Karthik Balakrishnan: Build, Integrate & Transact with Buy‑with‑AWS

Chip Rodgers   0:00  
Chip, Hey everyone. Chip Rodgers, Chief partner officer at work, span and so we are, things are winding down for we're at the last day, last hours of reinvent. And what an amazing, just exhausting, incredible reinvent this year. You

Karthik Balakrishna  0:18  
summarize it, it keeps getting bigger and better each year. And at the tail end of it, I think a lot of people are getting set for replay tonight.

Chip Rodgers   0:25  
Yes, yeah, it's the big the big bash at the end of the at the end of the event. Yes,

Karthik Balakrishna  0:32  
I know a lot of people who have deferred all the fun right for tonight, and they're ready.

Chip Rodgers   0:37  
Well, I am so excited to be joined by Karthik Balakrishnan and Kartik, welcome. Welcome to our conversation here. Karthik is, is gm of marketplace core, and you have, you're in the engineering team, product and engineering team at AWS, and responsible for a lot of the announcements that Matt and Ruba and and that Matt, Matt Garman and Matt, why have been announcing Matt, why has been prolific sending out messages on LinkedIn about all the new capabilities and so you've had a big job. I'm sure the team is, is, is like just feeling very gratified at the announcements

Karthik Balakrishna  1:29  
and all the work you put in reinvent is a culmination, right where you see all of it come together, and you hear about how partners and customers value all of these features, and the value all of this drives for them, and it's incredibly exciting. It just makes all that weight worth it, and to see all of it come together. And you're right. We are continue, continuously investing in automation as marketplace scales. We've transacted billions of dollars globally. We now have over 3 million subscriptions. We have over 5000 partners, over 20,000 products. And at that scale, an area you want to invest intentionally is automation. So this time last year, at reinvent we had announced the availability of a portfolio of public facing APIs, and over hundreds of sellers have integrated these APIs into their workflows. And very sad today, over 30% of private offers transacted on marketplace were created on a non AWS venue. Or to put it another way, partners are no longer coming to AWS to create these offers, because we meeting them where they are on their tools of choice. So be it on their coding tools, through our APIs, on their CRMs, through the CRM connector you we've built, or the CRM connector that works. All of that is now leading to this motion where we continuing to meet our customers and partners where they are. It's what we call AWS Marketplace everywhere.

Chip Rodgers   2:49  
That's That's fantastic, and that's that our as our philosophy as well, is, is, how do we, you know, get, get, get to the point where Aw, AWS processes are built right into the into the partner, where you know where they are, whether it's in Salesforce or whatever, you know their CRM or whatever. So amazing. You guys have done a phenomenal job. Thanks, Chip. So let's talk about buy with AWS, which is was a big announcement, you know, this week. And again, I think it's, it's very forward thinking. The way that you guys are just, you know, building the whole concept is to, is to go, you know, really extend out to a website, or just wherever anybody's in a buying process. It's like, boom, it can go get transacted in the

Karthik Balakrishna  3:41  
marketplace, absolutely. And it's a journey we've been on for a few years now, right? So AWS Marketplace today is available in 19 AWS service consoles, including the likes of EC two Eks and redshift. So take the keys. Case of the Eks integration, we did customers looking for a monitoring solution can now transact container offerings from AWS Marketplace from right within Eks, without ever having to leave eks. So that's an example of meeting customers where they are. We've built integrations to popular procurement platforms like Coupa and Ariba, and that allows our enterprise customers to use marketplace offerings within the procurement tools of their choice. And it's a journey we are continuing to invest now extending that reach into our partners. So earlier this year, we did a survey of our AWS customers, and over 80% of them told us that seeing marketplace branding on a partner website helped build trust, and over 60% of them told us that allowing them to transact a marketplace listing from a partner website would help expedite their purchasing journey. And as you know, we're obsessed about speed, we're obsessed about efficiency, and we're obsessed about customer experiences. And that essentially led to the culmination of buy with AWS, where it's a simple premise, we allow our partners to transact their marketplace listings from right within their own website. Right and meet their customers earlier in the customer's purchasing journey. And what that means is faster sales cycles for our partners and for our customers, it's about meeting them right at the moment where they want to purchase and eliminating friction in the process, so customers no longer have to come to AWS Marketplace to transact marketplace listings. And regardless of how customers sign in to AWS, whether they sign in with their Iam credentials on the AWS sign in page, or they use single sign on that their enterprise has set up for them, they can use buy with AWS at the click of a button.

Chip Rodgers   5:32  
That's amazing. And even so you talk about on a website, but also even inside of the product, I think some partners are even doing that. Is

Karthik Balakrishna  5:39  
that right? Absolutely. So one of the coolest implementations was what Databricks unveiled yesterday and you so I think folks who saw rubbers keynote saw that it's an in app purchase experience where customers, starting with the free workspace from Databricks, can simply use buy with AWS as a payment method and upgrade their workspace. And when they complete the process, they are in an upgraded workspace. So that's just one example of how partners are innovating. We buy with AWS is something all of our partners can leverage. So whether it's an ISV pursuing product led growth like confluent, for example, or Databricks, or whether it's a channel partner who hosts so fronts and now wants to give customers a way to transact. So we have partners like harass and bytes who have launched these storefronts, or whether it's distributors who have their own marketplaces. So Ingram micro, for example, which is again showcased in Rubus keynote yesterday, or tvsonics, they have all started to innovate with buy with AWS, where they're meeting customers where they are, and giving customers the ability to use their AWS credentials to complete purchases from right within by they are, yeah,

Chip Rodgers   6:45  
that's fantastic. So, Karthik, you just had a session on buy with AWS. Tell us about that. How did it go? I know you had a couple of customers work day. And was it confluent? I think on stage with you. Just, How was that received?

Karthik Balakrishna  7:00  
I mean, it was incredible, right? So earlier today, we actually had an AWS on our session where we talked about buy with AWS. So Moshe and I were presenting there, and later today we had the breakout session, and very well attended. I think it's just very exciting to be presenting with partners, and it's just been a it's early days. I mean, we've just about launched by with AWS, but to hear about the impact from our partners, where workday is using buy with AWS to accelerate their private offer motions, or the way confluent is using buy with AWS to drive product led growth and confluent launched by with AWS in two separate experiences, one being their marketing page, where they drive demand, and the second being, again similar to Databricks, using buy with AWS as a payment method from write within the confluent experience. And it's incredible. The early results we are starting to see. We are very, very excited for where this can go. And as of today, we have 58 partners. And to take a step back, when we started earlier this year, we thought 20 would be a stretch call, and it's just incredible, like the sheer demand we got from all stripes of partners who work with us. The team had to stretch, but we made all 50 it happen. And we are really proud to be where we are.

Chip Rodgers   8:09  
That's amazing. That's amazing. So other than, you know, taking a well, well deserved break, what's what's coming up next,

Karthik Balakrishna  8:18  
what's coming up next? So, I mean, we're excited to see where buy with AWS takes us next, right? So where we stand today, we buy with AWS as GA for SaaS product types, and heading into next year, we want to make buy with AWS available for all product types on marketplace. So that includes container products, which is armies and containers. We then have data products, we have professional services. So we want buy with AWS to be a consistent way to purchase these products across any website, across all product types. So that's an area we'll continue to invest into next year, and then taking that a step forward, we've just launched so we're going to be observing how customers use buy with AWS. And being a data obsessed company, we are going to observe the behaviors customers exhibit, understand the drop off points, understand where friction lies, and work with our partners in continuing to streamline these purchasing experience for our customers.

Chip Rodgers   9:12  
Fantastic. Karthik, thank you so much for taking some time today, this afternoon, and things are winding down. It's been an incredible week, and appreciate you taking some time. Thanks,

Karthik Balakrishna  9:25  
Chip. Have a great rest of your day. Great. Thank

Chip Rodgers   9:29  
you, Karthik, and thank you all for joining and we will see you next time. Thanks everybody. Bye.