Partners Must Embrace Cloud Marketplaces for Future Prosperity

Partners need to embrace cloud marketplaces, particularly AWS Marketplace, Azure Marketplace and Google Cloud Marketplace. Those who do will survive and thrive.

That's according to Vince Menzione (pictured), CEO of The Ultimate Partner, and host and producer of the Ultimate Guide to Partnering podcast. He addressed the "marketplace moment" during his Channel Futures Leadership Summit keynote Tuesday in Miami Beach.

Cloud marketplaces represent a "massive opportunity," for the channel, he said.

"I'm more excited now than ever, given the state of affairs that we're all seeing in our world today, especially that this is going to be a driving force, if not the seminal driving force of at least the next year," Menzione said. "I don't think we can underestimate the power of the hyperscalers. If you've seen the earnings reports over the last couple of weeks, you've noted that most of the aggregation and growth right now has been around the hyperscalers. And having been at one of them for about a decade, I got to see the amount of investments, the massive investments in building out these cloud infrastructures, the massive investments in software, and now we're seeing the investments that are going on in artificial intelligence (AI)."

Cloud Marketplaces Accommodate Changing Buying Patterns

During the COVID-19 pandemic, buying behaviors accelerated and changed, Menzione said.

"It's no longer a single threaded transaction," he said. "There are many forces that are driving this transformation, and driving and influencing your customers. We're also seeing the economic headwinds, and a lot of organizations have to do more with less."

There's $300 million in durable cloud budgets available, Menzione said.

"Bring your solution, whether it be software as an ISV or SaaS solution, or whether it be services, build on [their] marketplace and you'll be able to leverage it because they're allowing their customers to buy down against that $300 billion in durable cloud budgets through this process called marketplace," he said.

In addition, each of the three hyperscalers has made significant investments, Menzione said.

"I did an event with Microsoft at the end of July where we had Microsoft leaders talking about their investments, and they pivoted their entire business," he said. "Right now, they've told their field organization you won't work with an organization unless they have a transactable marketplace offer in our marketplace. So they're changing the model. They're pivoting hard here, and they're also looking to you as what they call the sales channel, or the channel, to help them drive that. And so what we're doing is matchmaking. We're bringing together those organizations with organizations that are closer to the customer, that are driving the whole solution to the customer. So look at what you do as an organization and match it up against what your customer is looking for."

Canalys has predicted $45 billion will flow through marketplaces by the end of 2025, and 80% of that is going to come through the three hyperscalers' marketplaces, Menzione said.

"And they're not going to do it alone," he said. "They're also going to rely on the distribution channels and the reseller channels to do that. In fact, they're layering in more incentives and more organizational resources to help you drive that. So you're going to see much more coming from those three hyperscalers to support this in this marketplace moment."