Nexus is born!

Today is an incredibly exciting day for me because we officially unveiled our new global partner ecosystem, Nexus! After a ridiculous amount of late nights, good ideas, bad ideas, and everything else under the sun it feels so good to have Nexus out in the wild for people to see and experience. When launching anything, for me there is always an enormous amount of anxiety in thinking about how others will react and respond and today's event isn't any different. What's different this time for me, is that the concept that sits behind Nexus is not new or something we're trying to create, it's something that just has naturally happened, we’ve observed, and we took the opportunity to give it a name and an identity.

At ExactTarget we absolutely love the technology and the services offerings that we've created. At the same time, from the very beginning we've understood that what we have to offer doesn't live in isolation, or if it does, the results that our clients will get from our offerings will be limited by how far we can take them on our own. As the years have gone by, we have partnered with the best and brightest complimentary technology and solutions providers that can easily pick up where we leave off, and add a tremendous amount of value to the efforts of our mutual clients.

What's different today than when we started forming our partner programs is that the complexity of the interactive marketing landscape has exploded leaving marketers in a world where its extremely difficult for them to figure out the way on their own. Many times, they are investing in several different technology products and are wanting them to all to work together seamlessly in a way that might make common sense, but is exceptionally difficult to actually make happen. This is where Nexus comes into the picture.

Nexus is built on the premise that in order to thrive in today's hyper-competitive environment, marketing organizations need a "stack" of technologies that are able to integrate and expertise for how to bring those technologies together, and that the technology stack and expertise that are necessary are not able to be delivered by a single vendor. Over the past 2 years, we've witnessed and have participated in engagements where our partners are banding together to provide solutions for our clients like never before. Technology companies who are partnered with ExactTarget are starting to partner together and build new integrations. Solutions providers who are partnered with ExactTarget are pulling together multiple technology products that work with ExactTarget and even starting to work with other solutions providers to give coverage in areas where they don't have expertise.

The connection that is organically being formed by our ecosystem of partners, is what we refer to as Nexus. Nexus is the name for our global partner ecosystem, it's the destination for where our clients and prospects go to learn about our partners, and most importantly it’s the connection that happens when you bring together more than one technology or solution provider to take your results to the next level.

It's important to note that what has been developed and announced today as Nexus is just the beginning of a long journey that will involve changes and modifications as we go. We're simply providing the platform for our partners, and we're privileged that they've asked us to come along for the ride. We're not totally sure where Nexus is going to take us in the next 5 or even 10 years, but we can't wait to find out!

To get your Nexus-on, start Nexus-ing, or just explore what Nexus has to offer, visit http://nexus.exacttarget.com.

Scott Roth
Sr. Director, Partner Marketing & Alliances
The ExactTarget Partner Team