AWS re:Invent 2022: 5 New AWS Marketplace Launches

From new AWS Data Exchange solutions to new EKS integrations and data visualization dashboards, here are five new AWS Marketplace offerings launched today at AWS re:Invent.

Amazon Web Services is injecting new capabilities into the AWS Marketplace—from new EKS integrations and data dashboards to innovation on the AWS Data Exchange.

“We’re trying to create this universe and experience that’s all about running faster,” Mona Chadha, director of category management across the AWS Marketplace, told CRN. “Helping our consulting partners, managed service providers (MSPs), ISVs get solutions into the customers’ hands faster.”

Chadha said the new launches are to provide easier and simpler ways for partners and customers to procure and access software and data on the AWS Marketplace.

“Ultimately, all of these launches are going to help MSPs procure faster on behalf of the customers to help them innovate faster,” said Chadha.

The AWS Marketplace is an online software store that allows partners to market and sell their software and services to AWS customers around the world.

Customers can find and buy a wide variety of solutions from system integrators, MSPs, resellers, distributors and independent software vendors (ISVs) as well as joint offerings from AWS’ massive 100,000-plus AWS Partner Network.

AWS re:Invent 2022

The Seattle-based cloud giant unveiled the new AWS Marketplace offerings and capabilities at AWS re:Invent 2022 today in Las Vegas.

Thousands of attendees flocked to AWS re:Invent this year in person to learn about the newest innovations and hear about the biggest cloud strategies and IT bets from leaders like CEO Adam Selipsky. The event runs from Nov. 28 to Dec. 2.

As more and more partners leverage the AWS Marketplace, Chadha said the company is creating new ways for MSPs, system integrators (SIs), ISVs and resellers to leverage the online store.

“What we’re trying to do is help these service providers really focus on building the right solutions for the customers, but then take some of the heavy lifting away from the procurement side of it, and streamlining that,” said Chadha, whose been with AWS for nearly a decade.

“The whole goal is to run faster. To let the MSPs go faster and innovate with customers faster. That translates into faster procurement, accelerate customers sales cycles, and as well helping overall increase the value of ISVs to customers,” she said. “Then that ultimately translates into larger deal sizes for those MSPs.”

In an interview with CRN, Chadha breaks down five new launches at AWS re:Invent around the AWS Marketplace that partners and customers need to know about.

AWS Data Exchange for Amazon S3

AWS Data Exchange for AWS Lake Formation

Data Visualization Dashboards

Vendor Insights

AWS Data Exchange for Lake Formation

AWS Data Exchange for AWS Lake Formation

AWS Data Exchange is now available for AWS Lake Formation.

Customers can now access the Lake Formation objects shared directly from the provider’s data lake.

“This integration just really lets data providers license access to live, ready-to-use structured data tables—like AWS Glue—that’s all managed within the AWS Lake Formation,” Chadha told CRN. “This expands ways for enterprise to exchange data into file-based structure tables and databases.”

Customers no longer have to build extract-transform-load (ETL)/extract-load-transform (ELT) pipelines to move the data.

“So they don’t need tools to extract that data, transform it or load it—they can just work right within the tables,” Chadha said. “It really accelerates decision making because you don’t have to move that data around, you have everything available all within those tables.”

AWS Data Exchange aims to make it easy to find, subscribe to and use third-party data from a wide variety of providers. AWS Lake Formation is a service used to build, manage and secure data lakes in days, enabling shared data across lines of businesses and help make data-driven decisions.

Business analysts or data scientists can start using analytics services such as Amazon Athena, AWS Glue DataBrew, Amazon QuickSight or Amazon SageMaker to query, analyze, and visualize data or run machine learning algorithms.

Amazon EKS Integration On AWS Marketplace

AWS is doubling down on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) integration on the AWS Marketplace.

Customers can now more easily discover, subscribe to and deploy third-party Kubernetes software from the AWS Marketplace on their Amazon EKS clusters.

“It provides customers the ability to manage their EKS cluster and deploy third party containerized software from the AWS Marketplace—all in one single pane of glass, and doing that all within the EKS console,” said AWS Chadha. “So they don’t have to leave and they can procure and get billed via AWS Marketplace.”

The move will simplify and streamline the procurement experience for customers and partners all within EKS.

Chadha said Amazon EKS integration on the AWS Marketplace will help developers.

“For example, if I’m working in the EKS console—I don’t have to leave. It saves up to about 67 percent of the time needed to search, find, buy, subscribe, and deploy, and manage third party software on their EKS clusters,” she told CRN.

“Customers can deploy software from their EKS console or they can deploy using the same simple commands that they use to deploy EKS add-on,” Chadha said. “So it’s a familiar experience for customers who are already familiar with EKS add-ons.”

AWS Data Exchange for Amazon S3

AWS Data Exchange is becoming available for Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), a new feature that enables data subscribers to access third-party data files directly from data providers’ Amazon S3 buckets.

“So now subscribers don’t have to create their own S3 buckets and they don’t have to move data around—they can just access the data providers information in their S3 bucket,” Chadha told CRN. “It really provides an easy way to just unlock and get access to data.:

AWS Data Exchange for Amazon S3 allows customer to use third-party data files for their data analysis with AWS services without needing to create or manage data copies, as well as data providers who want to offer in-place access to data hosted in their Amazon S3 buckets.

Once data subscribers are entitled to an AWS Data Exchange for Amazon S3 data set, they can start their data analysis without having to set up their own S3 buckets, copy data files into those S3 buckets, or pay associated storage fees.

“We heard from customers that, ‘There might be some large files that I want to gain access to and having to take that out of S3 and create my own bucket, it could get costly.’ So this makes it easy to gain access to those large file data without really creating or managing copies of that,” Chadha said. “It also ensures the integrity of that data as well.”

Customers access the same S3 objects that the data provider maintains and are therefore always using the most up-to-date data available, without additional engineering or operational work.

Data Visualization Dashboard

AWS Marketplace announced two Amazon QuickSight dashboards for AWS Marketplace which now allows sellers to access the billed revenue dashboard and collections and disbursements dashboard from the Insights tab of AWS Marketplace Management Portal (AMMP).

“This is going to display seller data on invoicing and disbursements through these interactive visualizations,” said Chadha.

“It really simplifies financial reporting—specifically billing information, disbursement in information, and you get all of this within 24 hours of customers being billed,” she said. “Before, you would wait for the reports to come in that typically would take several days. Now it’s a matter of just 24 hours where you get access to that data.”

Previously, sellers could access their business data via downloadable CSV reports on AMMP. They can now view, analyze and track key trends and metrics in a visualized manner on QuickSight dashboards on AMMP.

The new dashboards are based on up to 1.5 years of sellers’ historical sales and have daily refreshed data.

Vendor Insights

The new AWS Marketplace Vendor Insights offering simplifies third-party software risk assessments by compiling security and compliance information in a single unified dashboard.

The unified web-based Vendor Insights dashboard streamlines the procurement process by granting customers and partners access to evidence made available by sellers related to data privacy and residency, application security, and access control.

“Enterprise customers spend months collecting all this data. With Vendor Insights, you’re able to monitor your software environment and also have the ability to view your AWS SaaS environments as well. Where you have automated evidence refreshing from AWS Config and Audit Manager,” said AWS Chadha. “You have everything in one single pane of glass. That really helps to continue to accelerate procurement.”

Vendor Insights provides evidence backed by AWS Config and AWS Audit Manager assessments, external audit reports, and software vendor self-assessments.

It helps buyers reduce assessment lead time to a few hours by allowing buyers to access the vendor’s validated security profile and removes the need for periodic reassessments.

Initially unveiled earlier this year, Vendor Insights is now generally available in all AWS Regions where AWS Marketplace is available.