can get that message across in channel sales early—before anyone starts price shopping—then you'll have a far easier time at the final point of sale. Building pull-through demand in a channel sales environment requires a multi-pronged approach. You must: Educate so your product is specified from the start. Convince users that your brand is worth the investment and eliminates future headaches. Equip distributors with simple, persuasive messaging that helps them advocate for you over the competition. Demonstrate unwavering support and expertise whenever they need it. When done right, this synergy creates a ripple effect. Engineers specify your line, contractors request it by name, and distributors become your ambassadors. Follow this playbook consistently, and watch how quickly “we'll consider your product” turns into “that's the only product we'll consider.” If you're facing a sales or leadership problem and have a question for me, head over to to salesgravy.com/ask and we'll get you on the show.

Ross from Houston faces a common challenge in channel sales: how do you create brand preference for your product when you're selling through distributors who carry multiple competing lines and competitors who undercut your price? His company builds industrial dust-collection equipment and ducting, but they don't sell direct—meaning they rely heavily on distributors, contractors, and engineers to choose their brand over cheaper alternatives. Below, you'll find key insights on how to drive more “pull-through” sales to your channel partners and convince every stakeholder—from designers to installers—to pick your product. Why Pull-Through in Channel Sales Matters When you sell through distribution, you lose a lot of direct control. Your product is on the shelf (literally or figuratively) alongside competitors, and the distributor or contractor can often steer buyers toward any brand they choose. Pull-through happens when the end user, contractor, or engineer specifically requests your brand—making your distributor the middleman who fulfills the preference you created. Educate & Collaborate With Specifiers Ross' sales team already does lunch-and-learn sessions with engineering firms. Those engineers create the specs that contractors must follow, so if your product is “baked in” early, that's a massive advantage later when the contractor goes shopping. But the real test comes when the contractor or installer sees a cheaper alternative on the distributor's line card. Key Steps: Educate engineers on the deeper value and functionality of your product, so they'll insist on it in their specs. Collaborate with contractors. Even if they're not the final decision-maker, they can heavily influence whether your premium line or a cheaper knockoff is chosen. Brand Preference vs. Price Objections The toughest hurdle for a premium brand is the classic price objection. If the competitor's line undercuts you, how do you prove your extra value? Unearth the Real Cost of Going Cheap. Show specifiers and end users the Total Cost of Ownership—that cheaper or less-robust solutions can lead to higher maintenance, safety issues, or inefficiencies down the line. Highlight Success Stories. Gather testimonials or case studies from buyers who saved time, boosted reliability, or lowered total cost of ownership by choosing your brand. Create Tools and Guides. Develop clear documentation or ROI calculators that help buyers see beyond sticker price—especially useful if the distributor's rep isn't fully equipped to present your value. Dealing with the Distributor as a Gatekeeper You can do all the contractor or engineer training you want, but if the distributor's inside salesperson steers a buyer to a cheaper product, you still lose. That's why building the distributor relationship is non-negotiable. Action Items: Train the Distributor's Sales Reps. Show them exactly how to pitch your brand's advantages, from installation ease to long-term reliability. Reward Them for Advocacy. If possible, offer spiffs or incentives when they successfully sell your line. In some cases, highlight how your product can reduce their support headaches and returns, making their life easier. Co-Sell on Big Deals. Bring major opportunities to the distributor, or volunteer to go on key calls together. When you help them close deals, they become more loyal to you. Get Proactive and Strategic One pitfall in channel sales is that your rep can become just a “help desk” for the distributor—always fixing problems instead of actively driving new deals. But a proactive approach can turn that support into a competitive edge: Offer On-Site or Virtual Coaching. Whenever the distributor or contractor hits a snag, your rep steps in, demonstrating expertise. This builds trust and brand loyalty. Balance Support with Hunting. While your reps should help,