.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
Cloud-first environments represent one of tech's most significant shifts. Over 90% of organizations now use cloud services. This increase led to the rise and growth of cloud marketplaces.
Today, hyperscaler marketplaces are essential enterprise procurement channels. 85% of decision-makers today are turning to marketplaces for greater agility and procurement speed, according to Forrester’s TEI report on the AWS marketplace. And third-party sales through the marketplaces are expected to reach $85 billion by 2028.
While marketplace tech sales are thriving, buyers now have new demands.
Around 90% of enterprises have moved to a multi-cloud strategy. More and more businesses are leveraging multiple cloud usage, not only to optimize performance but also to manage risk, reduce costs, and ensure business continuity.
What does this mean for procurement? Should you, as an ISV seller, expand your presence across all hyperscalers? The answer to these questions depends on several factors.
In this blog, we’ll show you how to execute a multi-cloud strategy that drives growth while delivering value for both you and your customers.
TL;DR
- A multi-cloud marketplace strategy helps ISVs drive scalable revenue by meeting customers where they are.
- When assessing if it's suitable for your organization, consider product readiness, customer alignment, and financial and operational practicalities
- Before going multi-cloud, we recommend testing one cloud marketplace and incorporating the learning into your multi-cloud plan
- Launch your multi-cloud marketplace campaign by:
- Deciding on your objectives
- Assessing your readiness
- Selecting the best cloud expansion model
- Aligning internal teams and streamlining processes
- Building relationships with hyperscalers
- Regularly tracking and optimizing performance
What is a multi-cloud marketplace strategy?
A multi-cloud marketplace strategy is a structured go-to-market approach where a software company lists, sells, co-sells, and operationally integrates across multiple cloud marketplaces to drive scalable enterprise revenue.
Enterprise buyers are increasingly multi-cloud themselves. A customer may run infrastructure on AWS, data workloads on Azure, and AI workloads on GCP. If you’re only present on one cloud, you’re leaving revenue, influence, and strategic partnerships on the table.
Benefits of taking a multi-cloud approach
With a multi-cloud marketplace strategy, you:
- Meet customers where they buy
- Reach more customers across multiple cloud provider marketplaces
- Align with multiple hyperscaler teams
- Maximize commit capture
- Reduce dependency on a single ecosystem
Why should you explore a multi-cloud marketplace strategy?
As we’ve just seen, for ISV sellers, embracing a multi-cloud marketplace strategy offers clear advantages. By leveraging each marketplace's unique strengths, sellers can build a more flexible go-to-market strategy that drives growth.
And there’s more. You can also:
1. Meet your customers’ demand for flexibility
Enterprises globally are increasingly moving to a multi-cloud strategy. Offering a multi-cloud solution means giving your customers the freedom to choose the cloud environment that best suits their needs—whether that’s for compliance, security, pricing, or performance.
By listing your products across multiple hyperscalers, you cater to a diverse set of customers who may have existing commitments or preferences with different cloud providers.
2. Work around budgetary objections
Many customers already have cloud commitments with a particular hyperscaler. By listing your product across multiple clouds, you allow them to leverage these commitments to reduce costs and overcome budgetary constraints, offering a more compelling value proposition.
You’re not just selling your product—you’re enabling your customers to maximize the value of their existing investments.
3. Safeguard against technical churn
A common challenge with cloud migrations is the technical churn when customers need to switch providers. A multi-cloud approach minimizes this churn by providing customers with smoother transitions across cloud platforms, making it easier for them to move workloads as their needs change.
4. Reach newer, larger customer cohorts
By engaging with multiple hyperscalers, you can reach a much wider range of customers. Each cloud marketplace has its own ecosystem, which includes unique cohorts of customers who may not be reachable through a single cloud provider. This expanded reach can help you increase your market share and revenue potential.
5. Grow your partnerships, and hence partner-influenced revenue
Each hyperscaler has thousands of field sellers who drive cloud consumption. If you’re only aligned with one cloud, you only tap into one sales army.
Working with multiple hyperscalers offers a number of benefits, including co-marketing opportunities and access to exclusive tools and resources. These relationships can help you grow your business more quickly and sustainably.
6. Double down on infra security
A multi-cloud strategy provides inherent advantages when it comes to security and risk management. By distributing workloads across multiple cloud providers, you can reduce the risk of a single point of failure and improve fault tolerance—making your system more resilient.
While this list of advantages is compelling, you will still need to consider the effort and resources required for such a project.
Also Read: The complete guide to sales growth on cloud marketplaces
When should you build a multi-cloud marketplace strategy?
Not every business will immediately benefit from an expansion across multiple clouds, so consider these factors when deciding whether it's the right move:
Product readiness
- Is your product already compatible with multiple cloud platforms? If you can seamlessly integrate with AWS, Microsoft, and GCP, you are in a good place to take advantage of the multi-cloud trend
- Are you planning to expand your product’s capabilities to support more cloud platforms? If so, consider taking a multi-cloud approach
Customer alignment
- Where are your customers’ product environments? Are they using a single cloud provider, or do they have a multi-cloud strategy already in place? If most of your customers use multiple cloud platforms, offering your product in each of these environments makes sense
- Do enough customers (or prospective customers) have significant cloud commitments across two or more cloud marketplaces, so as to make this a viable go-to-market strategy for you?
Financial viability and operational readiness
- Would the size of the available TAM (Total Addressable Market) justify the investment in multiple cloud marketplaces?
- Do your teams have the resources to handle the increased complexity of managing multiple cloud listings and customer relationships?
- Are operations, sales, marketing, and engineering teams ready to support these initiatives?
Also Read: Accelerating global marketplace expansion with AWS
Proving your Cloud GTM model before going multi-cloud
Before you scale to multi-cloud growth, it is important to test and establish your Cloud GTM model with your current single cloud listing.
Here’s a quick summary of the steps involved:
- Test the marketplace model on a single cloud marketplace to start with
- Establish clear GTM swimlanes
- Build a differentiated hyperscaler partnership
- Assess the number of marketplace deals and co-sell opportunities you are able to close
- Get your cloud marketplace revenue to 10% of your ARR
- Replicate this playbook in another cloud marketplace
The benefits of testing with a single cloud marketplace
There are two main reasons why we suggest starting with one cloud marketplace:
Give each marketplace the attention it deserves
Each cloud marketplace comes with its own set of technical requirements, listing processes, billing integrations, and operational nuances. By starting with a single marketplace, your team can get each of them right.
By focusing on a single listing first, you can develop expertise in that area and establish workflows that will serve as blueprints for future marketplace expansions. This makes all efforts to scale much more streamlined and effective.
Listen to Alex Balcanquall, Senior Director, Marketplace Strategy & Operations, Cloud Software Group, speak about the unanticipated operational aspects of Cloud GTM, from payment cycles to tax implications.
Refine and learn from one marketplace before scaling
The second reason to start with a single listing is that it allows you to test and optimize your cloud GTM strategy in a controlled environment. You can experiment with different pricing tiers, packaging options, and promotional strategies while gathering meaningful data.
This focused testing ground allows you to:
- Identify what resonates with customers
- Understand common friction points
- Refine your approach based on real market feedback
The insights gained from this process are invaluable in shaping a successful multi-cloud strategy that can be confidently rolled out to other marketplaces.
In addition, by tracking key performance indicators like conversions, deal size, and customer acquisition costs, you can build a compelling business case for multi-cloud investment. This data-driven approach helps secure internal buy-in, allocate resources effectively, and set realistic expectations for performance on other platforms.
Also Read: The true cost of DIY cloud marketplace management
How to build and execute a multi-cloud marketplace strategy
Building a multi-cloud marketplace strategy isn’t about copying your listing from one platform to another. You should be designing a cross-cloud revenue engine that nevertheless considers individual cloud platform requirements.
Here is the step-by-step process to follow.
1. Define your objectives for a multi-cloud marketplace strategy
Before you expand across marketplaces, define why you’re doing it.
A multi-cloud strategy can support different goals:
- Accelerating enterprise deal cycles
- Unlocking cloud commit budgets
- Increasing partner-sourced pipeline
- Expanding into new regions
- Increasing ACV through bundled deals
Multi-cloud works best when it’s tied to a specific business objective. For example:
- If procurement friction is slowing deals, your focus should be on commit capture and private offers
- If pipeline is the challenge, your focus should be on co-sell alignment
Clarity at this stage helps build a clear roadmap as well as team alignment.
2. Assess your marketplace readiness
Not every company is ready for multi-cloud immediately. Besides experimenting with a single cloud approach first (as we covered earlier), ask these questions:
- Is your product successful on one cloud marketplace?
- Do you have a repeatable enterprise sales motion?
- Can your team handle private offers and deal structuring?
- Do you have executive sponsorship for cloud partnerships?
Also Read: Five barriers to marketplace scale and how to break through each one
3. Choose your cloud expansion model
There isn’t one “correct” order to expand from one marketplace to many. Choose the model that fits your customers, partnerships, and regional priorities best:
- Sequential expansion: Start with one cloud, optimize it, then expand deliberately to the next
- Customer-led expansion: Add a new marketplace when enterprise buyers request it consistently
- Region-led expansion: Prioritize marketplaces based on regional dominance. For example, North America may lean heavily toward AWS, AI/data-heavy verticals may prefer GCP, and so on
- Partner-led expansion: Expand where your strongest integration or co-sell partner sits
4. Align your marketplace strategy and your sales motion
Multi-cloud success depends more on internal alignment than external listing mechanics. Decide how cloud marketplaces fit within your GTM motion, and ensure that teams are enabled accordingly.
This step often requires:
- Sales enablement training
- Clear messaging around commit benefits
- Defined rules for when to use private offers
- CRM integration for tracking marketplace-influenced deals
Sales teams need to be aligned with your multi-cloud strategy. This means updating your sales playbook to account for selling across different hyperscaler ecosystems. Make sure your team understands the unique value propositions of each cloud platform and how to position your product effectively in those environments.
5. Streamline the listing process and minimize engineering demand
Expanding to multiple clouds shouldn’t mean that you have to hire more engineers. Use tools that automate the process of listing, tracking revenue, and reporting.
For example, Clazar helps companies list and manage products across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, all from a single interface. This minimizes the technical lift and ensures a more efficient post-listing process. By simplifying your approach, you can expand to multiple marketplaces without overburdening your engineering or operations teams.
)
6. Establish an effective partnership with all hyperscalers
Building relationships with the major hyperscalers is the first step in expanding your product’s availability. These platforms offer different benefits, like various programs, financial assistance, co-branding opportunities, and technical resources.
By building strong relationships with key decision-makers at the leadership and rep levels, you ensure that your product is positioned for success within each marketplace.
7. Manage cross-cloud revenue tracking and visibility
Managing multiple cloud listings requires tracking revenue, disbursements, and collections across different platforms. The key challenge here is to avoid juggling between multiple cloud portals and your internal analytics systems.
At a minimum, you should be able to answer:
- What is our total marketplace GMV across clouds?
- How much revenue is influenced vs transacted?
- Which cloud is driving the most co-sell pipeline?
- What’s the average time to generate a private offer?
Simplifying cross-cloud revenue recognition ensures that you understand where every dollar is coming from and can more accurately map payouts to customers and sales deals in your CRM.
See how Vectra AI saw 2.5X growth on AWS Marketplace and 6X growth on Microsoft Marketplace after adopting the Clazar platform
8. Monitor and optimize multi-cloud performance
After launching your product across multiple clouds, continuously monitor its performance and usage. Look for patterns, identify opportunities to optimize pricing or product offerings, and keep up with changes in the market or technology.
Often, one cloud may outperform in a specific vertical or region. Double down there while improving weaker channels.
Analyze reports from different hyperscaler sources regularly to ensure you’re meeting customer expectations and adjusting your strategy when necessary.
Execute multi-cloud GTM confidently with Clazar
Remember that the cloud landscape evolves quickly. Be ready to iterate on your multi-cloud strategy, responding to new customer demands, hyperscaler changes, and market shifts. Flexibility is key to maintaining long-term success.
If you want to take the plunge and expand your presence across the three hyperscalers, Clazar can help you manage this lift with ease.
Top FAQ's
1. Should every ISV pursue a multi-cloud marketplace strategy?
Not immediately. A multi-cloud marketplace strategy only works when:
- You’ve proven your Cloud GTM model with one hyperscaler
- Your product works across cloud environments
- Your customers already operate in multi-cloud environments
- Your internal team can handle operational complexity
Most successful ISVs (GitLab, Snowflake, Datadog) started single-cloud first and scaled once they built early wins and operational muscle.
2. What are the biggest benefits of going multi-cloud for ISVs?
A multi-cloud strategy helps:
- Meet multi-cloud customers where they already buy
- Overcome budget objections using cloud commits
- Reduce dependency on a single hyperscaler
- Reach new customer cohorts via different ecosystems
- Strengthen partner relationships across clouds
- Improve resiliency and reduce technical lock-in
A multi-cloud GTM motion offers reach, flexibility, and resilience—when executed correctly.
3. Is multi-cloud marketplace strategy worth the operational complexity?
Yes, when enterprise revenue justifies it. Selling on multiple cloud marketplaces increases reach, improves procurement speed, expands co-sell pipeline, and reduces ecosystem risk. However, it requires operational discipline and executive alignment. You should assess if your organization is ready and able to adopt this strategy.
4. Can early-stage startups benefit from multi-cloud marketplaces?
Early-stage startups should usually focus on one marketplace first. Multi-cloud expansion makes sense once enterprise motion and marketplace traction are proven.
5. Which cloud marketplace is best for enterprise SaaS?
There is no universally ‘best’ marketplace for all enterprise SaaS organizations. The right choice for your product will depend on:
- Customer cloud preferences
- The regions you prioritize
- The verticals you sell to
- Possible co-sell opportunities
- Your integration ecosystem
.jpg)
