Every enterprise customer you’re chasing has already made a commitment they haven’t spent. Most large Azure and Google Cloud customers sign multi-year deals promising to consume a set amount of compute, storage, and services. It’s called a Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment, or MACC, on the Microsoft side, and a Committed Use Discount agreement on Google’s. The number is often in the millions. And in a lot of accounts, that number is running behind schedule as the fiscal year winds down.
That gap is the opportunity. When a customer isn’t on pace to hit their commitment, they have real budget sitting on the table with a deadline attached. If your product is listed on Microsoft Marketplace or Google Cloud Marketplace, you’re one of the easiest ways for them to close that gap before the clock runs out.
Why this beats a normal deal
A marketplace purchase doesn’t compete with the customer’s other budget lines. It draws down money they’ve already committed to spend somewhere. That changes the internal conversation entirely. Instead of a procurement team asking “do we have budget for this,” they’re asking “how fast can we get this approved so it counts against what we already owe.” You go from being a new expense to being a way to avoid a shortfall penalty.
On the Microsoft side, purchases marked “Azure benefit eligible” count dollar for dollar against a customer’s MACC, as long as the deal runs through the Azure portal checkout rather than a plain credit card purchase. Google runs the same play through Committed Use Discounts and private offers, and its Customer Credit Incentive Program layers on extra cloud credits for first-time marketplace purchases. Both hyperscalers are actively pushing this because it keeps consumption on their platform. That’s a tailwind you get for free.
What it does to your sales cycle
Procurement is usually where deals go to die. Legal review, security questionnaires, a new vendor onboarding process, a budget approval chain that runs through three people who don’t know you exist. A marketplace transaction skips almost all of it. The customer already has a master agreement with Microsoft or Google. Buying you through the marketplace is just adding a line item to a contract that’s already signed. Partners running this motion consistently report deals closing weeks faster than the equivalent direct sale, precisely because procurement friction is the thing marketplace purchasing was built to remove.
What I’d tell you to do about it
If your product isn’t listed on at least one hyperscale marketplace, you’re leaving deals on the table that are easier to close than the ones your sales team is grinding through right now. If it is listed, make sure your listing is flagged as consumption commitment eligible, make sure your sellers know how to ask the “do you have unspent Azure or Google commitment” question, and make sure your finance team understands why a marketplace deal at a slight discount can still be a better deal than a full price direct sale that takes four extra months of legal review.
The budget conversation with your customer isn’t always about whether they have the money. Sometimes it’s about whether they lose it if they don’t spend it with someone by a certain date. Marketplace is how you make sure that someone is you.