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He added, “Those dollars are ‘use-it-or-lose it’ committed dollars. Every week, every month and every quarter, we see our customers coming to us saying their customer has committed dollars to spend by a certain date and need to transact in the marketplace to consume them.” Three years ago, that would have been a salesperson looking for ways to spend those dollars and close the quarter with a deal. If the line item was not in the budget, that deal could be in jeopardy. “Now this other pool of cloud funds exists and needs to be spent through the marketplaces,” Mehta said. “Smart sellers are asking their buyers about cloud budgets, and when they find them, magic can happen.” The change is important to agent partners. “To the channel, I’d say the dynamic is rapidly shifting in the way your buyers want to buy, and where they want to buy, so don’t get left behind,” advised Mehta. “B2B software procurement is a $500 billion annual business, and marketplaces only make up a small percentage of that today,” he continued. “While development in this space is still early, it’s moving quickly.” In the early days, when ISVs first started selling on marketplaces, channel partners feared they were going to lose business to this new digital procurement competitor, said Mehta. “Since then, we have seen the cloud providers build programs to embrace the channel.” The first movers in this arena form the channel-built partnerships with cloud providers, and that has paved the way to make it easier for others to access. For channel partners sales agencies that are considering jumping in, Mehta suggested they first invest in cloud expertise, review their portfolios of ISVs to ensure they represent the bestin-class for cloud attached sales and incent their teams to embrace marketplace procurement. “You earned your spot with your customers, and you need to evolve your business to keep that spot,” Mehta said. For MSPs, there’s an opportunity to be a type of “Lego Masters of cloud services, third-party software and the management and operations of the overall environment,” Mehta said. “It’s a builders dream, but some folks DIY it, and others hire contractors,” he continued. “I think we will see a steady increase in MSPs evolving their businesses to deliver turnkey, robust cloud services offerings including best-of-breed software solutions purchased via the cloud marketplaces.” Ultimately, as technology budgets shift to consolidate cloud and thirdparty software under the same budget, concluded Mehta, the efficiency and value of cloud spend becomes scrutinized and embraced at higher levels of the buyer’s organization, such as the CFO, and are managed by enterprise procurement teams. o 71 MARCH - APRIL 2022 | CHANNELV ISION

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