Microsoft makes move in marketplace melee
Forrester analyst tells CRN there will be 20 cloud marketplace winners as Microsoft unveils new sweeteners for ISVs using AppSource and Azure Marketplace
Amid predictions that marketplaces will account for nearly a fifth of B2B transactions within five years, Microsoft has unveiled a raft of new sweeteners for ISVs using its AppSource and Azure Marketplace.
According to Forrester, some 17 per cent of B2B transactions will be conducted via marketplaces by 2023 as a new "gig economy" for tech services takes hold.
As Microsoft Build 2019 got underway, Microsoft has moved to ensure it gets its fair slice of the pie by announcing a number of new tempters for ISVs offering cloud solutions on its marketplaces.
AppSource and Azure Marketplace will now support transaction capabilities for SaaS solutions from partners, Charlotte Yarkoni, Microsoft's corporate vice president, Growth + Ecosystems, announced in a blog post.
Specifically, the two marketplaces will now offer both per-seat and per-site SaaS transaction capability for our partners who build on, extend, or connect to Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and the Microsoft Power Platform.
Next up, Microsoft has extended its IP Co-sell programme beyond Azure to also include partners building on Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. It claimed the secheme, which sees Microsoft's own salesforce sell solutions built by its ISVs, has already generated over $5bn in partner revenue in the past year from nearly 3,000 ISVs.
As of 1 July 2019, the IP Co-Sell programme will also be expanded to Microsoft resellers, Yarkoni added.
"This opens new growth opportunities for both ISVs and reseller partners while bringing a broader range of solutions to customers", she said.
The rise of marketplaces is a consequence of the decline of the traditional vendor-reseller model and rise of channel "ecosystems", Forrester principal analyst Jay McBain said in a recent interview with CRN.
"The best programmes like Microsoft and AWS are going to an ecosystem approach wrapped around the customer," he said.
"They are putting in place marketplaces which Forrester believes will be doing 17 per cent of all B2B transactions in five years - and that's not just tech; that's also paperclips and forklifts. That's trillions of dollars of movement, so the future of resell itself is being threatened."
McBain said it is currently possible to pinpoint 20 obvious winners in the marketplace race, with many of the big vendors including Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle, SAP, IBM, Dell, as well as public cloud quartet AWS, Azure, Google and Alibaba all jockeying for position.
"Companies [vendors] are going to have to figure out not only their own e-commerce strategy - customers want to buy direct more than ever - they also have to figure out how they're going to interact and play on the 20 winners. Tens of thousands of channel-based vendors are going through this challenge right now and it's almost like a Google strategy: how do you come up on page one of a marketplace for security, or business continuity, or whatever layer you do. They better be hiring ecosystem and marketplace specialists to make sure they show up on these very quick-growing marketplaces that they don't' own."