Marketplaces Amplified by Cloud Expansion

With 84% of companies set to 📈 increase tech investments in 2024, cloud marketplaces become a place where cost savings, interoperability, and scale - all come together. Let’s take a look.

According to the Forrester Budget Planning Survey, 84% of organizations plan to invest more in technology, and 77% of companies plan to invest more in their ☁️ infrastructure in 2024.

Given such a significant YoY increase in spend, it’s essential to ensure that cloud investments expand capacity, shift workloads seamlessly, and remove barriers to scaled delivery across environments. This is where marketplaces start playing a significant role.

Forrester underscores:

“When you do need to add a new environment, such as a new SaaS vendor, consider whether it complements your broader IT design.

For example, Workday has an option for running on AWS purchased out of the AWS Marketplace, which can result in better interoperability and cost savings for AWS customers.”

🤝 Marketplaces emerge as a new GTM for the new B2B buyers

Forrester’s data reveals that global senior-level Gen Z and Millennial B2B buyers make up more than 2/3 of digital purchasers. Millennial leaders among B2B buyers make up an audience 2.5X larger than Gen X leaders.

Given that these new buyers are highly digital, Forrester highlights that it’s essential for companies to enable them with marketplaces, app stores, and in-product purchases.

Purchasing is also more than just a transaction now. It’s crucial to create a seamless experience for buyers across the full buyer lifecycle.

🎯 How this plays out, according to Ruba Borno, VP, WW Channels & Alliances in Amazon Web Services (AWS):

“According to Forrester, about 17% of the $13 trillion dollars global B2B spending will flow through e-commerce and marketplaces this year. Now that's a big number, but it's a shift of about $2 trillion away from traditional direct sales channels to these marketplaces.

So now if we double click a bit on AWS, we have sellers who've sold billions of dollars of products and services on the AWS Marketplace to over 330,000 global customers who are leveraging the AWS Marketplace to procure their technology.”

📊 VMware surpassed total 2022 marketplace numbers in just H1 2023

E.g. ”A few years ago, VMware adopted a strategy to expand the co-sell motion with AWS and with AWS Marketplace as a route to market…. in the first half of 2023, we've surpassed the growth from all of last year, all of 2022, and that's incredible.” shares AWS’s Ruba Borno.

“And customers tell us they're able to experience the value of these VMware solutions faster when procured through the AWS Marketplace….

What we're seeing is partners can expand their reach, reach more customers, they can close business faster, and they tend to have larger deal sizes when they're offering them on Marketplace.”

As we navigate this new buyer persona and a new GTM - how are your partnerships adapting to these trends?

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