Partners Weigh Investments In Online Vendor Marketplaces

AllCloud, Converge Technology Solutions, Involta and more weigh in on vendor marketplaces and the channel.

Some services partners are starting to test out the opportunity from online marketplaces, which have been receiving major investment from vendors including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Cisco and distributors such as Ingram Micro and Pax8.

However, services partners making listings on online marketplaces isn’t a ubiquitous practice just yet. And for some partners who are participating in marketplaces, the revenue made off marketplaces isn’t exactly replacing more traditional practices for finding leads and closing deals.

That’s the story from a variety of partners surveyed by CRN reporters this week at CRN parent The Channel Company’s XChange Best of Breed (BoB) conference, held in person in Atlanta.

Do partners like online vendor marketplaces?

Representatives from AllCloud, Converge Technology Solutions, Invenio IT, Clutch Solutions, Involta, Flagship Solutions Group and TurnKey Solutions gave their takes on the marketplaces opportunities heading into 2023.

Here’s what they had to say.

AllCloud

Gabriel Romero

Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Alliances

Denver

We’re an all-in AWS partner. So for us as a system integrator, I definitely see how AWS Marketplace is growing. I definitely see why AWS is doing it, and why they’re pushing their partners to list as much as possible on the Marketplace.

For certain partners, there’s definitely a good opportunity to get exposure that they might not get otherwise and to reach an audience that they might not reach otherwise.

For us, we’re still in the early days of putting our solutions out on Marketplace. We’re figuring out the best way to engage with customers on Marketplace to make sure that we’re giving them something that they can easily find and that they can easily use.

Converge Technology Solutions

Justin Hall

Vice President Of Global Alliances

Toronto

From a distributor standpoint, we absolutely are leveraging those marketplaces.

We’re working with Ingram (Micro) in some of our own offerings to get on their Marketplace. Because of some of the managed services that we do, we believe that their clients have the ability to leverage what we’re doing for our own clients.

It’s important for distributors to be open to what their resellers, their partners, are doing with their own services to put onto the Marketplace rather than just procure from it.

Then you have offerings such as AWS’ Marketplace. A lot of our partners are going into that space, and we’re aligned with it as an AWS partner. Our clients can certainly purchase through to the Marketplace. So we want to be as flexible as we can for our clients to purchase.

It’s really about client-first. So it’s the client’s choice.

Invenio IT

Dale Shulmistra

Business Continuity Specialist

New York

As a channel partner, I deal with (marketplaces) a little bit. Most of our clients are more in Azure, as opposed to Google or AWS. They don’t really come to us and say we want to go to Google. So I haven’t had much of an opinion on those other two, just Azure … For us and our business, we’re more focused on business continuity.

Clutch Solutions

Garrette Backie

CEO

Scottsdale, Ariz.

I think a lot of these lately are directed more towards MSPs or service providers. A lot of the product is directed towards MSPs. Especially when you’re a triple crown, I think people look at more of the service aspect rather than the partner aspect. And there’s a lot of product out there that goes into the reselling, but not necessarily the technical aspect of it. Every company is completely different. So everybody’s going to have a different answer of what’s needed. But you need to have an assortment because everybody‘s going to have a different answer. I think like a company like ours, we’re in our fifth year. A lot of these people here, they’ve been running business for 10 years, 15 years and they’re trying to figure out how to be a $25 million company.

So for us, the assortment is good because we look at other areas. Because we don’t want to throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks, we definitely want to be one-throat-to-choke company too.

Involta

James Buie

CEO

Cedar Rapids, Iowa

We see a great opportunity (with marketplaces). The channel for us has been a critical area to grow our business and provide solutions to our clients. We aggregate a lot of capabilities, so what I love about the vendor distribution marketplace is the opportunity to see the leading edge technology, bring it together and solve problems for our clients. So that‘s where we see the biggest advantage. We’re going to take advantage, we’re going to solve really hard problems for our customers and the middle market.

Flagship Solutions Group

Mark Wyllie

CEO

Boca Raton, Fla.

Marketplaces, we really haven’t done much in that area. They’re going to be a factor, but they’re still not a significant factor.

Next year, I know we’re going to spend our marketing toward that. But not a significant amount.

If I started seeing an uptick in customers really buying through a marketplace (I would invest more). I just haven’t seen that.

Optiv

Kevin Lynch

CEO

Denver

We have been, and continue to, work in partnership with the marketplaces. And while the volume is still relatively low, the adoption rate is increasing. We have established programs in place with our largest ecosystem partners on how to best leverage certain marketplaces, and constantly evaluate additional enhancements. While we believe strongly in the intimate, technical and deep relationship we carry with our valued clients, we also believe these transactional platforms will be a component of how security is provisioned in the future.

TurnKey Solutions

Harold Robinson

President

Baton Rouge, La.

We have gotten some sales through the Citrix marketplace, but vendor marketplaces aren’t yet at a point where they save us on the cost of acquiring customers.