Christine Puccio, JFrog | AWS re:Invent 2022

This is texturong TV. Hey everyone. We're back here for our coverage of AWS reinvent 2023 trying something a little different this time.

We we took a private conference Suite over at the wind which is next door to the Palazzo and Venetian where the show floor is and that we're doing really casual conversations here over coffee. I want to introduce you to Christine. It's Christine Puccio Christine Puccio Christine puccio Christine.

Well, you know, what first of all welcome Christine, how are you? I'm good. How are you know what it's good the days flying by we're loving signing out the sweet here much better than being on the floor with all noise and everything else.

We're gonna talk Jay Farr. We're gonna talk Cloud Christina. I should mention is with Jay frog will get into that.

But let's hear a little bit about your story about the you you've Might not holding me. Don't worry. I'm just gonna put 20 plus we'll keep it at that.

That's a boy doing it. But you have a great technology background. Yeah, I stumbled into technology.

It was in a financial analyst for Lockheed Martin and and made my way to AT&T and was in the internet explosion and and then found my way. It's on Microsystems for 10 years amazing, right? It's on and then as folks were migrating over from Solaris to Linux.

I migrated over to Red Hat and where I spent nine years of my time there at red hat in the partner all in the partner organizations. So I've seen a lot of models seeing them grow and disappear and it's been a really it's a really fun ride with Partnerships. And and now I'm here.

Yeah, no channels and partnership for such a Ingrained piece of the technology puzzle right of the technology world and you know, we're out here at reinvent this 55,000 people. They said this here, which is cool. It's good to see in person events coming back strong.

When I think about it, though. Like, you know the Genesis of AWS reinvent it kind of started with the AWS marketplace, right? This was a this is a conference built on the channel aws's channel Marketplace partners.

You know end users of cloud, but I think that's what makes this. Event what it is it is that it's the channel. It's a huge Channel ecosystem play AWS has really invested heavily in Partnerships in general and the programs that they bring to the Partnerships.

Yes. So Marketplace being like the extreme and then also with you know APN with the whole Coastal you now, they're marrying those two together, which is really nice to see but I remember Marketplace like back in 2015 and at the time redhead had a first party offer so we kind of like put that Marketplace to the side and then and then I got to fiddle with it when I was at my time at internet 5, but it's a it's great. He didn't even mention that I didn't have five kids.

Well, I didn't really my way back to networking and then now I'm here with the devops. So yeah, it's it's when I was at a Really is when I started diving deeply into the relationship with AWS and what we were doing with Marketplace and I can tell you just even from two years ago. It is not the same experience at all.

And it's a constant evolution of services that us partners can take advantage of to really really value back to customers. Really I'll tell you the truth. We even see it here at Tech shark where we work with AWS and what we work with the AWS is primarily with their Partners, right?

So, it's AWS and a partner and we do multiple type of events and stuff and what's amazing is this was all through covid? It continued to evolve and develop and they just kept at it and I think that this is why we see what we're seeing here this year that that was it. And so I actually told this story when I first got to jayfrog and showed the the growth and Spurt of what digital transformation did during the pandemic so like pandemic hit then you had, you know, every scrambling to transform digitally because consumers are forced to a Marketplace or wherever to buy and then all of those companies flocked over to cloud and then what happened was they wanted to buy software so, you know a vendors were looking at how do we make this easy Dipper cure and then that spurred a bunch of you know Evolution around the procurement process and so now here we are in a economy downturn It's so contract, you know, but serious.

Yes, we are to a certain extent in some sectors, but you've been around these are the normal cycles of business and I've I've been through start more than several of them and you know what they come up they go down things were a little getting a little out of balance, you know, in terms of some of the valuations and stuff and it's funny. I I speak slowly show me back. I am the CEO.

Okay friends a friend of mine and and we had this conversation. Not even at yala devops in July before that. He said, you know Alan them because at the time Jay frogs, I don't want to get into a whole stocks discussion, but Jay frog stock was not maybe performing as well as some other You know high flyer tech companies and he said it's like they don't reward me for running a fundamentally Sound business because they're all Top Line focused.

It well, it's so I have seen that turn of events happen several blips through my career and I can tell you I the reason I came to jayfrog really was for two solid reasons it was because they were in the infancy stage of growing their Partnerships. Not that they hadn't but they were looking at monetizing and being at red hat. I got to see that at the ground zero level and so it was such a wonderful opportunity to come in and help them build that sure I'm in the other one was security, you know coming from nginx and nf5.

I I knew it and I knew that that the security was not at the Waffle right it is it has to be ingrained into the developer life cycle and developers are having to be more conscious about their decisions and with the acquisition of vdo. I'm like wow, this is a perfect. This is yeah, perfect.

com. I'm my background security for 20 25 years and I thought that this whole devops which is given rights, the digital transformation really was a chance for us to To get it right or at least to get another bite at the Apple because the way we used to do security. You just wasn't working now.

It's now it's like the place. Yeah, you know what for the first time after 25 years of you know, China important security is all the sudden. It's job one, right?

Everybody's including developers including developers. And it's number one on the there was a PWC study. It comes out every February and it's like number one really is and you know, I think that you know the three areas for Jay frog, you know, and you did talk to Shawnee and you know is really the devops portion of our business and security and then the developer taking that and thinking two years out to the edge and and you know, all of that is technology but all of that has to be consumed quickly and so I always say the the I have the unsexy part of the job and that's like making it you know, Ball fast right and so procurement has become one of the areas that we're innovating even internally at jfrog, but you see it with marketplaces.

Yeah, and and I'll tell you it's we're in the hype portion of that of that curve, but even even marketplaces which Yes, they've evolved but the concept behind them has been around a bit. Devops has taken. It's turn it improving these things because what we've learned is look what worked for digital transformation two years ago is history.

What worked even a year ago is stale what works six months ago was before the economic downturn. I need what works now, right? And and so if you're going to be successful with Channel with with partners with Marketplace, you need that kind of devops shot in the arm of You know fail fast if you have to but iterate iterate iterate feedback loop iterate reiterate.

And and I think we're seeing that in real time. You seeing a real-time on the floor there? Oh my gosh, and and it's it's interesting because if you look at how companies are looking at their posture today with with all the vendors that they have so let's keep going with the digital transformation.

Well what happened well customers were buying sass. Yeah Solutions. So what did that do to the procurement person and made a nightmare because now you have like a hundred different vendors who have SAS Solutions, you know a large company I think now has around 400.

So then there's like this whole tale long tail vendors. So now what do you do is as a company, you're gonna focus on your 20% or your strategic and you are you that you think are right and then you're gonna then but you have this long tail, what's interesting about devops is that we are seeing our Summers look at standardization across the pipeline. So what happens is those organizations who want to fly under the cover of the of the procurement, you know, because they don't want to go through the lengthy process.

So you're seeing that undercover spending and you're it's in happening in different pockets of organizations. And so now companies are going well. Wait a minute how who else is using this and they're trying to consolidate.

Well, it started with the whole Shadow it thing. Yeah, right people just live in our credit cards and buying right on the not on the slide, but without going through the whole process. Then Shadow it grew into bigger buckets of Shadows if you will and and yet look we we're a little nothing company and I just went through a process here where I had our team start adding up.

What do we really spending here on all these SAS? You know, the the marketing team has some SAS tools. They use the engineering team does the sales team does we all You know, he'll turn you know something or later.

It adds up to real money, right? Believe me it does and you know, so what can we do to consolidate and really get a handle on that? Because you know, I I tried to do exactly you said, okay, let's concentrate on what the big numbers are.

Like which ones are really causing us and are really important. For instance. We use HubSpot.

Yeah, and we use cloudflare right? Those are important. They're decent, you know, it costs us a penny or two, but it wasn't just them it is that long tail that does add up because there's a ton of them out there.

I've always felt in the devops world. So to me, it was it's just a matter of time until security. You know merged into devops SecOps, whatever you want to call it and I've been preaching that for a long time.

But I I always felt that the devops world needed that consolidation for what you know, I call end-to-end devops providers and there's only a handful of them people who really can of offer the whole enchilada to to an end user Enterprise now. You don't have to have it all as your own tools. You could do it through Partnerships.

Okay, but I do think that's where we're heading and you know, and that that pendulum swings best of breed one throw to choke all of that but I think that's where we see a lot going on. There's so there's so much unpack there. There's so much going good, you know going back to the devops piece.

So, you know, Jay frog if I look at it, you know, I talked about pockets of organizations, but we're like 85% of Fortune 100. Yeah, because we are at me we have made impact in Enterprise. So if we're making impact and Enterprise those customers still are dealing with those pockets of business units.

Yeah. So what we are doing now is partnering with AWS and we're looking at how do we work together? And that's where that Coastal motion comes in and the the partnership and so we sit down and we do account planning with some of our our larger accounts and even some of our smaller accounts and we look at how can we help the customer in the eyes of the customer Obsession?

Where can we help them save? And how do we combine our effort? So how do we look at the long tail?

And how do we move it into more strategic where you where they're playing and they we all sit down together. And start looking at the whole platform. That's a beautiful thing.

I'm going to ask you really hard question now. Oh, no, you know. And if you don't want to answer you don't have to but you're right.

It's one of the nice things about that AWS is doing I also know that Jay farc has great relationships with Google cloud. And Microsoft is your and I'm not asking you to say which one you like better or which one you like working with, but all we seeing that at Google and Microsoft as well yet or you think AWS is kind of a little bit out ahead on this I think there are all aggressively moving there. And for for jayfrog, it's almost a perfect storm for us.

Right? It's like we're you know, we are you know multi-partner company, you know, we have different integration points with each we have relationships with all but there are there are differences within the ecosystem itself. You know, I think AWS has done a really great job of including the channel traditional Channel.

I think that they've done a really good job with msps. You look in Microsoft and they are basically looking at their partner program as the cloud partner program. So they're almost kind of like resell is is secondary.

But what is at the Forefront really is influence, right, you know, and and you're starting to see this is where I see the shift change of partnership so you could have five different touch points in your account of different Partnerships. And so, how are you rewarding? Them and I think Microsoft is is doing that.

I mean look what you've been in the industry. Like I have Microsoft always had a great partner Channel program that what that's what made them. Well a lot made them what they are, but that was one of their big things was I mean they had an and they still use they have an amazing amazing partner in channels.

And and the marketplace is Google's probably a little newer than both Amazon and Microsoft to this world another doubling down and Coastal. We see a lot of progressive movement and I think the past few years of their movement into more Enterprise contracts more Enterprise selling, you know, actually I worked with sap for like eight years and I a lot of the executives went over there and there's a lot of like Enterprise. Yeah minded folks over there.

So I've seen a complete shift I and being at Red Hat I worked with them and infancy stage, you know with AWS with sap and then with Google back and 16 completely different companies. Oh, yeah. no doubt, I Don't know.

I always felt like back in 2016-17 when they first started, you know gcp. Or GPC gcp. Yeah, it was it was almost an experiment then.

You know what? I mean? Like, yeah, we're gonna go for this good Google I could do billion dollars of expired laughing because I was working with the employee number three when I was a gcp and I'm like, oh my gosh, they're you know, you just looking at where they're at with a Partnerships, but it just like I said, it's completely no they're real.

Look they're top three. I think the real battles who's gonna be four. Yeah.

That's you know, you friends that IBM in Red Hat. Yeah. I do Oracle and bunch of others anyway.

Hey for people who say you know, what either I'm a j for our customer or I'm on AWS and maybe we want to look at Jay frog. Maybe we want to sit down and have this discussion that you're talking absolutely. So I'm on ramp, you know, the on-ramp really we have a lot of customers still migrating and you know, that's the reality and then that migration if you're moving over to Cloud you're definitely going to think about security and you're gonna think about your devops platform.

So what we're doing is we're sitting down and we're looking at how do we construct something together into that could be in the form of, you know, credits and Professional Services and and so I'm even but did they go to AWS or their cloud provider of choice or do they come to Jay frog if they come to Jay frogway that they come? Well, they actually go through we work a lot with our sales team. So my group at Jay Frog We manage all the alliance relationships right the strategy for Marketplace and I have Coastal Specialists, but more or less like Cloud sales Specialists and we are kind of a member of the team and very similar like a solution engineer and we are coming in to give them kind of the AWS.

You know way of how to work together and we bridge that gap between you know, pulling in the partners like a channel model and then we actually do account planning. We do account planning sessions. And so it literally have a few people there are sole job is to set up meetings and and make introductions and make sure that we're hosting those meetings because that's really where the magic is is LED and that's really planning so we can go have a conversation with the customer.

I love it. Right stuff. Yeah.

How long have you been with Jay Park? And four months. Okay, we won't tell shlomi.

He's not watching this so compared to some of these other companies. What do you think? Oh, I feel at home.

Do you I really feel a home and you know Red Hat really was, you know with openshift and and I actually learned about Jay frog when I was working within the isv group and it just I got to be more on the developer side. So it's really nice to be back here. And the spirit of the company is reminds me a lot of sun.

So yeah, I feel like I found a home good for you. Yeah Christine Puccio here. On textrung TV.

We're at AWA AWS reinvent. We are going to take a break and we'll be back in a bit.