The Inside Scoop

1+1=3, but 1+1+1=9

By Dennis Duckworth

As the newest member of Cloudera’s product marketing team, I’ve stepped into the newly created position of Product Marketing Director, dedicated exclusively to supporting our partner ecosystem. 

With over 20 years in data management, my career has evolved from developing AI applications (knowledge-based environments), to customer-facing roles in systems engineering and product marketing.

My presence here confirms Cloudera’s commitment to fostering a strong, vibrant partner ecosystem, which we believe is crucial for our continued success. We are dedicated to collaborating with as many of you as we can—ISVs, IHVs, SIs, OEMs, GSIs. Our goal is to offer comprehensive solutions that help our shared customers overcome their most complex data challenges, while ensuring our joint offerings are reliable, scalable, and aligned with their business needs. 

For me, part of the magic of a well-oiled partner ecosystem lies in the potential for multi-partner engagements.  While working with a single partner can increase deal value and customer benefits, involving multiple partners can have an exponential positive impact.

Here are some recent examples:

• We were working closely with a strategic partner on tactical event opportunities. They asked us to pick a SI to work with for each of their two event locations. This was a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate the power of our strategic partnership with a very practical element added. 

Often when software and platform partners do a presentation together, some or most of the material presented is “Here are some cool things you can do using both of us.” When you add a system integrator, the discussion transforms into “Here are some cool things you can do and here’s exactly what we will do with you and for you to make them happen.”

• We can add an ISV vendor on the front end to a Cloudera + IHV joint solution, taking our proposed offering beyond the abstract by demonstrating exactly what the customer will experience when using the Cloudera+IHV+ISV solution. It is often difficult to have a compelling demonstration of a data management system because it is mostly “plumbing”, and the plumbing is mostly hidden. Add a cool and valuable software tool that benefits from the larger data sets, the faster data pipelines, or the accelerated throughput, and users can quickly and easily see the value.

And so, I know 1+1+1 does not equal 9, I am just excited about the exponential opportunity to help make our partner ecosystem more successful.