Jon Yoo, CEO of Suger, shares how his company automates the complex & challenging workflows of selling software through cloud marketplaces like AWS.

Topics Include:

• Jon Yoo is co-founder/CEO of Suger.
• Suger automates B2B marketplace workflows.
• Handles listing, contracts, offers, billing for marketplaces like AWS.
• Co-founder previously led Confluent's marketplace enablement product.
• Confluent had 40-50% revenue through cloud marketplaces.
• Required 10-20 engineers working solely on marketplace integration.
• Engineers prefer core product work over marketplace integration.
• Product/engineering leaders struggle with marketplace deployment requirements.
• Marketplace customers adopt without marketing, creating unexpected management needs.
• Version control is challenging for marketplace-deployed products.
• License management through marketplace creates engineering challenges.
• Suger helps sell, resell, co-sell through AWS Marketplace.
• Marketplace integration isn't one-time; requires ongoing maintenance.
• Business users constantly request marketplace automation features.
• Suger works with Snowflake, Intel, and AI startups.
• Data security concerns drive self-hosted AI deployments.
• AI products increasingly deploy via AMI/container solutions.
• AI products use usage-based pricing, not seat-based.
• Usage-based pricing creates complex billing challenges.
• AI products are tested at unprecedented rates.
• Two deployment options: vendor cloud or customer cloud.
• SaaS requires reporting usage to marketplace APIs.
• Customer-hosted deployment simplifies some billing aspects.
• Marketplaces need integration with ERP systems.
• Version control particularly challenging for AI products.
• Companies need automated updates for marketplace-deployed products.
• License management includes scaling up/down and expiration handling.
• Suger aims to integrate with GitHub for automatic updates.

Participants:

· Jon Yoo – CEO and Co-founder, Suger

See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon/isv/

Sam Gantner, Chief Product Officer of Nexthink, reveals how DEX is moving IT from reactive firefighting to proactive problem prevention and transforming enterprise productivity.

Topics Include:

• DEX stands for Digital Employee Experience
• DEX eliminates IT issues preventing employee productivity
• Shifts IT from reactive to proactive problem-solving
• Employees often serve as IT problem alerting systems
• Best IT is transparent to employees
• DEX solves device sluggishness and slow application issues
• Network problems consistently appear across organizations
• IT teams often lack visibility into employee experiences
• Many organizations waste money on unused software licenses
• DEX Score measures comprehensive employee IT experience
• Surveys capture subjective aspects of technology experience
• Reduction of actual problems differs from ticket reduction
• Nexthink uses lightweight agents on employee devices
• Browser monitoring essential as browsers become application platforms
• Employee engagement metrics capture real-time feedback
• Nexthink rebuilt as cloud-native platform using AWS services
• Company deploys across 10+ global AWS regions
• 30% of engineering resources dedicated to AI development
• One customer eliminated 50% of IT tickets
• Another recovered 37,000 productivity hours worth $3M annually
• A third saved $1.3M by identifying unused licenses
• AI implementation requires dedicated employee training
• Good AI now better than perfect AI never
• Technology adoption is the next DEX frontier
• Digital dexterity becoming critical for maximizing IT investments

Participants:

• Samuele Gantner – Chief Product Officer, Nexthink

See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon/isv/

Linda Ivy-Rosser, Vice President for Forrester, outlines the evolution of business applications and forward thinking predictions of their future.

Topics Include:

• Linda Ivy-Rosser has extensive business applications experience since the 1990s.
• Business applications historically seen as rigid and lethargic.
• 1990s: On-premise software with limited scale and flexibility.
• 2000s: SaaS emergence with Salesforce, AWS, and Azure.
• 2010s: Mobile-first applications focused on accessibility.
• Present: AI-driven applications characterize the "AI economy."
• Purpose of applications evolved from basic to complex capabilities.
• User expectations grew from friendly interfaces to intelligent systems.
• Four agreements: AI-infused, composable, cloud-native, ecosystem-driven.
• AI-infused: 69% consider essential/important in vendor selection.
• Composability expected to grow in importance with API architectures.
• Cloud-native: 79% view as foundation for digital transformation.
• Ecosystem-driven: 68% recognize importance of strategic alliances.
• Challenges: integration, interoperability, data accessibility, user adoption.
• 43% prioritizing cross-functional workflow and data accessibility capabilities.
• Tech convergence recycles as horizontal strategy for software companies.
• Data contextualization crucial for employee adoption of intelligent applications.
• Explainable AI necessary to build trust in recommendations.
• Case study: 83% of operators rejected AI recommendations without explanations.
• Tulip example demonstrated three of four agreements successfully.
• Software giants using strategic alliances as competitive advantage.
• AWS offers comprehensive AI infrastructure, platforms, models, and services.
• Salesforce created ecosystem both within and outside their platform.
• SaaS marketplaces bridge AI model providers and businesses.
• Innovation requires partnerships between software vendors and ISVs.
• Enterprises forming cohorts with startups to solve business challenges.
• Software supply chain transparency increasingly important.
• Government sector slower to adopt cloud and AI technologies.
• Change resistance remains significant challenge for adoption.
• 69% prioritize improving innovation capability over next year.

Participants:

• Linda Ivy-Rosser - Vice President, Enterprise Software, IT services and Digital Transformation Executive Portfolio, Forrester

See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon/isv/

New Relic's Chief Customer Officer Arnaldo (Arnie) Lopez details how their observability platform helps 70,000+ customers monitor cloud performance through AWS infrastructure while introducing AI capabilities that simplify operations.

Topics Include:

• Arnie Lopez is SVP, Chief Customer Officer at New Relic.
• Oversees pre-sales, post-sales, technical support, and enablement teams.
• New Relic University offers customer certifications.
• Founded in 2008, pioneered application performance monitoring (APM).
• Now offers "Observability 3.0" for full-stack visibility.
• Prevents interruptions during cloud migration and operations.
• Serves 70,000+ customers across various industries.
• 16,000 enterprise-level paying customers.
• Platform consolidates multiple monitoring tools into one solution.
• Helps detect issues before customers experience performance problems.
• Market challenge: customers using disparate observability solutions.
• Reduces TCO by eliminating multiple monitoring tools.
• Targets VPs, CTOs, CIOs, and sometimes CEOs.
• Decade-long partnership with AWS.
• Platform built on largest unified telemetry data cloud.
• Uses AWS Graviton instances and Amazon EKS.
• AWS partnership enables innovation and customer trust.
• Three AI approaches: user assistance, LLM monitoring, faster insights.
• New Relic AI helps write query language (NURCLs).
• Monitors LLMs in customer environments.
• Uses AI to accelerate incident resolution.
• Lesson learned: should have started AI implementation sooner.
• Many customers still cautiously adopting AI technologies.
• Goal: continue growth with AWS partnership.
• Offers compute-based pricing model.
• Customers only pay for what they use.
• Announced one-step AWS monitoring for enterprise scale.
• Amazon Q Business and New Relic AI integration.
• Agent-to-agent AI eliminates data silos.
• Embeds performance insights into business application workflows.

Participants:

• Arnie Lopez – SVP Chief Customer Officer, New Relic

See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon/isv/

PDI Technologies’ Steve Antonakakis shares how his company is implementing generative AI across their fuel and retail technology ecosystem through a practical, customer-focused approach using Amazon Bedrock.

Topics Include:

• PDI's COO/CTO discussing generative AI implementation
• Practical step-by-step approach to AI integration
• Testing in real-world settings with customer feedback
• AWS Bedrock and Nova models exceeded expectations
• Early adoption phase with huge potential
• Fuel/retail industry processes many in-person transactions
• PDI began in 1983 as ERP provider
• Grew through 33+ acquisitions
• Provides end-to-end fuel industry solutions
• Owns GasBuddy and Shell Fuel Rewards
• Processes millions of transactions daily
• Generative AI fits into their intelligence plane architecture
• AWS Bedrock integrates well with existing infrastructure
• Focus on trusted, controlled, accountable AI
• Productizing AI features harder than traditional features
• Created entrepreneurial structure alongside regular product teams
• Team designed to fail fast but stay customer-focused
• AI features can access databases without disrupting applications
• Customers want summarization across different business areas
• AI provides insights and actionable recommendations
• Conversational AI replaces traditional reporting limitations
• Working closely with customers to solve problems together
• Beyond prototyping phase, now in implementation
• AWS Nova provides excellent cost-to-value ratio
• Focus on measuring customer value over immediate profitability
• RFP use case saved half a million dollars
• Early prompts were massive, now more structured
• Setting realistic customer expectations is important
• Data security approach same as other applications
• Treating AI outputs with same data classification standards

Participants:

• Steve Antonakakis – COO & CTO, Retail & Energy, PDI Technologies

See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon/isv/

Yashodha Bhavnani, Head of AI at Box, reveals Box's vision for intelligent content management that transforms unstructured data into actionable insights.

Topics Include:

• Yashodha Bhavnani leads AI products at Box.
• Box's mission: power how the world works together.
• Box serves customers globally across various industries.
• Works with majority of Fortune 500 companies.
• AI agents will join workforce for repetitive tasks.
• Workflows like hiring will become easily automated with AI.
• Content will work for users, not vice versa.
• Customers demand better experiences with generative AI.
• Box calls this shift "intelligent content management."
• 90% of enterprise content is unstructured data.
• AI thrives on unstructured data.
• Current content systems are unproductive and unsecured.
• AI can generate insights from scattered company knowledge.
• AI extracts metadata automatically from documents like contracts.
• Automated workflows triggered by AI-extracted data.
• Box provides enterprise-grade AI connected to your content.
• AI follows same permissions as the content itself.
• Customer data never used to train AI models.
• AI helps classify sensitive data to prevent leaks.
• Box offers choice of AI models to customers.
• AI is seamlessly connected with customer content.
• Administrators control AI deployment across their organization.
• Partnership with AWS Bedrock brings frontier models to Box.
• Box supports customers using their own custom models.
• Box preparing for AI agents to join workforce.
• Introduced "AI Units" for flexible pricing.
• Basic AI included free with Business Plus tiers.
• Both horizontal and vertical multi-agent architectures planned.
• Working toward agent-to-agent communication protocols.

Participants:

• Yashodha Bhavnani - VP of Product Management, AI products, Box

See how Amazon Web Services gives you the freedom to migrate, innovate, and scale your software company at https://aws.amazon/isv/