 Hey, welcome back everyone to theCUBE's coverage of Avis ReInvent 2021 here in Las Vegas. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE with my co-host, Dave Nicholson, cloud analyst here with SiliconANGLE and theCUBE. We've got a great guest, Res the Honor manned, SVP cloud hyperscalers, transformation at TD Stinex. Welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for coming on, Res. Hey, good morning. Good morning, you guys. You guys just had this big acquisition with billions and billions of dollars in revenue. Take us through what do you guys do for set the table for the company. Right, okay, yeah, it is a pretty big one. We're now number 60 on the Fortune 100. Worldwide revenues around just under $60 billion. We represent somewhere in the region of 1500 vendors and OEMs in over 100 countries. And we serve over 150,000 partners now, worldwide. So you got everything from the end point style products all the way up to data center, cloud, serving from the retail to SMB to VARs, going all the way to enterprise specialist NSIs. So TD Stinex, big company, global reach. You hit everybody, basically. You sell a lot of product, software, hardware, you name it, cloud is here. What is the big trend that you guys are seeing with cloud? Because you're talking to all the customers. You have a lot of services and you have products. You represent a lot of different brands. How are people rolling them together? Are they composing cloud? What are you seeing in the global landscape? Well, we specialize in cloud. We've been doing that for a number of years. And actually, depending on where partners are within the journey, they will have different levels of specialization. And the way we like to look at it is a matrix in terms of where is the complexity of the product that they're trying to take to market versus what is the size and their own maturity. So we tune our services and our support for those partners to help them better understand on board all of that technology and address it towards their partners. So if you can imagine, you got many, many announcements that were made here, right? And our partners have to consume all of that information and all of that technology and learn how to use it. And that's where we come in. We effectively act as the bridge to help them get up there running and lower the barrier of entry for them to execute on those products. And they want to add services to it all good. Cloud's perfect for that. So what's the relationship with AWS? I'm sure they're actually enabling a lot of value. What is the relationship with AWS, partner, network? How do you guys, what do you guys enable? What do you guys enable with Amazon? So if I give you the picture of our cloud practice builder, that's a good place to start. Our cloud practice builder program starts with looking at the partner and understanding what is their maturity in that path, specifically related to the technologies that they want to work on with AWS. And we look at them in terms of have they got the sales capability, have they got the operational capability, the financial setup, and really help them then on that journey. So yeah, we can go very, very deep where we have our own cohorts who help those partners get up to speed with. So you got to do a little vetting, you got to make sure people have the right capabilities and certain people have certain orientation to certain things, maybe levels of certification. Is there a swim lanes developing in the partner network that you have start working with big trends? Are they specializing more in application modernization? Is it more infrastructure? Or what are you guys seeing in terms of trends? There are multiple trends there. So as you say, we have one lane specifically for our ISVs, one lane for our people who host with infrastructure. We are obviously data centers, one of our biggest focus areas. And so each of our partners goes into a specific lane, specifically related to where they want to focus on. So if you consider, for instance, somewhere in the area of ISVs, the primary thing that many of the ISVs out there don't have is the ability to understand all of the AWS programs. So we help them understand that, understand how they can get the most optimal cost and program with AWS. And then you get into the next level, which is around their cloud operations, how they actually transact with us. And you can build a stack, you get into security, and then you get well-architected frameworks. So this is just one of the swim lanes that you could effectively go. And we can help build that out for them. Yeah, so Reza, draw a little map for me, sort of a mental map from the perspective of an end user customer. Say I'm a very large organization, I've got a large IT footprint, I'm looking towards modernizing in the future. How am I engaging with what TD Cinex is actually delivering to the market? We've been talking about partners, so give us a hypothetical. Again, I'm the customer. Who's the sales rep who's calling on me initially? How am I interacting with you versus the partner? And I know that there are a variety of ways, but give us an example. I want to make sure that people watching this understand, because we use the term partner to mean a whole variety of different things. Yeah, very, very good question. Because TD Cinex is one of the biggest companies that the vast majority of the consumers out there haven't heard of. Yeah, we are number 16 of Fortune 100. Now, most organizations deal with a local IT, trusted IT partner. That trusted IT partner then is who they would go to, whether it is their infrastructure, whether it is their security, they would work with that partner to help them manage it. Now, what we do is really support the partner to have the knowledge they need to have, the expertise they need to have, the services that they need to have, the solutions that they need to have to deploy those technologies with that customer. Now, in majority of the cases, the customer will never come in contact with us because we are behind the scenes supporting our partners. However, increasingly we are seeing three motions that we work with. One is with our partners, we do a sell to, right? Partner knows what they want, they work with the customer, they've established a need, they come to us and we help them deliver that technology. We do a sell with. So this is the part where you're talking about more of the newer technologies where the partner may be lacking some of that expertise. So this is where our experts, and give an idea, we have over 300 certifications just in the last year with AWS, where our experts would then help the partner actually land that technology with the customer. And then the ultimate level is a sell for. You're talking about longer sell cycles, very complex, where they really need to get deep. So we have our own experience centers, customer immersion programs, where the customer actually comes to us with a partner, where we then help them actually get through that process. So you're a multi-tier distribution system, you provide service layer to the frontline partners before the end users, provide support and software technology and executive services for them to serve their customer. That's right. Because they're probably not staffed up, they don't have the resources, they have a good business model and they want to make a lot of money. They do, they do and... They have good gross profit margins. I hope so, I hope we help them actually deliver better profit margins and as they move to services and recurring revenues with cloud, that becomes more predictable and sustainable for them as well. Well just, I was kidding, but I'm serious, I want to get into this gross margin because I think one of the things that you're bringing up with this question is, if I'm a partner and I'm talking to an end user, I want to make a lot of profit. So services are naturally important. I make more gross profit on services. So if you have volume discounts on things that I might not have that volume discount if I'm going direct to the manufacturer or platform, you provide that. Is that right? Am I getting that right? That you guys get to provide that discount pass-through? We do. With AWS we get a lot of support through their programs. They announce many programs this week, for instance. And as the partner gains more specializations and they gain access to more support through us, they also gain access to some preferred pricing. So to an extent it's about volume, it's also about how deep they go, how much they invest in their own expertise. So it really is not just a volume game but it's also a quality game as well. The operational value that you provide because you guys must have a lot of programs that pass through to the partner. Software, systems, what kind of examples can you give? If I'm the partner and I have an end user and I have a boutique, let's just say I specialize in data analytics and whatever is the unique thing, you're providing me services. Is there like certain software systems that you guys have? What operational support do you give to your customers? So in terms of the technology that the consumer consumes, there is a whole range of technologies around data management and data analytics. Then if you're talking about in terms of the support, operational support we give to the partner, again, the bigger the partner, the more transactions, the more volume they do. They need to have that operational optimization as well. Again, that's where we come in and give them the tools and the technologies they need to optimize that. Okay, so I got to ask you to reinvent now that we're in person, again, been a year, been two years since we've been to reinvent. What's your assessment of the show this year? What's the big takeaway that you see this year that's going to be relevant for you? Do you know what? I love the way these guys land some incredibly new technologies. And I love the theme of Pathfinder from yesterday. So when I look at the 5G, I mean, that sounds like a game changer to me. And I think there should be a lot of partners out there thinking, hold on a minute, this is a massive opportunity for us. Yeah, I mean, so. And the serverless stuff is getting better and better. Yeah. I mean like, they do a good job on their announcements. There is a reason why their technology is so highly rated. These guys know how to do technology. And I think of you, I think of the services that you could roll on top of this. I mean, if you're in front of a customer, big, medium, or large, I mean, if I'm a developer, a service provider, I can make so much more profit by building more of these services because that Pathfinder opens up these net new things. 5G, AI as a service, kind of anything. Yeah, I mean, partners with... They have their business models. The ones who have figured out how to wrap the services around the solutions that are out there, typically we find that they're the most successful with the fastest growth rates. And they kind of get themselves into a very positive virtual cycle. The more they can wrap around those services to hire their value, the more margin they tend to make, the more profitable they are. And actually then they continue to invest and expand their footprint. So Reza, quick advice, pretend that I am about to become essentially a local trusted value added reseller, partner for my end user customers, and I'm going to become a partner of your company. What would your counsel be to me about what I should focus on? What's hot? What's the hottest tip of the spear? Right now? Yes, right now, I need to go out and hire these people. Data, data, data, analytics data. I would absolutely zoom in on that. It is the new oil. And every organization needs to have insights. And if businesses out there do not have those insights, they are at a disadvantage. Partners who can figure out how to build services around data, they're the guys who are really winning. Awesome, great insight. Reza, thanks for coming on theCUBE here at Reinvent. Great conversations, great insight. Thanks for coming on, appreciate it. My pleasure. Okay, CUBE Coverage, you're watching theCUBE, the leader in worldwide tech coverage here in Reinvent. I'm Jeff Rowe, Dave Nicholson, host of theCUBE. Thanks for watching, we'll be right back.