2nd Day of Marketplace – Two Store Fronts

It’s coming up to the holidays and I, like many of you, have been shopping for presents. When I think about making a purchase I would usually head to retailers I believe have the product range, expertise and the trusted brand to help me make the right purchase - Bunnings or Mitre10 for tools and garden, Coles or Woolworths for groceries, JB HiFi or Good Guys for electronics.

Microsoft has a lot of well known products including Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Visual Studio, Windows, Teams, Active Directory, GitHub, LinkedIn, VIVA, Surface, Xbox and so on. This breadth of these products necessitates unique design in their user experiences and equally unique ways for users of these products to extend, enhance and get new value via marketplaces. Here context is everything, I would expect to buy a game on the the Game Store on Xbox but it would be confusing if I was offered a firewall. User experience, discoverability and brand alignment are all extremely important.

Why does this matter? When I get asked about the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace (that is Microsoft's B2B cloud marketplace) I am often asked; "Why there are two stores?". These stores being named Microsoft AppSource and Azure Marketplace.

My answer usually states that these are two store fronts for the same B2B marketplace, aligned to different buyers and products so Developers, IT Professionals and Business Users can all get access to the the SaaS and Software they need on the Microsoft Cloud.

Azure Marketplace and AppSource have 30,000 offers collectively available in over 140 countries and 17 currencies. There are apps that are free, some you bring your own license for and others that are pay-as-you-go or on subscription. So what are the primary differences?

Microsoft AppSource

Microsoft AppSource is focused on business users, those who use Office, Dynamics, Power Platform and SaaS products in organisations. Some of the offers are add-ins or Apps for Microsoft products like Office 365 or Teams, others may be apps for deployment alongside or on top of Dynamics 365, visuals for Power BI or flows for Power Automate. Others may be integrated or stand alone SaaS.

All these offers have one thing in common; they are for end users of our SaaS and software applications to discover, deploy and buy complementary easily with a credit card.

AppSource has some nice capabilities to allow for filtering and access to software and SaaS such as diversity business classifications and certifications to assist customers who may be interested in identifying Microsoft partners who meet diversity business classifications and/or have relevant accreditation in their region (currently US businesses only but may become available in other geographies).

AppSource allows for customers to request private plans for SaaS from publishers so special pricing and terms can be shared and more products sold.

Most importantly it supports today's self-service buyer via test drives allowing users to easily evaluate an app without an upfront commitment by deploying it into a preconfigured environment that demonstrates the applications key features and benefits. These run in a publisher’s environment so there is no need to download, set up or configure the product.

Azure Marketplace

By contrast, the Azure Marketplace offers solutions built on or built for Azure, intended for use by IT professionals and developers. This marketplace includes listings for apps, consulting, and managed services. Azure Marketplace also includes consulting services that are professional service offerings that help customers get started with or accelerate their use of Azure.

The software components published here could be VM images, network or storage appliances, developer services, databases, middleware, container platforms, developer tools all the way through to more complex applications like ERP, CRM and full SaaS.

SaaS is one of the offering categories that spans both of these store fronts enabling partners to advertise and sell their SaaS product to customers through the Azure Marketplace on be invoices on their existing Azure contract or through the AppSource Marketplace for charging to a credit card.

Reach new buyers

Having such a wide range of products and platforms that address different user needs in a number of market segments presents a unique opportunity to nearly all SaaS and Software partners.

For example, if you sell to Enterprises then putting your software or SaaS into the Azure Marketplace can speed up deal close, help reach customers in other countries and large customers can retire their Azure Consumption Commitments (MACC) with eligible licensing and products from the marketplace.

Alternatively, if Small and Medium Businesses are your focus then using our Commercial Marketplace enables you to tap into the extensive network of over 90,000 Microsoft Cloud Solution Partners and publishing integrations and apps for popular products like Microsoft 365, Teams, Power Platform and Dynamics 365 enables you to build awareness, attach to Microsoft's products and create new value for these customers.

AppSource and Azure Marketplace are not just web-based store fronts either they both integrate seamlessly with in-app experiences that are very powerful. Directly in the admin centers and the user interfaces of all Microsoft products technical and business users can discover, buy, download and implement products quickly and easily whether it’s something like a simple add-in for Outlook for your SaaS or a full Dynamics 365 payments application – companies large and small can be part of the ecosystem and help you to reach over 1bn Microsoft users.

How to get started

If you want to publish your offer into the Microsoft Commercial Marketplaces then I would advise either joining the Microsoft Startups program (if you’re a Startup) or the Microsoft ISV Success Program (if you’re a scaleup or mature software or SaaS company). Both these programmes provide help and support to get your product published into the marketplace and to reach customers and grow your revenue.

There is also a useful short course on Selling through the commercial marketplace and a more detailed site Mastering the Marketplace if you want to go deeper into the technology and guidance.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the next few articles in the series!

--Matt Furse, Senior Partner Development Manager and Marketplace Evangelist

Previous Articles in Series

1. First Day of Marketplace: One Marketplace Summit and a $1tn opportunity | LinkedIn