What exactly is the azure marketplace?
The azure marketplace is a store of a virtual machine, images, developer, services, and more. Some are from Microsoft, but most come from their partners and the community. So how does it all work internally? Azure can be used as a resource management platform to manage and deploying infrastructure in the cloud. This is done using JSON-based templates called Azure resource manager templates or arm templates for short. They describe the what and how of the deployment, deploying from the azure marketplace is as easy as searching for a particular VM service or solution and clicking deploy from the gallery. However, you can simply perform the same search and deployment right from within the Azure portal.
You might be wondering... "How does Azure Marketplace works?", It's pretty straightforward in the case of virtual machines, which are the most commonly deployed resource from the marketplace. First, you pay for the actual compute time, in other words, you pay for the virtual machine that is hosting the solution you want to deploy. Then if the publisher has chosen to charge a fee for their solution you'll pay for that. What options do publishers have and what are the ways you may or may not pay for the solution from the marketplace?
Publishers option at Azure Marketplace:
- Free Usage, you pay nothing above the compute costs of your virtual machine.
- Free Trial, you get to try the software for some time. Then if you're still running it, you'll be migrated to a paid subscription.
- Purchased or Own a License, this just means you already own a license or you've purchased one directly from the publisher and you'll use it for this deployment.
- Usage-Based Billing, whereby you pay an hourly fee much like you do for compute to use the software. This fee is added on top of the compute fees for your VM with a monthly fee.
- Monthly Subscription, paying a flat fee for each month for the software usage.
What exactly is in the azure marketplace, and how does it help you get things done?
Let's go over a few example scenarios starting with security. If you need anti-spam technology or a firewall that can detect and block sequel injections, cross-site scripting, malware uploads, and more. Try out Barracuda. But if you need anti-virus or malware protection, log inspection, intrusion detection, file integrity monitoring, and more. Check out solutions by Trend Micro. There are numerous DevOps solutions in the Azure marketplace, to make it easier to build, deploy monitor, and scale your solutions. There are many solutions for continuous integration and continuous delivery. Zibby labs stack storm Jenkins from cloud bees and Solana labs have you covered. All are available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. If infrastructure and application orchestration is on your radar, check out puppet and chef. Both can be installed from the marketplace in minutes and have you well on your way.
What about source control code, reviews, documentation, and issue tracking?
Check out "get lab" from bitNami. It'll give you unlimited free private repositories and its free asher already includes many data solutions. However, it's not always a one-size-fits all and many of our partners have made their solutions available in the marketplace. What if you need more than a bare-bones operating system, but don't need a full-blown solution out of the box. There are hundreds of various software stocks that are ready to deploy from the marketplace. BitNami has over 80 virtual machine images to get you going, including WordPress, Ruby, nodejs, Jango, and more. Windows or Linux chances are you'll find a VM image to get you started. Why not try out the azure marketplace today.
How to sell on Azure Marketplace?
To understand how to sell, let give a sales scenario first. Imagine your customers ran everything on-premises in their data centers, then your customers wanted to see their technology, they wanted to be able to control it. But that also meant that they had to pay for it, including cooling, electricity, insurance, and everything else that goes with it. Running on-premises solutions meant buying software packages and licenses with packaged software. A customer will be responsible for managing everything from the network connectivity to the applications with infrastructure as a service for IaaS. The lower levels of the stack are managed by a vendor, some of these components can be provided by traditional hosters. But very few provide an operating system that is still provided by the customer. In this scenario typically the customer is responsible for managing everything from the operating system through the applications. For the developer, an obvious benefit of IaaS is that it's free. The developer from many concerns when provisioning physical or virtual machines. Next is the platform as a service or PaaS, with PaaS sometimes also referred to as pass everything from the network connectivity through the runtime, which is provided and managed by the platform vendor. Microsoft Azure best fits in this category in fact because we don't provide access to the underlying virtualization or operating system. Today we're often referred to as not providing IaaS and PaaS offerings to further reduce the developer burden by additionally supporting the platform runtime and related application services with PaaS. The developer can almost immediately begin creating the business logic for an application potentially. This increases productivity and these increases can be considerable and because the hardware and operational aspects of the cloud platform are also managed by the cloud platform provider. Applications can quickly be taken from an idea to reality very quickly.
Finally, there is software-as-a-service for SaaS or SAS with SAS a vendor that provides the application and abstracts. Customers from all of the underlying components office 365 and Salesforce.com are both examples of software-as-a-service. It describes the various software models like having a pizza for dinner we can make it all at home. But it seldom comes out perfect or I can buy the raw dough from a bakery then do everything else at home, we can buy a taken baked pizza or have a pizza delivered, or simply go to a restaurant. Each of these relates in essence to the different types of services that you experience in the cloud. Four fundamental pillars motivate a customer to want to consider the cloud-first they need a faster way to deploy and develop new business. We can call this speed innovation or speed to market one customer. Therefore, the Azure marketplace is a powerful channel to market and sell your cloud solutions certified to run on Azure. Showcase virtual machine images, solution templates, and services and get access to our top Azure customers worldwide. Also, the Azure marketplace can drive more leads, promote your solutions to enterprises, and grow revenue. How can drive more leads? It's simple, it generates leads by giving customers the ability to spin up live instances of your applications running on Azure and by helping customers understand how you will meet their needs. Then how can promote the solutions to an enterprise? You can do that by gaining access to Microsoft enterprise sellers using the Azure Marketplace as a selling tool and then participate in co-marketing opportunities to reach new customers and markets worldwide. What about growing revenue? Well, leveraging rich commerce capabilities and get insights into how your business is performing on Azure Marketplace. The seller has two options to begin on Azure Marketplace, you can be a publisher or a business. BTW, don't be confused with the AppSource and Azure marketplace. Because AppSource includes business and industry solutions, such as apps that integrate into Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform services. While, Azure Marketplace includes IT and developer solutions that are built on Azure or used within Azure subscriptions themselves.
What are the benefits of selling with Azure Marketplace?
- Expand your solution portfolio to new markets and segments.
- Generate new marketing leads and sales opportunities.
- Upsell and cross-sell your solutions as your customers move their workloads to the cloud.
- Market your solutions for specific workloads and industry scenarios to reduce sales cycles, accelerate projects, and increase deal profitability.
- Get actionable insights on your listing performance and orders to learn how to maximize campaign activities for your solution.
In very simple term, the Azure Marketplace is like a huge shopping mall, inside there's a lot of partnered stores, which you can shop or use their services. Also, there is an option as well for you to open a store within the shopping mall and provide services or sell products. If you're thinking about where to begin? Then, Azure customers can discover and deploy Azure Marketplace solutions through the Create a resource option in the Azure portal. To learn more step by step, visit the Microsoft website and look for the Azure Marketplace overview.
Thank you very much for visiting my blog website. Hopefully, I was able to help you understand "What is Azure Marketplace and How to sell on it. If you have more suggestions, ideas, or opinions that you wish to share or add, please don't hesitate to comment below.
