Episode 9, Morgan Parker
tickets and get help when they're when they're building their app, so they don't get tony morelan 10 27 stuck what would be some of the other ways that the knox partner program is supporting partners? morgan parker 10 32 yes so i think, you know, while they're building, as i mentioned, the support is very important our documentation is fantastic you know, there's support forums that, you know, obviously, you get peer, you know, feedback and support through that, but also those are monitored by our support professionals as well so really, while you're building, you know, we do everything we can to help support you you know, moving from that, you know, when you're going to market the program is really designed that when you start to have some in market success, and you're actually serious about going in selling and creating a business with this, you know, we take notice so the, you know, we can see whose kind of activating licenses and who's making some sales so we have really good regional contacts and people that work with the program around the world so we work to, you know, once you start having some success really start working with you and this is where we really can build our relationship and start to promote you even further where, you know, once you get some notice, you know, we can promote you on our different websites there's a solution catalog on www samsungknox com as well as starting promoting solutions internally to our sales teams as well so, you know, once you kind of build some momentum, we work to help you, you know, increase that momentum and get more exposure and conquer, you know, make more sales is really the goal is tony morelan 11 43 this where the different tiers start to come into play, because i understand that you do offer i think it's four different tiers morgan parker 11 49 exactly yeah so everyone joins that, what would be a bronze tier, and really that is you get all the development resources and you can come in and start building and doing what you need to do to get your app off the ground, when you start making some sales and you know, started getting some notice, that's where, you know, we as the program would bump you up to what would be a silver tier partner, put you in contact with regional contacts and start you on that journey from there, you know, as you start to, you know, get in more and more sales, you know, we bumped you up to gold, and then platinum, those right now are pretty large partners, platinum partners right now are no blackberry and sony so at that level, you know, that is just more, you know, obviously, like joint pr and doing events together and that type of thing so yeah, we just really want to, you know, create more silver and then create more gold and hopefully create more platinum partners as well to really start growing our ecosystem so then what is it that you're doing for the small and medium sized businesses? yeah, that's why i think it's really the promotional, and connections with samsung that are really important so that's where the solution catalog comes in where, you know, we start to, you know, do things to jointly promote the solutions to you know, our base of customers and potential customers so i think, you know, doing that and having the relationship with samsung to pull you into more deals at that phase, i think is a really good and important, some really important benefits tony morelan 13 13 sure so giving a lot of visibility then exactly, morgan parker 13 16 yeah and that that comes back into, you know, with our global scale, i think this is one of the best ways that we can we can do this is, you know, providing more visibility from a very large customer base to our partner solutions tony morelan 13 30 so, tell me a little bit about the knox validated program morgan parker 13 33 yes, we just launched that this year so the nox validated program is for our partners and really what it does is it validates the implementation of a couple of our samsung knox products essentially so with that, you know, having no these rich implementations of samsung knox, we do a check to see how those are implemented make sure that you know both from a technical and security perspective, as well as some degree of you know, user friendliness, that these things are done in, you know, a really good way to then give our customers confidence that if they're buying these solutions that, you know, these things are implemented in kind of the best way possible so really designed to give our customers more confidence of these partner solutions, and to, you know, give our partners that, you know, go through this validation process, you know, even more promotional opportunities to promote those solutions further, as you know, kind of our chosen top, you know, validated solutions so, can you give some examples of these additional resources? yeah, absolutely so, first of all, it's really collecting all the existing sales and marketing resources that we do provide, whether that be you know, device imagery, and a lot of the latest device imagery, you know, then other sales and marketing collateral as well so, you know, our partners get to see you know, what we use and how we sell some of those solutions to our customers and get a better understanding of what those are and those can also be reused with, you know, their customers as well to show you know, what is the knox platform and if you're putting all this effort into integrating with the knowledge platform, you obviously would be good to have an understanding of what that is, and then convey that to your customer as well so those are a couple of, you know, kind of key areas of the sales and marketing resources and there's a bunch more in there as well and then really, as i mentioned before, really pushing ahead, and, you know, even doing the active promotion of those solutions, so, you know, getting in front of the obviously more customers, as well as our internal sales teams and other internal business units as well tony morelan 15 29 it sounds great now, you had mentioned the acronym utm in, for those who might not be aware of that, can you write exactly what are those acronyms? morgan parker 15 38 yeah, so i guess in the world of mobile device management, which is mdm, people can classify their solutions in a different way so ucm is unified endpoint management, enterprise mobility management cmm so they're all you know, basically a different way of managing mobile devices or endpoints and i think, you know, depending on guess who you are, you may classify your solution as a different way uvm could be the latest, as you know, endpoints can be more than just mobile devices it can be, you know, other type of smart devices or dongles or whatever so yeah, i think how you classify your solution and what you manage, you can name it something different tony morelan 16 18 so what is the next partner program done to drive awareness? morgan parker 16 22 yeah, i think the biggest one, and we'd work pretty hard to just get our solution catalog launched on www samsungknox com which is what i've mentioned before, so that is taking our silver and above partners, you know, getting what we call a solution brief or a solution profile off them and then putting together a full catalog of the solutions to promote to our customers and anyone coming to that website, essentially, you know, we also work hard to promote a lot of solutions more internally as well so we have some features coming later this month that will really help you know, promote a lot of these solutions more internally again, taking that solution brief solutions profile and working to support are no sales and technical sales teams so if they're working with a customer, and they identify a need that a partner solution they fit, we give them the catalog that they can go and search to find the partner solution that, you know they're looking for to fit that customer needs so, really working to promote that solution sale so, you know, i think a lot of times it's, you know, samsung knox and samsung devices plus partner solution or partner solutions, equals like that full solution that our customers are looking for tony morelan 17 32 you know, right now our society is going through a big transition, dealing with covid-19 can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges the that your team is facing? morgan parker 17 44 right, yeah, this is a, you know, as i mentioned, you know, trying to put together a lot of new features and things for our partners you know, we still have a lot of development on the program that that we're doing i'd actually say where we're probably more in still the growth phase, you know, coming out of something enterprises lines programs still, you know, pretty freshly transitioning before, you know, covid-19 happens so, you know, it's challenging with, you know, keeping our development timelines and still adding lots of new features quickly so, you know, we've had some, some delays with that, i think, you know, i'd like to see a lot of richer features in the program that we've had to wait a little bit more forward but yeah, i think, you know, just really keeping our heads down working more as a team globally to still get these features in the program as soon as possible excellent tony morelan 18 27 that's great to hear so, can you tell me what are some of the success areas for the next partner morgan parker 18 32 program? yeah, we, i mean, even as you know, the covid pieces, one example i mean, you know, having partners come in and use our development tools and new and innovative ways to, you know, solve for real world problems, whether it be social distancing, or, you know, contact tracing and that type of thing you know, there's some great uses of our tools for that, you know, other you know, large partners, you know, doing really great implementations and you know, again are the demand for the knowledge validated programming, how many partners we've had past that, so far has been really good to see as well and i think for what i look at successes, as, you know, people coming in and really using those development tools to make something great that, you know, has success in the real world so there's the opera world need for these things and that happens quite frequently so, you know, there's, there's lots of those successes and i would say, you know, a good way to see a lot of them is go to www samsungknox com and check out that solution catalog and see those solutions and see other success cases on there as well tony morelan 19 31 are there any companies or solutions that you can talk about that are built on knox? morgan parker 19 36 yeah, so, you know, i think, you know, starting with our platinum partners is blackberry and sony, you know, really full rich implementations of samsung knox really, you know, giving those customers using those solutions and samsung devices, extremely rich way to manage those devices and tailor them for you know, different business needs so i think starting with those guys is the probably the reason just implementations of a lot of them, you know, samsung knox sdks and those api's they use that's great tony morelan 20 08 any upcoming news? any webinars or events that you guys are participating in? morgan parker 20 13 yeah, i think i mean, you mentioned how covid slowed a lot of this stuff down so obviously, you know, not as many physical events this year but we do have lots of webinars that we run typically we do at least a monthly webinar, covering, you know, other more technical topics, or you know, how to work with samsung so those are actually posted on the blog at its developer, samsung knox comm so yeah, keep on checking there, and we have events going all the time online tony morelan 20 40 so what advice would you have for companies looking to morgan parker 20 43 join the next partner program, but really just come in and join? i think, you know, it's a very easy thing to come and join to sign your company up you know, come poke around and see, you know, what we have and you know, how we can start working together and really just don't get started you know as it's free and registration only takes probably about 1015 minutes yeah, just come and join and come see how we can work together tony morelan 21 09 so now are there any requirements that must be met in order for a company to be eligible to join the partner program? morgan parker 21 15 we just asked that the partners register with no corporate email address and their corporate details so other than that, there's no real strict requirements it's just we asked for it to be a company and we do a quick duns check for the you know, company registration that's actually it's nice to hear that you've tony morelan 21 33 made this so available to companies to get started to create opportunity morgan parker 21 37 absolutely yeah low barrier to entry is really the way that we wanted to make it so you know, people can again come in and check things out and see what we have to offer and tony morelan 21 47 just get started quickly and again, that website is www partner samsung knox com exactly morgan parker 21 53 and there's the you can go straight to the development tools that guide www developer samsung knox com as well so we've made that quicker for the more technical audience to really get started tony morelan 22 03 okay? are you guys active on any social channels like youtube or twitter? morgan parker 22 07 we do work with our, you know, developer teams as well so you're yourself and we actually have a little sub channel on your youtube channel, where we post all of our more technical webinars and everything they're so tony morelan 22 20 excellent, a great way for people to, you know, get online and check out some more of what you guys are doing so, absolutely, yeah happy to be a part of that yeah, it's really great to work together morgan parker 22 28 yeah, i think yeah, you know, one of the things that is really top of my mind is, you know, how we work together as one samsung, right, i think, you know, coming across to our audiences is not really fragmented, even though we're, you know, quite a large global organization it's really important so, you know, keeping working together with yourself and your team and other teams globally to make sure that, you know, we're working to, you know, come across as one unified front tony morelan 22 52 yeah and i think also one thing that we push how accessible we are exactly, you know, i mean, it's obvious that you guys are very accessible with the program being free and how easy it is to get started i know from our side that we're extremely accessible i mean, i'm constantly, you know, reaching out to people when they're posting questions, whether it's on youtube, or they're contacting me, you know, directly, whether it's linkedin or twitter or whatnot, that we are here to absolutely help so we've made it really easy for developers to get a hold of us whenever they have that, that need absolutely, morgan parker 23 21 yeah, yeah, i sit next to some of our support staff, and they're really great and, you know, they're, they're right on every ticket that we have yeah, i think, you know, i would echo that, that, you know, there's a real person behind, you know, every ticket and every issue and, you know, really working to solve these things as quick as possible tony morelan 23 37 definitely us too you know, we work as a team, i sit really close to some of our support people, and a lot of times it's a team solution that we're putting together so absolutely that's great it's really great so when you're not working, what is it that you do for fun up and up in vancouver? morgan parker 23 52 yeah, as i mentioned, i mean, vancouver's got a wealth of things to do so in the winter, it's really snowboarding and spending every moment i can in the mountains and yeah, just getting as much snow as i can in my life in the winter when there's a lot and then lucky enough as well once the snow starts to kind of melt, i start riding motorbikes so dirt bikes and street bikes and do a little bit of racing here and there so really, yes really full season of activities around and tony morelan 24 19 outdoors person and outdoors morgan parker 24 21 person exactly you like tony morelan 24 22 the wind blowing through morgan parker 24 24 yeah, exactly i mean, it feels good gone gone quick, sometimes tony morelan 24 28 sure excellent well, hey, morgan, absolutely appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me and talk about the next partner program so thanks very much appreciate it thank you outro 24 37 looking to start creating for samsung, download the latest tools to code your next app, or get software for designing apps without coding at all sell your apps to the world on the samsung galaxy store check out www developer samsung com today and start your journey with samsung the pow! podcast is brought to you by the samsung developer program and produced by tony morelan