Show Notes
At AWS re:Invent, the energy is palpable - more than 65,000 attendees, sprawling venues and nonstop announcements. In the middle of that amazing energy, I had a fantastic conversation with Mona Chadha, a 13-year AWS veteran and Director of Worldwide Infrastructure ISV Partners. Mona’s perspective sits at the intersection of Marketplace, ISVs, AI innovation and co-sell execution. This conversation unpacked what’s new, what’s changing and what’s working for partners building and selling with AWS. AI Maturity and a New Stage of Customer Readiness Mona made a simple but powerful observation about this year’s re:Invent. “This re:Invent is the perfect point where we have all the technical capabilities with Marketplace. We have the AI, AWS AI services, the Marketplace services, AI competencies to take AI to another level where you can now deliver value, deliver an ROI.” From her vantage point, all the building blocks - Bedrock, Agent Core, Trainium, Inferentia, Marketplace, APN competencies - are converging. Partners and customers now have the foundation not just for experimentation but for production-grade AI. This, she emphasized, is the shift from pilots to return on investment. “Those pilots have to manifest in an ROI and the only way you get that ROI is if you get that scale in production.” The DNA of High-Performing Co-Sell Partners Working across ISVs like Databricks, Snowflake, MongoDB, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Okta and others, Mona sees clear patterns among the companies that succeed most with AWS. The first is early and deep integration. “They’re the first ones to actually come up with - here’s how we should be integrating with Bedrock Agent Core. Partners who are really forward-thinking and get into that AI mindset early on.” The second is tight alignment with AWS - technically, strategically and commercially. “They embed AWS into how they sell and how they market. They understand their end customer base and they build their messaging around those integrations.” And the third is something simple but often overlooked - sharing information. “Oftentimes you might be in a co-sell engagement and you’re not sharing information. The best thing is when our partners work with us, we always have new tidbits to share with one another.” In Mona’s view, the strongest partners also share something else - they themselves are great AWS customers. That gives them internal fluency, confidence in the platform and a natural ability to speak the AWS language. Why Production Workloads Matter More Than Ever Much has been said across the industry about pilots and proof-of-concepts in AI. Mona sharpened that point with data and perspective. Customers are demanding real outcomes. That requires production, measurability, integration, security, regional scale and governance. AWS’s investments - including European Sovereign Cloud and new regional expansions - directly support that shift. “AI gives us predictability. You can actually measure it now. You can measure what that ROI is.” Marketplace Innovation - Bundles and Express Private Offers One of the exciting Marketplace announcements is the multi-product private offer. “Now you can build out an actual solution versus individual components. For channel partners and SIs, this creates a new revenue stream.” Solution bundles unlock entirely new ways for partners to sell: * Pricing on time and delivery * Pricing on outcomes * Pre-packaged architectures * Multi-ISV combinations * Attach services and managed offerings Paired with Express Private Offers, this creates speed and precision. “Being able to proactively deliver a prescriptive solution with a price - it’s smarter ways of procuring and really helpful for the buyer.” This evolution is not theoretical. It’s already reshaping how partners build and how buyers purchase. It Takes a Village - and a New Kind of Collaboration If there was a single recurring theme in Mona’s comments, it was orchestration. Technical stakeholders. Product teams. Ma
More from Inside Partnering
Samrah Khan on partner specialization, faster customer outcomes, and Google Cloud’s evolving ecosystem strategy The system integrator business is undergoing a fundamental transformation. For years, the traditional model was relatively straightforward. Technology vendors sold platforms, customers selected implementation partners, and SIs delivered projects that could stretch across multiple years. AI is changing that equation. Customers want more than technology implementation. They’re looking for partners who can help define their AI strategies, identify business opportunities, develop specialized solutions, and deliver measurable results in months rather than years. In my latest Inside Partnering conversation, I welcomed back Samrah Khan, Director of Google Cloud SI/GSI Ecosystem North America, to explore how these changes are reshaping the partner ecosystem. Samrah leads Google’s SI/GSI partner relationships at a particularly interesting moment. Google Cloud’s business experienced an amazing 82% year-over-year growth in Q2! But the more interesting story isn’t the growth itself. It’s how the expectations of customers, technology providers, and partners are changing. Here are six insights from our conversation. 1. Customers Want a Unified AI Strategy, Not Another Technology Implementation One of Samrah’s clearest observations is that enterprise customers are approaching AI very differently from previous technology transitions. They’re no longer simply shopping for infrastructure or selecting a systems integrator after choosing a platform. Instead, they expect technology providers and partners to work together from the beginning, bringing a comprehensive perspective on business transformation. “Customers are looking at both the partners as well as the hyperscalers or technology providers to come in and look at the whole enterprise from A to Z.” Thanks for reading Inside Partnering! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
For partner leaders, one of the hardest questions isn’t identifying your best-performing partners. Most organizations already know who they are. The harder question is: Who should you invest in next? That question sits at the center of my conversation with Kenneth Fox, CTO and founder of ChannelScaler. Kenneth has spent his career in channels and partnerships, and his perspective combines the technology side of partner management with the practical realities of running partner programs. Inside Partnering is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
At Sage FUTURE in San Francisco, I sat down with Dan Miller, EVP of Financials and ERP at Sage, to talk about how Sage is thinking about AI, ecosystem partnerships, and the future of ERP platforms. One of the clearest themes from the conversation was this: finance leaders are not resisting AI. They simply want transparency, accountability, and confidence in the outputs. For partner leaders, ISVs, and ecosystem builders, that creates a very different opportunity than the generic “AI transformation” messaging dominating the market right now. Dan framed it around trust. “What finance and operations professionals really want is confidence in the tools that they’re deploying are doing exactly what they are expected to do.” That requirement shapes how Sage is building both its AI capabilities and its broader partner ecosystem. Inside Partnering is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit insidepartnering.substack.com
At Sage FUTURES in San Francisco, Gretchen O’Hara delivered a clear message to partners: the market is shifting fast - and the opportunity is massive. But despite the noise around AI, one thing hasn’t changed. Partners are still at the center of how businesses win. “The channel is one of the most important things because our partners are the ones that have the deepest industry expertise and are closest to customers that can really solve their unique, unique business challenges.” AI may accelerate execution, but it doesn’t replace the need for domain expertise, customer proximity, and trusted advisory. In fact, it amplifies it. Inside Partnering is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.