Four ways Google Cloud Marketplace simplifies buying cloud software

Discovering, purchasing, and managing solutions on Google Cloud has never been easier thanks to Google Cloud Marketplace, where you can explore thousands of enterprise-ready products and services that integrate with Google Cloud. Marketplace simplifies buying solutions from Google and top software vendors as all purchases are seamlessly added to your existing Google Cloud invoice, so you receive just one bill from Google. 

We’re continuously improving how our customers can evaluate, procure, and manage cloud software online because we know that’s increasingly how you want to buy. In fact, in 2021 our marketplace third-party transaction value was up more than 500% YoY from 2020 (Q1-Q3). Let’s revisit the top four improvements we’ve made to the cloud software buying and selling experience in just the last few months that have accelerated buying momentum.

1. Find what you’re looking for faster

With enhanced filters, quickly discover top solutions ready to run in your Google Cloud instance. Filters are now more intuitive, allowing you to browse solutions by industry, type, category, use case, and more. Check out the “free trial” filter if you want to try a solution before buying. And if you’re looking for inspiration, we surface popular, new, and featured products across categories. Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, you’ll benefit from more detailed product cards to help you evaluate what’s best for your organization. Explore the Google Cloud Marketplace catalog to find innovative solutions to your business problems.

2. Buy and sell the way you want

We’ve added new subscription models and payment schedules, making it simpler than ever to save money and meet your organization's procurement needs. Through Google Cloud Marketplace, you can negotiate with third-party vendors and retire Google Cloud committed spend on first and third-party purchases. Many of our software vendors now have the ability to offer flexible subscription models, including flat fees, usage-based, hybrid flat fee + usage, and committed use discounts that customers can pay for monthly or up front. These partners can now also include standard or customized terms to meet your organization’s procurement needs. Learn more about initiating and accepting customized offers. And to make buying easier in large organizations, billing admins can now set up a procurement governance workflow that allows end-users to submit procurement requests for new SaaS products directly from Google Cloud Marketplace.

For the many software vendors accelerating growth via the Google Cloud Marketplace, in addition to these new pricing tools and the partner investments we announced last month, we’ve also broadened migration to Producer Portal, our new offer publishing, deal-making, and analytics portal. This new experience makes many of the new pricing features possible. Plus we’ve improved partner disbursements to set you up for success as your marketplace deal flow grows – all in pursuit of being the easiest cloud to go-to-market with. If you’re interested in selling your enterprise-grade solution to Google Cloud customers, here’s how to get started.

3. Manage purchases conveniently

After purchasing a great solution, you’ve got to set up and manage it. We’ve also made a few improvements to speed up your post-purchase time-to-value: 

• The new Your Orders page provides a unified experience where you can view and manage all third-party subscription purchases under a single billing account. 

• Your Products helps developers easily find, access, and receive relevant updates for the products that they used or are available to them within their project so they always have them at their fingertips.

• Plus we’ve simplified SaaS setup for admins with the Service Account Provisioning UI. It used to be that the software vendor had to manually share service account details with you, and someone on your end needed to provide access via command-line interface (CLI). We’ve made this easier: software vendors can now get the access their product needs with just a few clicks. And if you’re a SaaS vendor looking to speed up customer onboarding, read how you can incorporate this feature into your product. 

4. Maintain control over your solutions – easily

Once customers build or buy, establishing and enforcing standards and controls across your cloud landscape can be a headache, especially in large organizations. Luckily, Google Cloud Marketplace has Service Catalog functionality built-in to make teams more productive by helping you efficiently distribute approved solution configurations across your organization. Enforcing governance policies in-console with Service Catalog not only simplifies compliance, but it also saves engineering time by reducing manual configuration steps and post-build reviews. And now with the ability to publish Terraform configurations, Service Catalog allows for a consistent, flexible approach that reduces the need for organizations to learn multiple infrastructure-as-code (IaC) solutions. Ready to get started? Be up-and-running fast with our Service Catalog quickstart guide.

We know you’ll love these enhancements, and we’re not slowing down. We can’t wait to share more about what we’re working on soon.