By Jessica Alexander, CEO and Founder, Skematic
Intentionality means more than setting goals. It means knowing why the partnership exists, what outcomes you are building toward, and how both companies will benefit.
Too many ISVs list their product on AWS Marketplace and just hope sales will follow. They skip the foundational work: defining what their product contributes to AWS’s ecosystem, how it drives cloud utilization, and how to communicate that story internally.
At Skematic, we help companies build that foundation. Our platform takes on the heavy lifting of early partnership work so cross-functional teams can execute faster and be recognized for their contributions. That unseen, early effort is what creates long-term success.
If I had to name one factor that determines partnership success, it is alignment. Alignment vertically through leadership ensures the company understands the business case and measures it correctly. Alignment horizontally across departments ensures every team knows its role in making it work.
Product teams need to understand integration priorities. Marketing needs to shape the “better together” narrative. Sales needs to know how to transact through AWS Marketplace. Finance needs to handle listings, commissions, and reporting correctly.
Brennan put it simply during our conversation: “Incentives motivate humans.” If sellers are not incentivized to sell through Marketplace, they will not adopt it. The same applies to every department. When alignment is built in, adoption follows naturally.
After years of working with alliance teams, I have seen a pattern. The companies that consistently grow through cloud partnerships all share three things.
Executive and financial alignment. Leadership understands the mechanics of marketplace growth and treats it as a strategic priority.
Operational discipline. Processes for private offers, deal registration, and reporting are structured and repeatable.
Awareness and enablement. The partner value story is easy to tell and easy for AWS teams to promote. Great partners build advocates on both sides by keeping the message clear.
Brennan has taken that same approach at CyberArk. He built an organization that connects these dots across functions and ensures every motion is intentional. That combination of leadership support and process discipline is what separates great partners from good ones.
When I worked on alliance programs at CrowdStrike, I introduced the idea of seller adoption as the key metric for partnership success. It is still the best measure I know.
Seller adoption tells you how deeply your partnership is integrated into your company’s culture. When your sales teams use the Marketplace as their natural path to transact, it means they understand it, trust it, and are rewarded for it.
Brennan measures it the same way. Tracking how many sellers execute private offers each quarter gives his team a clear view of maturity and engagement. It shows where enablement is working and where it needs reinforcement.
Adoption is not just a number. It is the signal that alignment is working across every level of the business.
Cloud alliances are no longer side projects. They are central to the growth of modern software companies. But they only work when built on intentional design, strong alignment, and operational excellence.
That is why we created Skematic. Our platform helps companies establish the foundational partnership framework early. We automate and organize the heavy lift that cross-functional teams face when building a cloud partnership from the ground up. We help them execute faster, measure impact, and get recognition for the work that often happens behind the scenes.
When a company treats partnerships as a team sport, aligns its people both vertically and horizontally, and invests in building a strong foundation early on, growth becomes a natural outcome.
That is the model of partnership we are helping companies achieve.
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