Contributed Article: By Kevin Pickhardt, Executive Chairman – Pharos

The rise of cloud marketplaces has forced enterprises to adjust how they approach channel procurement decisions. In the past, those decisions were built on two primary factors: the expertise and value-add of the supplier, and the lowest total acquisition cost. While value-added suppliers generally weren’t the lowest cost, they brought industry, product, and service knowledge that buyers needed to be successful.

Cloud marketplaces add a new angle to this equation: committed cloud spend. As enterprises commit to increasing their cloud spend with a specific provider, such as Google, Microsoft Azure, or AWS, they tap into bulk purchasing discounts that reduce the operational cost of their cloud usage. In an age where more and more enterprise systems are becoming cloud-first, those discounts are becoming increasingly important.

And cutting costs on cloud usage isn’t the only benefit enterprises are gaining from the shift. Cloud providers are doing much of the vetting work enterprises once had to do on their own, providing an additional level of due diligence on the software developer. AWS, for example, provides expert reviews and certifications of security, architecture, and stability for the solutions offered in its marketplace. This becomes a value that is hard for enterprises to match individually.

To fully take advantage of those benefits, however, enterprises must understand how a bigger cloud spend impacts other areas of their operations. The following explores some of the key areas enterprises should address.

How the shift to cloud marketplaces impacts governance and security

Enterprises by and large have already made two important choices. They moved to the cloud and committed to interoperability by opting for systems that work together rather than in silos. Cloud marketplaces can help to reinforce this already-established direction.

But making the shift impacts how governance works, as the marketplace provider picks up part of the load in that area. AWS, for instance, has vetted the supplier, standardized the contract terms, and put the purchase on a bill the enterprise already processes. With many suppliers coming through the same provider, there is a common baseline that doesn’t exist when every vendor has its own contracting and process.

While the process helps lighten the governance load, it doesn’t guarantee consistent deployment or real interoperability. Two products bought from the same marketplace can still be deployed in different ways, tied to identity in different ways, and managed in different ways. The enterprise still owns how things fit together, and the supplier still owns whether its product fits the market needs, but the marketplace process can still help.

Security follows the same logic as governance for those leveraging cloud marketplaces, with multiple owners working together. The marketplace provider secures the platform and the transaction. The supplier is responsible for how its product handles identity, data, and access. The enterprise decides how it all comes together in its own environment.

Security takes a village. A marketplace can bring the village together on common ground by inspecting the supplier from a compliance standpoint, but each party still has to do its part.

Print management provides an excellent example of how cloud marketplaces are impacting procurement and security. Print has been a late addition to the conversation because enterprise

print management has traditionally come through the hardware channel, with software treated like part of the printer. While everything else in the office environment was being rebuilt as cloud services, print continued to be run like office equipment.
As print management takes a place among the rest of the cloud

migration, subject to the same governance, it stops being an exception. Now, it benefits from the same security reviews, cost reporting, and identity model as the rest of an enterprise’s cloud-based services.

The security shift is especially beneficial to print. Traditional print, which depends on trusted network connections, doesn’t align with Zero Trust programs. Cloud-based print management changes that by putting it in a place where the marketplace provider, supplier, and enterprise each do their part. Procuring print through the cloud marketplace can help to ensure that printing isn’t the exception to enterprise security programs.

How the shift to cloud marketplaces impacts the procurement/deployment relationship

The separation of procurement and deployment has long been a frustration for both vendors and operational buyers. This distance often disrupts communication and causes information to get lost. Confusion between what the vendor thinks they sold and what the enterprise thinks it bought is a well-known issue that leads to a result neither side likes: the change order process.

Cloud marketplaces help better integrate the IT service being purchased and the procurement of that service. This can streamline and accelerate the process dramatically, which is a benefit to all involved.

How the shift to cloud marketplaces boosts alignment

Greater alignment with existing cloud environments is one benefit that marketplaces deliver most directly. I know that, when I buy an app from my phone’s marketplace, I have the marketplace and the software supplier on the hook to support that alignment—both technical and financial. Enterprises are no different with the purchases they make on cloud marketplaces.

Along with greater alignment comes less complexity, albeit at the risk of the complexity that comes from bulk invoicing and administration. The enterprise has fewer vendors, contracts, and invoices to worry about, but a marginal increase in the effort to audit and inspect marketplace invoicing. The marketplace provider has taken on the burden of vendor management, which it can then leverage across all of the clients that use that vendor.

As cloud spend continues to rise, enterprises need to stay clear on the fact that buying on cloud marketplaces isn’t just a budget issue. It’s a shift that requires them to evaluate governance and security while rethinking how services like print, which have traditionally been viewed separately, can be optimized by bringing them into the cloud estate.

– Kevin Pickhardt is the Executive Chairman of Pharos, where he brings decades of leadership experience in scaling enterprise technology companies and guiding long-term growth strategies. With a strong background in building and advising technology-driven organizations, Pickhardt plays a key role in shaping Pharos’s vision around PrintOps — the modern cloud-native, user-centric approach to printing and the infrastructure and operations that support it. His leadership emphasizes operational discipline, customer trust, and sustainable growth across highly regulated and complex enterprise environments.

Opinions expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Biz Tech Journals