 Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Informatica World 2017, brought to you by Informatica. Okay, welcome back everyone live here with theCUBE exclusive coverage for Informatica's event, Informatica World 2017. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. My co-host this week is Peter Burris, General Manager of Wikibon Research, wikibon.com. Our next guest is Rodney Forman, Senior Vice President of Partner Ecosystem at Informatica. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you for having me. So, like the cloud, like data, ecosystem, Partner Ecosystem right now is one of the hottest areas in the build out within the supplier base for customer delivery of value. And we're seeing the channels change, the products change, and certainly with data 3.0 and Claire, you're seeing an opportunity is almost a fertile ground of developing partnerships and extending existing ones, creating new ones. Informatica, well poised, what's the strategy? What's the plan? Just give us the update on the ecosystem and what the plans are. So, we realize that in order for us to reach all aspects of the market, mid-market, enterprise, that it's important for us to have a strong network of partners. And that includes the largest global SIs that you see many sponsoring this event, Wipro, Deloitte, Accenture, Cognizance of the World, as well as resellers, as well, some of the largest resellers now are starting to sign on with our new channel program, which we just introduced in January. And we're seeing a lot of new opportunity and a lot of new customers that have not bought Informatica before that we're now selling to and reaching through the reseller network. And then we also have our ISVs, which are, you know, signing OEM agreements and incorporating our technology and their solutions to sell to the market. So it's another type of partner, you know, that we have. And then also a number of MSPs who are providing value-add around our technology and delivering complete solutions to the market are also helping extend our market reach. And it's really about customer buying patterns today. Customers are buying from partners because they can deliver an end-to-end solution. And wrap services around it as well. Absolutely. So let's talk about that, because this becomes really a dream for a partner and a supplier like Informatica. Jerry Held, your board member was on this morning or with us earlier, he talked about data being the heartbeat. But yet data is so pervasive. You could have levels of expertise. A heart surgeon, you know, call in doctor, hygiene, dental hygienist, if you will, for, you know, data hygienist. All kinds of data touch points in an organization. So how do you go out there and develop that channel? Is there a strategy around identifying certain partners that are just in a whole different class, have expertise than others? Because some might touch data differently, but data certainly is going to be robust. Yeah, what I'm finding where partners are having the most success for us right now is they develop a solution around a particular vertical. And let's say healthcare, for example. So they'll specialize in data management for healthcare organizations and go to market with that. They'll, you know, we've got partners that have had some key wins with some very large healthcare companies and it's snowballs. And they tend to stay there. So specialties are okay. Oh, absolutely. That's vertical markets, right? Yeah, absolutely. But that's the beauty of software and the beauty of this data focus is that if you have the chops to deal with data and deal with software and you're a reseller, then you can do enormous, incredibly impressive customization and refinement of a solution for your customers. Yeah, well and one of the best kept secrets of Informatica is that we have an incredible data security product. But our sales team sells data management. They don't sell data security. Who sells data security very well? Partners. So we're finding a network of partners that love our data security product. They see the engine behind it, which came from our other products, which does great data discovery. And then we coupled that with an outstanding user interface and then our data masking capability so that when you find a security vulnerability, you can do something with it. And we have partners that are just doing very light touch POCs and very quickly that the customers get it. They say, look, I understand that I've been focused on protecting the perimeter. I need to secure at the source, which is the name of the product, secure source. I need to secure at the data. And we're finding partners that are security focused are very, very good at selling that product and have the relationships we need to get to the CSOs, et cetera, to sell much better than our direct team. And so we're finding that partners are again, penetrating the market in areas that we haven't before because of their capabilities and skills. Rodney, the key about partners is they're also the canary in the coal mine because they're close to the customer. But they're also always striving to be relevant and they're going to make the right choice on behalf of the customer. They'll have multiple vendors in there that they're supporting. So I've got to ask you, as Informatica, lead executive of the channel, they all want to be relevant. So what's your message when you say Informatica can make you relevant to the customers in the fill-in-the-blank? Yeah, well what we tell them is we're your competitive differentiator. I mean, you've got an offering where you're trying to take customers to the cloud. For example, well that solution has to include data integration, both on-prem and cloud, and it's got to work together. I mean, we have partners that actually are very successful just focusing in on customers that are implementing Salesforce. And they go into the customer and say, you've got sources of data that will feed Salesforce. You've got to bring all that together. How are you going to do it? And they say that's a huge challenge for us, right? And they solve that problem using our technology. And partners have built businesses just around that. So the relevance is you can make them more competitive vis-a-vis other partners. Exactly. Well, let me try this on, because I think it's a great question, John. And let me see if you agree with this, Rodney, that the digital world is predicated in the idea that data is a strategic asset. Correct. You guys are in a position to provide tooling that allows your partners to start talking about for their entire mass of potential customers, what it means for their customers to start to move into a digital world. Exactly. Is that really kind of what you're saying? You're saying, look, your customers are going to want to go here. They may not know. Not a lot of people know how to do this. Here's a toolkit that you can start to master. So your customers can start to master and use that to move into this new era. Yeah, absolutely. Is that kind of the story? Yeah, I'll give you an example. I just had a meeting at Microsoft. Where... Who? Never heard of him. A little company called Microsoft. It's about relevance. Okay, I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you. The focus was around the solutions that global system integrators have built on Azure. And we did an inventory of those solutions. And we looked at that inventory from a perspective of which solutions need our technology, which solutions need data management, data integration, data quality, things we're good at. And about half of those, half of the inventory of those solutions that these SIs have built need our technology and add value to those solutions that are taking the market and make them more competitive, which benefits Microsoft because it drives data and compute consumption for these solutions. And so now these SIs are saying, we're just going to embed that technology from Informatica in these Azure-based solutions so we can sell more. And we're doing the same thing with AWS, same thing with Google as well. And the multi-cloud message that's happening, you're starting to see multi-cloud really kind of be the new vision, but it really is where hybrid will go. Hybrid cloud is certainly legit today and hardcore architectural stuff's being worked on. But the interesting thing is let's see how customers are handling their data. And they're not picking one cloud for their data. There's no data cloud. Data everywhere strategy. And you guys certainly agree with that with Informatica. What's your advice to the channel partners as they prepare? Again, back to my tiering. You got a heart surgeon. You have other specialties out there. How do you guys look at that? You guys have different programs, you certification. I mean, how is Informatica dealing with this breadth of channel? Yeah, so since I've joined, we've implemented a new channel program so that partners can invest in Informatica and build a business around us that is consistent and competitive in the market. And then we also have implemented an authorization and certification program. We didn't have one before. You could be Bob's bait shop one day and sell Informatica the next. And that's not what we wanted. We want skilled partners that know our technology that can drive successful customer implementations and adoption around it. And the ones that get behind you guys too, you want a reward as well. Exactly. So we've implemented a new authorization program and we're providing the enablement partners need to be successful with our products. And it also drives trust of the customer and then trust of our sales team. Because now we're comp-neutral with our sales team and they're using the partners as an extension of the sales team to penetrate the market and cover their territory. I always say to my kid, my daughter plays soccer. I always say to my daughter, oh, it's soccer. It's just easy. That is not that easy. So I always say to Peter. So it's a football fan. So I say to Peter all the time, oh, the channel business is so easy. Just make the product really good and make a lot of cash for the partner. Things will just balance themselves out. Again, not that easy. Sounds easy on paper, make a great product, make it insented and then make them make profitability. It's really what channel partners love, right? I mean, so it sounds easy, but how do you guys get there? Well, one thing we've put a lot of investment obviously here is around marketing. So there was no concept at Informatica of a ready to execute marketing campaign that a partner could run. Now we have those. And so we're actually helping partners with their own digital transformation to go to market with Informatica. But getting the Informatica name out is going to make customers more excited about Informatica and bias, potentially biased people towards Informatica, relative to all the different options they're going to have in the cloud, which is only going to make partners more excited about Informatica. They can wrap services around it so they can get more cash on the product sales. They can add 100% gross profit services. That's great services opportunity. It raises a really, really interesting, at least to me anyway, a really interesting question. And that is as your partners move, not only licensed software, but also cloud instances, either in subscription or pay-as-you-go kinds of notions. Your partners are also going to find that their customers have a much more complex arrangement of implementations. So your partners might be some of your best customers for Informatica technology. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we have a partner now, actually, that we're selling to, to transform their own environment. And I believe there's going to be more and more examples of that, just as you said. Yeah, and once they get invested in it for their own business, it makes it a lot easier for them to sell to other people's businesses. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. All right, final question. What's your day one, we've got tomorrow, you were at the analyst show yesterday, guys. Quick summary, what's the vibe so far? Obviously Informatica, well-positioned. Yeah. What's your take on the show so far? I was in the analyst briefing yesterday, and I met with a number of analysts. And coming from IBM, I've never seen this level of excitement around what we're introducing in the way of the brand and messaging, how we're transforming the channel business and involving partners. I mean, you see all the partners that are involved in this show, and they're extremely excited. The analysts just seem to be finding new ways that we are leveraging our technology to make customers successful. I mean, we talked about, when I met with analysts, I talked about a number of partner and customer success stories, and those use cases were just very eye-opening for the analysts, and it really seems like we've got even more of a buzz than we've had with the analysts because of what we announced. Partner event coming on the horizon. You always have the partner kickoff. I know that was in January, was it, I think? Right, yeah, we made partners a part of our sales kickoff, just like they were part of our sales team, and we had a record number of partners at sales kickoff. We've got, in July, our partner elevate event coming up in Frankfurt for all our Europe partners, and right now, our registrations are at a level where we're now trying to figure out if we have a big enough venue. You got to turn partners away. They're so busy, they got to turn people away. Yeah, well, we did at sales kickoff. We had to turn some partners away because we went over capacity. You need a cube there. Right, yeah, exactly. You need more partners to participate. Bigger boat, as they say. Exactly, but no, it's very, very exciting. The partners are excited. There's a lot of market opportunity for the partners and with our new channel program and what we're doing around skills and enablement and all the marketing. It's a fantastic opportunity for us. Well, yes, you know, we've been chroniclizing the vision and the journey of the new informatica. It's been great to see, and again, channel strategy. Have a great product, enable them with incentives. Some air cover and make them some cash and help serve customers. Yeah, we want to make it a win-win for our partners and informatica. Not all of them are greedy, but at the end of the day, performance and profitability. Yeah, they're in the business. That's in it for me, I'm a partner. What are you going to do for me? Hey, they're scared about their own customer transitions. Right. This can help. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much, Roddy, for sharing the insight. Thank you very much. Season veteran in the channel ecosystem business. It's the cube bringing you all the action here in San Francisco for Informatica World 2017. I'm John Furrier, Peter Barris. Stay with us more after this short break.