Red Hat Summit 2024 | Kabilan Mahendran | AWS & Bria Huber | Red Hat

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Kabilan Mahendran

Global Stragtegic Alliiance Leader

AWS

Bria Huber

Global Cloud Leader

Red Hat

Unlocking limitless possibilities: Exploring the power of AWS Marketplace as a one-stop software shop

As Amazon Web Services Inc. continues to offer cost-effective and scalable cloud computing solutions, the AWS Marketplace is being sought after because it consolidates, simplifies and streamlines invoicing and procurement. Through a hand-holding process, the AWS Marketplace meets enterprises where they are, simplifying the manner in which they procure and buy software. This is what makes Red Hat Inc. a notable partner, according to Kabilan Mahendran (pictured, left), global strategic alliance leader at AWS. “The best way to describe what AWS Marketplace is, customers look at it as a one-stop shop where they can procure all of their software,” Mahendran stated

play_circle_outline AWS Marketplace as a one-stop shop for procuring software.

play_circle_outline Empowering Customers with Seamless Cloud Migration, Handholding, and Simplified Billing Processes

play_circle_outline Building trust and credibility with partners in the cloud journey.

play_circle_outline Allowing customers the freedom to choose their timeline for migration.

Info

Kabilan Mahendran | AWS & Bria Huber | Red Hat

Kabilan Mahendran

Global Stragtegic Alliiance Leader AWS

Bria Huber

Global Cloud Leader Red Hat

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Rebecca Knight

>> Good afternoon everyone, and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of the Red Hat Summit here in Denver, Colorado at the Colorado Convention Center. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host and analyst, Rob Strechay. Rob, the afternoon, we are just getting in gear. I had a hit of the oxygen bar. I'm feeling good.

>> I did too. I got my tea going. I think the energy of the people here mixed with the Red Hatters and the partners has really just fueled us through this afternoon.

Rebecca Knight

>> I completely agree. I completely agree. A great segue into introducing our next two guests. We have Kabilan Mahendran. He is the global alliance leader at AWS. Welcome, Kabilan.

Kabilan Mahendran

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> And Bria Huber, the global cloud alliances leader at Red Hat. Thank you both for coming on the show.

Bria Huber

>> Thank you. Happy to be here.

Rebecca Knight

>> So we're going to be talking about AWS Marketplace. Let's start with the basics. Can you walk our viewers a little bit through what it is and how it works?

Kabilan Mahendran

>> Yeah. The best way to describe what AWS Marketplace is, customers look at it as a one-stop shop where they can procure all of their software, right? And Red Hat being one of our key strategic partners, they are looking to procure Red Hat software on AWS Marketplace. And the cool thing about AWS Marketplace is customers get to leverage what their procurement methods that they're already very familiar with. So what kind of partners they work with. We have over a hundred thousand partners who are already on AWS Marketplace and executing deals for them. So the simplest way to put it, it's a way for customers to buy software.

Rebecca Knight

>> And Red Hat obviously has listings on AWS Marketplace. What are some of the most prominent listings, Bria?

Bria Huber

>> So RHEL as the foundation for everything, certainly we've got a substantial RHEL business through marketplace, and then we also... We now have 30 listings actually. So OpenShift, Ansible, JBoss, you name it. As our customers are moving to the hyperscalers to AWS, we really want to focus on what that migration looks like and make sure that whatever they need, they could buy through Marketplace.

>> I think, again, where Red Hat and OpenShift in particular is deployed as a service inside of AWS, and that's the glue to that as well. But like you said, again, this allows you to leverage, say, an EDP that you have with AWS to actually go and pay for that and contribute towards that as well. And that had to have been some of your thinking with all of this.

Bria Huber

>> Absolutely. We all know that if we're asking to come out of pocket for an additional budget, that's not being a strategic partner. We want to go where our customers are and where our customers want to be. That's really what has helped us drive Red Hat as a traditional on-premise company with on-premise software subscriptions sold by Red Hatters into this journey to the cloud where first it's that we don't care where our customers deploy, a workload should go where it belongs. And then to now saying, "No, no, no, we want to be cloud first. We want to make sure that our customers, when they want to go to cloud, that there is nothing from a commercial or sales perspective that hinders them from going there."

Rebecca Knight

>> So meeting customers where they are. And so how do you work with customers and is it a hand-holding process? I mean, what exactly are the kinds of conversations that you're having?

Kabilan Mahendran

>> So customers typically come to us surprisingly. Because we've gotten repeated feedback from our customers where they've told us, "Hey, I want a simpler way of being able to procure software." And the cool thing about AWS Marketplace is it's all on a single bill for them. They can see all of their consumption that's happening on the cloud. Now, when you stack Red Hat software on top of it, they can see all of that in a single bill. And it also makes their budgeting a lot easier. They don't have to have separate cloud budgets and separate on-premises budget. The operational overhead is a huge savings from a customer perspective.

Rebecca Knight

>> To be able to bundle these purchases?

Kabilan Mahendran

>> Exactly.

Bria Huber

>> Yes. So one thing that we've done uniquely with AWS through Marketplace is a subscription listing. So that enables customers to actually take care of their renewal business through marketplace. So it's a generic listing. And so from there we end up, especially in this kind of initial phase, really walking our customers through what that means, how they can get those same discounts, how to put a private offer together. So there's a lot of this journey with our sales teams and our customers hand-in-hand to really make sure that it is a growth factor for them and where they want to be. And that from a procurement perspective, they get exactly what they want.

>> When I look at it, traditional customers are trying to simplify their entire supply chain. And I think, again, they're already using AWS. They're already using some of the services there. So going there, makes a lot of sense for this type of thing. Help me understand because you also have a very large partner ecosystem, and how does this really play with the partners in that ecosystem as well, and how they help those other organizations get the most out of this?

Kabilan Mahendran

>> Yeah. I can take this one. So we really have two cohorts of partnerships. We have our channel partners and then we also have the larger distributors built on the traditional on-premises model. But we also two programs to satisfy these routes to market. One of them is what we call CPPO. It's channel partner private offer. What that does is, as Bria mentioned, there's a Red Hat subscriptions listing. Now, Bria could work with a channel partner that a customer prefers to work with and execute a private offer. That's the part of the CPPO transaction. AWS Marketplace handles all of that in the backend, right? It's a seamless solution from a customer perspective because they just see it on their AWS bill as their channel partner selling them Red Hat software. And then on the backend, we handle the transaction flow and the financial transaction piece of it. How much of it goes to Red Hat and the channel partner piece of it?

Bria Huber

>> And this aspect is really important for us to get right because at Red Hat, we are customer's first partner always. And so if we had a mechanism that cut out our partners, it's a no-go.

>> Yeah, they'd be pissed.

Bria Huber

>> Absolutely.

>> Which is good because I'm actually with one of them for dinner tonight. So that actually has transacted on the customer private offer channel. I can't even remember the acronym, but has actually gone and transacted on it. And I know that because told me about it. So what kinds of reaction are you getting from these types of programs, from customers and those partners?

Bria Huber

>> So our customers are grateful that we have a way to meet them exactly where they want to be. Our partners are glad that they could be a part of that journey. So there's two different buckets I like to look at, right? Incumbency partners and then maybe more strategic partners for that customer moving forward. To us, what matters is that the customer gets to choose their partner and they could procure the way they want. So it's really important... I think for the feedback has been incredibly positive. All we're trying to do now is simplify. So now that we're there, now it's how can we continue to improve to make it an excellent experience for our customers and partners?

>> Because part of this in talking to that partner, he introduced me to one of the customers that actually had gone through this entire scenario. And part of it was that the partner was there to help from a cloud architecture perspective. They were doing OpenShift in AWS. So I forget the acronym for that.

Bria Huber

>> ROSA.

>> ROSA. Yeah, thank you. So when they did ROSA, but they also were using ALB and ELB, so load balancers out in front for the applications and configuring their VPCs so that they can move data around. Is that where you see from an AWS perspective, this is why you wanted to bring the partners into the mix is because it also, they're certified on AWS solutions and certified on the Red Hat solutions and kind of bridges that gap?

Kabilan Mahendran

>> That's exactly it. So if you take a customer, for example, they're very familiar working with a specific partner. They have this trusted relationship that goes back several years. This whole cloud situation is very new to a lot of customers. We've been steeped in it for several years. So it's second nature. But for the majority of customers, cloud is still relatively new to them. So they want a trusted, their advisor, like the partner they've already been working with for several years. And what AWS has done with these partners is we've also invested heavily into getting the partners trained and certified on AWS solutions. So it really marries the two together. So now the customer feels a lot more comfortable working with that channel partner as they go towards that cloud journey in their migration modernization path. And the other thing that I wanted to add is, historically, there's been a lot of fear from partners that, "Hey, the cloud providers are going to steal my customers or steal my source of revenue." So we've really invested heavily into correcting that and really leaning in with our partners. You probably hear from my executive leadership partners are key to AWS's success. As we recently announced a hundred billion dollars run rate in our business. If we're going to scale this any further, we really need our partners to lean in with us. And Red Hat being one of them is a key.

Rebecca Knight

>> How much of a culture shift is that? Because I mean, that is big because you're right, there was a real palpable feel around the competition and not wanting to give a little. So how do you make that change and how do you get that messaging out that, "Okay, guys. Yes, we're in competition with each other, but we also have to work together here to help serve customers"? Bria?

Bria Huber

>> So I think, one is we want to be as transparent as possible, right? Red Hat is, it's in our DNA to really lead with transparency. And so we also want that continuous feedback. So if we are getting that fear, we want to get to the root of why that is, see if there are any examples of that. Right those wrongs. And then really just make sure that we continue to highlight wins, partner success, and just take it slowly. It's not going to be a switch that's flipped and we really want to make sure that we are leading with empathy and understanding and making those course corrections as they come up.

>> So we've talked about the partners, we've talked about the marketplace. There's this other thing called distribution. So how does distribution fit into this from a Red Hat perspective and from an AWS perspective?

Bria Huber

>> So it's really interesting. I feel like a lot of times the distributors have really led the way in regards to this old model, old on-premise model versus this new cloud model. And so providers like Carahsoft have really shown us what it could be to transact through marketplace and take advantage of these major investments that our customers are making in AWS. So they've really been the tip of the spear for us.

Kabilan Mahendran

>> Distributors is a key part of our partner program. So we have an initiative called DSOR, another acronym for you, Rob.

>> I know Amazon loves acronyms for AWS, so that's-

Kabilan Mahendran

>> Welcome to my world.

>> Yes, absolutely.

Kabilan Mahendran

>> DSOR stands for designated seller of record, and it's really targeted at just the distributors. And for Red Hat specifically, we've now onboarded four distributors, Ingram Micro, Carahsoft, TD Synnex, and Arrow. They are another key part of our overall partner initiative because they have these long-standing relationships with the local regional partners that AWS might not necessarily have a close relationship with. And that's why the distributors play a key role.

>> Yeah. I think that's the key also, because being out there, the distributors also are doing a lot of that training. And you're relying on them for training and getting the partners up to speed on the content of the products as well as AWS is. But at the same time, they're bringing it together and then they're the people who can help piece it together for those organizations in the mind of the partner who then goes and talks to the thing. So I think it is that Waterfall down that really gets to that end user, so they have the good experience. I think that's got to be a focus of what you're looking for. Like you said meeting them where they are, but hey, I want to help them get the right product, the right time, right place.

Bria Huber

>> Exactly. And so they bring a lot of that scale. We're only so big. We can only be so many places. So they bring that scale along with that credibility. So if the partner can trust their distributor and the distributor trusts Red Hat, right? Then we've got automatic credibility to that partner. It's also, again, that feedback loop, right? The distributors are one of the first to tell us, "Hey guys, we really need to pivot here." So we really rely on a tight relationship with our distributors.

Rebecca Knight

>> You had mentioned earlier that the cloud is still relatively new for a lot of customers, and they do require some handholding and some explanation of what's out there. What are you hearing from customers in terms of why they're interested in these programs?

Kabilan Mahendran

>> Yeah. One thing that we're repeatedly hearing is it's not an overnight transition. Even if a customer says, "I'm all in on the cloud. I'm exiting my data center and going to AWS." It's still a journey. It takes time. But they will have contracts and agreement in place with partners like Red Hat. Now instead of making their life complex by saying, "Okay, you need to tell me exactly when you're going to be moving said workload to AWS," that's a very, very intense process from a customer perspective. So the point of Marketplace is what if we allow them to do that renewal on the marketplace, but give them the freedom to migrate in the timeline that they choose, right? Instead of having to accurately predict exactly when a certain workload is going to be either on-prem or on AWS.

Rebecca Knight

>> Excellent. Well, Kabila and Bria, thank you both so much for coming on theCUBE. A really interesting conversation.

Bria Huber

>> Thank you so much for having us.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight for Rob Strechay. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of the Red Hat Summit. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech coverage.

Kabilan Mahendran | AWS & Bria Huber | Red Hat

search

Rebecca Knight

>> Good afternoon everyone, and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of the Red Hat Summit here in Denver, Colorado at the Colorado Convention Center. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host and analyst, Rob Strechay. Rob, the afternoon, we are just getting in gear. I had a hit of the oxygen bar. I'm feeling good.

>> I did too. I got my tea going. I think the energy of the people here mixed with the Red Hatters and the partners has really just fueled us through this afternoon.

Rebecca Knight

>> I completely agree. I completely agree. A great segue into introducing our next two guests. We have Kabilan Mahendran. He is the global alliance leader at AWS. Welcome, Kabilan.

Kabilan Mahendran

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> And Bria Huber, the global cloud alliances leader at Red Hat. Thank you both for coming on the show.

Bria Huber

>> Thank you. Happy to be here.

Rebecca Knight

>> So we're going to be talking about AWS Marketplace. Let's start with the basics. Can you walk our viewers a little bit through what it is and how it works?

Kabilan Mahendran

>> Yeah. The best way to describe what AWS Marketplace is, customers look at it as a one-stop shop where they can procure all of their software, right? And Red Hat being one of our key strategic partners, they are looking to procure Red Hat software on AWS Marketplace. And the cool thing about AWS Marketplace is customers get to leverage what their procurement methods that they're already very familiar with. So what kind of partners they work with. We have over a hundred thousand partners who are already on AWS Marketplace and executing deals for them. So the simplest way to put it, it's a way for customers to buy software.

Rebecca Knight

>> And Red Hat obviously has listings on AWS Marketplace. What are some of the most prominent listings, Bria?

Bria Huber

>> So RHEL as the foundation for everything, certainly we've got a substantial RHEL business through marketplace, and then we also... We now have 30 listings actually. So OpenShift, Ansible, JBoss, you name it. As our customers are moving to the hyperscalers to AWS, we really want to focus on what that migration looks like and make sure that whatever they need, they could buy through Marketplace.

>> I think, again, where Red Hat and OpenShift in particular is deployed as a service inside of AWS, and that's the glue to that as well. But like you said, again, this allows you to leverage, say, an EDP that you have with AWS to actually go and pay for that and contribute towards that as well. And that had to have been some of your thinking with all of this.

Bria Huber

>> Absolutely. We all know that if we're asking to come out of pocket for an additional budget, that's not being a strategic partner. We want to go where our customers are and where our customers want to be. That's really what has helped us drive Red Hat as a traditional on-premise company with on-premise software subscriptions sold by Red Hatters into this journey to the cloud where first it's that we don't care where our customers deploy, a workload should go where it belongs. And then to now saying, "No, no, no, we want to be cloud first. We want to make sure that our customers, when they want to go to cloud, that there is nothing from a commercial or sales perspective that hinders them from going there."

Rebecca Knight

>> So meeting customers where they are. And so how do you work with customers and is it a hand-holding process? I mean, what exactly are the kinds of conversations that you're having?

Kabilan Mahendran

>> So customers typically come to us surprisingly. Because we've gotten repeated feedback from our customers where they've told us, "Hey, I want a simpler way of being able to procure software." And the cool thing about AWS Marketplace is it's all on a single bill for them. They can see all of their consumption that's happening on the cloud. Now, when you stack Red Hat software on top of it, they can see all of that in a single bill. And it also makes their budgeting a lot easier. They don't have to have separate cloud budgets and separate on-premises budget. The operational overhead is a huge savings from a customer perspective.

Rebecca Knight

>> To be able to bundle these purchases?

Kabilan Mahendran

>> Exactly.

Bria Huber

>> Yes. So one thing that we've done uniquely with AWS through Marketplace is a subscription listing. So that enables customers to actually take care of their renewal business through marketplace. So it's a generic listing. And so from there we end up, especially in this kind of initial phase, really walking our customers through what that means, how they can get those same discounts, how to put a private offer together. So there's a lot of this journey with our sales teams and our customers hand-in-hand to really make sure that it is a growth factor for them and where they want to be. And that from a procurement perspective, they get exactly what they want.

>> When I look at it, traditional customers are trying to simplify their entire supply chain. And I think, again, they're already using AWS. They're already using some of the services there. So going there, makes a lot of sense for this type of thing. Help me understand because you also have a very large partner ecosystem, and how does this really play with the partners in that ecosystem as well, and how they help those other organizations get the most out of this?

Kabilan Mahendran

>> Yeah. I can take this one. So we really have two cohorts of partnerships. We have our channel partners and then we also have the larger distributors built on the traditional on-premises model. But we also two programs to satisfy these routes to market. One of them is what we call CPPO. It's channel partner private offer. What that does is, as Bria mentioned, there's a Red Hat subscriptions listing. Now, Bria could work with a channel partner that a customer prefers to work with and execute a private offer. That's the part of the CPPO transaction. AWS Marketplace handles all of that in the backend, right? It's a seamless solution from a customer perspective because they just see it on their AWS bill as their channel partner selling them Red Hat software. And then on the backend, we handle the transaction flow and the financial transaction piece of it. How much of it goes to Red Hat and the channel partner piece of it?

Bria Huber

>> And this aspect is really important for us to get right because at Red Hat, we are customer's first partner always. And so if we had a mechanism that cut out our partners, it's a no-go.

>> Yeah, they'd be pissed.

Bria Huber

>> Absolutely.

>> Which is good because I'm actually with one of them for dinner tonight. So that actually has transacted on the customer private offer channel. I can't even remember the acronym, but has actually gone and transacted on it. And I know that because told me about it. So what kinds of reaction are you getting from these types of programs, from customers and those partners?

Bria Huber

>> So our customers are grateful that we have a way to meet them exactly where they want to be. Our partners are glad that they could be a part of that journey. So there's two different buckets I like to look at, right? Incumbency partners and then maybe more strategic partners for that customer moving forward. To us, what matters is that the customer gets to choose their partner and they could procure the way they want. So it's really important... I think for the feedback has been incredibly positive. All we're trying to do now is simplify. So now that we're there, now it's how can we continue to improve to make it an excellent experience for our customers and partners?

>> Because part of this in talking to that partner, he introduced me to one of the customers that actually had gone through this entire scenario. And part of it was that the partner was there to help from a cloud architecture perspective. They were doing OpenShift in AWS. So I forget the acronym for that.

Bria Huber

>> ROSA.

>> ROSA. Yeah, thank you. So when they did ROSA, but they also were using ALB and ELB, so load balancers out in front for the applications and configuring their VPCs so that they can move data around. Is that where you see from an AWS perspective, this is why you wanted to bring the partners into the mix is because it also, they're certified on AWS solutions and certified on the Red Hat solutions and kind of bridges that gap?

Kabilan Mahendran

>> That's exactly it. So if you take a customer, for example, they're very familiar working with a specific partner. They have this trusted relationship that goes back several years. This whole cloud situation is very new to a lot of customers. We've been steeped in it for several years. So it's second nature. But for the majority of customers, cloud is still relatively new to them. So they want a trusted, their advisor, like the partner they've already been working with for several years. And what AWS has done with these partners is we've also invested heavily into getting the partners trained and certified on AWS solutions. So it really marries the two together. So now the customer feels a lot more comfortable working with that channel partner as they go towards that cloud journey in their migration modernization path. And the other thing that I wanted to add is, historically, there's been a lot of fear from partners that, "Hey, the cloud providers are going to steal my customers or steal my source of revenue." So we've really invested heavily into correcting that and really leaning in with our partners. You probably hear from my executive leadership partners are key to AWS's success. As we recently announced a hundred billion dollars run rate in our business. If we're going to scale this any further, we really need our partners to lean in with us. And Red Hat being one of them is a key.

Rebecca Knight

>> How much of a culture shift is that? Because I mean, that is big because you're right, there was a real palpable feel around the competition and not wanting to give a little. So how do you make that change and how do you get that messaging out that, "Okay, guys. Yes, we're in competition with each other, but we also have to work together here to help serve customers"? Bria?

Bria Huber

>> So I think, one is we want to be as transparent as possible, right? Red Hat is, it's in our DNA to really lead with transparency. And so we also want that continuous feedback. So if we are getting that fear, we want to get to the root of why that is, see if there are any examples of that. Right those wrongs. And then really just make sure that we continue to highlight wins, partner success, and just take it slowly. It's not going to be a switch that's flipped and we really want to make sure that we are leading with empathy and understanding and making those course corrections as they come up.

>> So we've talked about the partners, we've talked about the marketplace. There's this other thing called distribution. So how does distribution fit into this from a Red Hat perspective and from an AWS perspective?

Bria Huber

>> So it's really interesting. I feel like a lot of times the distributors have really led the way in regards to this old model, old on-premise model versus this new cloud model. And so providers like Carahsoft have really shown us what it could be to transact through marketplace and take advantage of these major investments that our customers are making in AWS. So they've really been the tip of the spear for us.

Kabilan Mahendran

>> Distributors is a key part of our partner program. So we have an initiative called DSOR, another acronym for you, Rob.

>> I know Amazon loves acronyms for AWS, so that's-

Kabilan Mahendran

>> Welcome to my world.

>> Yes, absolutely.

Kabilan Mahendran

>> DSOR stands for designated seller of record, and it's really targeted at just the distributors. And for Red Hat specifically, we've now onboarded four distributors, Ingram Micro, Carahsoft, TD Synnex, and Arrow. They are another key part of our overall partner initiative because they have these long-standing relationships with the local regional partners that AWS might not necessarily have a close relationship with. And that's why the distributors play a key role.

>> Yeah. I think that's the key also, because being out there, the distributors also are doing a lot of that training. And you're relying on them for training and getting the partners up to speed on the content of the products as well as AWS is. But at the same time, they're bringing it together and then they're the people who can help piece it together for those organizations in the mind of the partner who then goes and talks to the thing. So I think it is that Waterfall down that really gets to that end user, so they have the good experience. I think that's got to be a focus of what you're looking for. Like you said meeting them where they are, but hey, I want to help them get the right product, the right time, right place.

Bria Huber

>> Exactly. And so they bring a lot of that scale. We're only so big. We can only be so many places. So they bring that scale along with that credibility. So if the partner can trust their distributor and the distributor trusts Red Hat, right? Then we've got automatic credibility to that partner. It's also, again, that feedback loop, right? The distributors are one of the first to tell us, "Hey guys, we really need to pivot here." So we really rely on a tight relationship with our distributors.

Rebecca Knight

>> You had mentioned earlier that the cloud is still relatively new for a lot of customers, and they do require some handholding and some explanation of what's out there. What are you hearing from customers in terms of why they're interested in these programs?

Kabilan Mahendran

>> Yeah. One thing that we're repeatedly hearing is it's not an overnight transition. Even if a customer says, "I'm all in on the cloud. I'm exiting my data center and going to AWS." It's still a journey. It takes time. But they will have contracts and agreement in place with partners like Red Hat. Now instead of making their life complex by saying, "Okay, you need to tell me exactly when you're going to be moving said workload to AWS," that's a very, very intense process from a customer perspective. So the point of Marketplace is what if we allow them to do that renewal on the marketplace, but give them the freedom to migrate in the timeline that they choose, right? Instead of having to accurately predict exactly when a certain workload is going to be either on-prem or on AWS.

Rebecca Knight

>> Excellent. Well, Kabila and Bria, thank you both so much for coming on theCUBE. A really interesting conversation.

Bria Huber

>> Thank you so much for having us.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight for Rob Strechay. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of the Red Hat Summit. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech coverage.