We sat down with the Founder of G3 Coaching Gary Gatiss to learn the full scope of selling alongside the hyperscalers, aka “Cloud Providers” (AWS, Microsoft, Google), as an ISV salesperson—and how to maximize the Cloud Marketplace Opportunity.
The relatively new route to market for companies that sell software—Cloud Marketplaces—has seen impressive growth in recent years. In the fourth quarter of 2023, enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services reached $73.7 billion—a 20% increase from the $61.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022, and by 2032, the cloud computing market is expected to be worth USD 2,495.2 Billion.
The gravitational pull of the Cloud Marketplaces is happening and all of the companies in the ecosystem are being pulled in. But despite the powerful draw and the notable momentum of the Marketplaces, there are many “knowledge gaps” in the go to market process that are limiting adoption in some cases, as well as limiting the success of ISVs who are nevertheless scrambling to get in the game. Even the nature of the Cloud Marketplaces is misunderstood. The Cloud Providers position the Marketplaces as catalogs, which implies that customers search for products in them and place orders. While the alliances and partner people familiar with the Marketplaces know that they do not operate that way, the pervasive expectation is that somehow the listings themselves will drive business. This expectation is perhaps the most significant gap in Cloud go to market.