“Why list on a cloud marketplace if the cloud sells its own products—and my competitors sit next to me?”

Across industries that set the pace, the majority actually leans best-of-breed (BoB) vs suites according to a BCG recent enterprise survey:

• Banking/finance/insurance - 75% of buyers prefer BoB

• Technology & telecom - 65%

• Healthcare - 50%

These are high-change and regulated environments where teams can’t wait for suite roadmaps—they pick the right tool for each job (and expect it to plug into their cloud).

Why best-of-breed wins (and how marketplaces make it easy):

Adaptability and business fit

70% of best-of-breed adopters cite adaptability and alignment with evolving needs as their primary driver.

Marketplaces reduce buying friction: trial/PAYG → private offer—so teams can land the exact capability fast, then scale under one cloud bill

Faster access to innovation

BCG notes AI/ML advances often arrive first via focused vendors. Listing puts your latest features where buyers already have budget (committed cloud) and where co-sell can pull you into live deals.

“Our customers are consolidating vendors”

Yes—63% of companies plan to consolidate; even 71% of BoB adopters expect more consolidation.

But customers can use the marketplace to standardize commercially (billing, security, data) while staying best-in-class technically with a curated BoB stack.

Integration reality (not a myth)

BCG finds similar levels of integration difficulty for suite and BoB. Those who prefer BoB are more likely to spend >20% of IT budget on integration (39% vs 29%), so the play is not abandoning BoB—it’s shipping cloud-native reference architectures and helping customers to compress effort.

Cost matters—but it doesn’t decide

Even about a third of BoB choosers believe suites are cheaper—and still pick BoB. Buyers optimize for impact and time-to-fit; marketplaces let you prove both in a low-friction path that grows into a private offer.

How cloud alliance leaders turn this into wins:

Lead with the customer outcome - help them “consolidate without capitulating.”

One cloud bill and security review; a curated BoB stack that actually fits their domain

De-risk adoption

Publish reference architectures to reduce perceived integration risk with documented patterns aligned to hyperscaler frameworks

Enable CPPO/MPO to bundle services

Let SIs and MSPs package your product with implementation, compressing adoption friction

Competition on marketplaces is real—but so is buyer preference for best-of-breed in the industries that buy the most and move the fastest.

Your job is to make your product the easiest choice to buy, deploy, and expand—on their cloud, with their budget.

Source: Research