AWS Marketplace

AWS Marketplace Seller Conference 2023 recap

The 2023 AWS Marketplace Seller Conference took place on September 12 in Bellevue, Washington. The conference was a day-long, interactive learning conference for our independent software vendors (ISVs), data providers (DPs), and channel partners (CPs) with listings in AWS Marketplace.

The conference had four goals: (1) Create a forum for sellers to learn from AWS subject matter experts how to build, market, and sell their AWS Marketplace offerings using AWS features, programs, business strategies, and technical integrations. (2) Provide best practices based on real-world experiences and lessons learned from sellers and their peers. (3) Solicit feedback directly to the AWS Marketplace team, enabling us to learn about their needs to further enhance the seller experience. (4) Drive relationships and collaboration between ISVs, DPs, and CPs.

This year’s event included a keynote, a roadmap session, an innovator session, and 12 breakout sessions with both seller question and answer (Q&A) panels and AWS Marketplace led presentations. It was followed by a cocktail and networking event.

This blog post includes a summary and links where you’ll find two on-demand videos of recorded sessions from the AWS Marketplace Seller Conference, along with some of the topics covered this year.

Keynote and roadmap: AWS Marketplace

Keynote speakers were Chris Grusz, Managing Director, Technology Partnerships; and Mona Chadha, Director of Infrastructure, Category Management, and Partner Development. In the keynote, Mona and Chris spoke to the attendees about taking advantage of all that AWS Marketplace has to offer to help accelerate their business. They covered feedback from other ISVs and customers and addressed specifically what AWS Marketplace has done to address the feedback.

Following the keynote, Matt Yanchyshyn, General Manager, AWS Marketplace & Partner Engineering joined the stage to discuss the general roadmap for AWS Marketplace. Matt discussed the enhancements that will help transform how enterprises find, subscribe to, deploy, and govern their software, data, and services purchases. One of the areas Matt covered in depth was about improving the ability of an ISV to more tightly connect their CRM platform to AWS Marketplace. He also covered improvements of AWS Marketplace APIs that enable a more streamlined experience for buyers and channel partners. Finally, he highlighted enhancements in governance capabilities through recent and future improvements to AWS Marketplace Vendor Insights.

Three tracks of breakout sessions

After the keynote and throughout the day, attendees joined breakout sessions featuring both AWS best practices and partner examples that followed three specific learning tracks:

  • The Grow Your Business track featured:
    • ISV-focused sessions around expanding reach both domestically and internationally.
    • Launching and expanding your public sector business.
    • How ISVs and global and system integrators are using AWS Marketplace to develop new sales channels and revenue streams.
    • Growing your channel business in AWS Marketplace.
  • The Go to Market (GTM) track covered:
    • Evolving your AWS Marketplace GTM strategy.
    • Developing powerful messaging for AWS customer personas.
    • Growing revenue by acquiring new self-service customers.
    • Structuring your AWS Marketplace GTM operations for scale.
  • In the Scale Your Business track, session topics included:
    • Improving operational efficiency with data and automation.
    • Scaling your AWS Marketplace growth by offering customers negotiated terms.
    • Solving operational challenges for a next-level private offers strategy.
    • Launching your SaaS products with the new self-service listing experience, including a demo.

In one of the final sessions of the day, our AI Partner leader, Harish Surendranath, was joined by CrowdStrike, Elastic, and NVIDIA. These AWS partners are making generative AI tooling and applications available to customers. The group discussed generative AI’s impact, challenges, opportunities, and best practices for utilizing AWS Marketplace to list procure, and deploy generative AI models, tooling, and applications. Harish also announced the availability of a solutions page highlighting generative AI offerings available in AWS Marketplace.

To wrap up the event, Mona Chadha led a thought leadership panel discussion around injecting change into an organization through AWS Marketplace. Susanna Dyer from Trend Micro, Annette Best Blum from Cisco, and Nora Di Bene from Genesys joined the stage. The panel shared with the audience their experience when they first were introduced to AWS Marketplace through the organizational change that happened as AWS Marketplace became core to their business. The panel also covered best practices, obstacles they face, and lessons learned.

To wrap up this year’s conference, attendees had the opportunity to network during the cocktail and dinner event with fellow sellers and channel partners outside of the structured agenda.

Learn more

If you attended the 2023 AWS Marketplace Seller Conference but missed a session, or if you didn’t attend this year, here are two on-demand videos of sessions from this year’s event.

  1. On-demand “Accelerate your international expansion with AWS”
  2. On-demand “Develop powerful messaging for AWS customer personas”

Watch more

Brian Westbrook, host of GeekWire, sat down with keynote speaker Chris Grusz, Managing Director, Technology Partnerships, to summarize the biggest news from the event and what it means for sellers and their customers.

Brian also interviewed a number of AWS speakers and partners during the conference to get their perspective on various topics and trends in the industry. Check out their interviews below.

Chris Grusz, Managing Director, Technology Partnerships
Dan Flood, Vice President of Sales, Digital Solutions Group, AHEAD
Daniel Bernard, Chief Business Officer, CrowdStrike
Matt Yanchyshyn, General Manager, AWS Marketplace & Partner Engineering
Mona Chadha, Director, Infrastructure Category Management and Partner Development
Nora Di Bene, Senior Director, Strategic Alliances & Strategy, Genesys
Rebecca Spataro, Director of Global Cloud Alliances, Snyk
Susanna Dyer, Director of Global Cloud Alliances, Trend Micro

About the author

Leigh Ann Haney is the Events Marketing Manager for AWS Marketplace. When she isn’t overseeing events, she enjoys time at the beach and in the waters of San Diego.