ThoughtSpot also made a deeper commitment to the AWS platform with the hiring of Britny Holloway as Director of AWS Global Alliances, while Rajesh Dhiman is now Senior Director, Global Systems Integrators.
Kuntal Vahalia, SVP of Worldwide Channels and Alliances at ThoughtSpot
Today, cloud analytics vendor ThoughtSpot is announcing multiple announcements relating to their partnership with AWS. Their Team and Pro editions are now available on the AWS Marketplace listing, which they believe will accelerate their business specifically, and around Amazon Redshift in particular. They also announced a pair of Director-level appointments on the alliances side, including Britny Holloway as Director of AWS Global Alliances.
ThoughtSpot believes that their cloud analytics platform is highly differentiated compared to other cloud analytics platforms in the market.
“We are predicated on the premise of self service and on search-based analytics,” said Kuntal Vahalia, SVP of Worldwide Channels and Alliances at ThoughtSpot. “Every other vendor is catering to data analysts. We want to empower every user in the organization through self-service. We want ThoughtSpot to be identified with enterprise cloud in the same way that Google is identified with enterprise search. No one else does self-service and search at an enterprise scale.”
ThoughtSpot is a 10-year-old company, with one founder now being the CTO and the other the Chairman on the Board. Former Nutanix President Sudheesh Nair became the CEO in 2018.
“Sudheesh’s philosophy is about what you can do differently,” Valhalia said. We have a great market fit based on technology we have perfected over the last ten years. The whole area has seen a greater product fit because of the success of companies like Snowflake and Databricks, but you still need something at the top. That’s us. We are the experience layer at the top of the stack. We are not a full stack solution.”
ThoughtSpot started out with an enterprise focus, but they have expanded well beyond that to meet demand.
“Today, our target market is broader than the enterprise,” Valhalia stated. Data is everywhere. While we started with an enterprise DNA, about two years ago, we moved into the commercial segment. What we do matters a lot for digital natives. Our ThoughtSpot Everywhere solution in particular has had success in the lower part of the market.”
Vahalia said that ThoughtSpot had always had channel partners, but that they had not been managed in a systematic and unified way.
“When I came to ThoughtSpot eight months ago, my job was to build the channel program and the alliance program, and turn our partner channel into something that was much more integrated and unified,” he said.
“Given that we are the experience layer and not a full stack solution, we want to be very thoughtful and very purposeful, with our tech alliances and our other partners as well,” Valhalia stated. “We give a 360-degree view to our partners. We have four core data clouds, Snowflake, Databricks, Google Big Query and Amazon Redshift. With channel partners everything is co-sell, co-delivered and with partner program incents to do the right thing at every stage of lifecycle. They are very focused, and support the entire customer lifecycle.”
Today, ThoughtSpot is announcing the launch of the AWS Marketplace listing for the ThoughtSpot Team and Pro editions, letting customers easily access and purchase ThoughtSpot’s self-service analytics through the marketplace with their existing AWS commitments. Alongside Databricks Partner Connect and Snowflake Partner Connect, ThoughtSpot sees this as the next phase of making ThoughtSpot fully interoperable with the most performant cloud data platforms.
“AWS is one of our core partners,” Valhalia said. “AWS is more than a cloud data platform. The marketplace has amazing distribution power. We think of it on two fronts. First, it is a way for us to unlock Amazon RedShift. Second, it is a way for us to use the power of broader AWS distribution to accelerate our sales cycle with Snowflake and Databricks.”
ThoughtSpot also hired a new executive specifically to oversee the AWS relationship. Britny Holloway comes over from AWS to lead AWS Global Alliances for ThoughtSpot, where she will oversee the ThoughtSpot-AWS partnership. She joins Rajesh Dhiman as one of the newly announced executives overseeing the partner ecosystem. Dhiman becomes Senior Director, Global Systems Integrators, where he is responsible for building and developing key global partnerships.
“Britny will help us maximize our RedShift business, and help us expand our Go-to-Market and distribution reach through the AWS ecosystem,” Valhalia said. “It’s critical that we use this distribution to make it easier for customers to consume us. We want to make it easier for them to get all our apps, free as well as paid. We could create our own marketplace, but it would bring a fraction of traffic they can bring us. We are being practical.”
While AWS is their primary hyperscale partner, they are working on relationships with the others.
“Two years back, we became a SaaS company and are seeing triple digit growth there quarterly,” Valhalia said. “AWS was our first relationship, but we are going deeper with others as we speak. We want to work with customers where they are. Retailers generally don’t want to put their business in AWS, so we have to give them options.”
