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Using the AWS Marketplace to optimize your digital experience investments

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Jillian Fraas, Partner Relationship Manager for Cloud at Contentstack, discusses how companies undergoing large-scale digital transformation can leverage the AWS Marketplace to optimize their technology budget.

Topics

  • What is the AWS Marketplace?
  • What do end-users see, and how does it work?
  • Differences and similarities between AWS and Contentstack marketplaces
  • Economic drivers for using the AWS Marketplace
  • Who within an organization uses the marketplace?
  • The value of purchasing headless CMS-based digital experience platforms on AWS Marketplace
  • Is Contentstack available now on AWS Marketplace?
  • Shifting your existing contract to purchase through the AWS Marketplace
  • Will Contentstack products be available on other marketplaces?

AWS Marketplace

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Key Takeaways

What is the AWS Marketplace?

Find, test, buy and deploy software that runs on AWS.

The AWS Marketplace allows organizations working within the AWS infrastructure—they may be doing cloud hosting, digital transformations, or other sorts of projects within the AWS network—to easily find, test, buy and deploy software within that system. ... Within the AWS Marketplace, there's going to be a variety of different solutions across different technology providers. These companies have made internal investments to position themselves in that marketplace. There will be tons of different types of technologies, professional services and software applications.

What do end-users see, and how does it work?

AWS Marketplace provides familiarity, confidence and reassurance about your purchases.

Like your personal Amazon account at home, it’s a way to purchase things that you could purchase directly from the retailer, but instead, when you purchase from a marketplace that you’re familiar with, you'll have a little bit more reassurance. You'll be confident of things like two-day shipping, your billing information will already be set up, and you'll have one less login you need to manage. You will also know who to contact if you have questions or concerns about your order. The same will translate into the AWS environment for customers already working with AWS. You can explore different categories by use cases or tools specific to what you're looking for. If you have technologies or organizations on your radar that you want to leverage, you can click through and go directly to their listings through the search tool.

Differences and similarities between AWS and Contentstack marketplaces

Both are designed to make it easy for customers to find compatible tools.

Both marketplaces are designed to meet the customer where they already are. In the case of the Contentstack Marketplace, it will allow our existing or prospective customers to know who they can easily connect with within our ecosystem. The same goes for AWS Marketplace—it's just pulling tools and technologies that work well within that ecosystem and putting them where customers can easily recognize that these tools and technologies are already living within that same environment. In the case of Contentstack, we have a variety of partner applications, experiences, accelerators and different things available for our customers. The same would go for AWS, just on a wider scale.

Economic drivers for using the AWS Marketplace

Marketplace offers various programs to help organizations maximize their technology budget.

Many enterprise organizations, if they're already working with AWS, will have an enterprise discount program or an EDP. It includes a pre-commitment to AWS on how much they will spend. And by making that upfront commitment, they are locking in things like different levels of discounts, or they're getting additional levels of support from either the AWS teams or partners. They may be getting some additional credits and incentives for their level of participation within that ecosystem.

If you don't have an EDP, it's still a great way to build up your spend within that ecosystem so that all those dollars start to count toward getting better discounts. It's just being smart about how you're allocating budgets. And what we find is that a lot of times, there are technology budgets that have been established that are already committed to something like an AWS. Where there's a lot of digital transformation going on, they know that they will need to spend on technologies, but they haven't quite identified yet which solutions those are. In a lot of cases, there's some flexibility. They know we're going to have to build out additional tools, but they're not quite sure what those are yet, but they know they're going to earmark that amount of spend. That allows organizations to tap into tools like ours when they're ready. When they hit that point, they already have the dollars set aside to do so.

There are many different types of programs available for organizations. ...Part of why I was brought on board is to help navigate all of these different types of nuances that can come with the various programs.

Who within an organization uses the marketplace?

Technical buyers can quickly deploy new solutions as needed.

Usually, it is someone on the more technical team. There are users that have the approval to buy via the marketplace. For example, I was chatting with our GM of Engineering, and he said he was more excited about this announcement than probably anyone in our company because he's actually the user who works with the marketplace. He's done this with other organizations where he already had a budget allocated and knew that he would need those tools and technologies. Now he can easily find those solutions when he's ready. When he needs it, he can deploy them. The budget's already there, so he doesn't have to go back to finance. He doesn't have to go back through levels of approval. It's already available to get up and running as quickly as possible. Our GM of Engineering was excited about this tool and offer because he goes in and purchases software this way.

As our teams are developing new solutions and building out new products, they find areas where they may need a tool that they haven't needed up till that point. And it makes it easy to go in and purchase through the marketplace because the dollars are already there, and the infrastructure's already in place. It's just a one-click purchase option to make that tool available to his team and continue moving forward with the project. There are permissions and controls as to who can accept or who can click to purchase within the marketplace. Users can't even get through a certain screen if they don't have that level of permission. So it is all very secure within the AWS system.

The value of purchasing headless CMS-based digital experience platforms on AWS Marketplace

Headless and marketplaces are both about providing easy-to-use choices.

One of the exciting parts about going headless is you have options for tools and technologies. It's plug-and-play. You can build out specifically around the solutions and the business problems you're solving. So when it comes to that, being able to interconnect with those other marketplace technologies will make it easier for the customer to know that they're building out a tech stack that works together. ... There's a lot of work going on behind the scenes of any of these marketplaces to make it as easy as possible to transact, to procure and to be able to test out those tools and technologies.

Is Contentstack available now on AWS Marketplace?

Yes. Contentstack is available on AWS Marketplace now, globally.

You can go through and procure this today. You have to have the right designation within your own AWS system to be able to purchase, but you can click through and submit a purchase. You can also contact us here to have those more customized conversations. If you want to set up a conversation between us and AWS and your organization, we're happy to navigate all of that. ... If you wanted to come through and make a purchase, but maybe this isn't the exact product offering you were looking for, or you've got questions to navigate, we'll help you do that, and then we can still upload it through the marketplace via a private offer. I'm excited to share that this is a global initiative.

Shifting your existing contract to purchase through the AWS Marketplace

For questions about your existing contract, be sure to work closely with your CMS team.

As we navigate towards upcoming renewals, we can look at some different levers and options and explore what makes sense. But every contract's going to be pretty different.

Will Contentstack products be available on other marketplaces?

We will prioritize customer preferences.

We host some of our clients on Microsoft Azure, and as part of this initiative, we're exploring different opportunities to meet our customers that have a preference where they are. So if it's an Azure marketplace or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), we're exploring our options. It's going to be customer-led. If that's where the customer demand is, we'll find ways to prioritize that.

Talk to an expert

Interested in talking to a Contentstack expert about this episode?

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