A new joint venture has set itself a target of helping 200 ISVs scale on AWS Marketplace over the next 12 months – in the process helping them unlock on-trend ‘product-led growth’.
AWS Marketplace is becoming a lucrative route to market for large ISVs like CrowdStrike, Okta, Trend Micro, Splunk, Snowflake and Palo Alto Networks, all of which have now sold over $1bn through the platform.
But the AWS Partner Organisation lacks the resources to successfully manage the tens of thousands of smaller ISVs looking to develop a marketplace play.
That’s according to Greg Finnigan, Founder of Cloudable.AI, a new joint venture backed by AWS cloud migration specialist Cloud Bridge (which is minority owned by Bytes Technology Group).
Its aim is to “help ISVs scale faster on AWS” by speeding up marketplace onboarding and monetisation, building co-sell alignment with AWS teams, unlocking MDF and scale GTM and navigating programmes like ISV Accelerate and Co-Sell Benefit.
“We’ve set ourselves some bold targets and are looking to onboard around 200 ISVs into marketplace in the first year,” Finnigan told IT Channel Oxygen.
“We’re looking to work with anyone that’s wanting to have an AWS partnership, that’s already using AWS as their hyperscaler, and that’s exploring a marketplace go-to-market strategy.”
PLG the place to be
Getting listed on AWS Marketplace is crucial when it comes to generating product-led growth (PLG) – the phenomenon of growing via try-before-you-buy schemes that’s becoming all the rage, Finnigan claimed.
“PLG companies are growing faster than traditional SaaS businesses – it’s 22% for SaaS companies versus low 50s for PLG companies,” Finnigan explained.
“And they’re also being valued 30% higher, so the VC and PE community like them.
“That’s really dialling into the trend that 81% of tech buyers would rather not talk to a salesperson and instead try before they buy – which is at the centre of PLG and is what’s really driving marketplace.
“I can’t imagine how an ISV would develop the back-end wizardry that goes on the marketplace to strip out all that operation cost of managing a PLG strategy – managing the process of who gets access to what for what periods of time, understanding the conversion metrics, and land-and-expand strategies.”
ISVs want to work with AWS but aren’t sure who to talk to and can be be disorientated by the circa 120 programmes and 30 different funding programmes on offer, Finnigan said.
“Where there’s a gap that Cloudable.AI fixes is that there just isn’t the partner management resources at AWS Partner Organisation to manage thousands if not tens of thousands of ISVs who all want to do co-sell. But there is the intent and appetite, especially since on 1 May AWS made the change to have everything on marketplace,” he said.
“AWS living its partner-first philosophy”
AWS Marketplace is becoming big business for channel partners as well as ISVs, with US-based Presidio in April becoming the first reseller to announce it had passed $1bn sales via the platform. UK channel partners including Computacenter, Softcat, Bytes, Trustmarque and Crayon are busy devising their own hyperscaler marketplaces strategies.
Despite this, market watcher Canalys last year predicted that it won’t be until 2028 before half of all deals flowing through marketplaces will be partner-led.
But Finnigan waved off suggestions that AWS sees AWS Marketplace as a primarily direct-selling vehicle.
“The features they’ve been investing in over recent months and years are for me a demonstration that they are living by the partner-first philosophy they talk about,” he said.
“Even at a [AWS CEO] Matt Garman level, they want as many customers to be working with partners as possible.”
“AWS are excited”
Although Cloudable.AI was founded by former AWS executive Finnigan last August, it will now work exclusively via Cloud Bridge and Bytes.
Cloud Bridge will provide expertise around migrations, modernisations, FinOps and DevOps.
“Only 55% of all business applications are hosted in the cloud, and 45% are still hosted on-premise, so I needed to plug my gap around that migration step that some ISVs need to take,” Finnigan explained.
Beyond its immediate plans to recruit 200 ISV customers, Cloudable.AI harbours ambitions to next year launch a platform that will allow it to scale further.
“There will be a combination of person-person GTM consultancy, but also an element of self-service – so sort of eating our own dog food,” Finnigan said.
“The numbers are meaningful, so AWS is excited.”
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
