Manage AWS Private Marketplace catalogs for your customers’ software needs

Private Marketplace enables AWS Consulting partners, resellers, and system integrators to help create and manage catalogs of approved AWS Marketplace products for their multiple customers and distinct needs. This varied channel community can help create Private Marketplace catalogs tailored to the customers’ needs to assist in managing their software environment. Additionally, software solutions and professional services from either Independent Software Vendor (ISV) or reseller can be added to a Private Marketplace catalog.

We would like to share with you the value of creating Private Marketplace catalogs for your customers. With Private Marketplace, you can help your customers modernize their procurement strategy across different use cases and teams, while highlighting your unique value proposition.

We will detail five use cases showing how you can use Private Marketplace to deliver value for your customers. These use cases also illustrate the flexibility and control Private Marketplace delivers. These use cases span across the following:

• Channel partner use cases: We discuss use cases for channel partners, often referred to as consulting partners, resellers, or systems integrators. These channel partners may or may not be within the AWS Partner Network (APN) programs, but in many cases deliver procurement and technology value to our mutual customers.
• AWS APN partner use cases: These specific APN partners are invested into the AWS Solution Provider Program, permitting them to manage, service, support, and bill AWS accounts for their customers.

Private Marketplace benefits

Each Private Marketplace catalog includes a set of approved products from AWS Marketplace’s catalog and custom branding, including title, description, logo and color scheme, assigned to a unique group of AWS accounts.

Previously, you, a APN or channel partner, could help create one Private Marketplace catalog to govern your customer’s entire AWS organization. With the recent launch of multiple Private Marketplace catalogs, you can now help create and manage multiple catalogs of approved software and services from AWS Marketplace for sets of AWS accounts within your customer’s AWS organization. You now have flexibility and control to help curate and manage distinct catalogs of AWS Marketplace products, enabling you to continue to deliver value and align to the unique needs across your customer’s organization.

Administration of the Private Marketplace is controlled by AWS Identify and Access Management (IAM) roles, which offer flexibility to create and manage your Private Marketplace catalogs. Additionally, AWS Marketplace APIs for Private Marketplace enable integration with ticketing and approval systems, so you and your customers can use defined product approval processes.

Private Marketplace can be used in conjunction with AWS Marketplace channel programs. In addition to curating software that adheres to your customer’s needs, you can also combine this with your Independent Software Vendor (ISV) resell solutions. By using your ISV relationships, you can deliver commercial and operational efficiency to your customers by constructing private offers and using commercial programs.

“AWS’s Private Marketplace feature is transforming Presidio’s AWS software engagements with enterprise customers. By managing and tailoring a software specific catalog within a project scope, we have optimized our customer’s control, governance, procurement, and delivery workflows,” said Chris Cagnazzi, Presidio SVP Cloud Solutions. Chris continues, “By leveraging AWS API’s, we are enabling integration with our customers approval processes. For example, Presidio is helping customers connect into their ITSM solutions, such as ServiceNow.”

Channel partner use cases

When APN and channel partners combine Private Marketplace with your AWS Marketplace channel program, you play a key role in balancing procurement agility, governance, and negotiated pricing terms. Examples of channel programs include Consulting Partner Private Offer (CPPO) and Solution Partner Private Offer (SPPO) programs. The following three use cases offer ideas on how you can use Private Marketplace for your specialization, including general software procurement, professional services, or category expertise.

1. Software procurement and management at scale

A curated general software catalog

Customers often ask us how they can be more effective in managing the long-tail software spend. Long-tail software generally refers to one-time, infrequent purchases that can constitute up to 80% of all software procurement transactions.

In this use case, you are awarded a contract to help manage the customer’s software procurement challenge. Your goal is to deliver cost and operational efficiencies to the customer procurement teams, while also identifying areas for consolidation across the long-tail spend.

By using Private Marketplace as part of your software engagement tool set, you would help build a catalog of approved software from over 8,000 AWS Marketplace products across 1600+ ISVs. You would create the catalog specifically for the customer’s engagement and curate approved products to support the efficiency goal. You provide value to your customer by using Private Marketplace and your CPPO program, unlocking the ability to negotiate discounts on behalf of the customer and extend those offers in the Private Marketplace catalogs.

2. Professional Services

Bundling software with services

In addition to software listings, you can also add your own publicly discoverable Professional Services alongside related AWS Marketplace offerings in your Private Marketplace catalogs. Professional services include specialist areas such as assessments, implementation, managed services, premium support, and training.

Your role
You would help approve both software products and their related professional services in your Private Marketplace catalogs, customizing the catalogs to your customers’ needs. Users of the Private Marketplace catalog can easily find, buy, and deploy the software and services available and approved for their use.

3. Category example: security

APN and channel partners focused on helping customers manage sets of AWS accounts can use Private Marketplace to help curate custom catalogs containing specific products for the designated accounts within the customer’s organization. In this scenario, you would work with your customer to help create and manage Private Marketplace catalogs for the subset of their AWS organization that you manage.

A security Private Marketplace

For example, an APN or channel partner specializing in security might work closely with customers in security disciplines. This could include endpoint protection, secure web applications, and securing on-premises or cloud-based workloads. The customer has specific accounts within the AWS organization dedicated for security’s use. You, as a security specialist, would work with the customer to help curate a security-only Private Marketplace of approved software adhering to guidelines set by key stakeholders for these accounts, accessible exclusively to the customer’s security and procurement accounts. The customer’s other accounts can be separately managed, with either a separate Private Marketplace catalog or access to the entire AWS Marketplace catalog.

Your role

To balance agility and governance, you would vet each approved AWS Marketplace product against the customer’s standards and policies. You act as an industry expert, recommending specific security toolsets and services to help ensure the pace of application development is maintained or accelerated.

When initially creating the security Private Marketplace catalog for the set of security accounts, you would work with customer stakeholders to approve the appropriate products for procurement. With this foundation in place, you could then use your ISV partnerships to optimize software purchasing via private offers (CPPO) in addition to delivering value in areas such as presales advisory. You would work with the customer to continue to review, approve, and add products as security’s needs evolve. This approach is especially effective across channel-centric security ISVs, who work closely with the respective channel communities in regards to AWS Marketplace programs.

Example

The following screenshot shows the customer’s security Private Marketplace catalog within the AWS Marketplace website, created by the administrator. The upper left-hand corner and top website bar shows the customization set by the APN or channel partner, indicating to the users that they are within the security Private Marketplace approved for their use. The Approved Products filter on the middle left enables the users to quickly find their approved products, such as Trend Micro, Fortinet, F5, Palo Alto Networks, and Crowdstrike.

AWS Solution Provider Partners use cases

AWS Solution Provider Partners can use Private Marketplace to implement a consistent set of approved products as a value-added service when onboarding new customers or accounts.

You can use Private Marketplace to include your curated sets of third-party software in your landing zone. This can help accelerate the initial phases of your customer engagement. You can manage Private Marketplace catalogs at the account level, which enables you to customize and manage distinct Private Marketplace catalogs for each customer.

“Multiple Private Marketplace catalogs has empowered us to be more flexible in how our customers access third-party software and services via the solution provider operating model. Regardless of the AWS organization account set up, we now work with customers to approve and manage specific tools needed to accelerate their development and migration objectives. Private Marketplace has also created a great vehicle to recommend appropriate software products and associated services based on experiences with our customers.” – Peter Perebooms, Partner/Owner at InQdo

Here are two use cases to show how you can use Private Marketplace to customize Private Marketplace catalogs within your customer’s dedicated AWS Organization. These could also apply to your multiple customers’ accounts within your AWS Organization.

4.     Managing a customer’s AWS organization

APN Partners managing your customer’s entire AWS organization can use Private Marketplace to customize and govern AWS Marketplace for the account’s distinct needs. In this example, a customer engages you to manage the company’s AWS organization, including the usage, billing, and underlying accounts. The customer might have accounts for specific business uses, such as subsidiary, clearance level, team, or instance type. Each account must adhere to the customer’s defined policies and procedures for purchasing and cloud usage.

Using Private Marketplace, you can curate catalogs of approved products and assign them to the relevant accounts. This leaves customer time to focus their innovation efforts rather than managing software and services procurement and billing governance.

5. Managing multiple customers under your AWS organization

If you have multiple customers in your AWS organization, you can use Private Marketplace to create and manage catalogs for each customer account under your umbrella. You can curate and manage a Private Marketplace catalog for each customer.

Conclusion

Whether you are an APN partner or a channel partner, you can use Private Marketplace to help build and manage curated catalogs of solutions and services for your customers. By using Private Marketplace catalogs, your customer maintains governance over software and service procurement while continuing to work with you, their trusted technology advisor.

Private Marketplace helps customers reduce operational overhead, increase agility, and accelerate innovation by centralizing spend and billing. Learn more about using Private Marketplace as an administrator in the AWS Marketplace blog and Private Marketplace’s AWS documentation.

You can also check the AWS PartnerCast to learn more about creating and managing Private Marketplace catalogs for your customers. Learn more and register on the PartnerCast page.

About the Authors

Phil Soane, Senior Channel Business Development, AWS Marketplace

Phillip Soane works within the channel community and helps partners of all types transform the procurement experience for their customers. He particularly enjoys working with partners to integrate the AWS Marketplace features into different operating models and then seeing the value this delivers in day-to-day customer engagements. Based in the UK, Phil enjoys listening to a wide range of music, family walks, and laughing with friends

Murphy Tiggelaar, Product Manager, AWS Marketplace

Murphy Tiggelaar builds and manages products and features that help customers purchase within AWS Marketplace. She loves building and launching products that enable customers to govern and customize their experience on AWS Marketplace. Murphy is located in Austin, Texas and enjoys traveling, cooking, and exploring all the great food, music, and nature Austin has to offer.