The Microsoft commercial marketplace is designed to enhance your ability to leverage partnerships by providing access to Microsoft customers, streamlining your sales process, and aligning with your business requirements—whether that is selling digital direct, through the partner ecosystem, or co-selling with Microsoft. With multiparty private offers now available to customers in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, there are bigger opportunities for partners to extend their trusted customer relationships to the marketplace.
Microsoft recently hosted a one-day Marketplace Summit that provided a deep dive on how partners can work together to accelerate business—using the benefits of the marketplace and ecosystem opportunity. The sessions from this event are now available on-demand here.
Marketplace Summit: connecting partners
The marketplace opportunity is growing to include not just software companies but also various types of partners. More than 300 partners attended the Marketplace Summit event, emphasizing the potential for both software and channel partners to incorporate marketplace strategies into their operations.
Themes from the event include:
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A partner-focused business platform
The Microsoft commercial marketplace is dedicated to partner growth. To support partners in building on marketplace momentum, we announced 50% reduced agency fees for all renewals through private offers, effective October 1, 2024.
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Marketplace investment is rooted in customer demand
Customer demand for cloud marketplaces is increasing as organizations look to simplify their cloud portfolios. The Microsoft commercial marketplace has seen a 100% increase in all-up revenue, with billions sold.
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The ecosystem is the next big growth opportunity
Many customers rely on channel partners to manage their cloud investments. With multiparty private offers expanding to more geographies, it already accounts for one-third of private revenue. To support channel partners in accelerating their marketplace business, Microsoft is piloting new go-to-market benefits through Microsoft Rewards.
Partners can learn more about multiparty private offers and the marketplace opportunity at the upcoming Microsoft Ignite event, where we’ll have a marketplace session dedicated to the ecosystem opportunity.
Four steps to building a multiparty private offer practice
The Marketplace Summit was hosted to support building meaningful partnerships for shared growth opportunities. Multiparty private offers unlock the ability to sell alongside the 500K+ Microsoft partner ecosystem, but partners need to build that into their business model to see success. Using this four-step framework, partners can accelerate their cloud marketplace business (this session at the Summit goes into further detail).
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Foundation: The foundation stage is crucial as it sets the stage for future success. By building awareness, leadership alignment and understanding, stakeholders and partners are more likely to engage with the marketplace. This initial engagement leads to a stronger partner ecosystem and lays the groundwork for increased marketplace activity and revenue growth.
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Enablement: Enablement ensures that partners are well-prepared to leverage the marketplace. By providing the right resources and support, partners can develop and deploy business process change strategies more efficiently. This leads to higher customer satisfaction, better performance in the marketplace, and ultimately, increased revenue.
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Execution: Execution is where the groundwork laid in the previous stages comes to fruition. By fostering active participation and collaboration, partners are more likely to invest in the marketplace. This results in a richer ecosystem, more diverse offerings for customers, and higher overall marketplace activity and revenue.
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Growth: Growth signifies the success and sustainability of the marketplace. By scaling partnerships and expanding solution reach, the marketplace can achieve greater market penetration and increased customer adoption. This leads to higher overall revenue and a stronger, more resilient marketplace ecosystem.
Within the private preview in the United Kingdom, over 40 channel partners onboarded to sell software solutions through the marketplace totaling several million in sales. Because many of the customers had Azure consumption commitments, channel partners could capitalize on pre-committed cloud budget, resulting in larger sales. On average, multiparty private offer sales are double the size of private offer revenue.
Private offers as a platform
The marketplace curates to your business needs. We continue to expand private offers to support unique business needs across a variety of private offer formats. Most recently, we introduced professional services private offers. This allows companies selling software to attach their professional services to a private offer, or partners can sell professional services independently. Scenarios to support professional services include proof of concepts, assessments, and workshops.
This further matures our private offer capabilities to support a variety of deal-making scenarios. Currently, the marketplace supports:
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Private offers: Basic private offers empower software partners to replicate their public listing and sell a private offer to their customer. Private offers are available everywhere that marketplace is currently available (141 geos).
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CSP private offers: CSP private offers help software partners scale to new markets, predominantly in the SMB sector, while allowing partners in the Cloud Solution Provider program to differentiate their offerings. CSP private offers are also available everywhere that marketplace is currently available (141 geos).
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Multiparty private offers: Currently available to customers in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, multiparty private offers help channel partners extend their customer relationships to the marketplace. With multiparty private offers, channel partners can resell ISV solutions to their customer, through the marketplace—and eligible solutions count towards a customer’s cloud commitment.
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Professional services private offers: Newly available, professional services private offers are available in the same geos as multiparty private offers. Partners can attach their professional services to a private offer of a software sale or sell their professional services independently.
The Microsoft partner opportunity
With the AI opportunity in front of us, there has never been a better time to be a Microsoft partner. A recent IDC whitepaper commissioned by Microsoft, "Microsoft Partners: Driving Economic Value and AI Maturity," found that for every $1 of Microsoft revenue, partners who provide cloud services generate $8.45 and partners who develop software generate $10.93.
With multiparty private offers, the marketplace opportunity is accessible for nearly every Microsoft partner. Any partner can resell software solutions and onboarding to sell multiparty private offers is simple. All you need are your partner ID, resell certificates, and a few other details to onboard. For software partners, get the list of channel partners actively selling multiparty private offers here to find impactful relationships to grow your business (list is updated monthly, partner sign in required).