MongoDB partners key in helping organizations understand technical debt in AI journey

Bidhan Roy, Vice President for Partners in APAC shares that partners are key in helping organizations understand that the data architecture in AI needs to be paramount.

MongoDB recently unveiled new capabilities to deliver a unified AI data platform to its customers. As MongoDB runs across Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, on-premises, and in hybrid environments, its unified data platform enables customers to get one database, one API, and one set of skills that work consistently wherever they deploy.

Ensuring customers are able to truly maximize these capabilities, MongoDB’s partner ecosystem plays a critical role in the tech company’s growth globally. In Asia Pacific, MongoDB continues to rely on partners to help them reach out to customers in the region and also deliver customers the best outcomes possible.

In a conversation with CRN Asia, Bidhan Roy, Vice President for Partners in APAC shared that as the data layer is becoming a core part of AI, the data architecture needs to be paramount. And this is where he believes MongoDB has the best opportunity in the region as it sits right on the database.

In the Asia Pacific region, Bidhan pointed out that while there is a lot of opportunity, a lot of organizations are still struggling in getting their data architecture right. Specifically, many AI applications are not seeing the daylight because of legacy database or technical debt.

“89% of companies say that they have got a huge technical debt. So, what is that? That is all applications that were written in very rigid, very legacy databases and sit in all companies. That is the operational data layer,” he said citing findings from an IDC study.

According to IDC research commissioned by MongoDB, organizations who fail to address technical debt will face 50% higher failure rates and rising costs for their AI initiatives by 2027. The research paper, Modernizing Legacy: Winning in the Age of AI, found that nearly half of the region's organizations (43%) say their existing architecture makes it impossible to build new applications without extensive modernization because it is too rigid, costly, and slow for today’s requirements.

However, there is a cohort of leaders who are generating three times more digital revenue (71%) than their mainstream peers (23%) by successfully investing in strategic modernization program to escape their legacy architecture. Support for new AI initiatives was the number one driver for modernizing databases and applications in the Asia Pacific region, cited by 46% of organizations. However, almost all organizations (90%) have experienced failed modernization initiatives, with siloed and poor-quality data cited as the major obstacle.

With more AI tools being developed and implemented over the last three years, Bidhan mentioned that all of these tools are now being bundled up, which has become a huge challenge for organizations to move beyond the experimentation phase of AI.

This is where MongoDB works with its partner ecosystem to ease the data architecture and make it possible for organizations to get the most out of their AI outcomes.

The role of partners

Bidhan, who joined MongoDB just a few months ago, is already on a mission now to ensure partners are well capable of enabling customers in their AI journey, ensuring they have the right data architecture in place.

MongoDB has also revamped its partner program to ensure partners have the right capabilities in working with customers.

“Partners are our primary go-to market in Asia Pacific, Japan and China. In this part of the world, partners are not just important; they are extremely important. They are the ones who are actually doing the implementation, managing systems, applications, services and even in advisory and consulting. So, it's absolutely vital on the importance that a partner plays in a customer environment,” Bidhan said.

However, there were a few things MongoDB needed to ensure in their go-to market plans with partners in the region. This includes identifying the types of partners that MongoDB would really need to work with.

“So, we chose partners with deep architecture expertise, partners who have got local experiences and of course, partners who have got quality customer relationships because these are the partners who are absolutely having a boardroom presence. Today AI is a boardroom topic but the friction that you would see across is that a lot of AI and it is pretty much published in the recent IDC report that we talked about,” he said.

Bidhan explained that dealing with the challenges in AI, especially in enabling organizations to move beyond experimentation, was for MongoDB to work with partners.

Challenges for partners

For Bidhan, the biggest challenge for partners today is their inability to move their customers beyond lift and shift in their cloud and AI journey.

“We have seen a really massive explosion onto cloud. But having said that, most of them are still on prem. But if you actually see what has happened is that it's absolutely just lifting and shifting from on prem to cloud. The customers have not started seeing the value realization of cloud. And the only way that they would see it across when there is a migration that happens, which is a technical debt that will come across. So that is number one feedback that we hear from our partners,” Bidhan said.

Another challenge for partners is the data silos they have to deal with. As there are multiple types of data, from structured to unstructured, MongoDB is trying to bolt in AI tools on top.

“It has become a boardroom topic. But it is the tools, and the applications are not talking to the data. How quickly can we really integrate this. So that AI just does not give a cross-server answer which is not necessarily very reliable and secure. But it also drives insights and most importantly action. And hence, the data platform plays a huge, massive role. Because our unified data platform just does not offer databases. It offers inbuilt capabilities of doing full text search and vector embeddings through Voyage AI. And at the same time the capabilities that it just brings across from an operational data layer perspective because of unstructured pieces,” he added.

This is just some of the feedback he has been receiving from partners which MongoDB is helping them overcome.

Four pillars with partners

For Bidhan, the best way to serve customers in the region is by having a very tight cohort of partners in the markets they operate in the region. This means each country would have about between five to ten partners, depending on the market size and have very clear distinct roles and opportunities.

“This whole philosophy is built on four pillars that we work with our partners on. The first is the skills and capabilities that we bring it across to them because we do know that they are extremely capable but as we move forward the AI applications, how do they integrate the legacy databases into the AI native applications is number 1 for us,” he said.

The second point is MongoDB is seeing partners constraint by rigid layers and are probably now seeing across a lot more lift and shift rather than actual modernization.

“I was privileged to be on the other side of the table with my hyperscaler experience and wherein we see a massive growth in the cloud adoption. But guess what, that particular cloud adoption was a lot for it to lift and shift. The customer does not necessarily see the true value over a period of 12 months, 18 months because it starts stepping up. So, the question is how do customers re-architect or re-write those applications, and what they need is an automated tool to help drive that modernization process. So, these are a few of the things that we really brought across,” he explained.

Third is being heavily focused on bringing vertical expertise to partners to be carried forward to customers.

“Because how the data is used and how it has been consumed in a banking industry for example, is very different than a retail industry versus a digital native business. So, these are some of the use cases that we are bringing across,” he added.

The last pillar is on having sufficient fire power with the partners in terms of co-selling and co-marketing with the partners, with everything wrapped around with the long-term partner profitability and long-term outcomes.

“In the countries we operate in the region, you would either have some economy shifts or some currency differentiation or even some taxation happening. Now, what the partner brings in across is the capabilities to get to these customers with their local nuances, local regulations, sovereignty laws is a critical area. So, it's a different mix of partners that we are aiming for. We definitely see an uptake in terms of how local partners are engaging with their customers, especially in the AI-native world. They are really going out and working with them. But some of these local partners are also engaging with customers on new applications that have been built,” Bidhan highlighted.

At the same time, he also pointed out that MongoDB’s GSI partners are very prevalent in Asia as a market because Asia as a market has got a huge legacy database. Another cohort of partners are the hyperscalers which MongoDB has a strong relationship with because the product is a cloud-managed database, data platform offering.

“These are the three cohorts of partners we usually focus on. These specific pillars are more pivoted into the local and regional GSIs. Because that's where we want to bring in the local expertise, given that they are there, their deep customer relationships, and help them remove the blockers for AI native applications or AI workloads,” he said.

While partner enablement is key for MongoDB, Bidhan also mentioned that they are definitely open to adding more partners. This is where they launched a program to increase their suite of partners over the next few months.

“We are also ramping up massively our own organization on a partner standpoint. Which is a combination of partner specialists and partner solution architects. Because that's a very key resource that I see as a huge differentiating factor for helping partners transition their customers or our joint customers quickly,” he concluded.