Channel will defy critics and trouser a third of cloud marketplace spend - Canalys

Spend via AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft marketplaces to swell to $25bn by 2025, but channel partners will capture nearly a third of that, analyst predicts

Nearly a third of marketplace purchases will flow through channel partners by 2025.

That's the prediction of Canalys, whose latest research claims supporters of cloud marketplaces failed to anticipate the key "critical role" channel partners will play in their success.

A small yet rapidly expanding share of storage, networking, cybersecurity and other software is now being snapped up via the cloud marketplaces of AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud, the market watcher noted.

Spend via this trio's platforms alone will swell 71 per cent to $4.1bn in 2021, before booming to $25bn by 2025, Canalys forecasts (see below).

Cloud users are being lured to the associated marketplaces of the big three hyperscalers by the promise of simple purchasing processes, consolidated billing and other benefits, it said.

The availability of cloud credits from the big three hyperscalers - which can be used against marketplace purchases - is accelerating adoption, the analyst noted. Growing numbers of vendors are "waking up to this opportunity, and building strategies to engage with one or more of these marketplaces as a route to market", it added.

However, predictions that these cloud marketplaces could leave channel partners out in the cold are wide of the mark, Canalys chief analyst Alastair Edwards said.

"Most supporters of cloud marketplace models failed to anticipate one key factor: the critical role that channel partners will play in their success," Edwards commented.

"The vision of marketplaces as self-service discovery and click-to-buy platforms has largely not materialised. Many customers still want to negotiate contracts, access discounts and integrate technologies. As end-user organisations embrace multicloud models, and seek to source increasingly complex technnologies via marketplaces, they are turning to trusted channel partners to simplfy, manage, secure and support their ongoing markteplace use."