Cloud marketplaces have clearly evolved beyond just procurement convenience to become genuine growth engines for ISVs.

Over the past few months together with Clazar we surveyed alliance leaders from companies across the range of scale and marketplace maturity, so here is a sneak peek before we publish this research on Thursday.

What makes this significant?

The high net new data (62%) shows cloud marketplaces are opening doors to customers that may have been unreachable through traditional channels — driven by faster procurement, budget utilization, and strategic co-sell alignment with hyperscalers.

This directly challenges the belief some still held in the industry that marketplaces may be just shifting existing pipelines.

Interestingly, only 30% of respondents indicated existing deals shifting from direct sales channels to marketplaces. This suggests the "cannibalization concern" keeping some ISVs from fully embracing cloud GTM may be overblown.

Reality check: net-new on marketplaces

Real-world validations come from companies like World Wide Technology, which shared their latest marketplace results with Google Cloud at our recent event: $250M+ in marketplace revenue with 234% YoY growth with 40% of business net-new.

WWT's 40% net-new figure closely aligns with findings from Forrester TEI study (Sept '23), which found ISVs channel partners selling through AWS Marketplace generated 40% net-new business via private offers. Although these results focused on channel partners, they underscore marketplace net-new revenue potential.

Achieving 40% net-new total revenue via Cloud GTM is very impressive. However, our broader statistic—62% of ISVs reporting some net-new marketplace revenue—is equally transformative.

The strategic implications:

• Marketplaces drive additive growth rather than mere deal shift

• Hyperscaler co-sell and partnerships provide leverage far beyond simplified procurement

• Customer cloud commit utilization remains a powerful buying motivation

But what's driving the successes of top performing ISVs on marketplaces? Is it better alignment with cloud field sales, customer cloud spend commitments, or something else entirely?