Taking hyperscaler partnerships to the marketplace with Neeti Gupta

Trunal Bhanse: Welcome to the Clazar podcast, everyone. It is here where we talk about modern GTM motions that are transforming sales and partnerships across SaaS businesses by talking to leaders and experts who have scaled their cloud alliances. Today, we have one such leader with us. Welcome, Neeti.

Neeti Gupta: Thank you, Trunal.

Trunal: Neeti, you're the founder and CEO of AI Partnerships Consultancy, which helps businesses leverage the opportunity of AI for innovation and growth through strategic partnerships. You're also a doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge in the UK. Previously, you led the Microsoft partnership at VMware. Under your leadership, VMware launched its marketplace motion on the Azure cloud marketplace and contributed to triple-digit million-dollar revenue for the business. In fact, in 2022, the largest deal made through the Azure marketplace was VMware. And CRN has already called you one of the most powerful women in the channel space. Neeti, how does it feel being in the partnership space and having all these accolades to your name?

Neeti: I'm really excited. I think I fell into partnerships like most of us because nobody goes to school for partnerships. It is a craft that I really enjoy and have gotten really good at. I feel incredibly honored that I had not only the craft to practice that I really enjoyed but also the opportunities at these big tech companies, which are becoming really powerful at this point, where I could practice that craft that I love so much.

Trunal: Let's jump straight into it, then. VMware did not have a marketplace presence before you joined. What were the first few things that you did there?

Neeti: When I came on board, as part of my 30-60-90-day plan, I did my due diligence. I talked to different stakeholders and tried to understand the gaps and opportunities in the partnership that we had with Microsoft. In 2021, Microsoft's key metric of success with their partners was the marketplace. When I looked at what was happening at VMware, we had different product divisions, but we didn't have a marketplace presence with Microsoft.

The first thing was to understand the challenges and then create a business plan or a business case that you can then go back and sell internally. Creating a strategy plan and getting buy-in is the first step. And that required going across multiple product lines and the leaders in all the functional domains.

Trunal: You talked about aligning all of your peers and VPs and securing buy-in. Could you share a little bit about those metrics, some of those conversations, and how you handled that?

Neeti: Going back to 2021, VMware was at that place where revenue was the key metric for the business. Working backwards from the key metric, what our customers were asking for, and the data Microsoft provided around reach of the marketplace, number of customers on the marketplace, and the enterprise customers who were engaged with Microsoft, we were able to create a back-of-the-envelope business case.

We also aligned with the different metrics for these key stakeholders internally. It wasn't that one day I woke up and just presented my business case. I did the homework required to build out a business case that made sense for the stakeholders as well.

Trunal: Walk us through why the product team was so motivated to help you push for sales through cloud marketplaces and what kind of metrics they were interested in.

Neeti: The product team was motivated because they also had a relationship with Microsoft. They were going to market with Microsoft by selling this first kind of SaaS solution that they had built with Microsoft. One key piece of feedback they received from Microsoft was that aligning with the MACC (Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment) would be best to drive consumption.

Trunal: What was the conversation with the ops team, and what were their concerns?

Neeti: The ops was complicated because VMware had so many different tools that were being used to book the deal, to track the deal, and then invoice the customer. What we were changing was fundamentally that we are not invoicing the customer directly. We are going through Microsoft becoming the billing agent, which is what the marketplace does.

We ended up doing what we used to call a blueprint of what that flow would look like when the deal came in through Azure Marketplace. We had to document the flow, estimate what changes we needed to make, and determine whether they were even possible in the timelines we were talking about.

Trunal: Who—either internal or external—would you say has been the biggest champion for you in getting this initiative launched within VMware?

Neeti: I think the product teams were definitely important. Alignment with the product team leaders internally was really important. It was also interesting that we got a lot of support from our legal and finance team as well on this. Once we made the business case, it was an incentive to show revenue generating route to market.

We also had a lot of support from Microsoft. We had a partner development manager assigned to us who really helped us navigate Microsoft. We also have the product team involved and we had champions at Microsoft product teams who were really helping us on the business side and the go-to-market side.

Trunal: In your time with VMware, the focus was on driving revenue and partnerships with Microsoft for both first-party and third-party software. Would you mind sharing what the difference between them is? And what happens when a third-party solution comes in conflict with Microsoft's first-party solutions?

Neeti: The first-party third-party chasm is much talked about with Microsoft. With first-party, Microsoft basically sells that as a core part of their offerings, especially with Azure with 500 plus and growing services. There's always conflict with the third party's solution as well.

The way we navigated that was we did a customer journey map upfront. We then went and educated Microsoft sellers on those solutions because it had to be a solution seller. We spent some time understanding what those incentives for Microsoft sellers were and then positioned our third-party solutions either via the marketplace or otherwise aligned to the incentives that they got benefits from.

Trunal: Neeti, as a closing thought … I know you've just started your own company. Could you tell the audience a little bit more about what your new company does?

Neeti: As the AI wave continues to grow and becomes more and more of a reality, I thought that the intersection between this new technology and partnerships is a good intersection for me to spend the next 10 or 20 years on. That kind of led me to form the AI Partnerships Consultancy. The idea here is that we help partners like VMware, GE, and the partners who work with these big tech companies to make sure that they understand how to work on the AI side.

My clients are asking, can you help us synthesize this information? Can you help us bring our cross-functional teams on board, get the buy-in that we talked about, and make sure we can make the business case? Can we go and then do the co-launches with these big tech partners? Can you help us understand the incentive structures and align a sales team?

As AI becomes even more mainstream, partnership leaders will be needed to help form alliances and collaborations. I would like to be the one you bring in when you have that opportunity.

Trunal: Absolutely. Well, first of all, thanks a lot again for coming to our podcast. It was wonderful to get insights into how these big organizations can affect change. And I loved your framework and systematic thinking.

Neeti: Thank you so much for having me on your podcast, Trunal.