Apr 11, 2020
In this episode of "Steve has a Chat", I catch up again with Steven Guggenheimer "Guggs" to get the latest on the ISV Connect program. It seems that the word is out at Microsoft about calls from me... they all seem ready now. But I still had a few surprises for him. Enjoy!
BTW, don't forget, Mark Smith (@nz365guy) and I do PowerUpLive every Tuesday at 4PM EST, click here to be alerted, and here's a link to the replays!
Transcript below:
Steven Guggenheimer:
Hello. This is Guggs.
Steve Mordue:
Hey, Guggs. Steve Mordue. How you doing?
Steven Guggenheimer:
Good. How are you doing?
Steve Mordue:
You know how I'm doing. You know why I'm here.
Steven Guggenheimer:
I do. I do. I assume we're get to go do a little update session,
and so I know or I assume you're recording and-
Steve Mordue:
You bet I am.
Steven Guggenheimer:
... whatever I say is ready to go.
Steve Mordue:
You got time?
Steven Guggenheimer:
Sure. Yeah, I got a little time.
Steve Mordue:
All right. Perfect, perfect. Well, it's been a while since we
talked. It's actually been a while since we've heard from you. I
was looking, and I think November was the last post, kind of an
update to the world of what's going on. I've been hearing the
hammers banging back in the background, but lots of folks, lots of
ISVs are reaching out to me for some reason or other, saying, "Hey,
what's the latest? What's going on? What's happening on that ISV
front?"
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yep. Like you said, lots of hammers in the background. Once you get
into that middle of the year, you're just mostly heads down trying
to do two things, trying to solidify all the work that's going on
for this year, so working with the field. The team went out and did
a field tour and, on lots of calls, we have our middle of the year
checkpoint. You're just grinding away on that, and you start doing
the planning for the next fiscal year. It turns out our Q3, which
is January, February, March, is kind of double busy. You're working
pretty hard to do whatever tweaks you need for this year and you're
busy planning for the next year, and so I think everybody's been
pretty heads down.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Then you get into January and February with the virus coming out, I
think you're busy trying to figure out, "Are we going to do [MBAS
00:02:13] live?" You plan for one version of it, and then you plan
for a different. You're working with customers and partners. I
think all of those things combined means everybody's busy. My
virtual team gets together on a regular basis, and I've got a
couple of calls after this, so that's where we're at.
Steve Mordue:
The ISVs have definitely had some challenges with Microsoft. Not
all of this, of course, is within your area. You're working on the
program for ISVs that will link to the products, which you're not
related to the products. You're related the program. But on the
product side, even, the ISVs are having some challenges. I know
that there's been ISVs that... The platform keeps shifting, keeps
moving around, new things added, things dropped. I even know some
ISVs that have said, "Hey, they just launched something, and it
kind of wiped out my whole solution."
Steve Mordue:
I think there's multiple things going on on the ISV side that's got
a lot of them nervous, and I think they're looking for some
reassurance that, "We bet on the right platform, and was that a
good bet, and when are we going to see a payoff on that bet?" What
kinds of things can you say to maybe reassure some of these ISVs
that are out there that are scratching their heads saying, "Hmm,
what's next? I mean was this a good bet?"
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yeah. I can't think of a better bet right now, but that's me. Of
course, I'm on the wrong side of the fence for that. The-
Steve Mordue:
Well, we're all biased. Even us ISVs are biased.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yeah, we're all biased.
Steve Mordue:
We're all biased.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Well, people want a little reassurance that, to your point, that
they made good decisions. From a platform and product perspective,
there's probably never been more energy in the combination of Power
Platform and D365 than we have today. I talked a lot about product
truth. I didn't think there was a lot of product truth for an ISV
in the platform SaaS offerings if you go back five years when we
were in the DPDx days.
Steven Guggenheimer:
James and [Mohamed 00:04:24] and Charles have just been cranking
along, and so from the breadth of the portfolio and the quality in
that link to Azure going down the stack and that link to SharePoint
and M365 going up the stack and the coherence in the platform. Then
we've been cleaning up. I mean God bless the team for all the work
they've had to do to clean up just years and years of monolithic
offerings that weren't in good shape. That speaks a little bit to
the change of the underlying platform.
Steven Guggenheimer:
We're probably as solid as we've ever been. We've got a
twice-a-year release train. The notes come out early. We did an ISV
session for the partners to get ahead of it. We'll do that again on
an every-six-month basis. Satya is sort of heavily invested.
Scott's heavily invested. Amy, our CFO, is heavily invested. I
think there's both product or platform truth. There's good energy
in the marketplace. I mean we're growing very well.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Can't say anything. Q3 will be coming up, but you look at Q2 and
Q1, you look at just quarter over quarter, now the platform's
growing and, if the platform's growing, that's opportunity, in
particular, Power Platform, Power BI, some of the D365 services. I
think all of that speaks to just incredible momentum. I see a
decent number of ISVs coming into the program and the platform
unsolicited wanting to take part in that.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Now, the one place people might feel a little discomfort is, as the
platform solidifies and as the services solidify and we add things
like AI and mixed reality in there, there might be places where
people were making an investment or were looking to extend that we
might be extending in that area. I would say, look, if you're an
ISV on the Microsoft platform, historically, one of your trademarks
is being somewhat nimble. I don't care if it's all the way back to
the Windows days and Windows 95 working your way up through the
internet era or intelligent cloud, intelligent edge. The value of a
platform is that balance between giving developers something to
build on and having enough coherence and consistency that both
customers and ISVs can count on it.
Steven Guggenheimer:
There's a fine balance there in terms of where you add features or
functionality or new capabilities to keep up with what your
competitors are doing, to keep up with what the customers are
asking for. It's a balancing act. I think the good thing, at least
in the Dynamics side, is that we're always open for conversation.
Whether it's myself or Greg or Mohamed or Charles, look, we'll pick
up the phone and we'll have the discussion. There'll be places
where people might feel uncomfortable that we've gone in that
direction. Great. We'll have that conversation, and we'll talk
about, roughly, where we're going without breaking NDAs on either
side.
Steven Guggenheimer:
My feedback to ISVs has always been the, "There's always someone at
Microsoft who thinks, someday, they're going to build something
that competes with you, so let's focus on the 90% where we don't
compete and know that there's going to be 10%." I think that's just
a truism. Look, energy is really good. I mean product coherence is
good. Product truth is good. If you look at what's going on, right
now, during the COVID response and the pickup for the Power
Platform in terms of helping hospitals and healthcare workers and
quick solutions, holy crud.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Then the new areas are good conversation, so let's have the
discussion. I mean I know a lot of the historical ISVs have been
around a long time, and some of the work they did that was either
custom on the product side or custom in terms of working with our
field as we make that available to everybody, that feels a little
less comfortable. We do a good amount of handholding for that.
Steve Mordue:
Yeah. I think one of the things you guys have been telling ISVs,
for years, as a way to build a business but also, in a way, to
protect your business is to go vertical. The more vertical you can
get, the safer you are. You guys are not going to go there. A lot
of horizontal ISVs, and they're... If you're horizontal, you're
plugging a hole. You're always at risk that Microsoft's going to
get around to the time to plug that hole. You're definitely safer
going vertical.
Steven Guggenheimer:
That's for sure, and that's even more true today. As some of our
competitors invest in the acquisition of vertical solutions, it
opens up that direction more. I would say, as a company, we're
making that pivot, albeit slowly but surely, to industry-led versus
product-led. We've always had product conversations. We've always
had audience conversations, developers or IT pros. We've always had
sides of organization enterprise, but industry was always kind of
a... not as strong a direction in terms of how we went to market.
We pivoted the company pretty heavily, and Azure's doing a lot of
this work at M365, and so is Dynamics. In industry-based solutions,
those are always the ones that get the best pickup, and now our
sales force is pivoting more and more in that direction. That's the
way to stay aligned.
Steve Mordue:
Yeah. You talked about nimble. Frankly, one of the challenges some
of these ISVs have is they're not that nimble. They built a bunch
of IP on something, and their goal was to just sit back and collect
checks, but you can't do that anymore. We're no longer in a space
you just build something and sit on it for years. You may not be
able to sit on it for months before you've got to go back in,
modify, refactor, take advantage of some new technology or... It's
a continuous motion now for ISVs. They're in continuous development
mode where they didn't use to be. It was like, "We're going to go
build something, sit on it, and cash in."
Steven Guggenheimer:
And particular in this space, and we see it a lot. I use the term,
sometimes, there's this notion of lifestyle businesses where you
build something and it supports the lifestyle, and there's not a
lot of interest or energy in reinvesting to change it or modify it.
Truthfully, that doesn't work. There are places where-
Steve Mordue:
Tell me about it.
Steven Guggenheimer:
They're-
Steve Mordue:
That's what I've been trying to do.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yeah, it's not working. Part of the blog series I've been working
on, it's called Continuous Transformation, and it's all... If you
look at 25 years or the 26 years of Microsoft, all we've ever done
is evolved and changed, and it's driven by technology and scale and
culture. I can't remember a period of time where something's not
upending the conversation.
Steve Mordue:
Yeah, but the pace is much greater in the past few years. The shift
to the cloud and the catch up, really, because we were behind
getting in the cloud, the catch up necessitated a pace that we have
not ever seen from Microsoft, this kind of a pace.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yeah. I think, in the line of business application space or the
Dynamics/Power Platform, we were further behind in that move, as a
Microsoft property, than some of the others, be it Office or Azure,
and so we're doing a lot of catch up, and that's why think that...
I talked a lot about product truth. I think they've done a
phenomenal job, but that's like a bit of a whip where we're as
close to it as you can be and, the further out you get, the more
you're going to have to go and make those changes, and you're
playing a lot of catch up.
Steven Guggenheimer:
The truth is, D365, there were custom deals floating around there
and custom support and all kinds of things that, as you modernize
and change, that goes away. I think some [crosstalk 00:12:10]-
Steve Mordue:
It's not scalable, yeah.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Well, people get frustrated because they had this special deal.
Well, look, we don't even build that product anymore or that
product's not one we're trying to sell. We're off doing cloud
stuff, so no, we're not going to go renew a set of terms or a set
of conditions for something that we're not trying to drive anymore.
The market's moved on. That's gone, and so you need to go modify
and change your solution to meet the current market needs.
Yeah.
Steven Guggenheimer:
On one hand, I get it. On the other hand, look, the time to move is
now. The world is moving, and the opportunity is very good. Despite
current conditions which are there, look, there's... The world, the
first thing they move is their infrastructure as a service. They
move the core horizontal infrastructure out, but sooner or later,
the next thing they're going to do is they're going to want to go
to a set of SaaS applications. They're not going to want to have a
cloud-based infrastructure then run some client server on-premises
solution. They're going to want to set a SaaS services.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Even though people may feel like it's a push or it's a hurry,
that's where the world's going. We're going to go push on it, and
you need to move your solutions there.
Steve Mordue:
I'll tell you, it's been very acute, these folks that have
on-premise solutions, particularly if they're physically on
premise, with this virus and the push to send everybody to work
from home in organizations that really weren't set up for people to
work from home from a technical standpoint.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yeah.
Steve Mordue:
I'm sure there are people out there now that are thinking, "Damn, I
wish we were in the cloud right now because those guys got it
pretty easy working from home if you already made this transition."
It's very acute right now.
Steve Mordue:
I was talking to Charles two weeks ago. I pounced on him, or a week
ago, I pounced on him for a call. He was saying one of the things
that's a-
Steven Guggenheimer:
You are getting a bit of a reputation, but keep going.
Steve Mordue:
Yeah. People are going to be scared and have my number blocked.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Nobody's going to pick up the phone.
Steve Mordue:
One of the things he said that was a big focus right now is making
everything work better. It's like we were firing off lots of
solutions, getting them to like 90%, move on to the next one, fire
it off, fire it off. Now there's this effort to kind of go back to
this. Let's close these gaps. As he was talking about, there's
still some significant gaps in not the product truth. The product
truth is there, but there's some gaps that they're now really going
to focus on closing. It feels like it's kind of like it's time to
do that. We've shot out tons of things. Now let's go back, tighten
them all up, and then go back to revisit shooting out more things
so-
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yeah, I think that's right. You look for gaps and overlaps. You
look for how do we take all the AI scenarios? They're kind of
scattered. Can we bring some of them together? Do they make sense
together? When they first came into the portfolio, they were sort
of all independent, so we ran them uniquely and independently and
just kept them going and, excuse me, tried to find alignment with
the various SaaS services. Now you go back and you say, okay, where
is their consistency? Where is the sum of the parts greater than
the individual?
Steven Guggenheimer:
You go and you look for whether it's process automation and the
work we're doing there, whether it's the power of virtual agent. If
you look at what they've done in terms of for COVID-19 in terms of
using a virtual agent, making it available, how do you turn these
into tools that can really scale and operate and work at the levels
needed?
Steven Guggenheimer:
I think Mohamed's got the same thing. There's a bunch of solution
areas as we took ERP and CRM and took them into their natural
marketing and sales and finance and operations, and we picked up
some other areas. He's doing that same work. Now is a beautiful
time to not necessarily double the number of offerings or add a
whole bunch of new products. It's now is the time to take the
momentum we've got and the offerings we've got and fill in the gaps
and, where there's overlap, bring things together, make these
things really operate at scale.
Steven Guggenheimer:
When you have the energy and you've got the interest, then what you
start to get is feedback on what you're missing or what's not quite
right. We want to take advantage of this time to go work on
that.
Steve Mordue:
Let me circle this back to your space, the ISV side specifically.
Over the past month, I've had two calls with some folks on your
team that were looking for my opinion about some complaints they
were getting, because you know I have opinions, about some
complaints they were getting from some ISVs that had built their
solution depending on this Team Member license and the changes to
Team Member. I am actually aware of a couple of these ISVs that
actually built their solution on the Team Member license without
regard for the restrictions of that license. Certainly pretty easy
to make your ISV solution have a lot of appeal if you've put it on
a lesser license than it should be on.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Right.
Steve Mordue:
They're complaining now about the changes. Both of your folks had
asked me my thought about that. I said, basically, "The hell with
them." I mean I have no sympathy for somebody who built a solution
on top of a license they shouldn't have. If you can't make revenue
on the right license, then your solution's not right or you're
thing isn't right. I mean do you have similar feelings of lack of
sympathy for those folks that did those things?
Steven Guggenheimer:
I sort of think about it a little bit differently. Yes, look,
there's people that take advantage of, it maybe intentionally or
unintentionally, of licensing they shouldn't. That just has to get
fixed, and we'll go work on that.
Steven Guggenheimer:
What there is that I think about is there are two scenarios that I
think of as light use or light functionality scenarios. If you have
something, a very large group of people... Students is a good
example. Healthcare workers might be a good example. Pick your
scenario where you have lots of people, and you have some people
that are heavy users, and you have some people who might touch the
solution once or twice a year or who touch the solution quite
often, but they need just a very lightweight answer to it. They're
not-
Steve Mordue:
A light touch.
Steven Guggenheimer:
They're users. They're users versus creators. That lightweight or
light touch scenario is one we still are trying to figure out the
right scenario for because there's not a great license type for
this. By the way, this isn't a Dynamics-type conversation. I can
say the same thing for Office for all the years it was there and
people would talk about different types of workers. It's one of
the-
Steve Mordue:
Contract workers, things like that.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yeah, yeah. They used to use the term knowledge workers, and there
was something else I can't remember. There is a collective
challenge, which is how do you build a licensing framework where
you can't tell between the two, light touch or light use, or you
can tell but there's no consistency. If I ask the question, "What
does light touch mean to one ISV or light use?" I'll get a very
different answer than what I get from another one, so you can't
design a licensing type that works for everyone.
Steven Guggenheimer:
That's one where I definitely have some empathy. It's not a
sympathy term. I get it. I don't know what the answer is. To your
point, ultimately, you have to design the solution to work with the
licensing types that are out there. There's this funny
juxtaposition between everybody wants simplicity but everybody
wants all ultimate choice. Well, those two things aren't the same.
You either get simple or you have the... and not as much choice or
you get all the choice in the world. It's the most complex thing
you'll ever seen, and so I don't know the answer to solving for
this one.
Steven Guggenheimer:
I know that the licensing teams are very aware of it. They've had
tons of these calls, in a good way, but there's not... I don't know
the answer. I haven't seen anybody figure out the answer in 10-plus
years of banging heads on this, and so I do think trying to design
a solution for the licensing types that are out there is the right
thing to do. Team doesn't serve that purpose. It's gone relative to
that where people try to use it for something that it wasn't
designed for, which in many cases, is that light use, light tough
scenario, but it doesn't work.
Steven Guggenheimer:
We'll keep banging our heads. We'll keep talking to people. People
do have to work within the licensing confines that are out there.
We're always evolving them. We're always taking feedback. We're
always trying to do better. Assuming something's going to come
magically, it doesn't happen.
Steve Mordue:
We're not alone there. I was reading the Forrester Report on
low-code solutions. We're obviously up there at the top now with a
couple of others. The negative for all of the ones at the top was
overly complex licensing. I was just thinking to myself, "You know
what? Whoever figures that out is going to win because that's the
thing holding all of the low-code platforms back a little bit is
people can't figure out how to buy it." They just can't. Partners
can't figure out what to sell. Customers can't figure out what to
buy, too many moving parts in the licensing. Fortunately, we're not
the only ones that have that problem, but whoever could figure that
out is really... I'm sure you guys have got some smart people
trying to figure that out.
Steve Mordue:
A couple of other things before I let you go. On-
Steven Guggenheimer:
Well, just on that one, there's also a difference between the
customer angle for that and the ISV angle. Trying to figure out a
licensing framework that works well for customers and ISVs, whether
it's the low-code scenario or some of these others, it adds to the
complexity. I highlight that in the sense that customers are a big
chunk of... That's typically where we start first when we're
working on a licensing framework because they're the... many times
are the purchasers or it ends up as part of a broader agreement
set, and so we have to figure that out, and so that-
Steve Mordue:
Actually, I think it's easier for ISVs because, as an ISV, I can
figure out and understand what license would be necessary to run my
solution and talk to a customer about, "Here's exactly what you
need to run my solution." Bigger challenge, I think, for customers
and SIs where a customer's like, "We want to do all these wonderful
things," and then for them to try and figure out what kind of
licenses they might need to accomplish those things. At least I
know what I'm doing with my solution. It's pretty straightforward.
I may have to shift it from a license I used to have it on to some
different licensing construct as things changes, but it's a little
easier for me.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yeah.
Steve Mordue:
One of the things that came up in one of my calls with a pretty
good size ISV recently was the lack of... I think he told me his
costs this year are going to be over $90,000 for Microsoft
licensing to be able to actually build and develop their solutions
on between their multiple sandboxes, different things like that.
It's a frustration for him that, "I'm building an ISV solution, a
big one. I have lots of customers that are generating licenses and
revenue for Microsoft, but I'm having to spend, as an ISV, a ton of
money to even be able to do that."
Steve Mordue:
We had that ISV competency out for about eight minutes, decided
that wasn't a good path. Some of the other paths to get IUR and
those sorts of things that you would need to build on aren't always
relevant for ISVs. The biggest thing the ISV competency really gave
was, "Here. Here's some benefits. Here's some resources for you to
go build on." What can we tell those folks that... I mean this
guy's literally having to buy retail. You know?
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yeah. That's a Microsoft-level challenge in many ways. It's the
what's the benefits? It really comes out of the MPN, the Microsoft
Partner Network. What's the benefits? That's where that competency
came from of being a partner and, if you're an ISV, how can you get
access to the software you need to build a solution?
Steven Guggenheimer:
I know that the team is deeply aware of that. It's from the day the
ISV competency went away to through all the conversations. I
haven't checked in in a while to see where they are on coming up
with an offering. I'll go back and ask. It's a good question. I
don't know. Look, I don't know the answer, the how do you provide
software? It ends up being, to your point, sandboxes or one-offs or
these other things versus what's the programmatic approach that
scales across Azure, Dynamics/Power Platform at M365? How do we
make it available? What do you need to do to qualify, as a partner,
so it's not just out there for everybody? It's an expensive
offering [crosstalk 00:25:23]-
Steve Mordue:
Yeah, so is manning an ISV practice with developers and people to
build, so-
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yep. No, they're both... That's right.
Steve Mordue:
Yep.
Steven Guggenheimer:
How do we find that balance? I don't know. Again, it's a little bit
like a light-usage, lightweight licensing SKU where I haven't seen
the answer to that. This is one of those ones that pops up and down
in terms of, sometimes, we seem to give a lot of benefit in that
direction, and sometimes we don't. Let me go back. I'll go back. It
could be one of the last things I can go poke on a little bit,
especially since-
Steve Mordue:
Yeah. That would be good.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Especially since I know Nick super well. Nick Parker took over
the... He has the ISV remit underneath him now, so I'll go bug him
about that.
Steve Mordue:
Yeah, we kind of kicked the can down the road when the ISV
competency went away, kind of grandfathered everybody into business
biz apps or some other competency while we figured it out, but now
we'll be looking at people coming up on that expiring, and they'll
be like, "Okay, now what do I got?" I mean it's obviously a big
expense for ISVs when they're looking at partnering with Microsoft.
They're thinking, "Here's something you can do for me," but other
things-
Steven Guggenheimer:
No, that's super constant, consistent feedback. That's not a new
one. We probably had that conversation the first time we did a call
and-
Steve Mordue:
Every time since.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Every time since, and I still haven't... It's one I get to poke on.
It's not one that I own, but it's one that I'll go poke on
again.
Steve Mordue:
How is ISV Connect? Have you guys collected revenue yet? Are we at
the point where we're collecting revenue from ISVs?
Steven Guggenheimer:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, collecting revenue. We crossed 1,000 ISVs that have
signed the agreements. I think we've crossed 1,000 apps in
AppSource now. We've done all the work to remove the ones that
didn't go through certification that didn't join ISV Connect.
Steven Guggenheimer:
We're actually in a good in a good spot. We've got a decent number
at the 20% level, and we're trying to get the ones that our field
is really asking for aligned with more of the 20-percenters because
those are the ones that are going to close out with the most. I
feel really good about the getting people into the program. We've
gotten the time to do the certification down. That's all been
cleaned up. I think terms and conditions, we've been through all of
that. We're heading into the next year. We won't add a lot, so keep
it simple, do more of the same.
Steven Guggenheimer:
The place we're spending energy now is on the benefits side. We've
got almost all the partners activated with their marketing benefits
now, and they've had the call, and we're working on that. On the
co-selling side, look, we're continuing to do the work with the
field to drive that forward. Some people feel pretty good about it
and we get really good feedback, and some people don't feel as good
quite yet, and so we're working on both of those.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Now as you head into Q4 with an economic challenge around the
world, everybody hunkers down a little bit, so we're going to have
to work a little harder. One of my meetings later today is how do
we stay focused on the right things and the fewest number of things
to keep the momentum going as we head into this year and next?
We're doing the planning for what would we tune for next year.
Overall, it's going well.
Steven Guggenheimer:
The operations, a lot of the challenges we had, once you got past
the people discomfort with a new program, a lot of challenges we
had were operations. We're cleaning those up. We have some
marketplace work to do. We've had good calls with that team. When
people give us feedback, we understand it. We're doing the
engineering work now. I sort of feel like we'll work our way
through Q4 this year and then, as we head into the next year, we'll
have both an engineering uptick on operations work, on the
marketplace, on the back end. There's work going on on Partner
Center because it's going to scale to more and more partners across
the company.
Steven Guggenheimer:
I feel pretty good, not perfect. I always say these things are a
journey and they take time, that's for sure, and so we'll-
Steve Mordue:
Yeah, yeah. It always takes longer than you think, right?
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yeah, yeah. I'm scarred enough to know that we still got another
year of cranking away, but we're in a good spot given where we
were. The energy's in a good place. We just got to keep focused and
keep going.
Steve Mordue:
Yeah. Maybe there's a way to solve both those problems. I seem to
recall, at least, the initial benefits that were being, "Here, in
exchange for the rev share, we're going to give you guys these
benefits." A lot of those benefits were targeting brand-new ISVs. A
lot of the benefits on that list for an established ISV, they were
like, "Oh, I don't need this. I don't need this. I don't need a
bunch of these things as an established ISV." Those are all,
certainly, high value to someone brand-new to the platform, which
is something we all want is more ISVs. Maybe there's a way to tie
in those IURs or the benefits back to, "Okay, you don't want a
marketing thing? Fine. How about if we give you some credits that
you could use towards the underlying platform stuff you might need
that could be a little more value to those folks?"
Steven Guggenheimer:
That's some of the conversations we're having is which benefits are
people finding value in? Where would they like to see other
benefits? The IUR is a constant one, so that one I sort of table
off on the side because it's a consistent.
Steve Mordue:
Yeah, yeah. Definitely, benefits will be different for someone
brand new to the platform who's never done anything versus someone
who's been there for a long time. Let me ask-
Steven Guggenheimer:
Right. This is one of the trade-offs when you go... A platform is
only as strong as its ecosystem. To make the ecosystem stronger,
you're going to add more people in, and so you're going to bring
people in. Part of what you're trying to do is attract that. Not
all of those things feel great for the people that have been there
and been working on it. That's where a little bit of the tuning and
being agile helps because you're adapting to... Look, the platforms
are going to scale and grow. It's in a good spot, so there's going
to be more people you know on it, and so we have to find that the
tools that work for everyone.
Steve Mordue:
Yeah. Thanks to your little kick, I got a call next week with about
a dozen people on the AppSource team, so they're going to get an
earful of all my opinions so they can put that in the mixer.
Steven Guggenheimer:
No, I think it'll be good because look... and they know. To be
honest with you, they know. We told them, "Look, it's better to
hear directly. There's a couple of folks, we're having them talk to
you. They're sending me the feedback," and then they can tell you
where they're at and what they're doing and why it's taking a
little longer than maybe people had hoped for. That's the beauty of
doing it right and getting it fixed is... not the beauty, the
reality.
Steve Mordue:
Necessity.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yeah, the reality or the necessity. It's a little like rebooting
this program.
Steve Mordue:
I want to wrap up here because I don't want to take up too much of
your time.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yep. Yeah, I got somebody-
Steve Mordue:
You recently announced a retirement.
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yep.
Steve Mordue:
Coming soon. Who's going to be stepping into your shoes for this
ISV motion? Figured that out yet? Has that been just thought
about?
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yeah. No, we're going to move the team into another part of the
organization. It'll be close to the Accelerator Team, which used to
report to me anyway, and the Industry Team and with one of our real
good leaders and with DSI. It'll end up in a spot with Greg and
Sean still running their teams aligned with the work going on for
another key part of the ecosystems, which is SIs, and the industry
work, which has a ton of ISV work. It's all the accelerators.
Again, that team used to report into my org, so it'll feel like a
pretty natural connection into places it would fit and the people
we've worked with pretty closely all along.
Steve Mordue:
You're going to have every single one of these issues fixed,
buttoned up, running like a well-oiled machine before you walk out
the door, right?
Steven Guggenheimer:
I'm going to stay committed to doing the best job to make sure
we're set up well for our next fiscal year to transitioning well
and to being there. Then I'll be around for a little longer to make
sure if there's questions or engagements that are needed to done
that I do them.
Steve Mordue:
All right, cool. Well, I'm looking forward to everything that that
comes. Thanks for making the time for the call.
Steven Guggenheimer:
No worries. I always enjoy a surprise call on whatever day it is.
Days get lost nowadays, but-
Steve Mordue:
Yeah. I'll bet you enjoy them, right?
Steven Guggenheimer:
Yeah.
Steve Mordue:
All right, man. Have a good one.
Steven Guggenheimer:
All right. We'll talk you, Steve. Take care. Bye.