The disintermediation thesis was wrong

Jay McBain, Chief Analyst at Omdia, tracks the major distributors. They are growing 20–30% YoY, with profits up 60–70%

• Marketplace deals with partner involvement—through private, reseller and multi-party offers—will pass 50% this year, heading to 59% by 2030

• Jay argues that this should eventually reach 96%, matching the share of Microsoft revenue already assisted by partners

​Mason McCoy, Director, Marketplace Strategy at Microsoft, on why the channel's role feels familiar:

"This is not new... it's a new website we're doing it on."

The partner qualifier changed

Mason McCoy: The implementation capability, the expertise on the software you're selling... that is the number one difference maker on those that are doing a certain number of zeros and those that are doing a lot more.

Look at who was on the panel to represent that.

AHEAD holds 1,000+ Microsoft certifications and 4 specializations. 80% of its employees are engineers.

Alexandria Klote, AHEAD: "I walk so many customers through their first-time marketplace purchase." She does the same for vendors — "sometimes we are also enabling the ISV while enabling the customer."

Without GTM, a listing will sit there quiet

Ben Stockler, TD SYNNEX: A public listing that sits up on the Marketplace can sit there quiet. You really need that partner or distributor to help build that private offer to tie into the opportunity.

TD SYNNEX works with 150,000 partners. Its Stream One platform connects 30,000+.

Adoption—it’s not really just about awareness anymore… What really separates those partners is partners who have operational readiness, they’ve built out a proactive go-to-market strategy.​

The blocker is often your own comp plan

Varonis grew Marketplace-billed sales 127% YoY while staying channel-first.

​Thomas Zaki paired enablement with an economics and process reset:

• Comp-positive incentives for transacting through Marketplace

• The same process sellers already run — "mirroring how we operate on a day-to-day basis"

• The alliance org sits under the channel org

​Varonis doesn’t leave successful deals as isolated references: it maps similar accounts, aligns partners and Microsoft, and takes the joint story back to the field.

That is how alliance activity compounds into distribution.​

Give Marketplace a target and an owner

Ben Stockler: If someone's looking back in a year and they continue to look at marketplace as a reactive motion, they will have lost opportunities in the last 12 months, period… Create a go-to-market practice around Marketplace