Last week in London we wrapped our final in-person session of the year with ISV alliance and cloud GTM leaders.

They joined our insightful speakers Phil Soane (AWS), Vineet Parmar (Zscaler) and Manesh Raveendran (Spektra SaaSify)

Here are a few signals that stood out:

1️⃣ Marketplace is becoming “normal” for sellers

Zscaler shared how Marketplace is now built into how their sellers think. Their analysis confirmed that deals are in fact larger via AWS Marketplace and close faster.

Sellers see it as a way to unlock more customers and budget, not only a procurement shortcut. Their conversation is no longer “should we use Marketplace?” – it’s “what does the next level of Marketplace adoption look like?”

2️⃣ Early-stage Marketplace adoption: don’t oversell it internally

For companies earlier on the curve, one theme kept coming up:

the goal isn’t to win a big internal debate about Marketplace – it’s to land a first set of deals through Marketplace.

Keep the story simple:

Lead with customer benefits and deal velocity, get a few wins via Marketplace. Let those deals prove the case to sales, finance, and ops.

Once there’s real revenue in the reports, adoption conversations become much easier.

3️⃣ Channel and Marketplace are getting tightly linked

For more mature ISVs, we heard strong agreement that channel partners are now key to Marketplace scale.

Partners in the room were very enthusiastic: Marketplace is becoming a way to

• strengthen their AWS alignment

• simplify procurement for joint customers

• participate directly in cloud-commit–driven deals.

4️⃣ PLG is getting a bigger role on Marketplace

Importance of PLG elements is growing – especially free trials, but also self-serve flows on Marketplace listings.

For many buyers, this is now the expected way to start: try the product, then scale via private offers and co-sell.

5️⃣ New AWS capabilities that will shape 2026 GTM

A few product moves that people in the room were paying attention to:

• Agent Mode – buyers will be discovering products via conversational agents.

  Makes keywords, messaging and SEO (& AI optimization) on Marketplace listings more important.

• Multi-Product Offers – the ability to bundle multiple vendors into a single offer and transact as one. Big enabler for alliance plays that feel seamless for customers.

• Express Private Offers – for deals that are too big for pure self-serve but not big enough for a heavy sales cycle you can train AI to negotiate

6️⃣ Integrators as critical infrastructure

Marketplace enablers like Spektra SaaSify are becoming essential infrastructure for Marketplace scale – to automate co-sell, private offers, PLG and now funding requests so GTM teams don’t get stuck in operations.

Huge thank you to everyone who joined, and to Spektra SaaSify for helping us close the year with such a high-signal session.

Also, thanks to Deel for supporting us. Deel is the all-in-one payroll and HR platform for global teams. You can get a 10% off all Deel products here.