Internal Readiness for the Azure Marketplace

Let’s assume that you’ve become familiar with all the benefits and features of the Azure Marketplace. You are ready to open a new sales channel through the Azure Marketplace and you want to work closer with Microsoft to assist you in co-selling your solution to their global customer base.

You now want to know where to start with this journey. It is important that you ask a few tough questions, once you have the answers to these questions you will be able to start plotting your journey to the Azure Marketplace.

In this blog, I explore the questions that you need to ask yourself and what to consider.

Is my business ready for the Azure Marketplace?

A good starting point is to look at your organization as it is.

What solutions do you have that might be a good fit for the Azure Marketplace?

A good fit solution will tick most of the below boxes:

• The solution is B2B (Business to Business) focused. B2C (Business to Consumer) rarely works well on the Azure Marketplace as individuals rarely have Azure Subscriptions to procure your solution.
• The solution is deployed either in my own Azure tenant or on the customer's Azure tenant. Ideally, the deployment of the solution must be automated, and once a customer clicks to purchase your solution on Marketplace, this triggers a deployment process that spins up the required resources. If your solution’s deployment is not yet automated, don’t stress as we can assist you in handling a more manual process.
• The billing model is subscription-based and quite straightforward. Your billing model needs to fit into what Microsoft offers in terms of billing mechanisms. We can guide you on how your standard proposal can be converted into something that Microsoft can handle by utilizing a blend of their available billing mechanisms.
• The solution runs on Azure. To meet Microsoft’s highest co-sell status, at least 50% of your solution must run on Azure. Having most of your solution run on Azure gives you more scalability, availability, and agility.

Is my organization ready to handle a new sales channel such as the Azure Marketplace?

We need to evaluate if our organization is ready to take on the global reach that Azure Marketplace offers.

Below are a few things to consider:

• Azure Marketplace is available in 141 countries around the world, do we want to sell into all of them? Do I have the support structures in place to handle queries, deployments, and customer engagement from potential customers in different time zones? This is where automation is your friend, if you have an automated deployment process this reduces the internal effort of deploying a new customer’s environment at 02h00 in the morning.
• To transact on the Azure Marketplace, an organization requires a USD-denominated bank account where payouts can be received from Microsoft. Thankfully, most local banks offer these types of accounts, but to get the bank account set up might still take a couple of months.
• To leverage the global reach that Microsoft offers, it is important to consider if and how you will partner with other Microsoft partners. Azure Marketplace is set up to allow margin sharing via their billing mechanisms. Partnering up might be a great way to gain reach and exposure to new markets.
• Currently, Microsoft charges an industry-low 3% fee for every transaction facilitated via the Azure Marketplace. It is crucial that this be taken into account when developing a business case for the Azure Marketplace.
• Leads get shared from the Azure Marketplace with your sales team, how will these leads be managed and actioned?

Do I have the necessary skills to become transactable on the Azure Marketplace?

When considering the actual process of becoming transactable on the Azure Marketplace, we need to have a look at our internal skills, resource availability, and the associated costs.

Do I have the necessary skills to build the integration requirements internally?

In order for your solution to comply with the Marketplace requirements, you need to consider the following:

• To become transactable on the Marketplace, a solution must be able to communicate back and forth with Microsoft’s fulfillment APIs. Do I have the internal skills to build this communication? Do I have the capacity to reallocate resources to focus on this?
• A solution must integrate with Azure Entra ID/ Active Directory and must have single sign-on capability.
• In order to comply, you have to build a landing page to welcome the subscriber into your solution.

From a marketing perspective, do I have the internal skills to build out the required Marketing Collateral?

To achieve the relevant co-sell statuses with Microsoft, there is a big Marketing collateral requirement that must be met, consider the below:

• Solution brochures, one-pagers, pitch decks, and customer success cases must be developed and shared with Microsoft.
• There are certain logo configuration requirements to be fulfilled in order to publish the solution to the Azure Marketplace storefronts.
• Videos, screenshots, and getting started guides are required.

The above-mentioned questions and considerations are a good checklist to get started with, once you have answers to all the above you can start plotting your journey to the Azure Marketplace. As Microsoft SureStep Ambassadors, we are equipped to assist you with this journey and advise on alternative ways to get past the above-mentioned hurdles. You can reach out to us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for further assistance and guidance.