How to list on the Google Cloud Marketplace

What is the Google Cloud Marketplace?

The Google Cloud Marketplace is a digital storefront allowing tech buyers to find, procure, and deploy business solutions hosted on the Google Cloud. Buyers get single source access to a wide catalog of enterprise-grade software curated, vetted and hosted by Google, that can be seamlessly absorbed into their existing tech environment using pre-existing commits.

The Google Cloud Marketplace, in the company of the two other cloud hyperscaler marketplaces (AWS and Microsoft Azure), has reshaped the SaaS sales and procurement landscape.

Let’s zoom out and look at the macro trends that brought us here.

In 2022, Deloitte’s Future of Cloud survey of executive-level leaders showed the transition of product workloads to the cloud, with respondents saying that only 25% of their workload remained on-prem, with a planned reduction to 15% or less. The digital transformation movement has since transitioned from being a market disruptor to the industry norm, with worldwide cloud infrastructure services expenditure growing 19% year on year in Q4 2023 to reach US$78.1 billion.

Of the three hyperscalers, Google Cloud saw the strongest revenue growth of over 25%. With organizations of all sizes moving their workloads to the cloud, over 60% of the world’s thousand-largest companies and 90% of funded gen AI startups are Google Cloud customers.

The natural progression of a cloud hosted industry is to transact on the environment they live in, which brings us to the emergence of cloud marketplaces as the preferred procurement channel. The seeds for this were sown back in 2022 when the number of new cloud marketplace buyers grew 200% from Q1 to Q4.

According to Canalys, cloud marketplaces have now gone from a forward-looking trend to a “strategic and actionable routes-to-market” accelerated by the pandemic-enforced shift to sellerless procurement interactions. Canalys also predicts that global sales of third-party vendor software and services through cloud marketplaces will hit US$45 billion by 2025.

Why sell on the Google Cloud Marketplace ?

While the advantages for buyers to transact through the marketplace are clear and sellers are responding to the buyer demand for this route-to-market, ISvs are aligning their orgs towards marketplaces sales for a host of other listing benefits. Selling on the Google Cloud Marketplace, or any cloud hyperscaler marketplace, gives you access to millions (or even billions) in buyer commits. The simplicity and standardization of contracting and invoicing through the marketplace also makes this route attractive, slashing deal closure times and facilitating quick renewals.

The economics of selling on the Google Cloud Marketplace offers even more benefits for sellers-

• Cohort access - Listing on the GCP marketplace helps you build awareness among new customer groups, particularly increasing your access to enterprise customers building their solutions with and on Google Cloud. By actively driving your partnership with the Google Cloud Marketplace, you increase the chances of having your solutions “presented to customers with AI-powered recommendations and alongside popular services while they're building”.

• Simplified listing management - Google Cloud Marketplace's management portal serves as a single source destination for listing, monitoring, and updating your offering along with tracking usage and offering customer support. The GCP marketplace also offers standardized user agreements that can be plugged into contracts

• Association with the Google brand - Listing on the GCP marketplace gives you the benefit of being associated and vetted by a globally trusted brand like Google. Additionally, as your association with the GCP marketplace grows, you can begin leveraging co-marketing and co-sell opportunities to drive inbound interest and access Google's vast seller pool.

What are the listing incentives and resources offered by Google Cloud Marketplace?

Google Cloud’s vision for the Google Cloud Marketplace is to offer its end customers solution completeness – the ability to source holistic and instantly compatible solution ecosystems with rapid time-to-value. Parallely, Google Cloud’s ultimate goal is to drive and increase workload consumption through these transactions. This is the core reason why Google Cloud treats  listings that have direct parity with first party services, with consistency and consideration for the customer’s need to make a fully informed choice.  They win the workload either way.

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To drive transaction volume, the GCP Marketplace offers a series of programs, offers and resources to help you succeed.

• The Google Partner Advantage Program, which is a prerequisite to listing on the GCP Marketplace (we’ll speak about this soon), offers multiple tiers of benefits ranging from access to events and training material to discounts and partner incentives.

• Partners eligible for co-marketing initiatives benefit from GCP’s expertise in position and messaging support to help you drive organic traffic and generate inbound interest for your listing. There are also multiple eligibility-based partner advisory services to help you define your joint value proposition with Google Cloud and access the wider seller network
• The GCP Marketplace recently introduced a Customer Credit Program which offers ISVs GCP credits on a percentage of the Annual Contract Value (ACV) of new cloud workloads brought in by them. ISVs can use these credits on their own cloud consumption invoices or pass along the benefits to their customers on the marketplaces during deal negotiation conversations.

Learn more about the Google Cloud Marketplace opportunity for ISVs from Dai Vu, Managing Director, Cloud Marketplace and ISV GTM Initiatives at Google Cloud

How to list on the Google Cloud Marketplace

The process to  list and begin transacting on the Google Cloud Marketplace can be split into two parts, each with their set of steps.

Part I - Achieving partner eligibility

1. Enroll in the Google Partner Advantage Program
2. Achieve Build Partner Status
3. Sign the Marketplace Vendor Agreement

Part II - Setting up the listing

1. Go the DIY route, or
2. Let Clazar do the heavy lifting

Part I - Achieving partner eligibility

1. Enroll in the Google Partner Advantage Program

Like we saw a little earlier, the Partner Advantage program provides ISVs with the tools and resources to build or distribute solutions within the Google ecosystem to improve outcomes for joint end users. To enroll for the program, you will need to submit company details, your (owner of the initiative) details and then accept the program agreement and terms.

2. Achieve Build Partner Status

Once you become a Google Partner, you will need to fulfill a set of requirements to become either a Service, Sell or Build Partner. SaaS ISVs selling own and operated solutions “that are built with and run on Google Cloud; are an extension for a Google Cloud or Google Workspace product; or integrate with a Google Cloud or Google Workspace product,” need to achieve Build Partner status by fulfilling its requirements.

You can do so by logging into the Partner Advantage Portal and creating a new authorization request and accessing and completing activities in the program requirements section.

3. Sign Marketplace Vendor Agreement

Once you have achieved build partner status, you will need to work with your Google Cloud representative to sign the Marketplace Vendor Agreement before you gain access to the Producer Portal from where you can list and manage your offering. In order to proceed to part 2 of this process, you will have to meet the below eligibility criteria.

You can do so by logging into the Partner Advantage Portal and creating a new authorization request and accessing and completing activities in the program requirements section.

Part II - Setting up the GCP Marketplace listing

Now you’re ready to start creating your listing. There are two ways to do this - 1) go the DIY route, commiting engineering and operational bandwidth to list and run your GCP marketplace operations, or 2) hand over the heavy lifting to a cloud GTM automation like Clazar to manage and scale your GCP marketplace listing for you.

1. DIY-ing  your Google Cloud Marketplace listing

There are four parts to creating your listing.

2. Accelerating your Google Cloud Marketplace motion 
with Clazar

Or…..begin your cloud marketplace journey with Clazar. By leveraging our expertise of getting hundreds of customers transacting on cloud marketplaces, and our game-changing automation platform, you can bring down listing time from over 6 months to as low as 20 days. Not to mention the hours in engineering bandwidth and operations costs you will save per week. Here’s how you can list and begin transacting on the Google Cloud Marketplace with Clazar.

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Listing is just the beginning. Manage your operations, build transaction volume, tap into the GCP seller network through Co-Sell – and scale to multi-cloud operations – with Clazar as your co-pilot.