AWS Marketplace Now Empowering Authorized Partners To Create Custom Software Solutions

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is making its Marketplace even more channel-friendly. The cloud giant revealed a brand-new selling model that allows AWS Marketplace ISVs to authorize channel partners to sell on their behalf.

The new model, Consulting Partner Private Offers, lets vendors give solution providers customer-facing, private offers. In turn, partners are recognized by AWS as the seller on record, Garth Fort, director of product management, AWS Marketplace, said during his keynote at The Channel Company's 2018 Best Of Breed (BoB) conference in Philadelphia on Monday.

The AWS Marketplace is a digital library that AWS customers can tap to find, compare and deploy AWS software and other IT services. There are more than 190,000 active customers, 1,400 participating ISV partners, and 4,200 product listings on AWS marketplace today, Fort said.

[Related: AWS Marketplace Now Offers Private Pricing For Partners]

Some vendors in the Marketplace have very mature channel programs and do most of their business through partners, and these companies needed a way to do business on the AWS Marketplace through the channel, Fort said.

"These partners were saying; 'I have a completely channel-based model, and you're dead to me unless you build something that lets me work with my channel partners, and I want all of it automated in such a way that eliminates paperwork,'" he said.

The new model lets vendors create reseller terms and identify partners that are authorized to sell on their behalf. These partners can then customize offers and present the solutions to customers. AWS will provide invoicing, reporting and billing on the back-end for partners.

Trend Micro, a cybersecurity software vendor that does 99 percent of its business through the channel, is a AWS Marketplace vendor partner that has been instrumental in helping AWS create the latest Consulting Partner Private Offers. AWS has been very receptive when it comes to streamlining the software buying and selling process for solution providers, said Wendy Moore, director of product marketing for Trend Micro.

"Overall, we recognized that AWS is transforming the industry, and they are also transforming how software is procured," Moore said. "Having programs like this are incredibly important to us.

[Partners] will be able to build multi-vendor solutions and price them."

iCorps Technologies is a Boston-based IT consulting firm that is a direct partner for Microsoft Azure and is planning to increase its work with AWS. The latest Consulting Partner Private Offers demonstrates that AWS is embracing how partners prefer to buy and sell, said Michael Hadley, president and CEO of iCorps Technologies.

Being able to be the partner of record, Hadley said, is very important.

"Not going through any distributors is ideally what I'd like to see. For me, going direct is where it's at," he said.

Small ISVs will benefit from the new model because now those companies can use channel partners to fill in the gaps in regions where they may not have sales resources, AWS' Fort said.

Despite being launched in 2012, the AWS Marketplace didn’t have any channel initiatives attached to it until 2016 when it launched a channel incentive program. "Then we saw real dollars flowing through, and customers wanting to be able buy through channel accelerated," Fort said.

At IT BoB 2017, AWS introduced Seller Private Offers, a feature that allows partners to quote prices to customers that are only visible to those customers.