Why Azure Marketplace is Important for Channel Partners

The shift toward cloud marketplace-driven growth for SaaS vendors is evident, and channel partners are now emerging as key 🎯 accelerants. Darren Sharpe, Microsoft's Commercial Marketplace Lead for UK Services Partners, recently shared his insights on this in our Cloud GTM Leader course.

🤝 Cloud Marketplaces: Hubs for Modern Partnering

Darren emphasized that cloud marketplaces are now focusing on "co-selling, delivering together, and being the best partners for a customer.” This shift aligns with the trend of customers becoming buyers, not builders, seeking nearly complete solutions that are customizable at the edges. Here, partners, working alongside ISVs and cloud marketplaces, excel.

📊 Channel Partners: The Untapped Potential

Customers are increasingly seeking ecosystems of partners that deliver the best value in their specific areas. Partners play a crucial role in guiding customers through cloud maturity, offering cloud-agnostic perspectives and technical expertise. The value of channel partners as trusted advisors is significant.

Channel partners are finding new roles and opportunities in cloud marketplaces, moving past initial competitive concerns. By working with marketplaces, they open up avenues for "digital procurement advisory" and application portfolio modernization. This approach helps channel partners not only retire customer cloud commits but also delve into more lucrative digital transformation projects.

🔄 Marketplace + Channel: A Synergistic Approach for ISVs

New ISVs typically start as cloud-partner first but aim to expand their channel footprint for scaling. Darren points out that these new SaaS organizations often begin with about 20% channel-sourced business, unlike traditional IT vendors which might have around 80%. This gap presents an enormous opportunity for SaaS companies to deepen their engagement with partner ecosystems through cloud marketplaces and increase customer stickiness and growth.

Traditional ISVs initially questioned the need for cloud marketplaces alongside existing channels. Now, however, they recognize Cloud GTM as a means to generate incremental, new opportunities and engagement.

Darren explains:

“ISVs that are maybe stuck in a network security or data center specialist organization of a partner, it's a way to modernize your message into those partner organizations. You might be transacting double digit millions with those partners today, but your cloud marketplace opportunity is to co-sell with the hyperscaler and with the cloud elements of those partners, which may well be a new part of the organization for you.”

Darren highlighted unique position of Microsoft's cloud marketplace, based on company’s extensive experience in partnering, its global reach and well-established platform.

💡 As the cloud marketplace expands their ecosystems to include both ISVs and channel partners, how are you changing your strategy?

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📈 Accelerate your Growth in Cloud Marketplaces

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