Cloud-Marketplaces

"Simplify procurement, provisioning, and governance of third-party software, services, and data…" is how Amazon Web Services advertises the AWS Marketplace. Sounds like an Amazon for cloud services of all kinds? That's exactly what it is!

Thousands of software offerings from different categories are available on an "online marketplace" for every company and can be purchased quite simply with a click. Certainly, a land of milk and honey for IT, but also a great challenge.

A cloud marketplace is an "online marketplace" operated by a cloud provider where customers can search for software applications and developer services and subscribe to them directly. In this context, cloud marketplaces not only offer services from cloud providers themselves, but also enable the direct procurement of software products and services from third-party providers. This model is very close to the familiar Amazon shopping experience.

The cloud marketplace model challenges companies on a wide variety of levels. Here is just a small selection:

Portfolio Management: Cloud marketplaces contain myriad service offerings at the infrastructure, platform, and software levels. There are a wide variety of categories such as security, data & analytics, and storage. In addition, the offerings can then be individually configured and assembled. For this reason, before using cloud marketplaces, it is essential that enterprises define the cloud portfolio that may be purchased and used by enterprises. In addition to maintaining a whitelist (=permitted services), it is advisable to establish a portfolio management process in which the evaluation of cloud services is carried out in accordance with the company's requirements and specifications in order to ensure an active decision for or against the use of the service.

Contractual basis: At least the two typical cases must be regulated here: The first case is a contractual relationship between the company directly with the cloud provider. Here, contracts are negotiated on the basis of existing and planned requirements with or without minimum purchase (commitments), discounts and price scales. In the second case, a third party is added to the buyer and seller construct. Cloud marketplaces have third party offerings in their catalog in addition to the services of the cloud provider itself. The purchase then takes place in the cloud marketplace; however, the contractual basis must then be created between all parties.

Rechnungs- und Kostenmanagement: "Every organization in AWS Organizations has a management account that pays the charges of all the member accounts." (source: docs.aws.amazon.com) The invoice recipient can be centralized. Departments or corporate entities can be assigned to the invoice recipient. This allows them to go shopping in the cloud marketplace in practice, while the invoice is then sent to the registered invoice recipient. However, this requires that companies actively define and establish the payment structure for the cloud marketplaces in accordance with their organizational structure and processes.

The three levels described above are only a selection of what would need to be defined and regulated in the context of enterprise cloud marketplaces before they can be used.

Are you already using cloud marketplaces in your organization today? Can you then answer the following questions without any problems?

To put it plainly: Cloud marketplaces need a control level with clear responsibilities, guidelines and processes to ensure the targeted and controlled use of cloud marketplaces and to become master of the cloud service boom in the company.

Author: Stephanie Riesebeck