In a recent episode of Ecosystem Aces, Chip Rodgers, Chief Partner Officer at WorkSpan, sat down with Manish Nair, Head of Alliances and Channels for SAS in the India and ASEAN region. With 14 years at SAS and a background in leading partnerships, Manish shared insights into how SAS drives its indirect go-to-market strategy and collaborates with partners across technology, system integration, and industry verticals.
Key Takeaways from the Conversation:
- Three Pillars of SAS’s Partner Strategy SAS's partnership model is structured around three core pillars:
- Global System Integrators (GSIs) – Collaborating with advisory and consulting firms to support digital transformation with SAS’s AI and analytics capabilities.
- Reseller and Channel Partners – Engaging with niche partners possessing domain expertise and local market knowledge to expand SAS’s footprint.
- Technology Partnerships – Working with cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP, along with infrastructure vendors such as Intel and Red Hat to enhance product offerings and ensure seamless customer experiences.
- Leveraging GSIs for Industry-Specific Solutions SAS provides a powerful analytics platform that integrates across multiple industries, offering solutions in fraud detection, risk management, and supply chain optimization. GSIs play a crucial role in adapting these capabilities for industry-specific use cases. By understanding CXO-level challenges and digital transformation initiatives, GSIs help align SAS’s technology to customer needs and drive measurable business outcomes.
- Co-Developing Industry-Specific IP with Partners SAS encourages partners to build custom IP on its platform to address specialized challenges in industries like banking, public sector, and manufacturing. Partners develop solutions such as fraud analytics for procurement integrity or regulatory compliance frameworks for financial institutions. These solutions can be replicated across multiple industries, enabling partners to scale their business and differentiate their offerings in the market.
- Aligning Technology Partnerships to Customer Needs The SAS platform is deeply integrated with major cloud providers and infrastructure solutions, ensuring high performance and scalability for AI and analytics workloads. Strategic alliances with AWS, Azure, and Snowflake help deliver seamless analytics experiences. Additionally, SAS’s collaboration with Intel enhances computational efficiency, allowing organizations to process large volumes of data quickly and derive actionable insights.
The Future of SAS PartnershipsSAS remains committed to innovation, continuously evolving its partner ecosystem to meet changing market demands. With a strong focus on enablement, SAS provides partners with training, certification programs, and co-marketing initiatives to accelerate joint go-to-market efforts.
The company also offers a Managed Analytical Service Provider (MASP) program, enabling partners to create new service offerings using SAS’s platform.Final Thoughts: The Power of Trust in Partnerships Manish emphasized that building a successful indirect go-to-market model requires trust and long-term commitment. Aligning with the right partners, investing in mutual success, and fostering transparency are key to driving sustained growth.
As SAS continues to expand its partner network, the company remains focused on delivering cutting-edge AI and analytics solutions while empowering its ecosystem to innovate and scale.For more insights into SAS’s partner strategy, listen to the full Ecosystem Aces podcast episode with Manish Nair.
Chip is passionate about building strong communities and ecosystems around enterprises to build excitement for the category, deliver value for customers, and grow the business. Prior to WorkSpan, Chip was with SAP for over 13 years, most recently growing the SAP Community Network to over 2 million engaged customers, partners, and developers. He has an MBA from the University of Chicago and an engineering degree from Northwestern.
