AI is changing everything: Are you ready?

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Is your business ready for 2026?

Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast.

What a thrilling week hosting partner leaders at Ultimate Partner LIVE in Reston, VA at the Carahsoft Training Center. Even if you couldn’t be with us in person at the groundbreaking event, you can listen to the most profound sessions.

In this exclusive interview, Erwin Visser, a key leader at Microsoft, discusses the company’s major organizational restructuring into Enterprise and SMEC (Small, Medium, and Corporate) divisions, and their massive, channel-led $600 billion bet on partner-led growth, with a core focus on AI and security.

Visser outlines the “Frontier Firm” mindset—a commitment to being AI-first across customer experience, employee productivity (with Copilot saving users an estimated 34% of their time on boring tasks), business processes, and product innovation.

He details Microsoft’s enormous investment in partner enablement, a new dedicated partner sales organization, and the urgent challenges of data compliance and software sprawl in the new age of AI agents. He concludes by sharing the three non-negotiable traits of a great partner, providing crucial guidance for anyone looking to navigate the tectonic shifts of the current business world.

Through our events and community, you have access to exclusive content, workshops, and strategies that help you achieve more and stay ahead of what’s next.

If you haven’t already, please consider joining our Ultimate Partner Community, where the most compelling leaders in the technology partnership.

Thanks for being on this journey with us.

Key Takeaways

The three non-negotiable traits of a great partner are integrity in business, leveraging Microsoft’s investments, and possessing proven technical/sales ability to deliver solutions for customers..

Microsoft has restructured into two core divisions: Enterprise and SMEC (Small, Medium, and Corporate), with SMEC representing an estimated $600 billion market opportunity.

The company has made its largest ever investment in partner training, financial incentives, and programs for the SMEC segment, viewing it as a major channel-led bet.

A “Frontier Firm” must adopt an AI-first mindset, focusing on transforming customer experience, employee experience, business processes, and innovation.

Early adoption of Copilot for employee experience is the fastest win, with one belief suggesting it saves employees 34% of their time on boring tasks.

Microsoft has created a new Partner Sales Organization and an “outbound share” metric to ensure its sellers actively share opportunities and co-sell with partners in the SMEC space.

https://youtu.be/xmUFSbk_IyQ

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Ultimate Partner is the independent community for technology leaders navigating the tectonic shifts in cloud, AI, marketplaces, and co-selling. Through live events, UPX membership, advisory, and the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® podcast, we help organizations align with hyperscalers, accelerate growth, and achieve their greatest results through successful partnering.

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Transcript::

Transcript

[00:00:00] Erwin Visser: I, I believe that when, uh, people start adopting copilot, they save 34% of their time. Yeah. Have, uh, and it’s, it’s the, and it’s the 34% that you don’t wanna do often.

[00:00:15] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Menzi, your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering.

[00:00:25] Vince Menzione: We just came off Ultimate partner live at Carahsoft Training Center in Reston, Virginia. Over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this episode brings you right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in. Uh, I also wanna, I wanna invite another friend up on stage here.

[00:00:49] Vince Menzione: Uh, he’s been at many of our events. He’s been incredibly supportive of our ultimate partner. And, uh, as many of you know, uh, Microsoft has been a sponsor, has been, uh, may have been the title sponsor for this event and for many of our other events, uh, over the last few years. Uh, incredible support from that organization as well and what we do.

[00:01:09] Vince Menzione: And, uh, when I picked up the phone and I said, Irwin, I know you got a really busy calendar this fall, but we really need to hear from you. And one of the things I love about doing these is that we’re gonna have a very intimate conversation. Around what’s going on at Microsoft. And I hear this, by the way, I hear this from a lot of you, like, eh, we’re figuring out our strategy.

[00:01:29] Vince Menzione: We got it with company B, but we don’t have it with company A or A and B. And so, uh, we’re gonna have a really great conversation today about Microsoft, about the tectonic shifts that have been impacting. The, the world and how Microsoft sees the world. So with further ado, Erwin Ser, my incredible friend, also from Florida, by the way,

[00:01:53] Erwin Visser: first of all, Vince, uh, uh, it’s great to have you, uh, on stage after you.

[00:01:58] Erwin Visser: Thank you, uh, after your recovery, I think, uh, thank you. A lot of people were shocked seeing what happened to you, and it’s awesome to be here. And the pictures of your daughter. Uh, sweating. So, um, no, very happy that, uh, we have, uh, this event with, uh, with all our friends here. And, uh, thank you. I’ve had a

[00:02:15] Vince Menzione: lot of reasons to continue going on.

[00:02:17] Vince Menzione: Yes. Uh, including, uh, I’ll just share this for a second. ’cause I, I haven’t shared this on stage with many people, but um, as they were driving me in the ambulance, I yelled out to the guy, I, I don’t remember very much, but I remember yelling out, said, I’ll be okay, honey. I’ll be all right. And then when they got me to the hospital, my wife called my daughter who was getting married in eight weeks from that day.

[00:02:37] Vince Menzione: And I, I’m yelling out in the background, Hey honey, I’m gonna be able to walk you down the aisle now, meanwhile, my foot was, was, was broken in two places and I was in a cast and I went from a wheelchair to Walker to crutches. Uh, but I got, I was able to get up and I was able to get through physical therapy and, and do that within a fairly short period of time.

[00:02:58] Vince Menzione: So, yeah. Yeah. Amazing grit.

[00:02:59] Erwin Visser: Thank

[00:02:59] Vince Menzione: you. Amazing grit. Thank you. Thank you. And, uh, you’ve had some things as well, so we, we share ailments kind of getting all Yeah. Yeah. This is

[00:03:07] Erwin Visser: probably the real reason we we’re doing this shit thing. Correct. You’ve had multiple hip

[00:03:10] Vince Menzione: replacements as well. Exactly. And now he’s climbing mountains again.

[00:03:13] Vince Menzione: It’s crazy. Oh, yeah. I, uh, I wanna stay

[00:03:16] Erwin Visser: busy as long as I can. Yes.

[00:03:17] Vince Menzione: And for those who don’t know, uh, Irwin is. Has one of the distinctions that very few people in our world have been. You climbed a very important mountain at one point, not a couple years ago. Yeah. Maybe just share that for a second. We started,

[00:03:31] Erwin Visser: yeah, I was, uh, yeah, I was able to, uh, climb Everest, uh, two, uh, two years ago.

[00:03:34] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Uh, some of it, yeah. It’s, uh, incredible. It’s, uh, uh. It’s hard always to describe Everest because it’s, it’s almost every superlative you can use. It’s like amazing. It’s traumatic. Uh, it’s hard. Uh, the hardest thing I ever did. And so any, any excess, it’s kind of what, uh, what Everest was. Well, you talk about it like it’s these Oh yeah.

[00:03:56] Erwin Visser: I was over, over at Everest.

[00:03:57] Vince Menzione: Last week.

[00:03:59] Erwin Visser: Yeah. No, this, uh, it takes some preparation and, uh, yeah. You, you do learn, uh, to know your own boundaries and your thresholds when you do something like that. Yeah. And, and, uh, yeah. I know we, we have so many topics to, uh, to go through, but one of the reasons for me. To try to climb Everest.

[00:04:18] Erwin Visser: Was, was also kind of curiosity, you know, it’s the, had the, I was always intrigued by seeing the, as a, as a young kid by seeing the movies, read the books. And as I always ask myself the question like, would I be able to do something like that? You know? And so the curiosity of finding out where your, where your own like, uh, boundaries are, uh, yeah.

[00:04:40] Vince Menzione: And I don’t wanna go down a path here ’cause we have a lot to talk about today. Yes. But I just will ask you one question. Do you think going through the, that whole process, did that, has that prepared you for the business world? ’cause it’s changing rapidly. Today we talk about tectonic shifts. Uh, there’s even changes within your organization.

[00:04:57] Vince Menzione: Do you think having like that fortitude and that strength that you develop around that helps you?

[00:05:03] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think so. It’s, um, like, it’s, it’s hard sometimes to describe, but it’s, I, I think professionally I. But also in my personal life, you, you learn really not to sweat the little things anymore.

[00:05:17] Vince Menzione: Yeah.

[00:05:17] Erwin Visser: Super. And you, you kind of cave up like a lot of things that maybe would be frustrated in the past or irritated. I, I became much more patient, but also like an an a no ca like attitude, like really focused on. Things that are important. Yeah. And be able to really put aside the, the minded details. I

[00:05:35] Vince Menzione: love that.

[00:05:36] Vince Menzione: I love that. That’s mindset, that’s maniacal focus. That’s, yeah. All those things combined. So let’s talk about it. Right. Uh, beautiful. About having you, we’ve been on stage multiple times together and we had this conversation like, let’s not do this slide. Let’s just have a riff today. I mean, you know, elephant in the room.

[00:05:54] Vince Menzione: There’s been a lot of changes at Microsoft the last several months, and if you, if you’re not navigating and understanding all the changes, they’re all good. Right. There’s been a, but there’s been a lot of shift. Uh, big AI spends like over $120 billion in chips and data centers, right? Um, and then organizational changes in a big way.

[00:06:12] Vince Menzione: And we can go through those individually, but maybe I’ll just turn it over to you to maybe share some of what’s happened and what’s changed.

[00:06:18] Erwin Visser: Yeah, yeah. Let, let me start with the organization ’cause I think it’s maybe most, uh, relevant for the people in the room here. Uh, and it’s, it’s, uh, there were a few different steps here, but I think.

[00:06:28] Erwin Visser: At the, maybe the most, uh, important for our partners is that, that we, we kind of like, like we, we created two different like divisions or organizational units. Yeah. One really focused on enterprise and one focused on what we call the S-M-E-S-C markets, small, medium enterprise. And, and the, I’m, I’m part representing the S-M-E-S-C, uh, business here at, uh, Microsoft.

[00:06:53] Erwin Visser: So the. The, for SME and C, the, it’s really a big bet on our partner and our partner channel. Yeah. And we we’re making significant investments, uh, in, uh, not just in, uh, in our partners financially, but also through incentives, through programs. We, uh, we we’re making the largest. Training investment ever at Microsoft this year.

[00:07:15] Erwin Visser: Uh, in technical skills, in sales, skills of our partners and, and really getting very close with our channel partners around helping our small, medium enterprises, anything outside enterprise Yeah. To really, uh, transform with AI and security. And, and so, and that is, uh, where we, we, uh, Ralph Halter is the, the new president of, uh, of our organization.

[00:07:38] Erwin Visser: And, and he is, it’s, it’s really a big bet on our, on our partners left to right. That’s where we, uh, are all super focused on.

[00:07:46] Vince Menzione: And, uh, without having an org chart and doing slides here, but, um, for people that don’t know, by the way, Ralph Hap took over for, what was Kevin Pi role, correct? Because Kevin been on stage multiple of our events.

[00:07:58] Vince Menzione: And also this S-M-E-N-C organization, small, medium enterprise and corporate. Represents. If I had took a pyramid and we looked at it, maybe the top 9,000 organizations would be enterprise. And then there’s this huge chunk. That’s why we talk about the acre diamonds. Yeah. And layering it in is really because partners need that reach to those customers.

[00:08:18] Vince Menzione: They’re all significant companies, by the way, too. There are a lot of big enterprise organizations there. Yeah. And then just so you know, it’s. It internally, it’s known as the fourth region. So you have America’s, you have emea, you have apac, and then you have S, M, E, and C. People sometimes refer to it that way as well, right?

[00:08:34] Erwin Visser: Yeah, yeah. That’s, that fourth region changed with the, the latest announcements. Okay. Allon being the CEO Oh, that’s right, yeah. Of the commercial business. So we, we now, uh, in our organization chart, and I, I’ll, I’ll, I will not go too deep in Microsoft. Uh, structures, but, uh, Deb Cup is, is leading our enterprise business.

[00:08:53] Erwin Visser: Okay. Uh, and Rolf, uh, is leading our SMEC business. Oh, they did? And they are next to each other. Oh, very nice.

[00:08:59] Vince Menzione: Very nice. And Deb ran the Americas business prior to that, correct? Yeah. That’s great.

[00:09:03] Erwin Visser: Yeah. And so for America, say, if you think about the opportunity and so, uh. Uh, approximately, uh, uh, only the top 7,000 companies in Americas, they are enterprise.

[00:09:14] Erwin Visser: So everything else, else we call s, m, E, and C. There’s a, a lot of large corporations in that. Everything else. Yeah. Uh, that’s why we also started to use the word enterprise and not like SMB because that’s. Companies don’t wanna be a small business like everybody has like an, uh, an aspiration. So we, uh, we, uh, if we look at the opportunity for, for us as Microsoft, those of our partners estimated, uh, $600 billion.

[00:09:40] Erwin Visser: And I know that’s a huge number, but it’s, it’s kind of, it’s, it’s out there in opportunity in the next period to really with AI transformation. So it’s, uh, yeah, significant, uh, uh, market.

[00:09:53] Vince Menzione: So I’m slipping, I’m skipping through your slides. Yes. You want, and we’re, but we’re gonna talk about this. So, uh, I’m glad you mentioned about Judson as well.

[00:10:02] Vince Menzione: So Judson’s role has in increased significance as well. Now he is now the CEO of the commercial business. Is that correct? Yeah. Is that, yeah. And what does that mean and what, what, how does his role line up with Satya’s role?

[00:10:16] Erwin Visser: Yeah, so I think it was. Probably the natural next step for, for Judson. Uh, you, he, he has been the architect for our sales organization for our go to market for the last years.

[00:10:28] Erwin Visser: And, and this is the, the, the next. Like, I would say evolution, where also Akashi and his marketing organization is now reporting into Judson. He also, uh, uh, some other operational, uh, organizations and he kind of oversees our, our, uh, our commercial business now left to right. Uh, and so keeping such a probably more opportunity to, to think about the innovation Yeah.

[00:10:51] Erwin Visser: And what it really means, not just for Microsoft to become Frontier. It’s, it’s, uh, one of the. Terms we have been using also around our, uh, our AI days, but also, uh, what it means for our partners and what it means for our customers. Yeah. At this, uh, this AI transformation,

[00:11:07] Vince Menzione: we’re gonna talk, we’re gonna dig in on Frontier in a second.

[00:11:10] Vince Menzione: I, I, by the way, I apologize. We’re gonna, you’re gonna see these slides later on from an, from Matt Berg who’s gonna be up on stage. So you’re not gonna miss some of this, and it’s all in the decks that we’ll share. But we wanna dig in on the conversation here, reference here. And the other thing I, I also think about.

[00:11:25] Vince Menzione: Uh, frontier. One of the other changes that were made to the ISV organization, the Software Development Corporation Organization Yes. Yep. Was a, was an additional focus. On. This is where I think the Satya conversation comes in with the, uh, the LLMs, the chip manufacturers and sort of the startups that are very focused on ai.

[00:11:46] Vince Menzione: Right. So that’s maybe an area where Satya is gonna spend more time. Yeah. Versus Judson on the core business, the commercial business. Is that what you Yeah, no, that’s

[00:11:53] Erwin Visser: a hundred percent. Uh, and the, and I think this is always the ever, its, uh, so I’m, I’m aging myself now. I, uh, I started, uh, working, uh, uh, in it in the early nineties, or the middle nineties I should say.

[00:12:06] Erwin Visser: And so the, so I was kind of still the tail of the PC revolution or the client server. And then we had internet and like we have a, we have seen a couple of those transformations and I, I think what’s. It, it always feels that we, um, overestimate the impact in the first two years and we underestimate Yes, the longer term impact and the changes in the markets.

[00:12:31] Erwin Visser: So true. And, and so and so, like if you. If you would be an, a betting man in the nineties, and you would’ve put all your money on, say, companies that just came up there, like Google, uh, Amazon, uh, you, you probably would, would not be sitting here, but maybe living on the yacht in, uh, in the medi. But so do you, do you have the, and this will happen again in 15 years from now, there will be brands that will be top 50 companies in the world.

[00:12:58] Erwin Visser: That currently don’t exist or are maybe in a startup phase? Yes. Uh, because AI is gonna create this, this transformation, and I, I think what makes Microsoft’s, uh, pretty unique is that we were able to like go through three or four of those transformations successfully. And, and so I think, uh, understanding what AI really means and what’s at it’s, it’s.

[00:13:21] Erwin Visser: But I sometimes think it’s funny. It’s like we talk a lot about the AI transformation that is that what it means for our customers? I think as Microsoft even and, and with our partners, we should probably spend also some time around what AI transformation means for us. Uh, ’cause we also know that our business will be different in five years from now, 10 years from now.

[00:13:40] Erwin Visser: Yes. But I think having that, like having that innovation mindset is gonna be very important for Microsoft and other companies in this market to really. So, so five the next, uh, 15 years successfully. Yeah. And

[00:13:54] Vince Menzione: there’s a genesis story here for those who I, I, most people might know this, but I wanna point this out.

[00:13:59] Vince Menzione: So chat GBT, November, 2022 comes out like outta nowhere. Yes. But what we didn’t realize was that Satya was in the room making a lot of these things happen five years earlier and leaned in in a big way. To chat, GBT, data centers, resources, all kinds of things, and leaned in with the company and also was the first one, I will say this, uh, even with AWS in the room and others, uh, leaned in, some of the other organizations were flatfooted.

[00:14:29] Vince Menzione: Microsoft leaned in, in a big way with co-pilot and with other technologies before others were really advancing on ai. And so I think the natural progression of that is this frontier firm because what you’re, what you’re demon, what you’re saying. To each of us is we all need to lean in as well. Right. So take us through that.

[00:14:47] Vince Menzione: What, what does it mean to be a frontier firm?

[00:14:49] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Yeah. It’s the, a frontier firm is really to start thinking like AI first and, and, uh. Uh, think about your as a company, and that is a statement for you as a partner, but also for your customer. Like, what does it mean for like your most core businesses that you, that you drive as an organization?

[00:15:11] Erwin Visser: And then, and you have to think through like your customer experience. Like what can ai, how can AI transform your customer experience, your employee experience, and how can you, uh, improve the productivity, uh, improve the work that your, and, and also the, the wellness of, of your employees, eh, and take, take out all that, all that, that freaking administrative work and, and use AI for people to really leverage their creativity and their.

[00:15:38] Erwin Visser: Uh, their impacts where they, where they wanna spend their time, uh, business processes. Uh, I think there’s a huge opportunity for agents to start really automating business processes and workflows. Uh, the, it’s AI and, and, and agents are kind of like developed as a, as a technology for, uh, for that opportunity.

[00:15:57] Erwin Visser: And, and last not, but not least, innovation. Like, how can you leverage your opportunity to really leverage AI into your data, into your customer information, to start innovating you yourself as a company, innovate your services, innovate your products, uh, yeah, your, uh, your added value in the market. And so Frontier is really around.

[00:16:20] Erwin Visser: Having an AI first mindset in those, in those four parts of your business and, and try to lead with it. And I, and I think what’s the, the biggest, uh, uh, opportunity or challenge is for a lot of companies is that where, um, in the past we, we have seen kind of like business inno, business led innovation, and we have seen it led innovation.

[00:16:47] Erwin Visser: Arguably clouds was, at least for a long part, was like an it led innovation. Yeah. Um, AI has to start with business innovation, and so making sure that the leadership of the organization has like an AI agenda and an AI strategy. And then creating the, the, the discipline and the knowledge across the organization.

[00:17:11] Erwin Visser: That means business users, business leaders, uh, developers, it to really adapt it. But it, it, often what we see is that it’s really starts with the senior management to, uh, to really adopt ai Yeah. As an,

[00:17:25] Vince Menzione: as a strategy. And what you’re saying is you use the term customer zero at Microsoft. I used to use the term eating your own dog.

[00:17:31] Vince Menzione: Food. Right. That was kind of like a, not a politically correct term, but that’s what you’re saying is you need to internally. Embrace, commit and apply across your business first, and then you can then help other organizations transform. Is that what you’re Yeah, that’s what you’re saying

[00:17:48] Erwin Visser: with it? Yes. Yes.

[00:17:49] Erwin Visser: And, and for partners and we, um, we spend a lot of time with partners also helping them to adopt, co-pilot, uh, helping them to adopt AI because it’s, it’s hard to, uh, if you are a salesperson or a technical person. And, and you wanna talk to your customer about AI transformation, but you are not using AI daily yourself.

[00:18:08] Erwin Visser: You’re probably not really representing that technology. Uh, well, and, and so we, uh, as in Microsoft, we did a lot of like early education. ’cause even in an organization like Microsoft where, where you assume that all the employees have an innovative mindset, otherwise, why would you. Start working there.

[00:18:26] Erwin Visser: Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s, it took a little bit of like, uh, time for us ourselves to a hundred percent adopt co-pilot, make sure everybody start really leveraging agents and co-piloting their daily life. So I, I think that is, that discipline is, is super important. Uh, what,

[00:18:43] Vince Menzione: what are you seeing both internally and externally from the best of the best?

[00:18:48] Vince Menzione: Like what do you, what what, what have been the nuggets of success you’ve seen like early adopting?

[00:18:53] Erwin Visser: It’s, um, it’s a great question. I, I think the, the nuggets are really at the, the first big win for a lot of companies is like the employee experience. That’s the easiest. And we, we, we can show you, uh, and probably, uh, all the Microsoft presenters today, tomorrow will show you the, the, the specific stats, but I, I believe that have, when uh, people start adopting copilot, they save 34% of their time.

[00:19:19] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Uh, and it’s, it’s the, and it’s the 34% that you don’t wanna do often. Right. And it thinks that, that the, the boring tasks, you can automate that. And it, it makes people available for much more added value tasks. So the, the productivity that you create by just rolling out co-pilot or co-pilot chat and having people left use it is, is huge immediately.

[00:19:42] Erwin Visser: Yeah. And then the, the second phase is really. Around, uh, workflow agents where we see success and, and this can be, yeah. And I, um, if you think about an agent, like a lot of the, the work that you do with copilot is kind of like interactive. It is prompted and where agents are gonna be proactive and so they can start like automating a workflow or automating and um, and conversation in an automated way.

[00:20:09] Erwin Visser: And so that’s the often the second one. And then, and then the third one is really the, the, it, it, it’s, it’s a theme probably over the last five years, but, uh, the opportunity with data. Yeah. Uh, where, uh, and, and a lot of companies still have a lot of data on-prem, and this is probably the still a huge opportunity for partners to help customers with their data strategy.

[00:20:31] Erwin Visser: But when, when we start, when customers start leveraging analytics and AI on top of their data, always magical things start, yeah. Uh, happening. Uh,

[00:20:42] Vince Menzione: well, and you also bring up a really good point. Most that data states gotta be clean, it’s gotta be governed, it’s gotta be secure. So, and that’s where some of the partners in this room come in, because what you don’t wanna have happen is somebody doing something errantly.

[00:20:57] Vince Menzione: Like going in and finding out the CEO’s compensation for the year because they asked Yes. They asked chat GBTA question that, and that data wasn’t secured.

[00:21:06] Erwin Visser: Right? Yeah, yeah. You’re you’re totally right. Yeah. That’s, by the way, uh, our most asked question or the first, um, I would say the, the, the, the. The concern that customers have by running, uh, by using copilot or Jet GPT.

[00:21:22] Erwin Visser: ’cause there’s a lot of like gray AI coming into companies and that’s why we think we have a great offer with, with copilot chat and copilot it, uh, MT 65 copilot because you, we, we have the controls for data compliance and data management. And so making sure that people don’t have access to the data Yeah.

[00:21:40] Erwin Visser: That they should not be able to see. And uh, there were one or two stories early on that I think, uh, shocked a couple of business owners. And so we, we, uh, this is probably one of our leading stories and, uh, the leading story of a lot of our partners is to make sure that we first of all may have the data compliance, uh, in place.

[00:21:59] Erwin Visser: Yeah.

[00:21:59] Vince Menzione: And we’re gonna have some other partners talk through some of their capabilities and, but what are you, what is your organization doing today? To, to enable those organizations to be frontier firms and to be successful implementing copilot, implementing AI technologies, a agents and, and security and governance of data.

[00:22:18] Erwin Visser: Yeah. It, it’s, uh, uh, if I, if I think about enabling partners, I always think in, in kind of three buckets. Uh, first of all is like. Um, helping partners to build solutions that they can, can resell. And so, and this is often is, uh, we help them with solution building, with technical training, sales training, marketing training.

[00:22:40] Erwin Visser: So it’s kind of the enablement of the partner to be successful and haven’t differentiated value prop in the, in the. Place. The, the second one, uh, bucket for me is what we do around go to markets and, and for people that work with Microsoft, you know, we have a lot of like investments that we put in markets with our partners, and we have program investments for pre-sales, for post-sales.

[00:23:03] Erwin Visser: For, uh, for marketing, uh, the partners can, uh, can benefit. Uh, we have, uh, incentives in markets. Uh, we, we do all kind of like different investments in our, in our top partners. So we, we wanna make sure that they have an, an end-to-end goal, to market to be successful. And then the third one is really co-sell.

[00:23:22] Erwin Visser: And when we, we talk about co-sell, we, we thought we are, we’re doing a lot of co-sell at this moment with our channel partners and we, we have created a, a news organization structure. Uh, against that. Uh, but we also talk about marketplace co-sell as a huge opportunity and, and especially with the announcements, uh, lately.

[00:23:41] Erwin Visser: Uh, and there’s, so this. Co-sell, co-marketing is, is how we really help partner help Talk about the new

[00:23:48] Vince Menzione: organization. You mentioned the Manu a new organization. What, what was that one?

[00:23:52] Erwin Visser: Yeah, it’s, it’s the, uh, the partner sales organization. Okay. Yeah. We invested, uh, worldwide and the partner sales team that is really, uh, closely aligned with, uh, with our top partners and, and helps them on top deals, works together on the top deals.

[00:24:06] Erwin Visser: So really helping, uh, make sure that. Our opportunities are shared with partners because in, we are a hundred percent partner based in the, in our market, but also make sure that we help our partners close their, their largest deals with Microsoft sellers. And are

[00:24:20] Vince Menzione: these partner sellers across all of the operating models, or is it just in the channel model?

[00:24:26] Vince Menzione: Is it across the enterprise model? It’s a, in the channel model. It’s in the channel model. In the channel. So you’re helping some of these channel partners to be more successful by providing resources to them. That are Microsoft badged?

[00:24:38] Erwin Visser: Yes. Correct. Okay, that makes sense. And then also giving partners like early insight in opportunities that we have recognized.

[00:24:43] Erwin Visser: And so one of the, one of the metrics of our own sellers in SME and C is there, we, it’s a technical, like a little bit of details now, but we call it outbound share, is like, are you sharing those opportunities with partners and are we doing, uh, co-sell on those opportunities? That’s have one of the key metrics how we look at our own sales organization is how many of the opportunities are being shared.

[00:25:07] Erwin Visser: ’cause we, uh, it’s, it’s the, we really wanna. Build out and work together with our partners around this opportunity. That’s a huge

[00:25:14] Vince Menzione: op uh, component by the way. ’cause I, I think people might, might have missed that, that, that, that is new and that is overlaying and supporting the organization in a bigger way on partners, which is really incredible.

[00:25:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah, it

[00:25:26] Erwin Visser: was, uh, our largest investment in headcounts starting, and we, we started our fiscal year in July. And our largest investment in headcounts, uh, was this partner sales organization. Yeah.

[00:25:36] Vince Menzione: So Nina Harding has been a guest on the podcast. She lives actually five miles away from me in Florida. Uh, we all live in Florida.

[00:25:44] Vince Menzione: Uh, my

[00:25:44] Erwin Visser: long-term plan is to move Microsoft headquarters to Florida. I think it makes sense at this moment. It’s like one by one. It’s,

[00:25:51] Vince Menzione: it’s a long trip, by the way. It’s a long, it’s a long journey trip from Florida to Seattle. But let’s talk, talk to me about how your organization is working with her organization, which is much more enterprise partners, ISVs, GSIs, uh, but, and Ben also supporting the Americas organization.

[00:26:08] Vince Menzione: How does that all work together? Like how do you guys coordinate? Yeah. Most people here are Americas, so I would assume that would be in Nina’s.

[00:26:15] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Uh, geography. It’s a great question and, and I, I think that, you know, there’s have a, if, if you have full of Microsoft. You know that we have been going forward and backwards and we had a single partner organization and we had a split partner, partner organization between enterprise and non-enterprise.

[00:26:32] Erwin Visser: And we, we can go historically. Yes. We went a few times left and right. It’s like a pendulum. I, I think there’s. There’s, uh, there’s clearly pros and cons on both. Yeah. Um, I think the, the, the pro in our current organization is split as a partner team is that we, we really are very close to our, the market and to our sales organization.

[00:26:57] Erwin Visser: So we have that integration that we can deliver. That is harder when you, when you are one central team, the, the con. And, and we talked about it a lot, is that, and we have a lot of our partners and probably a lot of you sitting in this room that sell both in enterprise and in SMEC. And so how do we make sure that you have one partner experience at Microsoft?

[00:27:18] Erwin Visser: Yes. And not two different organizations. And so, um, I’m, I’m pretty sure we’re not a hundred percent perfect here, but, uh, we, we working very closely with Nina’s team and Nina’s organization. Nice. Uh, to make sure that we, we, we operate still as one partner organization. And we have one very nice, so that you don’t feel that you get like, boxed in into a certain business as a partner.

[00:27:44] Erwin Visser: And if you, if you, uh, encounter that, please give me or anybody else at Microsoft in the partner organization feedback because we really wanna make sure that we enable you and be successful across those boundaries. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, it’s a, it’s, uh, and you sat

[00:27:58] Vince Menzione: in that organization prior to your new role, which is more of a global role now.

[00:28:02] Vince Menzione: Yes. So you know both organizations very well as well. Yeah. Which is good. Yeah, I live both,

[00:28:06] Erwin Visser: uh, both worlds multiple

[00:28:07] Vince Menzione: times. Probably multiple times. Yeah. I am going to open it up for questions. Um, do we have mic? Thank you. Susan’s got a mic, so if there are anybody that has any questions, I thought, you know, I’ve been asking all the questions.

[00:28:22] Vince Menzione: Yeah. We wanna open it up to this incredible group of people here. I’m sure people wanna know like the inside story about how do I work with Microsoft. Um, Susan’s got a mic if anybody wants, if anybody has any questions and wants to raise your hand. Not that we’re putting anybody on the spot right now because we Wow.

[00:28:40] Vince Menzione: No questions. We must have, we must be pretty good.

[00:28:42] Erwin Visser: No.

[00:28:46] Erwin Visser: Oh, there’s a question.

[00:28:47] Vince Menzione: Oh, there’s a question back here. Here we go. Good. Do you have any else? Altitude sickness. Did you have any altitude sickness? Yeah. Uh,

[00:28:55] Erwin Visser: yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s hard not to have altitude sickness. Uh, I assume you talk about est not by Microsoft. I live in Florida, but this is not that high.

[00:29:06] Erwin Visser: Yeah, yeah. The, yeah, the, the, the. So, uh, you spent six weeks, uh, we spent six weeks, I, not everybody, but we had bad weather in the base camp or above. And base camp is, uh, 17,000 and a half feet, and so 5 6500 meters for people, uh, that are in meters. And so the, you have 49% of oxygen there. So you, like, you, you kind of feel, uh, let me say that in nice English, uh, you, you kind of feel not a hundred percent every day like you are.

[00:29:39] Erwin Visser: You, you have all kind of problems that, uh, altitudes, uh, uh, lack of oxygen creates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine.

[00:29:47] Vince Menzione: That’s incredible. And the fact that we’re able to do it too. ’cause the weather sometimes impacts people’s ability to go their way, right? Yeah.

[00:29:52] Erwin Visser: You know, it, it’s, uh, I think you also have to be lucky.

[00:29:55] Erwin Visser: Yeah. And the luck is, uh, I always think luck is often an underestimated part of life, but, uh, especially when you climb Everest, you, you have to be lucky. ’cause the, the best climber can be hit by an avalanche. And then, uh, and mediocre climber like me can just be lucky and walk through them. So, yeah. Yeah.

[00:30:13] Vince Menzione: Did you lose anyone on your trek? Yes, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. I’m

[00:30:17] Erwin Visser: sorry to hear that. That’s terrible. Yeah, I know that that’s the, that’s the traumatic part is that, um, and I don’t wanna, uh, this isn’t, this is an optimistic event, so I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna trade. It’s fascinating. I don’t wanna be, uh, uh, uh, start this, tell sad stories here, but you, you get very close to debt.

[00:30:36] Erwin Visser: Because you see dead bodies, uh, and we have unfortunately a fatality in our own team. Um, and so you, you, you start really. Feeling that had, uh, I had, uh, and my wife will absolutely tell me, uh, I had PTSD when I came back, uh, certain levels. That feeling just from being so intense for a few weeks that coming home it was very hard for me to relax.

[00:30:59] Erwin Visser: I, I couldn’t sleep. I had. Yeah, so it, it takes like two, three weeks to really settle back in the, yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:05] Vince Menzione: That’s fascinating. Well, I think it’s the incredible challenge in overcoming the challenges that are important here, and I think you bring that forward into this conversation as well. So thank you.

[00:31:13] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I think we have one more question. We have question if we have

[00:31:15] Guest Question: time. Uh, Rob Lawrence from Microsoft. I actually have a comment, uh, because you guys were talking about the importance of the data state with, uh, with AI right now. And I just wanna say like, it’s even bigger than you’re talking about because with Agen ai, we’re gonna have.

[00:31:33] Guest Question: AI executing processes inside of companies. So it’s not only about data leaks and privacy, but it’s also like, are we getting the right results and and are processes being performed completely correctly? So I think that the partner community has a huge opportunity around data estates and securing them and making them.

[00:31:53] Guest Question: Secure, functional, um, but also that, so that they’re training and grounding AI correctly. So it was a really good point to bring up, and I just wanted to like highlight it for the people in the room. It’s like super, super important.

[00:32:06] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Hey, thanks for emphasizing that. I a hundred percent agree. Yeah.

[00:32:09] Erwin Visser: Wonderful. We have another question. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:32:16] Guest Question: Good morning.

[00:32:18] Vince Menzione: I think you’re on. Yeah. Good morning,

[00:32:19] Guest Question: Marion Breeze from User Lane. Um, and I just to, to add to that, you talked about the data estate. What about the software estate? We see software sprawl with software applications and the opportunity to consolidate that for customers where they can do so much more now with Dynamics, um, and other Microsoft tools.

[00:32:40] Guest Question: And what does that look like for consolidating software?

[00:32:43] Erwin Visser: Yeah, that’s, that’s a great question. It’s, and the. So there clearly there’s an opportunity with, uh, with AI to, uh, to modernize your, your software infrastructure. And, um, and we, we invest a lot in our dynamics product, uh, to, to help customers innovate.

[00:33:00] Erwin Visser: Uh, CRM, uh, ERP finance. Uh, so that is, it’s, it’s absolutely an, an opportunity. The, you, you, you may have seen some, uh, comments in the past about SaaS. Is that or other, uh, statements? Yes, and I, I, I was kind of, um, uh, thinking that through, eh, is that, um, I, I think that there, there will be an opportunity in the future.

[00:33:26] Erwin Visser: Or in the, now I have to say future. The future is now the future. Okay. Uh, to start leveraging agents and build AI agents to, to extend the life of, uh, your transactional systems. Because in, in a world where as an, where less and less people are going to use the UI of the application, you, because you get abstracted through AI agents.

[00:33:53] Erwin Visser: You don’t have to rebuild the transactional system. If you want new functionality, you build it into the agent and you kind of. Go around the transactional system. Um, so yeah, there is, there’s gonna be, I think customers will have a, a choice in the future. And do I wanna invest in a new CRM system or do I build AI agents that built out the experience in addition to the CRM system?

[00:34:18] Erwin Visser: Uh, while I said that, and I, uh, I was reflecting on that and we, in the, in the nineties, we talked about the end of the mainframes. I read a stat like a week ago that still, I believe more than 60% of the top 500 companies still use a mainframe. Yeah. More or less. Great. So it’s, it’s, and so this is one of those where yes, the opportunity’s there, but this is a, a thing that will be distributed in change.

[00:34:44] Erwin Visser: Yes. It’s not that everybody will. Stop buying CRM and go to agents

[00:34:49] Vince Menzione: because the data’s already there. Why we replace it, right. It’s structured the data, laid it out as foundational, and then you let, then you attach

[00:34:56] Erwin Visser: it a hundred percent. Yeah. So it, it’s, uh, yeah, we’re, but there’s, I think there’s gonna be more choice and more opportunity to, uh, to innovate with AI and, and think about, uh, the, the lifecycle of a transactional system in the future.

[00:35:10] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Very great. Thank you.

[00:35:14] Vince Menzione: We’re good. We’re off time. We’re good there. Last one, last, last one I’ve been told. Okay.

[00:35:19] Erwin Visser: What does a great partner looks like to you? That’s, whoa, that’s a great question, by the way. Uh, how come I didn’t ask that? Yeah. What does a, I, I think, um, what does a great partner look to us?

[00:35:34] Erwin Visser: I, I think probably I would say, uh, the first part is clarity and integrity. Heck, so I, I know that, uh, we have some partners and we love them that are dedicated to Microsoft, and we, we love those partners, but we also love our partners that have multiple businesses. I, I think the, the, the clarity and integrity around where we work together.

[00:35:58] Erwin Visser: And where we don’t work together is very important. Yeah. Uh, so that, that is, uh, one aspect. Secondly, I think, uh, partners that are really leveraging our investments and make sure that they, they have, uh, their specializations. In our technology proven like, uh, understanding proven impact at our, uh, our customers, um, and partners that, that, uh, leverage the investments in the, in the go-to market that we put in the marketplace.

[00:36:29] Erwin Visser: Those would be my top three, like integrity in how we do business. It’s still a people business. And so we, we need that integrity together, uh, leveraging our go-to market investments and really ensure that you have the, the re the, the technical and sales ability to, uh, dr. Like, uh, proven to deliver solutions for our customers.

[00:36:52] Erwin Visser: Yeah,

[00:36:53] Vince Menzione: I love that. I love that clarity is so important. Yeah, we’re, we will talk more about it after the break actually. Yeah. But guess what? We’re at break time. Awesome. I wanna, so I wanna thank you. You’re an incredible friend. You flew up for this, for this event. You’ve been on the road nonstop. And your support and your organization’s support of us is outstanding.

[00:37:11] Vince Menzione: And I just want to thank you

[00:37:12] Erwin Visser: from the bottom of my heart for your friendship and support. Ah, thank man. Yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate to be here. You and, um,

[00:37:21] Erwin Visser: I, I, I may put you on the spot now, but uh, maybe as an idea for the next Ultimate Partner event, I spent 30 minutes on Everest because I see there’s some interest there. I would love, yeah, I would love for you to do a keynote on that.

[00:37:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah, I would love that to be a keynote for our event. Absolutely. You’re on.

[00:37:35] Vince Menzione: You’re on. Alright. Thank you Irwin. Appreciate, thank you so much. We can leave that here. Thank you, sir. Isn’t Irwin great? Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Eye to Partnering. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community.

[00:37:57] Vince Menzione: We created a unique place. UPX or ultimate partner experience, it’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started as we’re taking this studio, and we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here, including our January live stream.

[00:38:25] Vince Menzione: The Boca Winter Retreat and more to come. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level.

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