Chris Grusz: Powering ISV Growth Through AWS Marketplace Innovation

Chip Rodgers  0:01  
Hey everyone. Chip Rodgers, Chief partner Officer at workspan, and that's been a great event here today, Chris.

Speaker 1  0:09  
It's one of my favorite events of the year. You know, a lot of times it's almost like a homecoming, because there's a lot of these people that we've been working with for years, and it's awesome content. And every year the bar gets a little bit higher, and there's so much going on with marketplace. So it's, it's a great event,

Chip Rodgers  0:23  
great and talk about content. I mean, I think the content has been really, I think early on, it was sort of one on one kinds of content, but, but the today, this time, it's been really advanced, a lot of really good questions,

Speaker 1  0:35  
yeah, now we've, we kind of we, we arranged the content so that, if you're kind of an operator marketplace, there's some really good stuff there on how to list your product and run it and use the reporting. If you are selling through marketplace, there's all kinds of awesome co sell content. And then, of course, if you're looking to just take advantage of some of our new features, we've got all of our developers here, our product managers. So you really get to talk to the people that actually have been building the products, and get to ask those questions. And so that's what's the beauty of the event, is you really have that intimacy that you don't typically get when you go to some of our other

Chip Rodgers  1:07  
events. That's amazing. Yeah, really great, great event. Okay, so maybe I should do an introduction here. We're talking about the event. So I'm really excited to be joined by Chris Cruz, and Chris is General Manager and Managing Director of Technology Partnerships for AWS and an icon at AWS that would be

Speaker 1  1:26  
going a little too far. But yes, I've been with the team for nine years now. So yes. So from a small business up to what it is now, which is a very material part of the business

Chip Rodgers  1:35  
for AWS. No kidding. I mean, just, just the growth has been phenomenal.

Speaker 1  1:39  
Yeah, no, it's, really taken off. And when we rewind back to where we were just kind of distributing self service Amis to where we're at now, we're selling, obviously still, Amazon machine images, SaaS products, containerized solutions, professional services, both in self service formats as well as large private offers like the aperture has expanded so much over the years. And so it's been a really fun ride.

Chip Rodgers  2:02  
Yeah, it's so just so many I think you guys are really doing some really amazing things, both in in CO selling, you know, and then also with the with closing business, with private offers on the marketplace and and the marketplace growth has been, has been phenomenal. So tell me a little bit about what you and your team like. How do you describe what it is that you guys are doing? Yeah,

Speaker 1  2:25  
so we work with our technology partners for a variety of things. It could be adoption of all of our APN programs, or it could be adopting of a marketplace and with some of the marketplace features. And for what's important for us is we're ultimately trying to help our ISVs grow when they grow. That's very good for AWS as well, and it's good for our customers. And so we focus very much on, how can we find them, new logos, new business through product led growth initiatives. And then how can we really automate that CO sell capability, leveraging things like private offers, which just simplify how we co sell it, it automatically pays our field sales teams, puts that spin on the AWS bill, and there's all kinds of really good benefit that occurs as a result, yeah,

Chip Rodgers  3:02  
well, and it just streamlines the sales process as well, right? Oh,

Speaker 1  3:07  
absolutely. I mean, that's the nice thing with marketplace. Is we've been on a kind of a multi year effort to take marketplace, which really started off as a website, and then really decompose that down into APIs. And those APIs are what allow our partners to work with AWS at scale, because a lot of our partners, they don't want to work with us and do a dozen deals or even 100 deals. They want to go do 1000 or 10,000 deals. And the only way you get to that scale is when you have automation. How do we integrate into their CRM systems? How do we integrate marketplace into their billing records? And you can only do that through APIs. And so it's been really cool to see the engineering that keeps coming out. We keep launching more and more APIs, and that's just going to further automate how we how we partner with our technology partners, our consulting partners, our distributors. You know, all that automation helps. You know, every one of the partners that are as part of

Chip Rodgers  3:56  
APN, and Matt has done a phenomenal job, Matt and his team, you know, building, building those capabilities to be able to roll it out. Oh yeah, we've been

Speaker 1  4:04  
so busy, like they, they launched over 100 features last year alone, and some of them are small features that, you know, resolve paper cuts. And then there's big features, like vendor insights that are big tier one launches, but they just the rate of innovation has been awesome, and that really makes my job a lot easier when we're innovating so fast that, you know, it's really showing that our partners that we're really investing in them on how we can actually automate their businesses as well.

Chip Rodgers  4:30  
And we've been excited to be a part of that story as well. Working with our customers, AWS, partners,

Speaker 1  4:36  
and absolutely, work span has been a big part of that. Like we we look at having things like our ACE integration as a key component how you work with us. You guys really kind of led the pack in terms of doing that ace integration, and that is an integral part of how we actually scale our business moving forward. So you guys have been a very valuable partner, and, you know, definitely helping us with the journey that we're on.

Chip Rodgers  4:55  
Well, we appreciate the partnership, Chris and and I guess. I'll just say, you know, congratulations on the great event and another great event, and looks Yes, absolutely fantastic. So gosh, thank you, Chris, thank you as well for Yeah. That works, man has been doing Yeah. Thank you and and thank you all for for joining, and we'll see you next time. Thanks everybody. All right, guys.

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