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Google’s Ecosystem Leader for North America Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®
We are bringing you some of the best episodes of 2023 to help you prepare for success in 2024; this one is part of a MASTERCLASS Series working with Google Cloud.
Google Cloud is approaching a $30 billion business, ranking it number three of the leading cloud providers, or “hyperscalers.” Google Cloud creates a massive opportunity for partners to help Google’s customers take full advantage of their cloud environments by providing the ecosystem of additional services, platforms, and expertise only partners can provide. If you’re a technology leader, looking to learn how to grow your business effectively, don’t miss this exclusive Ultimate Guide to Partnering series Precision Partnering, where I’m joined by the Google Cloud leaders driving the partnership business to help define what it takes to partner with Google effectively.
Jim Anderson, VP of Google Cloud North America, Partner Ecosystem and Channels, joins me to kick off this critical series of the podcast, Precision Partnering Masterclass. In this episode, Jim and I explore the ins and outs of Google’s mission to drive growth and accelerate customer outcomes through their partner ecosystem, and how Google infuses the right mindset into the selling organization. We also discuss the emergence of marketplaces, and the exciting opportunities in store partnering with Google.
In Jim’s words
As an Executive on Google’s Cloud team and a board member for Altair (NASDAQ: ALTR), Jim has more than 25 years of experience with some of the world’s leading technology companies, including Hewlett Packard (HP), Dell, and Cisco. Jim works with customers and partners to leverage emerging Cloud, AI/ML, and Data Analytics technologies to accelerate Digital Transformation by driving data-powered innovation.
Jim is known for his experience in helping businesses, at an inflection point, take advantage of market transitions. He has been described as a thought leader with the agility to make an impact that matters. Throughout his career (including six years with Global responsibility), Jim has successfully run businesses that help customers leverage digital technologies to drive efficiencies and enter new markets. He has been selected as one of the “Most Influential Black Americans in Corporate America” (2020 Savoy Magazine) and a “Best of Biz 2015” award winner in the Executive of the Year category.
What You’ll Learn
- Jim Anderson’s Role & Mission. 3:00
- How Google Infuses a “Value Mindset” into the Organization. 5:08
- Google’s Response to Generative AI. 9:15
- What makes a great partner? 10:08
- What does it take to Partner with Google? 13:26
- What to expect from The Precision Partnering Masterclass Series? 15:39
Exclusively Sponsored By Google Cloud
This episode of the podcast is exclusively sponsored by Google Cloud. Google Cloud’s mission is to accelerate every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business. More than any other top cloud provider; Google Cloud as unique capabilities to meet customers’ needs across four areas. Data, Trust, Open Infrastructure, and Collaboration, all underpinned by Sustainable Technology. Learn more at cloud.google.com
On becoming, The Ultimate Partner™
At Ultimate Guide to Partnering, we bring you the leaders in this industry, the best in the business from the leading tech organizations and the hyperscalers, who drive the greatest influence and impact to our world of ecosystems.
With this exciting new Masterclass Series, Ultimate Partnerships becomes The Ultimate Partner™ More than just a new look, The Ultimate Partner is doubling its commitment to helping YOU become the Ultimate Partner by getting it right. Do you want to be The Ultimate Partner? Visit our NEW website.
Other Noteworthy Episodes Featuring Google Cloud
Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
partnering, customers, google, organization, ultimate guide, partner ecosystem, leveraging, partnerships, success, marketplace, mindset, google cloud, journey, jim, ai, solutions, business, cloud, drive, listeners
SPEAKERS
Vince Menzione, Jim Anderson, Announcer
Vince Menzione 00:00
At Ultimate Guide to Partnering, we bring you the leaders in this industry, the best in the business from the leading tech organizations and the hyperscalers, the ones driving the greatest influence and impact on our world of ecosystems. With their latest earnings results, Google Cloud is approaching a $30 billion business, ranking it number three of the leading cloud providers, or hyperscalers. This creates a massive opportunity for you as partners to help Google’s customers take full advantage of their cloud environments by providing the ecosystem of additional services, platforms, and expertise only partners like you can provide. So if you’re a technology leader, looking to learn how to grow your business effectively, then you won’t want to miss this exclusive Ultimate Guide to Partnering series Precision Partnering. In this series, I’m joined by the Google leaders driving the partnership business to help define what it takes to partner with Google effectively.
Announcer 01:08
This is the ultimate guide to partnering with the top partnership podcast. In this podcast, Vince Menzione, a proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host Vince Menzione.
Vince Menzione 01:28
Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Menzione, your host today. I welcome Jim Anderson is vice president of Google Cloud in North America, partner ecosystem and channels. And he joins me to kick off this important series of podcast precision partnering. In this episode, Jim and I explore the ins and outs of Google’s mission to drive growth and accelerate customer outcomes through their partner ecosystem, and how Google infuses the right mindset of value mindset into the selling organization. We also discuss the emergence of marketplaces, and the exciting opportunities in store partnering with Google. I hope you enjoy and learn from this discussion. As much as I enjoyed welcoming back, Jim Anderson. This episode of the podcast is exclusively sponsored by Google Cloud. Google clouds mission is to accelerate every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business more than any other top cloud provider, Google Cloud as unique capabilities to meet the needs of customers across four areas. Data Trust, open infrastructure and collaboration, all underpinned by sustainable technology, learn more@cloud.google.com. Jim, welcome back to the podcast.
Jim Anderson 03:00
Hey, Vince, it’s great to be back. Thanks for having me.
Vince Menzione 03:03
I am so excited to welcome you back to Ultimate Guide to Partnering to kick off this special series of episodes, we’re calling Precision Partnering
Jim Anderson 03:12
for vision partner, I look forward to talk to you about it. So you’re the leader of
Vince Menzione 03:17
Google’s North American partner organization. But for our listeners who might have missed our last episode, Episode 157, can you define your organization’s role and mission?
Jim Anderson 03:29
Sure events. As you mentioned, my name is Jim Anderson. I am the Vice President of Google Cloud, North America partner ecosystem and channels, and part of the North America sales executive team. Google’s cloud mission is to accelerate every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business. The mission of our partner organization simply builds on this mission to leverage our ecosystem to help customers maximize their return on Google technologies as they go through this transformation journey.
Vince Menzione 04:00
Jim, that’s a massive mission. And we’re going to spend these next series of episodes going through that in greater detail. But what’s the essence?
Jim Anderson 04:09
Well, that’s we are extremely focused on delivering differentiated partnerships that produce the business outcomes that our customers are demanding and expect Google’s best in class technologies empower organizations to really harness their data to provide actionable insights. While leveraging the best and most secure open infrastructure. We also enable industry transformation through AI and ML capabilities are a hot topic right now. And we combine this with applications from our partner ISPs, and with implementation assistance from our solution partners to ensure customer success. So Jim,
Vince Menzione 04:43
our last episode was a fan favorite. And in that interview, we discussed how your leader Thomas Kurian, has put a stake in the ground when it comes to partnerships. His announcement that all deals must have a partner attached to them. And he’s gone on and been on other podcasts since where he’s talked about the importance of partnering to Google. How does this approach impact how you’re investing to drive the growth in the business?
Jim Anderson 05:08
I know one of the things we talked about during our last podcast was having a value mindset. Google’s business approach starts there, as our focus is on the outcome versus just the transaction. Partnering for us is just not about partnering with the companies we work with. It’s also about partnering with customers for their digital transformation journey. If one truly believes in a value mindset, then partnering with an establishing a solid ecosystem of partners that can ensure the success of this journey is non negotiable. I would say we have this mindset throughout our entire organization, starting at the top in my previous role I responsible for our South Central region. And what I have observed that when it comes to transformational deals, we never went alone.
Vince Menzione 05:57
I love the fact that you bring a seller’s mindset, this value mindset. Can I borrow that? I really love that term. You mentioned it last time and I talked about growth mindset. I talked about partner led mindset, but value mindset really nails it in terms of the customer, right showing up with the right value for the customer.
Jim Anderson 06:17
Exactly. Our value mindset encourages our sales team to involve partners in most of their deals. In North America, we have launched partnering with precision initiative to support a win win environment for our customers, our partners, and Google. This includes investments in key areas like ISP, cosell partner service capability, and differentiated solutions with a goal of accelerating customer outcomes and maximizing impact. How do we improve the value that we bring to customers, because we want to be a partner for their whole cloud transformation journey.
Vince Menzione 06:55
So since our last discussion marketplaces have truly taken center stage Canalis predicts that the marketplace opportunity mostly focused on the hyper scalars, like Google will exceed $45 billion. It’s an astounding number by 2025, can you help our listeners better understand that opportunity for partners working with Google,
Jim Anderson 07:19
we’re really excited about this emerging digital channel, we see the same growth opportunity for marketplace that many of the analysts see. But marketplace creates a win for not just the customer, but also for Google and the partner, from our customer perspective, marketplace greatly reduces the friction of trying new technologies. And your cloud environment allows customers to increase their ROI associated with their spending commit, by leveraging both first party and third party products against that commit, that’s when a partner, it can greatly reduce the procurement cycles associated with their software. And by Google mounting it to count towards the commit, increasing the financial incentives for a customer to use their product. from a Google perspective, it helps customers take full advantage of our platform, and really optimize their spin in the cloud over time.
Vince Menzione 08:15
So Jim, from my perspective, as well, I believe it takes the friction out of the partnering right, it becomes in many respects, the non fungible token that allows the organization’s to go to market more effectively. Would you agree here?
Jim Anderson 08:29
I definitely agree. What we’re working on, and you’ll hear me talk about it often is how do you remove the friction, and bringing this whole ecosystem together to increase the value we bring the partners and reduce their time to value and marketplace is right along the lines and making that happen?
Vince Menzione 08:46
such exciting times ahead? I’m so excited for this next couple of years for marketplaces. And for Google. We talked about this earlier in AI has been in the news quite a bit. I’d be remiss if we didn’t have a discussion about AI, the open AI initiative chat GPT. And I know that Google has been front and center when it comes to AI and AI initiatives. I was wondering how Google is responding to what’s out in the marketplace right
Jim Anderson 09:15
now. I don’t think Google is responding to that. I think we’ve been involved. As you mentioned, for a long time with AI, we have a long history of AI and bringing innovative technologies leveraging AI to market. As you know, we include it with a lot of the applications that we bring the market, right. The key thing is how do you leverage AI to really make a difference with the customers in our society in a positive way. And that’s really what we’re focusing on as an organization. Based on our history around AI. We’re looking to leverage large language models are capabilities around conversational AI, and what we do with search in ways that are unique to the industry. It’s exciting because AI will change the way that people enter Aqua technologies, Google will be on the forefront of that, working with our partners and customers in ways that benefits their organization. So Jim,
Vince Menzione 10:08
over the last six years, I’ve been following what’s been going on in our tech sector this transformational time. And I’ve been watching Google’s rise through my own experiences, working with organizations, and the interviews I get to do with great guests and partners. What do you believe it takes to be a great partner working with Google,
Jim Anderson 10:29
we want our partner ecosystem be a multiplier of success with our customers. I know the previous episode, and I talked about the principle of one plus one equals one, when it’s really a multiplier effect. And I know my math was bad. But in other words, we’re focused on how do we remove the friction? How do we come together as a joint success model, realizing that neither of us can do it alone is critical to our mindset, and our success. What I did was work with partners that have focused on expanding customer reach vast and building capacity around digital transformation, and are committed to co innovation with us, there’s a lot of opportunity for innovation, and how we engage with partners, really is just beginning to surface with some of the technologies out there in the marketplace. And I look forward to taking advantage of it as we move forward. And really improving how we bring value to our customers.
Vince Menzione 11:23
Jim, I love what you had to say about one plus one equals one. And I know you were a math minor, for instance. So
Jim Anderson 11:31
map, I don’t know if it’s showing right now.
Vince Menzione 11:35
But I think the point is well served in that really going back to the customer. And then all of the partner precision what we’re talking about here, because it’s not just one partner, it’s not a transaction like it was several years ago, it takes a group of organizations coming together, we could use the term stitching here, but bringing together the value for the customer in the right way, we’re going to learn how your organization comes together, and supports that customer with the right value mindset,
Jim Anderson 12:05
exactly the right value mindset, where we can bring the right partner with the right experience at the right time to take them on that journey and be a mentor for them on that journey as they move along it.
Vince Menzione 12:17
I’m so excited to bring this to our listeners. But what about the partners that don’t get it right? And then don’t get partnering? Right? What was the kryptonite?
Jim Anderson 12:26
The biggest issue I see with partners that have struggled with us is their lack of focus on what some call year to journey and the cloud partners that mostly invest in acquisition with little investment and ensuring the success of their customers cloud journey, tend to struggle and fall short of expectations, that transaction doesn’t produce the win. It’s the journey that determines success. Our goal is really to make our customers a superhero on their cloud journey, and partners and Google Cloud, Jim act as their mentor to help them on that journey. I think kryptonite happens when one loses this perspective. So I always encourage partners to think customer first and keep the right perspective, understanding that we are here to help customers who are going from where they are today through our journey, and we need to invest in their success. And I think what
Vince Menzione 13:21
I hear it’s not a one and done type of transactional model in the cloud. In that you are building right you’re you’re innovating new solutions. Google’s platform is known for having so many innovative aspects and workloads that you’re really helping them reimagine their business. And that’s a long process.
Jim Anderson 13:39
Exactly right. It is long process. And what customers want is they want to partner for that process, right? They’re not looking for us to simply drive a transaction they’re looking for us to share in their success journey. And that’s what we want to do.
Vince Menzione 13:53
So Jim, what advice would you have for our listeners, they’re going to be joining this series of episodes this masterclass precision partnering on optimizing for their success. Working with Google
Jim Anderson 14:04
lasting partnerships are all about finding a key win for all the stakeholders involved. I encourage partners that are looking to understand how best to work with Google to first understand how we measure success. I believe success is measured differently in a consumption business versus a transaction business. I always suggest they have a story of how they drive that success for us. And it’s easy for our sales teams to understand. This means understanding your value mindset, and that we are focused on driving digital transformation, and customer acquisition, leveraging our platform. I also believe that focus is a key success factor when trying to partner a global set the Salesforce has a clear understanding of your value proposition and when best to engage. At the same time, many customers see the complexity of their environment increasing as they try to take advantage of multi cloud and hybrid environments. They see partners To help them remove some of that friction that we’ve already talked about, we are looking for partners that want to double down with us to build the technical capacity to help customers accelerate their digital journey. Every customer’s journey is a little different. Agility is important in our world. So we’re looking for partners that are able to adapt to ensure our customer success no matter where they are in their cloud journey.
Vince Menzione 15:22
I love what you have to say on a few fronts here, right, the doubling down talks about commitment. And then you mentioned agility, which is one of my favorite aspects of successful partnering is that organizations need to understand when they need to pivot when there’s new opportunity areas and take advantage of those opportunity areas. So I know we want all of our listeners to think about those things as we go through these next episodes. But Jim, can you take us through what our listeners will hear from and what they can expect in this precision partnering series at the podcast,
Jim Anderson 15:54
Google is trying to leverage his partner ecosystem to bring maximize value to our customers, we approach the market with four pillars when it comes to our partner organization. We have the ISP pillar, which we invest in CO sell with, we have a resale pillar that’s more of a traditional value added reseller pillar, which we work to bring value to our customers that want to work with resellers. We also have a technical enablement to learn because the services associated with our partners, and the customers that need those services are critical. And we have this focus on service delivery, excellence. And we also have a solutions pillar, right? Because we believe that the partner ecosystem can be a differentiator for us in the market. And we’re going to do that with horizontal and industry solutions. As we move forward. I often talk about this concept of a trifecta where Google is the platform, ISPs offer a solution. And we have implementation partners that can come together to take that ensure success of that solution with the customers and who we hear from from your team. You’re gonna hear from Rob Harper, who’s responsible for Channel Sales and how he’s leveraging precision partnering to really drive value with our resell partners in the market. You’ll also hear from Chris Voss, who’s responsible for what we call our service partner. A lot of people know them as GSI as the global system integrators. And they’ll talk about how we’re leveraging our service partners to ensure customer success. We also have Clyde de Souza, who’s responsible for partner engineering organization, and working with customers to drive their technical enablement and making sure they have the capabilities needed to ensure success of digital transformation and our customers. You’ll hear from Scott Bertelsen, who leads our ISV organization and you’ll talk about how we’re leveraging ISPs and partnering with them on cosell to make sure that we’re bringing value to our customers. And last but not least, you’ll hear from Rebecca Potts, who’s responsible for our solutions, pillar driving business outcomes with our customers in leveraging the solutions we bring to market as a differentiator for us. So that’s the team. Hopefully, it’ll be a great conversation.
Vince Menzione 18:09
So excited to take our listeners through this precision partnering journey, pulling together all that Google offers to support the customer.
Jim Anderson 18:20
Well, thanks, Mick. It is really exciting to be back. I love listening to your podcasts. And I love the thought leadership that you are driving when it comes to partnering in the marketplace, and really the partner ecosystem, I believe, fundamentally over the next three years, you’ll see a lot of innovation when it comes to partnering, and how we partner three years down the road, we’re probably a lot different than how we partner today. And I’m glad that I’ll be able to be a part of that journey.
Vince Menzione 18:47
So for our listeners, stay tuned for precision partnering in these next several episodes. So there you have it. Another amazing guest joins Ultimate Guide to partnering. And I hope you enjoyed this interview as much as I did. Odds are if you’re a technology partner, executive, and hearing my voice, chances are you too, are looking to accelerate your success through partnerships. I mean, let’s face it. We all have seen partnerships that look good on paper, but never live up to their expected results. There are a lot of reasons why partnerships fail. And at ultimate partnerships, we help you get it right by applying a proven set of best practices and framework that’s used by leading partners working with Microsoft and other technology giants. If you want to learn more, follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website at Ultimate Guide to partnering.com.
Announcer 19:45
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Guide to partnering with your host Vince Menzione online at Ultimate Guide to partnering.com and facebook.com/ultimate Guide to partner we’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partnering