The Move to Marketplace

More than a decade ago, Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store became the central hubs for individual consumers to download apps. The reason was simple: It was easier for individuals to use a single platform to find, compare, pay for and securely consume apps.

The same dynamic has been unfolding only recently for business software (B2B). Companies are either migrating existing infrastructure to the cloud, or building new stuff natively in the cloud. As a result, the once decentralized market for business IT is rapidly consolidating on three centralized platforms. The hyperscalers AWS, Google Cloud and Azure are turning into fundamental platforms on which business software is hosted and developed.

Everybody wins: Corporate end customers, hyperscalers and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs).

End Customers

Companies today have the same needs as individuals more than a decade ago:

• Procurement & Business want to find, research and purchase software easily
  
• Operations wants to manage as few vendor relationships as possible and reduce overhead costs
  
• Finance wants to understand and pay expenses with as few invoices as possible
  
• IT wants to ensure governance, security and quick deployments
  

The Azure Marketplace, AWS Marketplace and Google Cloud Marketplace serve these needs and have become the three standard platforms on which Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) need to be found.

Hyperscalers

Azure, AWS and Google Cloud want software to run on their cloud because they derive billions of dollars in revenues from the hosting costs.

The more solutions they can offer and sell to their end customers in addition to their own products, the better.

This best-of-breed approach makes sure that the hyperscalers remain the platform of choice to serve any kind of demand, and safeguards its competitive position.

As a result, the hyperscalers are highly interested in onboarding ISVs to their marketplace and have crafted a variety of co-selling strategies.

ISVs

ISVs need to be listed on the Azure Marketplace, AWS Marketplace and

Google Cloud Marketplace - ideally all three of them at the same time -

and build a Go-to-Market relationship

with the hyperscalers.

Benefits include:

• Visibility and awareness
  
• Time to market
  
• Sales volume
  
• Brand power & co-marketing opportunities
  
• Commitment drawdowns
  
• Secure deployments
  
• Insights on usage, performance, revenue
  

The Challenge

As with everything in life, the devil is in the details. There are 10,000s of ISVs listed on the marketplaces, and you want to play a strategic role for the hyperscaler sales reps and partner managers alike.

The scope of how you as an ISV can team up with hyperscalers depends on a variety of variables:

• Business Case: What is your commercial ambition for the next few years?
  
• Consumption: How much hosting revenue ends up with the hyperscaler compared to your deal sizes (COGS)? How much are you already spending, with what trendline?
  
• Demand: How many customers do you have? How big is the Total Addressable Market (TAM)? Which regions are you targeting?
  
• Competition: Does your solution compete with hyperscaler products? Is a joint Go-to-Market motion strategic enough to drive demand in complementary hyperscaler offerings? Are you focused on a particular vertical or technology? Do you have an executive sponsor at the hyperscaler?
  
• Pricing: Do you sell via public offers to private offers? Consumption- or unit-based?
  

How we can help

As former employees at Google, Microsoft and Amazon, we work out a compelling marketplace strategy for your ISV needs.

• Feasibility: Which marketplace best serves your needs? Do you check all prerequisites to be of interest to Google, Microsoft and Amazon? What is unique about you, and why should hyperscalers and end customers care?
  
• Ambition: How can a joint business case be formulated? What tangible benefit is in it for the hyperscaler?
  
• Commercials: What contractual agreement between you and the hyperscaler makes sense? Which Go-to-Market elements are needed for joint success?
  

We offer 3 hands-on workshops with your business and technical stakeholders:

• Introduction: All you really need to know about the Google Cloud Marketplace, Azure Marketplace and AWS Marketplace
  
• Scoping: Your circumstances, and what we need to formulate a compelling Marketplace strategy
  
• Presentation: Our view on what you should do & next steps
  

As our main deliverable, you will receive an:

• internal strategy doc on how to work with your hyperscalers
  
• externally shareable Go-to-Market strategy ambition (incl. business case) for your Marketplace onboarding process.