 TheCube presents Ignite 22, brought to you by Palo Alto Networks. Hey guys, welcome back to TheCube, the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage. We are live in Las Vegas at MGM Grand Hotel, Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante, covering our first time covering Palo Alto Ignite 22 in person. Dave, we've had some great conversations so far. We've got two days of wall-to-wall coverage. We're going to be talking with Palo Alto, Zach's leaders, customers, partners, and we're going to be talking about the partner ecosystem next. Well, it's super important, you know, it's funny you talk about, for a minute, you didn't know where we were. I came to Vegas in May, I feel like I never left two weeks ago, we're at Reinvent, which was, I thought the most awesome Reinvent ever, and it was really all about the ecosystem and the marketplace, so super excited to have that conversation. Yeah, we've got Whit Crump joining us, director of America's Business Development, worldwide channels and customer programs at AWS Marketplace. Whit, welcome to TheCube, great to have you. Thanks for having me. Give us, you got a big title there, give us a little bit of flavor of your scope of work at AWS. Yeah, sure, so I've been with the marketplace team now almost eight years, and originally founded our channel programs, and my scope has expanded to not just cover channels, but all things related to customers. So if you think about marketplace having sort of two sides, one being very focused on the ISV, I tend to manage all things related to our in-customer and our channel partners. What, some of the feedback that you're getting from customers and channel partners as the marketplaces has evolved so much. Yeah, you know, it's been interesting to watch over the course of the years, getting to see it started its infancy and grow up. One of the things that we hear often from customers and from our channel partners, and maybe not so directly is, it's not about finding the things they necessarily want to buy, although that's important, but it's the actual act of how they're able to purchase things and making that a much more streamlined process, especially in large enterprises where there's a lot of complexity, we want to make that a lot simpler for our customers and our partners. Another management is such a hassle, right? But so when I come into the marketplace, it's all there, I got a console, it's integrated, I choose what I want, the billing is simplified. How has that capability evolved since the time that you've been at AWS and where do you want to take it? Yeah, so when we first started Marketplace, it was really a pay-as-you-go model. Customer come, they buy whatever the solution was and then it was charged by the hour and then the year and one of the things that we discovered through customer and partner feedback was especially in their dealing with large enterprise purchases, they want to be able to instantiate those custom price and terms into that contract, well enjoying the benefits of Marketplace and that's been I think the biggest evolution started in 2017 with private offers, 2018 with consulting partner private offers and then we've added things on over time to streamline procurement for customers. So one of the hottest topics right now, everybody wants to talk about the macro and the headwinds and everything else, but when you talk to customers like look, I got to do more with less, that's the big theme and I want to optimize my spend, cloud allows me to do that because I can dial down, I can push storage to lower tiers, there's a lot of different things that I can do. What are the techniques that people are using in the ecosystem to bring in the partner cost optimization? Yeah, and so one of the key things that partners are doing for customers, they act as that trusted advisor and when using Marketplace either directly or through a partner, customers are able to really save money through licensing flexibility, they're also able to streamline their procurement and then if there's an at-risk spend situation, they're able to manage that at-risk spend by combining Marketplace and AWS spin into one basically draws down their commitments to the company. And we talk about at-risk spend, talk about user-lose-it type of spend, right? And so you increase the optionality in terms of where you can get value from your cloud spend. That's right, customers are thinking about their IT spend more strategically now, more than ever. And so they're not just thinking about how do I buy infrastructure here and then software here, data, services, they want to combine this into one place. It's a lot less to keep up with a lot less overhead for them but also just the simplification that you alluded to earlier around all the billing and vendor management is now in one streamlined process. Talk about that as a facilitator of organizations being able to reduce their risk profile. Yeah, so one of the things that came out earlier this year with Forrester was a total economic impact studies for both an ISV and for the end customer but there was also a thought leadership study done where they surveyed over 700 customers worldwide to sort of get their thoughts on procurement and risk profile management. And one of the things that was really surprising was that I guess it was like over 78% of respondents stated that they didn't feel like their companies had a really well-defined governance model and that over half of software and data purchases actually went outside of procurement. And so the companies aren't really able to, they don't really have eyes on all of this spin and it's substantial. And that's a huge risk to the organization. Yeah, huge risk for the organization. And half of the respondents stated outright that they viewed marketplaces away for them to reduce their risk profile because they were able to have a better governance model around that. So what's the business case? Can you take us through that? How should a customer think about that? So okay, I get that the procurement department likes it and the CFO probably likes it but what's the dynamic around the business? So if I'm a, let's say I'm a business person and I'm running the process, I get my procurement reach around. What does the data suggest that, what's in it for me, right? From a company-wide standpoint, what did maybe the forester guys address this? So that overall business case I think is important. I think one of the big headlines for the end customer is because of license flexibility is about a 10% cost savings in license cost. They're able to right-size their purchases to buy the things they actually need. They're not going to have these big overarching ELA's. There's going to be a lot of other things in there that they don't really, aren't going to really directly use. We're talking about shelfware, that's sort of the classic term. I buy something, it never gets used. Also from just a getting things done perspective, big piece of feedback from customers is the contracting process takes a long time. It takes several months, especially for a large purchase and a lot of those discussions are very repetitive. You're talking about the same things over and over again and we actually built a feature called standardized contract where we talked to a number of customers and ISVs distilled a contract down into a largely a set of terms that both sides already agreed to and it cuts that contract time down by 90%. So if you're a legal team and a company, there's only so many of you and you have a lot of things to get done. If you can shave 90% off your time, that's now, you can now work on a lot of other things for the corporation. Right, a lot of business impact there. You think faster time to value, faster time to market, workforce optimization. Yeah, I mean, from an ISV standpoint, the measurement is they're able to close deals about 40% faster, which is great for the ISV. I mean, obviously they love that. But if you're a customer, you're actually getting the innovative technologies you need 40% faster, so you can actually do the work you want to take it to your customers and drive the business. You guys recently launched, what is it, vendor insights? Talk a little bit about the value. What are some of the things that you're seeing with that? Yeah, so that goes into the onboarding value out of marketplaces. A number of things that go into cutting that time according to Forrester by 75%, but vendor insights was based on a key piece of impact from customers. So, you know, a marketplace is used for one of the reasons is discoverability by customers. Hey, what is the broader landscape look, for example, of security or storage partners? You know, trying to understand what is even available, and then the double click is, all right, well, how does that company or how does that vendor fit into my risk profile? You know, understanding what their compliance metrics are, things of that nature. And so, historically, a customer would have to go to an ISV and say, all right, I want you to fill out this form, you know, that my questionnaire. And so they would trade this back and forth as they have questions. Now with vendor insights, a customer can actually subscribe to this and they're able to actually see the risk profile of that vendor from the inside out, you know, from the inside of their SaaS application. What does it look like on a real-time basis? And then go back and look at that whenever they want. And, you know, the feedback since the launch has been fantastic. And I think that helps us double down on the onboarding benefits that we are providing customers. I want to come back to this idea of cost optimization and try to tie it into predictability. You know, a lot of people complain, oh, I got surprised at the end of the month. So if I understand it with, by leveraging the marketplace and the breadth that you have in the marketplace, I can say, okay, look, I'm going to spend X amount on tech. Yeah. And this approach allows me to say, all right, because right now procurement or historically procurement's been a bunch of stovepipes. I can't take from here and easily put it over there. You're saying this not only addresses the sort of cost optimization, does it also address the predictability challenge? Yeah, and I think another way to describe that is around cost controls. And, you know, just from a reporting perspective, you know, we have what are called cost utilization reports or CUR files. And we provide those to customers anytime they want and they can load those into Tableau, use whatever analysis tools that they want to be able to use. And so, and they can actually tag usage in those reports. And what we're really talking about is helping customers adopt fin-op practices. So, you know, develop directly for the cloud. Customers are able to understand, okay, who's using what, when and where. So everyone's informed that creates a really collaborative environment. It also holds people accountable for their spin so that, you know, you can talking about shelfware. We bought things we're not going to use or we're overusing. People are using software that they probably don't really need to. And so that adds to that predictable, is everyone has great visibility into what's happening. And there's another, I mean, of course, saving money is in vogue right now because, you know, the headwinds and the economics, et cetera. But there's also another side of the equation, which is, I mean, I see this a lot. You know, the CFO says, financial people, why is our cloud bill so high? Well, it's because we're actually driving all this revenue. And so, you know, you've seen it so many, so often in companies, you know, the spreadsheet analysis says, oh, cut that. Well, what happens to revenue if you cut that? So with that visibility, the answer may be, well, actually, if we double down on that, we're actually going to make more money because we actually have a margin on this and it's got operating leverage. So if we double that, you know, we could, so that kind of cross-organization communication to make better decisions, I think, is another key factor. Yeah, huge impact there. Talk ultimately about how the buyer's journey seems to have been really transformed. Correct, right? So if you're a buyer, you know, initially, to your point is, you know, I'm just looking for a point solution, right? And then you move on to the next one and the next one. And now, you know, working with our teams and using the platform, you know, and frankly, customers are thinking more strategically about their IT spend. Holistically, the conversations that we're having with us is it's not about how do I find the solution today, but here's my forward-looking software spend or I'm going through a migration. I want to rationalize the software portfolio I have today as I'm going to lift and shift it to AWS. You know, what is going to make the trip? What are we going to discard entirely? Because it's not really optimized for the cloud or there's that shelf will component, which is, hey, you know, maybe 15 to 25% of my portfolio is just not even getting utilized. And that's a sunk cost to your point, which is, you know, that's money I could be using on something that really impacts the bottom line in various areas of the business, right? What would you say is the number one request you get or feedback you get from the end customers and how is that different from what you hear from the channel partners? How aligned are those vectors? I would say from a customer perspective, one of the key things I hear about is around visibility of spend, right? And I was just talking about these reports and, you know, using cost optimization tools, being able to use features like identity and access management, manage entitlements, private marketplaces, basically them being able to have a stronger governance model in the cloud. For one thing, it's, you know, keeping everybody on track, like some of the points I was talking about earlier, but also cost optimization around, you know, limiting vendor sprawl. Are we actually really using all the things that we need? And then from a channel partner perspective, you know, some of the things I talked about earlier about that 40% faster sales cycle, you know, that TEI, the Total Economic Impact Study that was done by Forrester was built for the ISV. But if you're a channel partner sitting between the customer and the ISV, you kind of get a little bit of the best of both worlds, right? You're acting as that advisor. And so if you're a channel partner, the procurement streamlining is a huge benefit because, you know, like you said, saving money is in vogue right now. You're trying to do more with less. So if you're thinking about 27% faster win rates, 40% faster time to close, and you're the customer who's trying to impact the bottom line by innovating more quickly, those two pieces of feedback are really coming together and meeting in the middle. Throughout 2021, or sorry, 2022, our survey partner, ETR, Enterprise Technology Research has asked their panel a question, is what's your strategy for, you know, doing more with less? By far, the number one response has been consolidating redundant vendors. And then optimizing cloud was, you know, second, but way, way lower than that. The number from last survey went from 34%, it's now up to 44% in the January survey, which is in the field, which they gave me a glimpse to last night. So you're seeing dramatic uptick in that point. And then you guys are helping. We definitely are. I mean, there's the reporting piece, so they have a better visibility of what they're doing. Then you think about a feature like private marketplace and managed entitlements. So private marketplace enables a customer to create their own private marketplace, as the name states, where they can limit access to it for certain types of software to the actual end customer who needs to use that software. And so, you know, not everybody needs a license to software X, right? And so that helps with the sprawl comment, to your point that's on the increase, right? Am I actually spending money on things that we need to use? But also on the consolidation front, and we talked with Nikash an hour or so ago, he was mentioning on stage, if you just think of this number of security tools, or cybersecurity tools that an organization has on its network, 30 to 50. And we were talking about, well, how does Palo Alto Networks, what's realistic in terms of consolidation? But it sounds like what you're doing in the marketplace is giving organizations the visibility, for sure, into what they're running, usage span, et cetera, to help facilitate ultimately, at some point, facilitate a strategic consolidation. That's exactly right. And if you think about cost optimization, our procurement features, you know, the practice that we're trying to help customers around FinOps, it's all about helping customers build a modern procurement practice and supply chain. And so that helps with that point exactly, the keynotes point. Exactly. So last question for you, what's next? What can we expect? Oh, so what's next for me is, you know, I really want to, you know, my channel business, for example, you know, I want to think about enabling new types of partners. So we've worked really heavily with resellers, we worked very heavily with Palo Alto on the reseller community, how we're bringing in more services partners of various types, you know, the GSIs, the distributors, cloud service providers, managed security, service providers, was in a keynote yesterday, listening to Palo Alto talk about their five routes to market and, you know, they had these bubbles. And so I was like, gosh, that's exactly how I'm thinking about the business is how am I expanding my own footprint to customers that have deeper, I mean, excuse me, to partners that have deeper levels of cloud knowledge that can be more of that advisor, help customers really understand how to maximize their business on AWS. And, you know, my job is to really help facilitate that innovative technology through those partners, so. Sounds like. Powerful force, that ecosystem. Exactly, great alignment, AWS and Palo Alto. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. We appreciate hearing what's going on at AWS, the partner network, the MP and all that good stuff. That's really the value in it for customers, ISVs and general partners alike. We appreciate your insight. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Our guests and Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage.