Eight AWS Marketplace innovations to shape your 2025 cloud sales strategy

AWS re:Invent 2024, the year's most anticipated cloud innovation conference, marked the grand finale of the 2024 event calendar in Las Vegas. As the public cloud market leader, AWS continues to shape the future of cloud innovation, infrastructure, and go-to-market strategies—making this event crucial not just for technical leaders, but also for revenue, alliance, and partnership executives.

While headline-grabbing product launches and partnerships dominated the main stage and breakout sessions, other strategic announcements flew under the radar. Collectively, these updates could significantly impact your cloud sales playbook for 2025. In this blog, we'll unpack all marketplace-specific launches from and around re:Invent, and give you actionable insights to help you capitalize on AWS's latest innovations and keep your cloud sales strategy ahead of the curve.

Remember to check out our recap of re:Invent 2024 with experts Michael Musselman (Astronomer), Nadav Tzuker (Wiz) & Trunal Bhanse (Clazar) before you get started.

1. Buy with AWS

AWS has made a giant leap in streamlining the marketplace purchase experience with the launch of "Buy with AWS"—something that has been causing anticipatory buzz in the cloud community for some time (we covered this on our re:Invent round-up too). With this launch, AWS has found a way to elegantly bridge direct sales discovery and marketplace transactions, revolutionizing how you connect with potential customers.Here's what the deal is: You can build a co-branded (with AWS) product discovery page right on your website. This page, using a widget will have a "Buy with AWS" CTA button that then lets customers make their purchase through the marketplace. You essentially get to have a storefront on your website where your customers explore your products. Once they’re ready to buy, they simply click the "Buy with AWS" button, log in with their AWS credentials, and complete their purchase through AWS Marketplace. It's that straightforward.The beauty of this approach is that you can convert high-intent prospects at lightning speed from their natural point of discovery while offering all the benefits of marketplace purchasing— the best of both worlds.Premier partners like Wiz have piloted this launch, leveraging their webpage to not just showcase their product, but also multiple other powerful co-branded assets like case studies and research reports.‍

Getting started: Yes, there's some engineering work involved in the setup but the potential benefits far outweigh the initial effort.  The “Buy with AWS” onboarding guide in the AWS Marketplace Management Portal details how you can get started.

2. Expanded SaaS Co-Sell Benefits

AWS has significantly enhanced its commitment to democratizing co-sell opportunities for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) of all sizes. Starting January 2025, AWS has expanded SaaS co-sell benefits—also known as SaaS Revenue Recognition—to include all ISV Accelerate Partners transacting in the AWS Marketplace, including eligible SMBs and startups.Previously an invite-only benefit exclusive to large enterprise tech ISVs, this change opens the door for sellers of all sizes to leverage essential co-sell resources that were once beyond their reach. By creating this inclusive ecosystem, AWS is empowering ISVs to drive collaboration and accelerate revenue growth.For your cloud sales strategy, this is nothing short of a gamechanger.

‍Getting started: You will need to qualify for the AWS ISV Accelerate Program to access co-sell benefits.

3. Partner Central APIs for Selling with AWS

The new Partner Central APIs for co-selling are a huge upgrade from AWS to help you manage your ACE activities directly from your CRM. These APIs dramatically enhance the scalability, accuracy, and immediacy of your CRM-ACE integration. Unlike the slower S3 file-based transfers, the APIs let you get more precise and instant with your data sharing, ensuring that you maintain data sanctity at scale for both your internal teams and AWS field sellers. With these updates, you can seamlessly create, update, view, and assign opportunities, accept AWS referral invitations, retrieve a list of your solutions on AWS Partner Central, and associate specific solutions, AWS products, or AWS Marketplace offers with opportunities as needed.

‍Getting started: You can use this API via the AWS Partner CRM Connector or, take the uncomplicated route to setting up co-selling from your CRM with an integration partner like Clazar. We’ve helped businesses like Honeycomb 2X opportunity submissions in just 11 days of connecting their CRM with ACE.

4. Partner Connections

AWS is intensifying its focus on multi-party co-sell with its innovative Partner Connections feature. This powerful new capability transforms how you collaborate with other ISVs within the AWS ecosystem in two key ways.First, it uses AI-powered recommendations to help you discover ideal collaboration partners. Think of it as smart matchmaking – the system identifies ISVs whose solutions complement yours, creating opportunities for powerful joint offerings that better serve customer needs. Second, it streamlines multi-partner deal management through ACE (AWS Customer Engagement). Once you've connected with potential partners, you can seamlessly create and manage joint customer opportunities together. Real-time updates keep all parties – internal teams, partners, and AWS field teams alike – synchronized throughout the deal cycle, constructing a smooth path from opportunity to closure.  

‍Eligibility: Partner Connections (Preview) is available to all eligible AWS Partners who have signed the ACE Terms and Conditions and have linked their AWS account to their Partner Central account. You should also be using the new Partner Central APIs to create and manage multi-partner opportunities from your CRM.  Learn more.

5. Dedicated Slack channels

Great news for teams who run on Slack! AWS has introduced dedicated Slack channels for eligible open opportunities, revolutionizing co-selling collaboration between your internal folks and AWS field sellers.These Slack channels create a direct line between AWS and ISV teams, bringing account managers, solution architects, and success managers into one collaborative space. No more endless email chains or scheduling multiple calls – everything happens in real-time, right where your team already works.The integration goes beyond just communication. Through AWS Partner Central integration, these channels automatically deliver real-time updates on deal progress, stage changes, and next steps. This seamless flow of information keeps everyone aligned and moving forward efficiently.Security remains paramount always: Slack Connect ensures all discussions stay confidential, with strict access controls limiting participation to essential team members only.

‍Eligibility & getting started: This is available globally to ACE-eligible ISVs working on high-value deals, excluding deals related to national security or customers in the Greater China Region. Log in to AWS Partner Central to request Slack channels directly through the ACE Pipeline Manager in Partner Central and start collaborating, or ask your AWS sales contacts to create a channel. Learn more.

6. Business Planning in AWS Partner Central

AWS just made it easier to align your strategies with its goals. AWS Partner Central's new business planning feature brings strategic alignment, goal-setting, and performance tracking into one cohesive experience. The Business Planning feature streamlines collaboration with standardized AWS templates and a platform that centralizes multiple touchpoints, conversations, and emails between AWS Partner management and sales teams. You can use this to set goals, track progress, and access comprehensive performance metrics in one place. Speaking of performance metrics, AWS also stepped up its reporting and analytics game with deeper data on everything from attainment figures to year-over-year comparisons. 

‍Eligibility & getting started: This feature is available to ISVs who are actively engaged with AWS Partner management teams to create joint business plans. To get started, reach out to your AWS Partner contact to initiate a business plan. Once a draft plan is shared, log in to AWS Partner Central, navigate to “My company,” and click on “Business plan” to start collaborating. Learn more.

7. Gen AI-powered virtual assistant for AWS Partners

AWS is leveraging the power of Generative AI to deliver always-on support with AWS Partner Assistant. Built on Amazon Q Business, this intelligent virtual assistant is now live in both AWS Partner Central and the AWS Marketplace Management Portal. AWS built this specifically to spare you the effort of time-consuming manual searches through documentation. Partner Assistant instead instantly surfaces relevant guidance by analyzing the vast library of AWS partner resources. It delivers real-time, context-aware answers drawn specifically from AWS Partner documentation and guides. Think of it as your always-on AWS expert, ready to provide precise answers to your questions right when you need them.

‍Eligibility & getting started: AWS Partner Assistant is available to all Partners who have linked their Partner Central and AWS accounts. You can start using  AWS Partner Assistant by logging in to AWS Partner Central or the AWS Marketplace Management Portal and accessing the chat from the bottom right of your screen.  

8. Gen AI for co-sell matching

AWS will be tapping into the powers of gen AI again to help its sales teams assess customer needs, find a qualified ISV partner, and connect them with customers through AWS Originated (AO) opportunity sharing. AI will analyze data from ACE and the marketplace to recommend the most suitable AWS partners from the thousands of ISVs vying for attention - in seconds and directly in the AWS’ internal CRM. What does this mean for you? ACE eligibility and achieving AWS Specialization are minimum requirements for you to be recommended. ISVs holding an AWS Specialization with the “Differentiated” stage in AWS Partner Central can access an “AWS co-sell recommendation score” through the Analytic and Insights dashboard. These scores will give you insights on the capabilities that are evaluated and matched across regions, industries, and segments. Having access to this information will empower you to prioritize the right activities, maintain visibility, and improve your ranking in AWS’s co-sell ecosystem.

The AWS Marketplace is constantly innovating and evolving to streamline the buyer and seller experience. Staying informed about the latest developments from hyperscalers is key to crafting a strategy and architecture that sets you apart as a truly differentiated partner. Make this your guiding principle for success this year.

Have big goals for marketplace growth in 2025? 

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