What It Actually Takes to Win on Cloud Marketplaces in 2026 and Beyond
Juhi Saha, CEO of Partner1 and former Microsoft Pegasus lead, shares how B2B software companies should approach cloud marketplace strategy — from getting transactable to structuring multi-party deals and capturing hyperscaler incentives.
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Enterprise buyers are sitting on massive committed cloud spend — MACC on Azure, EDP on AWS — and they're actively looking for ways to draw it down. That creates a structural pull toward marketplace-transactable solutions.
The companies that understand this aren't just showing up; they're getting pulled into deals that already exist. According to Omdia, cloud commitments across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud now total $470 billion, with customers able to spend portions of that on third-party marketplace purchases.
And that pool is only growing: the combined value of those three marketplaces is projected to reach $163 billion by 2030, up from $30 billion in 2024 — a 29.1% CAGR.
As Juhi Saha, CEO of Partner1, a two-time Inc. Power Partner Award winner, explains:
"Marketplaces are no longer just a procurement layer or a storefront. They've become a revenue acceleration channel, because you're tapping into committed spend, existing demand, and active deals that are already in motion."
That's why we sat down with her to understand how to build a successful marketplace motion.
Here's what she had to say.
From storefront to revenue engine
The biggest shift Juhi points to isn’t technical; it’s philosophical.
“The question used to be, ‘Are we on the marketplace?’ Now it’s, ‘How is it helping our sellers retire quota faster, and how is it helping the hyperscaler’s sellers do the same?’”
That shift changes everything.
A listing is passive. A revenue motion is active. It requires alignment across sales teams, clear incentives for every party involved, and a deliberate strategy for how your product fits into larger deals.
In this new model, marketplace strategy sits at the intersection of product, sales, and partnerships. If your offer is aligned with hyperscaler priorities and easy to transact, you stop relying on cold outbound and start benefiting from pull. Here are some examples of the power of marketplaces:
- CrowdStrike, Snowflake, Palo Alto Networks, and Splunk were among the first ISVs to cross $1 billion in revenue through AWS Marketplace alone
- By 2027, Canalys predicts that more than 50% of all marketplace sales will flow through the channel.
- According to Forrester, the ROI for companies transacting on cloud marketplaces like the Microsoft Marketplace is a staggering 587%
“You’re not selling alone anymore. You’re selling alongside these ecosystems — hyperscalers, partners, and their sellers,” said Juhi. “The real opportunity is inserting yourself into existing demand, existing budgets, and existing relationships.”
This is what Ecosystem-Led Growth (ELG) looks like in practice. And it’s why tools like Crossbeam, helping companies identify account overlap with hyperscalers and partners, have become critical in deciding where to focus.
How to get transactable?
Juhi emphasizes that for companies starting a marketplace motion, the biggest mistake isn't technical, it's strategic:
"It's not one size fits all. The real question is: where are your customers actually buying? Which hyperscaler are they aligned to? Where is their committed spend?"
Before investing in becoming transactable, you need to understand where your ICP lives. Otherwise, you risk building on the wrong marketplace entirely.
This is where Ecosystem Intelligence becomes critical. Understanding overlap with hyperscalers allows your team to prioritize the right marketplace and avoid wasted effort.
For teams that aren't sure where they stand, Partner1 offers two free diagnostics to help cut through the noise before committing resources:
- The Partner Ecosystem Readiness Assessment evaluates the strength of your overall partnership motion and surfaces the biggest gaps before you invest in any specific channel.
- The Marketplace Mobilization Assessment is purpose-built for Microsoft and AWS motions. It benchmarks your current marketplace readiness and delivers a personalized diagnostic from a Partner1 expert within two business days.
Once you know where the gaps are, the next challenge is closing them — fast. Getting transactable means navigating middleware integrations, partner portal certifications, and billing infrastructure. For most software teams, that's a significant technical lift.
Partner1 removes that bottleneck by deploying the middleware directly. That end-to-end support covers all major cloud providers — AWS, Azure, and GCP — because, as Juhi noted, most companies today have customers distributed across all of them. Getting on the right marketplace isn't a one-hyperscaler decision.
The results speak for themselves. Impartner spent five years listed on Microsoft Marketplace — joining calls, showing up in the ecosystem — but saw flat growth, no consistent co-sell motion, and no pipeline. Six months after engaging Partner1, the picture looked completely different:
"They helped us rework our Microsoft strategy from the ground up. New value prop, sharper messaging, seller-ready collateral, and a co-sell process we could scale across our teams. Six months later, we've closed over $2 million in marketplace transactions with MACC-eligible customers. We're actively co-selling with more than 500 Microsoft accounts and working with top global SIs like Avanade, Infosys, and Accenture. Partner1 didn't just consult — they helped us execute, and fast."— Trevor Burnett, VP Marketing at Impartner (watch the full story here)
That's the difference between being listed and being aligned.
Where does the real growth happens?
Getting listed is just the beginning. The real acceleration comes from multi-party deals, and this is where most companies struggle. In a well-structured deal, three players are involved:
- The ISV: delivers the product
- The SI (System Integrator): delivers implementation and transformation services
- The hyperscaler: provides the commercial vehicle
On paper, that sounds clean. In practice, the complexity lives in the handoffs.
And friction removal is the whole game. The smoother the deal, the happier the customer. The happier the customer, the more likely the hyperscaler seller is to lean in — which is what makes the motion sustainable.
The biggest mistake Juhi sees is companies treating multi-party deals as opportunistic — assembling them deal by deal as situations arise. That approach doesn't scale.
"There's so much work that goes into structurally setting them up," she said. "The companies that win are the ones that pre-wire the relationships, incentives, and deal structure. They're building a motion they can run over and over again."
Partner1 acts as the operational backbone for this pre-wiring; helping companies identify who to sell to, how to position messaging for each party, what hyperscaler sellers actually cares about, and how to structure deals so incentives are captured proactively — not claimed retroactively. As Juhi put it, some clients describe them as a "partnerships co-pilot" because they operate side-by-side through every stage of the motion, not just the setup.
The KPIs that actually matter
Measuring marketplace success requires a shift in thinking. There are two key metrics: attach and influence.
"Influence means you're helping the customer do more with the hyperscaler," said Juhi. "That's what drives deeper alignment and more co-sell opportunities."
Tracking influence requires tighter integration with hyperscaler sales teams — analyzing referral data, co-sell pipeline activity, and downstream consumption impact to understand where your solution is moving deals forward.
Partner1 manages this tracking as part of its end-to-end incentives practice: identifying applicable incentives at each stage, applying proactively, and running the rhythm of business across marketing, sales, and product to ensure nothing is left on the table.
The incentives trap
One of the most overlooked aspects of marketplace strategy is incentives. Hyperscalers offer significant financial programs — rebates, credits, co-op funds, and rewards — but most companies treat them as an afterthought.
“These incentives aren’t just perks, they’re signals,” said Juhi. “They tell you where the hyperscaler wants you to focus, where they’re willing to invest, and where they’ll support you.”
The mistake is claiming them after the fact. The opportunity is designing around them from the start. When done right, incentives don’t just improve margins, they unlock:
- Additional funding
- Co-sell support
- Marketing resources
- Stronger partner relationships
“There’s often hundreds of thousands of dollars available, but more importantly, it’s leverage. It’s how you get the hyperscaler to lean in with you,” said Juhi.
What stops companies cold?
Despite the opportunity, many companies stall before generating meaningful marketplace revenue. The root cause is almost always internal, and it starts before any technical work begins.
"The most common failure point is misalignment," said Juhi. "If the partner team is fully bought in but the technical team says it'll take months, that's when things die. You need support from every adjacent team. Otherwise, progress just stops."
Juhi’s approach is to address this upfront: before engaging with a new client, they make sure the C-suite and board are genuinely aligned and committed to resourcing the motion.
"If that's not there," she said, "it's probably not the right time. You need the alignment, enablement, and budget — or you're setting yourself up to fail."
Even after initial buy-in, three issues tend to emerge:
- ICP misalignment. If you're on the wrong marketplace for your actual customer base, you won't see momentum regardless of how well the deal structure is built.
- Sales team enablement gaps. Each hyperscaler ecosystem has its own language, incentive logic, and best practices for co-selling. Sellers who don't understand them won't succeed — not because the opportunity isn't there, but because they can't navigate it.
- Partner activation stalls. SI partners often show early interest but don't convert to active co-selling without ongoing enablement and clear incentives.
"Even if you have operational alignment," Juhi said, "if you don't have these three things, you're going to hit roadblocks on ARR."
What’s coming next?
Looking ahead two to three years, Juhi sees cloud marketplaces becoming the default procurement channel for enterprise software, and increasingly for services as well.
“This isn’t a channel shift, it’s a fundamental change in how software is bought and sold.” — Juhi Saha.
Three trends she's watching:
- Multi-party deals become standard: Hyperscalers, ISVs, and SIs converge on the marketplace as the primary transaction layer. Juhi pointed to Anthropic's marketplace launch as an early signal of what's coming: more and more companies will formalize these partner-to-partner deal structures.
- Services integrate tightly with software: Buyers increasingly want both in a single transaction, and marketplaces are actively building to accommodate that.
- AI reshapes discovery and deal formation: Static listings will give way to dynamic, AI-driven discovery based on workload and consumption patterns, and budgets can flow across listings more fluidly.
The implication is clear: the window to build this infrastructure is now, not after the motion becomes mainstream.
Companies that invest early — getting transactable, aligning with hyperscalers, structuring repeatable deals, and leveraging incentives — will have a structural advantage as this model becomes standard.
Ready to see your ecosystem overlap?
Crossbeam helps you identify which of your customers and prospects overlap with hyperscaler partners, so you can prioritize the right marketplace motions before you invest.
Partner1 offers two free diagnostics to help cut through the noise before committing resources:
- The Partner Ecosystem Readiness Assessment evaluates the strength of your overall partnership motion and surfaces the biggest gaps before you invest in any specific channel.
- The Marketplace Mobilization Assessment is purpose-built for Microsoft and AWS motions. It benchmarks your current marketplace readiness and delivers a personalized diagnostic from a Partner1 expert within two business days.
FAQ
How do I know which cloud marketplace is right for my business?
The right marketplace depends on where your customers have committed spend. Before investing in becoming transactable, you need to understand your ICP's hyperscaler alignment — whether that's Azure (MACC), AWS (EDP), or Google Cloud. Tools like Crossbeam can help you identify account overlap with hyperscalers so you can prioritize the right marketplace. Partner1 also offers a free Marketplace Mobilization Assessment specifically for Microsoft and AWS motions to benchmark your readiness before you commit resources.
What's the difference between being listed on a marketplace and actually driving revenue from it?
A listing is passive — it makes your product available but doesn't create motion. Driving revenue requires active alignment: your sellers need to understand hyperscaler incentive logic, your deal structures need to be pre-wired for multi-party transactions (ISV + SI + hyperscaler), and your team needs to be enabled to co-sell alongside hyperscaler sales reps. Companies like Impartner were listed on Microsoft Marketplace for five years with flat results before restructuring their motion and closing over $2M in marketplace transactions within six months.
What hyperscaler incentives are available, and how should we approach them?
Hyperscalers offer significant financial programs — rebates, co-op funds, credits, and co-sell support — but most companies claim them retroactively instead of designing around them from the start. The right approach is to identify applicable incentives at each stage of your deal motion and apply proactively. When done correctly, incentives don't just improve margins — they unlock additional funding, co-sell support, and stronger partner relationships, sometimes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per deal.
