Google Cloud Marketplace News: Changing Compensation

Cloud marketplaces continue to grow in popularity as a way for buyers to procure services and platforms. A recent survey by cloud firm Tackle.io found that 44% of ISVs expect to transact more than 10% of their revenue through a cloud marketplace in 2023. Google Cloud must see similar promise in the approach because it’s implementing a couple different improvements on this front.

First, Ichhpurani wrote Google Cloud has increased compensation for its own sellers — read, internal sales teams — on partner applications sold via Google Cloud Marketplace. This should encourage Google Cloud field teams to push marketplace sales in tandem with partners.

Second, Google Cloud is formalizing how ecosystem partners pay one another for marketplace sales. Through its partner platform, the company is helping how, say, a security vendor extends margin to a reseller for an implementation. Or, if a customer buys directly, both the vendor offering the service and the partner reselling it earn a cut.

“There’s economics being shared across [the ecosystem],” Ichhpurani told us, adding, “Last year, resellers could transact but weren’t getting margin on, say, third-party technology. But now the ISV can opt in and determine what margin is agreed to with the reseller.”

Other Marketplace changes, per Ichhpurani’s blog, will include “accelerated solution onboarding, more granular cost management, and new governance capabilities to support customers in industries with specific procurement requirements such as the U.S. public sector.”

That part about “granular cost management” piqued our interest.