 Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Microsoft Ignite, brought to you by Cohesity and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host Stu Miniman. We're joined by David Willis. He is the corporate VP US One commercial partner at Microsoft. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. It's my pleasure. Thanks for inviting me today. Congrats on a great show. This has been a lot of fun. We've been here three days. It's our first time here. It's been a great show. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're really excited about it. There's, I mean, a lot of energy from our customers and our partners. You know, talking a lot to partners and customers. Everybody's going through digital transformation right now. They're either being disrupted or, you know, they plan to disrupt. They know that. They know they have to get ahead of that. And so digital transformation is a big theme we're hearing today. And then some of the new technologies that we're really driving hard, artificial intelligence is a very hot topic this week. And, you know, as I meet with partners, you know, I run the partner group for the U.S. But I'm actually meeting with a lot of customers here this week. And what we're seeing is a lot of our customers are actually looking to Microsoft to become partners as they leverage the cloud solutions to bring value to marketing. That could be IT companies that are, you know, either delivering services in MSP or on premise that now with the cloud, they can go to market with us. But sometimes it's a company that, say, makes equipment for manufacturers and they see an opportunity to turn on an IoT device with that product, deliver more value to the customer. And as a result, we can go to market with that customer, you know, to those manufacturing companies. So there's some really interesting, you know, evolutions that we're seeing in the business. And at this specific event, I've been meeting back to back with customers, talking about how we can partner together, go to market. It's really exciting. Yeah, Dave, I feel like you watched our intro talking about the keynote on day one because we said, you know, Microsoft itself is going through a digital transformation. And the question we had coming in is, well, how does that transformation line up with their customers and partners? So you've been with the company almost 26 years now. So I want you to talk about digital transformation. But before, you know, question we've asked a lot of the Microsoft guests is, you know, what's the same and what's different about the Satya Nadella Microsoft compared to, you know, what you've done in the past. Yeah, we've gone through a lot of changes over the years since I joined in 1992, for sure. And a lot of it's fun. I got to say, I'm more excited now than I ever have been. Part of it is just the momentum we have with our cloud solutions and the opportunity that's available to us and our partners and quite frankly, our customers as well. And you know, Satya talks about our mission, empowering every person, every organization on the planet to achieve more. But you know, loosely translated the way I see it, it's all about customer success. And you know, when Satya got up in front of our new hires, we have this mock program, which is kind of, you know, new employees coming out of school. And he said, listen, you don't join Microsoft to be cool. You join Microsoft to make other school, which is our customers. And so that's a radical change in how we think and how, you know, just the culture is at Microsoft. And it's really exciting. But then I add to that, you know, the technology we're lining up, we've got four key solutionaries. I'm not sure how familiar we're from modern workplace around office, seeing some amazing take up with teams right now. And as they talk to partners, they're really excited about the momentum around teams. Dynamics as well. We're seeing some great take up from customer experience, right through to finance and operations scenarios. And then of course, Azure. I mean, the growth and momentum we're seeing, you know, across apps and infrastructure, data and AI is just fantastic. But at the end of the day, again, it's all around using that technology and those solutions to enable digital transformation for our customers so that they can succeed. Azure is having tremendous momentum to talk to our, talk to our viewers a little bit about what you're seeing. Yeah, so Azure, I think, you know, I guess the biggest differentiators we hear from our partners that I'm meeting and our customers, quite frankly, are many dimensions. One is around just how we're focusing on developers to make them more productive. Because for them, it's all about how can I, you know, be more agile, develop applications faster for my business or just to bring to market. So that's one key piece. The fact that we have a hybrid solution as well, we're consistent from on-premise to cloud, is very big for our customers because very few customers are willing to go 100% to cloud right away. They've got a vision, they want to get there, but knowing they can balance that with a consistent, you know, management approach and security infrastructure as well. Intelligence is big too. So as I said, you know, being able to, you know, as you have all this data and the accumulation of big data that's happening, being able to apply machine learning, apply cognitive services solutions like chatbots and other agents, and then of course, AI is a big one. And then lastly, trust. And that was a key, you saw Sachi talk a lot about that at his keynote around trust. And we're really differentiating ourselves from that perspective in the sense that, you know, we've got over 70 certifications to meet various compliance standards. And GDPR on privacy is a big focus for us. It's, you know, while it started in the EU, it's actually pretty high on our North American customer list as well from a proprietary standpoint. So that's helping. But quite frankly, when I meet with partners, what they love is this go-to-market approach. So we've got a large sales force that our partners can plug into and take advantage of as we go to market together. And you know, obviously technology is one key element. Pricing is another key element. But knowing that they can work with us to go to market, we're not going to compete with them in any way. You know, we're really clear on what our proposition is and how we go to market. It's a big value proposition as well. Dave, we could drill down a bit on the partner ecosystem because there are some partners that have been going through that digital transformation like with Microsoft. There's others that, you know, started out, cloud native, if you will, you know, cloud first. And, you know, talk a little bit about, you know, the changes, the dynamics that you see in the ecosystem. How many of them, you know, start out their businesses on Azure versus, you know, the options? Yeah, I mean, partners have always been a big part of our business model at Microsoft since day one. And in many ways, it's been a large part of our success, being able to scale and reach a broad audience. But I would say now with cloud services, partners are more important now than ever before. And as we focus on customer success, not just delivering technology, not just licensing technology, but actually focus on customer success, we need partner solutions, you know, like what Cohesity provides to provide that last mile of functionality that customers are looking for. And that's why, you know, this ecosystem is really growing at a rapid pace for us, which is really exciting. And then the other piece that we're putting a lot more emphasis on now, particularly as many of our partners are becoming more focused with, you know, specialized IP and really, we encourage partners to really be clear on what you do best. It's creating this opportunity for partners to partner with other partners. And, you know, so we're developing this whole ecosystem, which, you know, provides great opportunities for, you know, a partner like Cohesity to work with, say, one of our service delivery partners to go to market together and achieve, you know, one plus one equals, you know, more than just two, which was really exciting. And then the value prop to customers is we can just provide that many more solutions, end-to-end solutions that they can provide as they make a bet on Microsoft. And so the value prop there is super high. So, I mean, this is what we, it's been a continual theme of this conference and also here on theCUBE is the breadth and depth of this ecosystem. I mean, and you've just described how partners are partnering with others. And, I mean, what's sort of the endpoint? Is it just going to get ever-vaster? I mean, I don't even know if that's the right word, but... I believe so. I mean, you know, we estimate the total digital transformation opportunity at a global level to be $4.5 trillion. You look at the size of Microsoft and our competitors, we're close to that. So that's why I say this opportunity is just tremendous. And, you know, new solutions are being developed all the time. And we hadn't even thought of or dreamt of before. And partners are just, I mean, that's what I love about our partners. They're so innovative. They bring these new solutions to market. And so, hey, as far as I'm concerned, it's infinite. I mean, there's just so much opportunity out there and some of the opportunity we don't even know about just yet. Yeah, Dave, one of the challenges is just the pace of change just keeps increasing. It's the only thing constant in our industry, I think. Talk about how you work with your partners, how training is involved. Is there any things you've done from certifications or levels usually here, you know, the gold platinum and like that has changed in the last few years to enable this? Yeah, I would say, you know, we're really focused on simplifying how to work with Microsoft. It's been a big focus for us. A year ago, we went through a major field reorganization. You may be aware of where we lined up our sales teams by industry as an example, so they can really drive value to customers. And one of the things we did with partners was we were highly fragmented. So we had enterprise partners in with our enterprise sales teams. We had SMB partners over with, you know, small and medium business group. We had ISVs kind of over here. So that's why we called the one commercial partner group in my title, in my org, is we pulled all that together into one organization so we could really simplify how to engage with Microsoft from a partner perspective. And then we clarified, we really have three primary functions that within my team that partners plug into. A build with, a go to market, and a sell with. Pretty straightforward. A build with was, hey, you know, you want to build an application or a solution or develop a new practice area. I've got technical resources, you know, and other resources that can help partners build that solution or practice. On the go to market side, I've got a whole marketing team that can sit down with a partner who may not, because a lot of our partners actually don't have marketing expertise. They're great at technology, you know, great solution, but they need help. And so we've got marketing people we can assign to help them build a marketing campaign and go to market. We've got lots of great funded programs as well. And then I've got this sell with team and they're actually aligned to our field sales teams and they plug partners into our field sales teams. So you can imagine, you know, every now forecasting meeting that happens or pipeline review with our sales teams, I've got somebody sitting at that table representing partners and plugging partners into our go to market focus. And so partners are loving that. And one of the metrics we track is partner attached to pipeline. A year ago, when we started on this journey, 25% was the partner attached to our pipeline. We're up to almost 90% now in terms of partner attached to our pipeline as a result of having that direct connection into our field team. So it's really, again, that's simplifying how you build with. We'll be clear on how we do that, how we go to market together and then how we co-sell together. Yeah, as I look forward and I hear the places where, you know, Microsoft's leading towards the future. Talk about AI, talk about IoT. I mean, you heard about, you know, Microsoft even creating products down to some of the edge device. That's going to propose even more challenges to the broadening and deepening of the ecosystem. What should we look to see for Microsoft? How do you plan for kind of that future of even more diversity? In terms of more partners and more capability? Yeah, I mean, we've got a major partner recruitment effort. But quite frankly, a lot of our new solutions actually comes from our existing partners. So they're looking to round out, set up new practice areas. So we're always, you know, willing and open to sit down with partners to help them map out that future as well. And then there's a whole lot of partners out there including partners outside of the US that want to come to the US to help partner with us. And so we try to be as welcoming as possible because there is so much opportunity to your question earlier that we can all go after together. I want to ask about culture. So Satya Nadella up on the main stage and in other various media reports and interviews, he talks about Microsoft's culture, the culture he wants to create and cultivate, creativity, collaboration, inclusiveness, a real embracing of diverse perspectives. So that sounds great. And especially in an industry where the tech culture has pretty much a bad reputation as not being diverse, not being relentless and competitive. What's it like to work there? I mean, you've been here nearly three decades. Yeah. You know, as I said, you know, it's, well actually it really starts in what we call the growth mindset. And I think Satya talked about that on Monday. We talk about it all the time so I can't remember when it's talked about not, but this approach is different. It's not that we know what we're doing. We're, you know, we're growing really well. We're, you know, stocks flying, all this kind of stuff. It's not about kind of, you know, just getting excited about those accomplishments. It's all around, hey, how can I learn more? And how can I, you know, do more and capture those learnings and just, you know, grow in the market? So it's found, it's really founded in this growth mindset. But then the three key elements that sit on top of that are around customer obsession. So I talked about that and putting the customer first. It's around one Microsoft where we can't operate in silos. We need to work together and, you know, be selfless as possible so that we can achieve, you know, greatness together. And then diversity and inclusion is a big focus for us. We put a lot of emphasis on that. And that includes, you know, bringing in a diverse workforce where we've got a really big focus on that. And there's good business reasons for that as well. Our customers are diverse. We want to make sure we're developing products and interacting with our customers from that perspective as well. But then inclusion's important as well. And one of the ways we look at it is, hey, diversity is, you know, being invited to the party. Inclusion is actually feeling welcomed while you're at the party. And so that's why this reinforcement of inclusion of not just, you know, race and gender and other things like that, but it's, you know, your backgrounds, your, you know, what's on your resume or just how you think or your personal style as well. And that's a big cultural change. We've been going through the last few years that I wouldn't have said was around as strong in the early part of my career at Microsoft. So how do you do it? How do you make sure, I mean, the hiring, as you said, the numbers are bearing out, then how do you make sure people do feel comfortable and that they have a seat at the table? Yeah, I think, I mean, it starts at the top. So we got the best cheerleader with such. I mean, he reinforces throughout and his leadership team and down. And, you know, I lead a large organization as well. And it's a top priority for me. We review that regularly. And it's not even just within Microsoft as well. So we're actually doing a lot with our channel. We believe our channel could be a lot more diverse as well. So as an example, we started up this women in cloud initiative within the U S and we've got led by Gretchen O'Hara who's runs my go to market marketing team and doing a great job, you know, it's literally up to a hundreds now of women that are in our channel that are, you know, learning from each other, sharing from each other, supporting each other. But also, you know, people like myself and other males and others getting involved to help, you know, nurture that environment and make sure that everybody feels really comfortable that, hey, this diversity inclusion thing, it's really, really good for all of us. It's not only, you know, the right thing, it's also good for business. Right, exactly. Yeah, great. Well, thank you so much, David, for coming on theCUBE. It was great talking to you. Good conversation. Thanks so much for having me. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. We will have more from Microsoft Ignite in just a little bit.