#143 Chris Cochran: Nurturing A Successful Hyperscale Partnership

Chris Cochran, Vice President of Cloud Strategy and Alliances at Data Dynamics, joins Chip Rodgers for this episode of Ecosystem Aces. In this conversation, Chris and Chip talk about how important hyperscalers are in nurturing growth, especially in an era where data is constantly moving to the cloud.

As a senior member at a fast-growing startup, Chris brings an unparalleled perspective to hyperscalers like Microsoft and AWS. This podcast offers insight into the importance of cloud migration, why hyperscalers are essential, and why the customer is the key to deal acceleration.

Chris talks about:

• How Data Dynamics are making cloud migration easy for customers
• How Chris approaches partnering with hyperscalers
• Importance of customer-centricity

How Data Dynamics are Making Cloud Migration Easy for Customers

Data Dynamics is a fast-growing startup, and Chris said that they closed last year with a 50% growth. Their platform revolves around customers' unstructured data using analytics and data rationalization. Data Dynamics have put StorageX, ControlX, and Inside Analytics platform modules in the market.

The company has partnerships with major hyperscalers, with Microsoft being the paramount and AWS and GCP rapidly making progress. One customer faced a challenge where a large amount of data in the customer’s data center had to be evacuated urgently to a hyperscaler. Data Dynamics was successful in this program with both a fast timeframe and alleviating potential monetary penalties on the customer.

Data Dynamics got the attention of hyperscalers when they finished a project within six months, which would have taken six years. Also, the 12 person team was reduced to two people who scoped the work and executed it through their policy-based technology engine in an automated fashion. This helped reduce the staffing needs for a project, produced financial savings, and identified proper tiers of storage for the customer.

There are three categories into which data is put:

·         Prolific Data

·         Obsolete Data

·         Trivial Data

Hyperscalers are fighting for customer data, and Data Dynamics encapsulates the data that's on the customer's systems and moves it in a very expedient manner without a lot of restrictions. Complicated environments, networking, firewalling, and other complications are overcome and data is moved into the hyperscaler of choice for the customer.

The StorageX platform allows the customer to do this because years and years of experience have been built into the technology, from the underpinning to recognizing different file types, different firewalling capabilities, ports, and so on. The technology has evolved to the point where now it's being recognized as one of the premier tools in the industry for migrations.

How Chris Approaches Partnering with Hyperscalers

From a partnering standpoint, Chris has a team of partner managers and a customer success team. All these teams align together, and engagement with Microsoft takes place across multiple business units. Chris works closely with the product team, and Data Dynamics’ CEO puts in the investment for advancing and developing the best product.

Within Microsoft, there are regulated industries like financial services, health care, retail, consumer goods, and manufacturing, as well as state and local government entities. Data Dynamics works and aligns with those regulated industries and helps them to sell features and capabilities of data and analysis, analytics, and also for compliance and migration.

The customer has to pay nothing for migration licenses, and this benefits the sellers by growing their Azure consumption revenue. Charging no cost from the customers acts as deal acceleration and helps the product team build better products that solve customer needs. Data Dynamics lines up pricing and measurements with the hyperscalers’ field sellers. Customers can also get inside analytics for data rationalization and buy the Control X technology from the marketplace.

Thus, Chris at Data Dynamics is helping facilitate some of the world’s biggest hyperscalers’ growth.

Importance of Customer-Centricity

Chris says that understanding and helping the customers can solve the biggest problems. Through his time at IBM, Chris learned that putting the customer first is the key to success for any organization. Understanding the needs, the pain points, and the troubles a customer faces helps develop the right solutions.

Chris even tells his team to document the discussions with customers so that the customers know they are being heard and the organization is working to meet their demands. Customer centricity and customer empathy are important because if an organization wants to develop a solution, they must have proper knowledge about the customers and what they need.

Wrapping Up

Almost every industry is moving to the cloud, and organizations like Data Dynamics that can help companies with data migration in a safe and secure manner are important. Chris discussed how he is partnering with hyperscalers and helping customers with data migration through their platform.

Also, Chris emphasizes that customers must be the center point of your strategy for success and rapid growth. 

To know more about Chris and what his team at Data Dynamics is working on, you can follow him on LinkedIn.

Links & Resources

• Learn more about how WorkSpan helps customers accelerate their ecosystem flywheel through Co-selling, Co-innovating, Co-investing, and Co-marketing.
• Subscribe to the Ecosystem Aces Podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcast.
• Join the WorkSpan Community to engage with other partner ecosystem leaders on best practices, news, events, jobs, and other tips to advance your career in partnering.
• Find insightful articles on how to lead and get the most out of your partner ecosystem on the WorkSpan blog.
• Download the Best Practices Guide for Ecosystem Business Management
• Download the Ultimate Guide for Partner Incentives and Market Development Funds 
• To contact the host, Chip Rodgers, with topic ideas, suggest a guest, or join the conversation about modern partnering, he can be reached on Twitter, LinkedIn, or send Chip an email at: chip@workspan.com