In the past decade, organizations have increasingly turned to the cloud to support their digital operations. Companies find the cloud a more efficient way to host their data and support their systems, and the cloud has fueled an expanding digital ecosystem, with infrastructure, platform, and software providers cooperating to deliver full solutions to enterprises. The rise of cloud marketplaces can be framed within this new paradigm. These are commerce platforms designed to enable the cloud services ecosystem and its utilization by organizations.

Cloud marketplaces were born with the premise of facilitating organizations’ search, acquisition, and implementation of software that runs on a cloud provider's infrastructure. Marketplaces are designed to streamline potentially lengthy processes through which independent software vendors (ISVs) promote and sell their software, and where end users acquire and implement the software within the cloud infrastructure. All participants in the ecosystem - cloud service providers, ISVs, professional and managed services providers, and enterprise buyers - benefit from this efficient go-to-market model.

In this insight, Frost & Sullivan explores the role of the cloud marketplace in shaping how businesses conduct operations and adapt to new technologies. The cloud marketplace has evolved from an alternative sales channel to a significant revenue driver, shaping the future of cloud transactions. The insight covers current features and scope of cloud marketplaces, benefits and advantages of cloud marketplaces for enterprise buyers and software providers, impacts on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) demand, emerging opportunities for software providers and IT professionals, value chain transformation in the context of cloud marketplaces, and business strategies of leading cloud marketplaces (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Salesforce App Exchange). We also profile Tackle.io, a company that focuses on assisting ISVs with their go-to-market strategy via a cloud marketplace management platform and consulting services.