228 - Unlocking Multi-Partner Growth with Microsoft Marketplace feat Jason Rook

Microsoft’s Jason Rook joins Ultimate Partner

Jason Rook is an accomplished channel and sales leader with a wealth of experience in cloud computing. As the senior director of Product Marketing and commercial Marketplace Channel Sales at Microsoft, he leads strategy to help Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) build and sell applications through channel partners. 

Before Microsoft, Jason was the Global Modernization Program Lead – Systems Integrators at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he grew revenue and created innovative service offerings with AWS consulting partners. He also served as Business Development Manager – Global ISV Modernization at AWS, enhancing customer service through agility and innovation.

Jason has contributed significantly as a Microsoft Partner Advisory Board – Inspire member, providing feedback on Microsoft’s partner strategy and events. He was also the Senior Vice President of Business Development at 10th Magnitude, now Cognizant Microsoft Business Group, driving revenue growth and earning recognition as a 4x Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year.

With over two decades of experience and a proven track record of driving growth and innovation, Jason Rook remains a leading force in cloud computing and partner ecosystems.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode

0:02 – Partner Growth and Success in the Cloud Computing Industry

3:59 – Azure Marketplace Growth and Partner Support

9:05 – Marketplace opportunities for ISVs and Channel Partners

13:35 – Microsoft Partnerships and Marketplace Deals

18:11 – Partner Relationships and Opportunities in the tech industry

21:58 – AI Opportunities in Microsoft’s Marketplace

28:08 – Leveraging Marketplace Transactions to Build Better Microsoft Relationships

33:41 – Successful Partnerships and Key Strategies

37:45 – Microsoft Partnerships and Marketplace Opportunities

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from one of the industry’s leading experts on how to navigate and succeed in the Microsoft commercial marketplace. Whether you’re a software publisher, channel partner, or just interested in the tech industry, this episode is packed with actionable insights.

https://youtu.be/fpIFOpfGrhE

LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP

For more insights and detailed discussions, tune in to the full episode of The Ultimate Partner. Subscribe to stay updated with the latest trends and strategies in the world of technology partnerships.

Transcript

Keywords: 

Microsoft commercial marketplace, Azure Marketplace, ISVs, channel partners, cloud computing, AI opportunities, Microsoft relationships, tech industry, partner growth, marketplace deals

Transcript (Generated by Otter A.I. – Please Excuse Any Typos)

Jay McBain 0:02  

Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent you

Vince Menzione 0:13  

show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every

Sharon Schoenborn 0:18  

day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning

Vince Menzione 0:23  

that flywheel success is where you will build momentum. And that momentum will continue. And then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince BenZion, your host, and I’m on a mission to empower every individual organization and partner to achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Much of the discussion we’re having is around the tectonic shifts, this decade of the ecosystem, the increasing dominance of the three hyperscalers the changing buying behavior, and this marketplace Moment. Today, I’m going to double down with a friend who’s leading the charge at Microsoft around marketplaces, and Channel Sales ecosystem led growth. Jason rook Jason, welcome to the podcast expense.

Jason Rook 1:12  

Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here. Great

Vince Menzione 1:15  

to have you in Boca. So a little side note for people I’ve been listening for seven and a half years, Jason was episode 13. Like one of the very first podcast we did. We were back, I was back in the like the home office or I was maybe a second bedroom of the third bedroom at the time, and recording on zoom in those days and had you on. You had been in a row we’ll talk about I want you to talk about your career. But you had been in a role at Microsoft. And then you had left and you joined a fast startup, an organization that was really growing around Azure. That was like a big thing back in the day. We’re just starting to launch into the cloud in a big way.

Jason Rook 1:52  

Yes. And we that first conversation was all about kind of that that growth, right. And at that point, people still didn’t really know what Azure was in some cases. Yeah. So that was fun.

Vince Menzione 2:01  

Yeah. We got to meet we got to work together in the same organization at Microsoft on the US partner team has when I brought my public sector team over to us partner became part of the leadership team. And you were running this high growth group you had, in fact, you had been invested in I believe, from the Azure team. Yeah. This was at the point where we were kind of almost like the black belt type approach. We’re, we’re doing this fast start into Azure into cloud. And we didn’t have a lot of partners at the time that were dead, understood cloud and understood Azure. And you were late leading the charge. Yeah,

Jason Rook 2:33  

you think about it. We had, we had no partners at that point, right? Because it was this point in time where everyone was confused in the initial reaction was let’s go get the biggest partners, the more traditional Microsoft partners. That’s right. And and they weren’t on board. No, it was a well, and so that team, that team, what we discovered, you know, the phrase that someone coined, we don’t know who it was, but the board in the cloud, or the cloud, I know. Yep. And that that partner, you know, that was what accelerated the Azure growth. And, you know, some of those partners. lucky enough to be a part of that some of those partners just had rocketship exits. It was it was a lot of fun. Now you look around and it I always kind of joke. It’s kind of like SharePoint at one point. Nobody did SharePoint, and then everybody’s a SharePoint partner. And now everybody’s an Azure part. Yeah, right. So

Vince Menzione 3:22  

and at that point, we were trying to help organizations understand from the best of the best, you had left Microsoft, you had gone to an organization that was really considered the best of the best in class, and was on that rocket ship. You were part of that rocket ship. And tell us a little bit more about that journey and how you have led here.

Jason Rook 3:40  

Oh, wow. Yeah, so that was, it was a lot of fun. That rocket ship was a rocket ship. And it was at a time when, you know, I think it was interesting, because we had customers that a little further down the cloud path, because, you know, there’s some other competitors that were kind of leading the way and Microsoft was catching up. And, and we had just this ecosystem of partners. And the story was interesting, because Microsoft’s product was more app dev focused, you remember, we made this pivotal moment when would Azure became kind of an infrastructure platform, and then everybody got on board, but in those in those early days, it was really about bringing the expertise to the table along hand in hand with the Microsoft account teams to close you know, in those days, what were mega Azure deals today those those titles or monthly payment but if those times, right, those Azure deals were really significant. That’s what kind of crossed the chasm for Azure.

Vince Menzione 4:38  

I mentioned to you yesterday at our van or executive summit that like a million dollar quota for Azure was considered that was like the that was like the business quota for public sector when when it first came

Jason Rook 4:50  

out. Yeah, that’s the company that I joined to the bank to they were involved in one of the first Azure deals and it was like a 250k deals huge and it was on Herta right It was, I think you remember at Lincoln Square, we had these big poster boards and like the top as your board of the cloud party, so people wouldn’t know what a partner looked like. And here’s the part of it closest to our TK deal. That’s like mind blowing.

Vince Menzione 5:11  

I remember those battles was in the office back. So you came back to Microsoft almost two years ago. Tell us more about that. Yeah. So

Jason Rook 5:19  

well, you know, if you think about the work we were doing at 10th magnitude, and I kind of started story in in roughly 2019, there were two things going on at TIFF, maybe two that were pseudo marketplace related. So the first of which is that, you know, our bread and butter was really helping customers get to cloud and one of the sweet spots for us were ISVs, you had ISVs, that were either startups or ISVs, that had a real legacy on prem infrastructure architecture. And we would go in and help them get to cloud, right? Cloud shift back in the day model, lift and shift in the ISP space, it was more apt of DevOps focus, more redesign, but we were doing quite a bit of lift and shift, as well. And we noticed as we worked with some of those that some of those ISVs were like, even in the M 12. portfolio, and they started to tell us, hey, we want to transact in cloud marketplaces. And Microsoft started to push us that direction. We want to do that in one of those 12 ISVs. If you don’t know him, 12 is the Microsoft VC fund. Right? I was gonna ask you that. Yeah. So one of those ISVs we actually help them get their app into marketplace. And we thought, wow, there’s a business here for us. Yeah. But we were equipped to help people with the publish aspect. So we started to strike up a relationship with all people tackle IO, right? We have, we’re having a conversation with John the team there. And as well with the Azure Marketplace team, all the way back in 2019. About Hey, could we be kind of the front end of this is V motion, right to get the ISV to cloud and knowing that one of the exit paths for that ISP was to get to Cloud Marketplace, and that’s where tackle 

would pick them up and run. So that was the one big thing. 

Jason Rook 7:34

The other thing that was really interesting is the ISPs that we worked with, were really pressing us on will you sell our stock, and back then it was hashey Corp. And Jeff software is really no longer around the same scenario, New Relic, those ISVs were coming in saying, Hey, you guys do a great job. But design implementation support, yeah, but the whole relationship gets really rocky when we have to bring in another reseller to sell Yes. And so if you’ve ever been around a pure play pro serve, organization, going from Pro surf to I’m gonna sell software is an incredibly heavy left very, it’s heavy, and you know, different motions. If you’re in a high growth organization like that there’s, you know, a list of 10 things, you’re gonna spend capital on selling software, very bottom right. And so we started to, we started to see, hey, in our CSP business, and what a lot of people don’t know is, even back in 2019, you could sell ISV apps through marketplace on CSP contracts, which blows some people’s mind, right?

Jason Rook 8:05

But we were doing it and we would tell the customer, hey, you’re gonna buy some Azure from us, you want some SendGrid? We’ll add that to your you know, we’ll add that to your to your CSP bill. And we started to think this is the path for how we’re going to sell software in the future. Interesting. Yeah. So you know, COVID hits to the bank, two exits, we kind of you know, the world changed a little bit. I was at another hyperscalers doing some really interesting things. And research, Project research, research. Yeah, it was, it was an awesome experience. I really, really was. But a friend of mine connected me with Yvonne, who did your show a couple episodes ago. And Anthony Joseph, who keynoted for us in Dallas, amazingly blue repeat that. Yes. Yeah. So I was having conversations. And Anthony’s message was, hey, you know, this marketplace thing. And Microsoft’s being kind of rebooted, a real shot in the arm, and it’s going to have some explosive growth. But if you look at the big puzzle of marketplace, there’s a puzzle piece missing. And that’s channel partner. So come over here and help us figure out that puzzle piece. So that’s what I’m doing now is working on how we the channel partner, and we use channel partner, broadly, right? Think of it as non ISV. How do we get the non ISV partner and those 400,000 partners go? So ISV apps?

Vince Menzione 9:05  

So I’m just going to say not? Because you’re sitting here, I think it’s one of the most important roles in Microsoft, because we talk about the mid market, huge opportunity in the mid market. We talk about the Marketplace moment. And it’s really driven not because of Microsoft, Amazon or Google so much as the changing and buying behavior. The older things that are happening, right the dominance of the hyper scalars, the cloud commitments, the role of marketplaces, the decision making process changing and the ability to consume against that. But it’s right now it’s just a it’s it’s just a one to one between an ISV or an SI and on Microsoft, Amazon or Google, right. We we forget about this buying process and we forget about the influence strategy that’s happening. What the customer is really doing is they’re not directly buying from these ISVs necessarily. They’re buying through their trusted relationships, their existing agree Minutes, the people that have been surrounding their organizations for years and years and years, these trusted IDs, and they’re not necessarily somebody at the ISP. Yeah. If

Jason Rook 10:09  

you look, you think about every analyst slide, you know, we talked about that a little bit yesterday, the numbers are big no matter who does the slide, right? That’s right. But that ISV marketplace opportunity number, it’s big. But what you don’t see on this slide is, the channels are part of that, right? And the channel parts not going to go away, they’re not going away. None of these top 100 300 ISVs are all going to say, we’re out of the channel business, right? Nobody’s gonna say, Well, I’m gonna replace my channel and build an entire sales force to go do this, right, the GMO is gonna have value. And that’s, that’s not going away, it’s probably even gonna get bigger in the marketplace,

Vince Menzione 10:42  

right? The big guys aren’t gonna rip and replace the small ISVs. They need scale. So they need the partners and that’s figured out so you know, you you hosted a session yesterday, you Greg gold camp, and Sanjay Mehta from tackle on stage talking about the staggering growth of cloud marketplaces. I was hoping we could dive in a little bit here and talk more about your session.

Jason Rook 11:04  

But my session yesterday, yeah. So first of all, it was just a fun conversation, the way we approach that, right? We just kind of got together as a group of folks on the phone and said, Okay, what do you hear? And what do you hear it and then we kind of broke it out into topics, I thought the flow was really good. But the the gist of the session was, you know, these are the top things that we hear from execs, whether it’s a customer exec ISV, or partner exec, and it started all the way with, you know, we get in the room, and some people will say, is marketplace for real, right, like, Yeah, where are we at on the on the hypo meter? And so we talked about Yes, Mark, please. Absolutely. For real, you can see it in the numbers that we talked about. Okay, it’s for real, but what is it right, and we still spend a lot of time on that. And then we talked about once you’re kind of you believe it’s for real? And you know what it is, then what do you do about it? And that was that’s where the conversation gets really interesting.

Vince Menzione 11:59  

So what are you doing to accelerate and capture this opportunity?

Jason Rook 12:03  

So me in particular, in the role that I’m serving today, I think the focus is on this channel partner sales model. And the way that we kind of think about marketplace, we think about marketplaces a product. And within marketplace, there’s in within that product, there’s a number of features, and they’re really kind of two core features that enable a non ISV channel partner, we’ll call them a channel partner to go sell marketplace or an ISV after marketplace. And the one is the CSP notion. I mentioned that that’s been around for a long time.

Vince Menzione 12:34  

I remember when we when we instituted Yeah, CSP. Yep.

Jason Rook 12:37  

And the ability to attach that third party app has been there only recently. And why say recently, two and a half years ago, February 2022, we launched the private offer functionality with SMA to do a custom deal. And you know, partner can earn margin, the customer can pay below list price, all those types of things. And then, in July last July, we launched what we call multi party private offers, to US customers only. And I’m sure we’re going to talk a little bit about that expansion today. But it that functionality allows any Microsoft partner to sell an ISVs application through marketplace into an enterprise customer, which is where it gets really interesting because the enterprise space, we have customers that have cloud consumption committed, right, and they can use those commitments to purchase ISV apps. So when I say any partner it really, like we designed that feature with an incredibly low bar. Yeah. Because we want everybody to participate in this motion. Right? When I say all you need is a Microsoft AI cloud partner program ID formerly known as an NPN. ID, which you can get one of those. I have one Yeah, you have one of those. to transact the deal today. We should do it. Let’s go decrement somebody’s Mac. Yeah.

Vince Menzione 13:43  

Well, what’s important here too, is that it means that Microsoft’s going to do the direct billing to the customer. Yes,

Jason Rook 13:47  

yeah. Yeah. So you don’t have to collect Microsoft’s gonna do the collections in Microsoft’s gonna pay you on defined terms. I mean,

Vince Menzione 13:54  

and they’re gonna pay you on time on time, if that’s the

Jason Rook 13:57  

like, that’s not new, right? Anybody who’s a Microsoft partner, one of the reasons you’d love to be a part of Biff or Sif or any of those programs is, you know, while there’s lots of hurdles, and lots of work, you know, the checks gonna come on time, right?

Vince Menzione 14:08  

Yeah. And it might come early with a discount. Yeah, nothing. We know any of that. So one of the concerns I hear from partners is that the marketplace opportunity is clear for ISVs, but maybe not so clear for the SI world. Yeah,

Jason Rook 14:23  

that that’s true. I’d say it’s true. Everywhere. Very true in the Microsoft ecosystem that can be high. Is that the case? Well, I think there are a couple of things. Especially the Microsoft ecosystem, the traditional Microsoft partner, the one that you’ve you’ve had a lot of them on your show. Yeah, don’t sell software. Right, right. So there’s an investment they’re gonna need to make Now earlier, I said the the bar is lower with marketplace, but you still have to invest, right? You still have to build that muscle in the strength to go do that. And so a lot of those partners are saying hey, you It’s not clear to me that that’s worth it for me and what I need to go do to be able to transact software, right. So I think there’s part of that. There’s also some confusion around, hey, I’m a partner, and I want to sell my professional services and an ISP app, right. And so that’s not necessarily functionality that’s available yet. That’s a feature that we’re working on, we’re actually in private preview to allow that systems integrator to sell their, you know, $100,000, Azure migration, along with, you know, a million dollars in New Relic or whatever the ISV product happens to be, which is what the customer wants, right? The customer wants one stop shopping, they want it super easy. The partner wants friction free, easy transactions without a lot of Microsoft tax on top of

Vince Menzione 15:46  

those, right? And when does that feature and functionality come? So we’re private

Jason Rook 15:49  

preview for that right now for the US, Canada and UK. And so will at some point, we’ll launch into general availability, and then that that will follow kind of the MPO expansion across the globe as we get to that point. So

Vince Menzione 16:02  

as you you’ve been rolling out this MPO program, I think, since the start of the fiscal year, maybe a little bit before then. Right. We, for general availability started the fiscal year started the school year, what have you learned along the way? A

Jason Rook 16:14  

couple things. I think one of the things that I’ve been, we kind of expected this, but I’ve been shocked at how, how lopsided the managed versus unmanaged is. And I think interest I should clear that Yeah, yeah, in in the, in the Microsoft world, you have all kinds of partners, everybody can participate. But there are those partners that are managed, right. So they’ve got an FTE of some type or vendor of some type that looks after them within the Microsoft space. And normally, those are the ones that drive significant amount of revenue. They’re participating in all the programs, that’s pilots, CSP, its solution, assessments, whatever it happens to be, they’re participating in all those things. Those are not the partners that are driving the majority of the MPO deals. It’s the Microsoft partner, who is a reseller of some other type of software as well. And I always kind of framed it up, hey, it’s the it’s the Microsoft partner, you know, back in the day, when we were kind of getting started is that partner that was they were the partner in town, and then they build a Cisco business, or then they build a VMware business, then all of a sudden, they’re no longer a thought partner in town, and somebody swooped in and took that spot. Now what’s happening is we need that partner to come sell Cisco, or VMware or Red Hat, or any of those products. And they’re swooping in to enterprise customers, because they’re experts at that sale. They’re experts at that product deployment and that customer in that they know that customer that inside and out yeah, in their swooping in and selling these deals. And now the account teams are like, wait, I, where did you come from, right? Like we’ve rolled through five reps since the last time we entered interacted with you. And those partners are selling marketplace deals, and they’re not small. They’re huge marketplace deals. And all of a sudden, they’re on the radar. Again, I think we knew that would happen just because of the nature of marketplace. But the pace at which it’s happened. And you know, the the wind wires that we see and those types of things are pretty staggering.

Vince Menzione 18:11  

And are they bigger partners are smaller, smaller parts smaller. So this goes back to the trusted relationship piece, right? The seven seats at the table, these are the organizations that you as a customer, and you might have a Big Mac agreement with Microsoft. Yeah. And yet you trust this local relationship to

Jason Rook 18:26  

win because you trust that local relationship because they’re experts in titanium or VMware or whatever that happens to be right. Now, granted, the big guys are doing well. But it’s staggering how good the little guys are doing. It’s It’s really It’s refreshing to see right? Because we’ve got this 400,000 partner ecosystem you often wonder like, hey, where does everybody play? Yeah, and people are finding a new path. We

Vince Menzione 18:51  

are thrilled to announce our partnership within partner software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally, in partner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management, and partner marketing automation. Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance tracking customizable partner journeys and comprehensive business planning. These features Empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value in partner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere and continues to innovate with new modules like analytic studio designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. For more information visit in partner.com.

Vince Menzione 19:47  

I think that’s fascinating about this and I don’t want to digress is that we Microsoft had this concentration at one point when I was there around these large account resellers and then became LSPs. And it was a concentration of All of the revenue up to a few. And what you’re saying is it’s spreading out, it’s thinning out along along the long tail a little bit. Maybe not quite the longtail, but a little further down to smaller. Well,

Jason Rook 20:11  

specific to marketplace. Yeah. This market marketplace. Yeah, there’s just because there are things that other partners can do very, very well, that now drive and marketplace Sell Sale, which then drives Azure. Right. And it’s in, that’s a really unique opportunity at this point in time. And I mentioned like, we set that bar very low to be able to participate, because we wanted to see that happen. I think it’s an interesting you think about Microsoft, right? The waves of opportunity, right? There was the, you know, I’m

Vince Menzione 20:45  

gonna bring this up with you. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I

Jason Rook 20:48  

was looking up, you know, I kind of came at the wave of which was, you know, the windows 2000 AD, the mail wars, right, the notes versus exchange, that was a wave. And then there was the dotnet days, and then SharePoint and Azure. I think there’s a window right now for partners to step into this marketplace motion. It’s not going to be a wave, like some of the other waves we’re probably going to talk about today. But it is it’s a window of opportunity to kind of reinvigorate your Microsoft relationship and reinsert yourself into some of those things that you may have wanted, like deep relationships with account teams, the ability to sell with and across Microsoft. Yeah,

Vince Menzione 21:23  

yep. So new opportunity areas to engage with Microsoft sell selling teams. Yep. Being first being first in an area. So same way that your other organization was with Azure. Yep. Yeah. You mentioned you alluded to Geo expansion. You talked a little bit about moving from the US market into the UK, Canada. Yep. Tell us more about that. So

Jason Rook 21:44  

we don’t disclose a lot about the geo expansion. And I think the reason why, and you can kind of look at how other hyper scalars have rolled theirs out, as well as that. It’s not a technical lift. It’s a lot of tax and regulatory. Right. Yeah. So there’s just on commerce engine below. Yeah, absolutely. So there’s ongoing conversations, but we do know that we are on track to launch in Canada and UK that previous one really well. So in the summer timeframe that will go live there. And then we’ll start to look at what the next geographies are. After that. It’s obvious if you think about where we want to go, it’s we want to go everywhere, right. But there are definitely markets that are larger, that are a lot of opportunity. There’s definitely some of those markets are also highly complex regulatory perspective. Right. So as I think the plan, you know, we’ve done a much better job over the last two years of kind of putting this roadmap out. The next probably roadmap, you know, it’s always the Inspire timeframe, which I know, we can’t say inspire timeframe anymore, because that’s kind of gone. But

Vince Menzione 22:43  

it’s July 1, beginning of the fiscal year Microsoft, and inspires usually mid July. Right. So

Jason Rook 22:48  

normally, we say inspire timeframe. But uh, you know, we’ll probably get more updates on that in that July timeframe. The

Vince Menzione 22:54  

July timeframe, we’re gonna call it from now on, right, it’s, it’s changing. So you alluded to something else earlier, too. And, you know, it’s like the elephant in the room. We can’t have a discussion any longer without talking about AI is huge AI opportunity. Right. Jay was with us yesterday $158 billion channel opportunity by 2028. Probably under call that he once said to me that he thought it was a hype moment around AI. He has since said that sentiment has changed. And he’s he’s pulled back from that hype moment and saying that this really is the moment for AI.

Jason Rook 23:27  

I mean, obviously at Microsoft, we think it is. I think, you know, if I think channel, right? I mean, that’s what this conversation is all about, I think, what would be interesting to as to figure out as to see who figures out the AI opportunity and what it looks like, right? So I don’t sit on as many as virus reports. I used to now that I’m at Microsoft, but I do spend some time with a dynamics partner. And one of the pieces of feedback that they’ve given me is that, hey, we go in and we do these copilot presentations. And we turn it all on and we leave and then we come back to start to prospect and the customers like great, we got copilot. We’re copilot everywhere. We’re done. Thanks for showing us right. And so their concern was, hey, is this AI motion going to really kind of cut into our opportunity? Yeah. And what they’ve started to do is kind of dust off some of the old things. They were you know, like most partners, they were exchange shop and office 365, SharePoint, Azure dynamics, they started to go back and kind of dust off some of that SharePoint playbook and say, Okay, we’re gonna go run around all the business departments. And now that you’ve got AI, let us show you how we can do like Intelligent Automation. Let me let me show you how we can build internal apps. So I think there’s a path there where people are going to pick up some of that muscle. I think there’s, I think, you know, app dev and AI might be easier. I know. Yesterday, we had a session to talk about All right, we talked about all the co pilot toolset, yes, the studio. But there’s going to be kind of a resurrection of those guys that go in right Apps customers. I think there are going to be that’s going to be some super cool work that’ll happen. If people go straight to the hey, we’re gonna get to build a data governance packet or practice. I didn’t know, you know, it took me two, we went down that path with data, right? We hired a bunch of data scientists. And what we found out is that customers wanted to do their own data work, right? Yeah, I’m not gonna let some partner come in here and tell me what my data means. But usually they don’t they They’re a mess with their data. They’re a mess. So there’s probably some some governance in the arc and some guidance there. But I don’t know. Well, time will tell. But if I were building an AI partner today, boy, it would be a little more apt heavy. And I’d be building that tool set.

Vince Menzione 25:36  

I want to ask you another question about AI. And I remember having this conversation with somebody who was on the global blackbelt. Team. Yeah. When copilot first came out, and it was we were getting calls from every CEO saying come in here. And it was the first time maybe in years that Microsoft was getting that level of attention. Right? AWS had basically had the data state, they had most of the, because they had the eyes dominance, right. And that kind of shifted with AI. So that was the other thing. We’re not just the technology, but I think the the buying behavior and the customer persona changed for Microsoft and for Microsoft sellers. How do you think that’s impacting the marketplace, business and business opportunity? As you said?

Jason Rook 26:19  

That’s a really interesting question. I can only speak to what I see. There’s a couple things that I see. Luckily, I’ve been to bonds org and I know Yeah, had you been an ISP success? The excitement, from ISV success participants about building AI into their apps interesting is off the charts. Like it is really, that’s, that team’s a really exciting place to be right now. Because you’re having to, with every ISV, you talk to you, you’re having that conversation about AI, and they’re in there, and but they’re asking for a lot of things like, hey, help me do this, I want to build AI into my app. I think that’s really interesting. The thing that I also see in my seat, is, for some reason, I get routed a lot of systems integrators, who are now hey, we’re going to become a software provider, right? And AI is going to be what drives that, right. And that’s a, that’s a heavy lift to build to take a systems integrator and then go spin out a software piece,

Vince Menzione 27:15  

right? I’ve seen it done before, but it is a heavy lift, it is a heavy

Jason Rook 27:19  

lift. And most of those, you know, historically, most of those become practice offerings, right. So they’re not in their services, 20% software. And that’s not that doesn’t work well in a marketplace construct today. But I think that there’s a number of those types of partners that are going to shift and they’re going to become multifaceted in that way, they’re going to sell software, probably under a different banner, right? Because they’re going to try to sell through marketplace through channels, those types of things. They don’t want the friction of hey, you know, I’m ABC S, or you know, Si, and now I have ABS, ABC si app that I want to sell, and I want you to go sell my app for me, they’re going to spin those out. But I think it’s really exciting to see that component. And that’s like this really interesting integration between AI and marketplace, beyond all the other cool stuff that we’ll be able to do with AI in the in the storefront experience, right. But if you think about building a business, or building a better product, it’s a super exciting time.

Vince Menzione 28:13  

Yeah, it’s very exciting. So for our listeners and viewers watching us today, then maybe haven’t taken the leap. And yet, right maybe they’re an SI, maybe their channel partner, you’d like to call them selling partners, right? The ones you work with

Jason Rook 28:25  

bounced that term around, right? Because it’s really what is the how does the ISP refer to them? Right? And when we sit have these conversations, the distance we’ll call them vendors, or resellers and vendors, and we kind of tried to map to what is the broader ecosystem look, but you know, if you think about it, the non ISV that wants to sell an ISV app.

Vince Menzione 28:45  

Yeah. What do you say to them now? To get them on board?

Jason Rook 28:48  

The channel partners? Yeah, um, depends on there’s a lot about persona, right? Because if you think about that ecosystem is huge. It’s every day from the distributor to the VAR to the all flavor si local, regional national to the niche player to the 1000s of MSPs. You know, the top end, if you think about kind of the distributor in the large reseller, it’s so easy way to expand your Minecart. Yeah. It’s some ways to tell you’re getting this pressure from the ISP or depending what’s the vendor, they’re telling you, hey, I want to go to marketplace I mean, marketplace. When a ISP moves to a marketplace driven sales motion, it drives a lot of cost out of their business, right? So they’re getting that pressure there. So hey, some of its Hey, not carrot more stick, and they’re getting that from us in the US the hyperscalers. And the ISPs. You know, in some cases, it’s Hey, you can now participate in another revenue generator for you. Now granted, sometimes your perception might be you’re taking away my top line revenue and just leaving me with the mark. Yeah, that’s always been an issue. Yeah. And that’s going to continue to be an issue and I think there are some that are evolving pretty quickly to figure that out. But in some of these some partners that haven’t historically been a part of the software transaction, that’s new money to them. I think the other way that we kind of position it is also a little bit of if you’re not doing it, somebody else is going to do it. And we see that in some of the, you know, some of the mega deals, or I should say, large marketplace deals. The channel partner that sold the deal was not necessarily like the incumbent, right. And the story always still is, you don’t want to be that systems integrator. That’s in doing a lot of great systems integration work, right,

Vince Menzione 30:36  

your digital partner of record back in the day and Microsoft terminology, but you were the incumbent, I guess, is what I would say, right?

Jason Rook 30:43  

You don’t want to be you don’t want to own the Azure piece and all the design development, and then you get the 11th hour and the customers like, oh, I also need this additional firewall to run on top of Windows Firewall. And I also need this data tool from that app. And I need this tool from New Relic and blah, blah, blah, and now I need to go aggregate those, and I’m gonna go pull those from somebody who is a reseller. When you’re that systems integrator, you’re like, wow, I could just set all that up and marketplace for you right now and maintain account control. Yeah, I think that’s a big piece as well. And then the other piece that I think you just hear all the time, it’s gonna be the path your as much support, you’re always looking for the path to how do you build that crisp relationship with the people that carry the bat? Right. And I think this is going to be that path.

Vince Menzione 31:22  

What do you see from the best? You know, you mentioned that account control, that partner has the account control, but what else do you see from the best of the best that you work with? Implementing this MPO?

Jason Rook 31:33  

So I would say there’s a couple things. On the high end, the larger partners, the ones that are starting to shift their go to market strategy, and their comp plans comp plans. Yeah. So when there’s hard drives behavior comp drives behavior, so when they make a marketplace transaction equal to an off marketplace transaction, and in some rare cases, already, a marketplace transaction more lucrative for the seller than an off marketplace transaction. That’s a huge best practice. Then I think there’s a next click down, we’re seeing something really interesting with a handful of partners. Again, we’re only in the US today. So I will tell you the what’s going on in the UK with the private preview, like there’s partners over there. Soft cat bites, compu Sen, a lot of UK names that you might have just know, they’re already doing marketing events, right? They’re like, we’re not even GA yet. They’re already out there. Right? So there’s a lot of that. But in the in the US, there’s a couple of partners that kind of are those larger reseller space. And what they’re doing that’s really interesting, is they’re going around, and they’re educating Microsoft account teams on marketplace. And if you think about, if you think of it, I love this because it took me through we did that all the time. Azure, yeah, we would go do these Lunch and Learns not with customer, but with Microsoft account teams to teach them about Azure. Like, I can’t tell you how many times I went and taught somebody what DevOps was right, and how that led to an Azure sale. And there’s a handful of these resellers that are starting to do that with marketplace. What’s really interesting is that they come in and say, Hey, in reality, we’ve been doing marketplace in this motion for four years, guys, like we know the marketplace motion, you don’t. And let us show you how a marketplace sale takes place. And we’ll just we’ll we’ll swap in the right hyper scalar for this conversation. And I think those partners are having a lot of success. And they’re using marketplaces, this wedge to build better Microsoft relationships, right? And then when they leave that account team or that eight year that’s do they, they don’t think of that as a marketplace conversation like oh, this partner does marketplace, but they also have an AI practice. They also have an Azure practice those types of things. So I think that’s one of the things I would

Vince Menzione 33:41  

say it’s comes down to the fundamentals, the foundation of what makes a successful partner, you did it attend Matt Intuit, you mentioned this, and then it’s about building that brand. And that story of being known for that one thing. And being that trusted adviser to an account seller who’s trying to make quota as 100, maybe a couple 100 partners calling on him every day, if you’re the quickest path to them making their number and maybe helping them get to where they need to go to maybe a red jacket as we still refer to it. Yep. And today. Yeah, I mean, that’s the path to success. And then you become known for that one thing, you become the partner, the ego to partner, right. It’s very, it’s fascinating that you brought that up.

Jason Rook 34:21  

Yeah, there’s a handful of ISVs that were early in the US preview that had some of the early deals that we already know, they’re they have the early deals in the UK preview, right, like they’ve repeated, they rinsed and repeated that motion. And it’s, it’s pretty smart.

Vince Menzione 34:39  

So got a couple of other questions. I want to ask you about multi party offers in marketplace, but I want to I want to flip into a personal question. I love asking each of my guests. So Jason, you’re hosting a dinner party, anywhere in the country, maybe anywhere in the world. In fact, since you’re gonna be doing a little bit of a roadshow, you might pick someplace else You can invite any guest. Three guests, in fact, from the present or the past of this amazing dinner party, whom would you invite and why?

Jason Rook 35:09  

So here’s the problem with being episode 3230 something right now, I’ve seen this show so many times. I think the challenge is you don’t want to answer this question. You don’t want to take somebody else’s answer. Right. But I will,

Vince Menzione 35:23  

though Elon Musk’s. You know, Bill Gates, has

Jason Rook 35:27  

been a couple interesting. You’ve had a couple of guests that have like, pulled some themes together. I mentioned Jay like Jada, this got Canadian come comedians, right. Yeah. So I’ll do the kind of a similar theme, I think.

Vince Menzione 35:40  

Heroes of Ohio, Heroes of Ohio.

Jason Rook 35:43  

So let’s theme this one out. So the first one would be Thomas Edison. So New Jersey, come on, yo, he was born in Milan, Ohio. I did not every kid in northern Ohio that you at one point third or fourth grade, you go through his boyhood home, right. So love that. Yeah. So so there’s like the split this time in Milan, Ohio that everybody gets. So that would be one. The other. The next one is kind of another inventor, kind of interesting guy. When I was in elementary school, I had to do this book report on famous Bo Vermeil. And I picked Eddie Rickenbacker. And if you’ve ever know there’s an airport in Ohio, named after him, and he was a World War One fighter pilot, he was interesting guy, racecar driver. He’s the guy that kind of he’s, I guess, coined with he was the founder of the soapbox derby. But when I was doing that research, when I was looking at what I found this article about Edie Reichenbach or we’d go hang out and smoke cigars with the Wright brothers. And so think about like, stories that he could tell like, Hey, we’ve got some plywood and some wax paper. Let’s, let’s see if we can take that airborne, right. So I think that would be really interesting. And then the third is like the patron saint of Ohio, which would be Woody Hayes. So obviously, the greatest football coach in history, for at least most of us, but the interesting thing about him as well. And I know you’ve been through a lot of like the Microsoft exec training the bench program that you always have to pick up on your mission statement, that type of thing. And I, mine has always been you win with people, right? And I didn’t make that up. I kind of stole it from the title Woody Hayes his book, right? And so I love he wrote a book. And that was always his big thing is you win with people. So I think that would be fascinating. He was quite the character as well. So if you think about those three guys, and Woody Hayes kind of leading the conversation, that would be a great dinner party,

Vince Menzione 37:27  

I still want to ask, I’m gonna come along and bring dessert if you don’t mind. But I want to talk to Thomas Edison about how why he went when it good. Why did he come to New Jersey, then

Jason Rook 37:36  

it will, he also did a lot of his work in the state of North wood, which would be a really interesting conversation between him and Woody Hayes.

Vince Menzione 37:41  

I love it. I love it. It was a fascinating list. All right. So we are at the we’re at that point, right, the new beginning of the new fiscal year for Microsoft, lots of great excitement, lots of great energy about ready to happen. What advice would you have for our viewers and listeners here today on how to achieve their greatest results, how to optimize for success in this new fiscal year with Microsoft?

Jason Rook 38:05  

So kind of parting thoughts going into the Microsoft’s next fiscal year, marketplace related or in general?

Vince Menzione 38:12  

We can go marketplace. That’s what we’re Yeah, that’s what we’re here for. Right.

Jason Rook 38:16  

So I think, from a marketplace perspective, I think the vast majority of Microsoft partners still need to lean in and get educated. Yeah. Because it’s not for everyone, right? And no, no, there’s not one Microsoft motion that everybody jumps on, everybody’s gonna jump on AI but in their own flavor, right. I think you need to understand where the marketplace fits for you and your business. Whether you you know, if you don’t sell software today, you need to understand like, hey, if I get in a situation where I needed to sell software, am I going to be able to do this motion with Microsoft? If you’re a CSP? I think we use we yesterday you spent yet a whole session kind of talking about like the momentum and SMC. If you’re a CSP partner. You definitely need to understand the I should make sure I’m clear on so it CSP so CSP is a really fun term it myself, right. So if you’re a customer, you can buy Microsoft, you don’t buy directly Microsoft buying a cloud solution provider contract was sold to you by a cloud solution provider who can be a direct cloud solution provider or an indirect cloud solution provider who sells the indirect cloud service provider resellers. Right?

Vince Menzione 39:23  

So if you’re in that mix, people say it’s so complex Yeah, to work with Microsoft. But if

Jason Rook 39:27  

you’re in that mix in you know what CSP is, you should understand the marketplace. Yes model because if you think about that, the opportunity in SMC SMC customers can be SMB. They can be larger upper upper upper enterprise customers, they can buy direct on an enterprise contract, the MPO that could buy off a CSP contract CSP, right and I think those partners are going to need to really lean in and provide some value and coach those customers Along the right path. Yeah, yep.

Vince Menzione 40:02  

And they have an opportunity to make more money selling an ISV solution on top of the other services that are providing. Absolutely. Yeah. I

Jason Rook 40:07  

mean, it’s the other thing is you don’t want to leave any money on the table. Right. So I think that the partners that figure that out in that space will be really critical. The other thing is that there’s I think, if you’re one of those partners who you kind of been on the fray, right. You’ve always been in the program, but not in the program type thing. But you’ve got a really strong relationship with an ISV, who sells a lot through marketplace. Usually net, right, the opportunity might be coming for you, right? That’s an important piece. Yeah, yep. Yeah. And

Vince Menzione 40:38  

stay, you know, we we we use ultimate partner in the events we do to really educate people on what’s been happening, right. They’re a third of a trillion dollars in cloud budgets, right this marketplace moment. Satya said 80% growth in 100 million dollar cloud commitments just in quarter to quarter growth. So if you’re not looking at this as a huge opportunity, or you’re missing, you need to lean in. Jason, I want to thank you for being here. So great to have you in the studio. Glad you finally got 13 to now what a change has been, I want to thank all of our followers, listeners, supporters of Ultimate Partner and for listening tuning in, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you follow along, we’ll be able to get more incredible guests like Jason to come join us. Thank you for your support. Thank you for listening to The Ultimate Partner. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ultimate Partner. Hopefully, this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something. Have you implemented everything you’ve been learning? And are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve? If not, it’s time to take action now. Join ultimate partner experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about. With up x you get access to exclusive Industry Insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources, and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now visit our website, the ultimate partner.com and sign up today.