Ultimate Partner®
Vince Menzione - Technology Industry Sales and Partner Executive
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302 – How Top ISVs Are Winning With Cloud Marketplaces
Unlocking billions in cloud marketplace revenue. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ This powerful panel discussion featuring leaders from Google, Tackle, and dbt Labs dives deep into the explosive growth of cloud marketplaces and the radical shift toward AI-driven go-to-market strategies. With hyperscaler backlogs nearing half a trillion dollars, the conversation unpacks how top-tier organizations are transforming their compensation models, aligning executive buy-in, and navigating the complexities of co-selling to capture committed customer budgets. From the rise of AI agents acting as metered SaaS to the essential operational investments required to scale marketplace revenue from 10% to over 50%, this session provides an actionable roadmap for software companies ready to dominate the 2026 partner ecosystem. https://youtu.be/LSj49f5FEII Key Takeaways Hyperscaler backlog commitments represent a massive, nearly half-trillion-dollar addressable market that completely changes the budgeting conversation. Successful marketplace selling requires complete executive alignment, right down to the CFO, and strategic adjustments like spiffing sales teams for marketplace transactions. The AI category is experiencing staggering 18x year-over-year growth, forcing companies to pivot toward an “agent-first” go-to-market model. Shifting from traditional channels to cloud go-to-market demands a multi-year, intentional investment in operations, people, and technology. System integrators are evolving into software companies as they build orchestration agents to manage fragmented, end-to-end workflows. Leveraging cloud commitments bypasses standard 12-15 month budget cycles, allowing for significantly faster deal closures and larger initial lands. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Google Cloud Marketplace, hyperscaler backlog, cloud commitments, co-selling strategies, AI agents, metered SaaS, product-led growth, rev ops, B2B sales transformation, ecosystem shift, channel strategy, system integrators, Deal registration, private offer APIs, digital transformation, software procurement. Transcript: Insight to Revenue- The State of Cloud GTM [00:00:00] Dai Vu: These are all things everyone has to do to get to that first five to 10 deals, and then 10, 20, 30% of your business through Marketplace. [00:00:09] Vince Menzione: You can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way Hyperscalers are partnering, how AI is remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:21] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and each week I sit down with leaders at the intersection of technology. Partnerships and outcomes. The voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. [00:00:43] Vince Menzione: It is the strategy because being in the room changes [00:00:46] John Janke: everything. Let’s start. [00:00:52] Vince Menzione: And we have an incredible session. The way that we wanted today to, to, to start the day up was like, let’s talk about what’s happening right now and let’s get three leaders in this space to come up and talk about the world and how it’s a rapidly evolving. So I want to invite to the stage dvu from Google is a great friend of Ultimate Partner. [00:01:14] Vince Menzione: Are you guys ready? Are you guys micd up already? Okay, good. Good. John Yanke, the CEO and Founder of Tackle, and Sean Todo, who is an incredible leader with DBT, but also an old friend of mine. We worked together on Microsoft Days. Good to see you gentlemen. Thanks Sean. Great to have you with us. [00:01:37] John Janke: They stuck me on the side ’cause they said I’d block the screen if I sat in the middle. [00:01:41] Shawn Toldo: You still block it a little bit. [00:01:42] John Janke: And that picture’s from like 1985. I, I, we do have to get that. I had way darker hair. It was, uh, 10 year, 10 years at a startup. Makes you turn white. [00:01:52] Shawn Toldo: Mine’s the exact same right now. So it’s all good. [00:01:55] Shawn Toldo: Mine’s AI generated. Yeah. [00:01:57] Vince Menzione: Well, you know, guys, I just took it all off at that point, you know, it’s like good. Yeah, but you lose enough of it. You pull it out over the years. Yeah. So, uh, some really exciting times. Uh, you, we gotta spend some time at you at our breakfast. That’s right. A couple weeks ago. [00:02:13] Dai Vu: A lot of folks here, too. [00:02:14] Vince Menzione: A lot of folks that are here were at that breakfast, and I thought we’d spend a few moments with you talking about all the exciting things that have been happening at, at Google. I mean the, yeah, the businesses just to, first of all, the numbers were house. Outstanding. Congratulations. [00:02:28] Dai Vu: That’s right. [00:02:28] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:02:28] Vince Menzione: Really, some really great numbers. Commitments are off the charts. [00:02:32] Dai Vu: Yes. [00:02:32] Vince Menzione: Crazy off the charts. [00:02:33] Dai Vu: Yes. [00:02:34] Vince Menzione: Yes. Uh, and then there’s a lot happening in this little world called ai, which makes a ton of sense. Yep. I was critical about Google in the beginning because you had all the assets, but Microsoft leaned in first. [00:02:45] Vince Menzione: Uh, but now it’s like things have evolved, uh, quite a bit since those first days. Absolutely. In, in November of 2022. So, uh, take us through a little bit. Let’s, let’s go through [00:02:56] Dai Vu: it. Yeah. I could talk for quite a bit of time because obviously we came out next, yeah. At the end of April, and then we had our earnings announced, but shortly thereafter. [00:03:03] Dai Vu: But, but real quick on next, uh, for folks who attended, uh, you know, the way they framed, uh, the discussion was they showed this AI integrated stack, and that’s how they frame the keynote because we position ourselves as being the only vendor that provides this. Fully integrated stack from custom silicon all the way to the apps and agents. [00:03:23] Dai Vu: And a lot of the announcements were, were focused in those areas. Um, uh, I won’t go through the, the long list, but I think the big ones coming out of next were, uh, certainly the eighth generation TPU we announced, so we actually split this into two specialized chips for training and inference. Uh, so that’s, uh, that was a big piece. [00:03:41] Dai Vu: Uh, but the big one that we announced was this, uh, Gemini Enterprise. Uh, agent platform. So think of it as the comprehensive platform for companies to basically build scale, govern and optimize their agents. And of course, once they have that, they can bring that into, uh, what we call a Gen Gemini enterprise app, which is really the front door for AI for. [00:04:03] Dai Vu: All customers and all employees to manage a mix of agents, um, as part of their daily workflow. And, uh, and a big part of it is, you know, certainly they’ll have some custom agents, but we think a lot of the agents will come from the ecosystem. And obviously there was a big announcement around what we’re doing there. [00:04:21] Dai Vu: Um, and in fact, one of the things that’s interesting is this shows the evolution of, of marketplace in our, in our partnership, which is we’ve taken a lot of the marketplace experience. And brought it into Gemini exp uh, Gemini Enterprise app, right? So search, discovery, uh, the ability to invoke agents, uh, in context. [00:04:39] Dai Vu: I think that’s gonna be very powerful as we think about the evolution, uh, of, of go to market. And then the last thing maybe I’ll highlight is this, um, is. 750 million, uh, investment fund that we’re gonna drive with the broad partnership. So this cuts across all partner types, global system integrators, uh, uh, you know, AI, pure plays, uh, ISVs, uh, the big management consultants as well, uh, because we recognize that partners are gonna be critical to drive business transformation with our end customers. [00:05:08] Dai Vu: So we’re investing around things like. Technical enablement, access to our product teams, access to our FDE for deployment engineers, and then a lot of incentives to drive usage and deployment. So, um, so a lot of, a lot of activity and obviously the ecosystem’s gonna be very critical for us to drive that impact’s. [00:05:25] Dai Vu: Fine. And the last thing, I know we’ve going on and on fine, but the last thing I’ll just mention is just on the earnings announcement, uh, Vince touched on the backlog, so people have been tracking Yeah. Two quarters ago. We were 155 billion on the backlog, and then a quarter later we were 240 billion. And then in the last quarter, just recently, 462 billion. [00:05:46] Dai Vu: So obviously that’s a, a massive signal of customer intent, but more importantly, it’s a, it’s, it’s a addressable market for this ecosystem to go after as well. [00:05:54] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Almost a half a trillion dollars. Yes. In commitment. So a lot, a lot of reason why we should be on the marketplace. [00:06:01] Dai Vu: Absolutely. Absolutely. [00:06:02] Vince Menzione: Um, each of these gentlemen have some things to talk about as well, about their companies and the exciting things that have been happening. [00:06:08] Vince Menzione: I’m gonna start, John, I’m gonna start with you because Tackle has, has transformed quite a bit since the last ti
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