Hyperscaler marketplaces now move tens of billions of dollars in software every year. What they have not figured out is how to extend a line of credit to a 40-person MSP in Lyon, bundle three vendors into one invoice, or teach a reseller how to sell agentic AI. That gap is exactly where distribution is rebuilding itself.
Remember when streaming was going to kill the video store, and then it actually did? The IT channel has spent the better part of a decade bracing for its own Blockbuster moment. Every time AWS, Microsoft, or Google shipped a new marketplace feature, a keynote somewhere read the distributor its last rites. The distributor, rudely, declined to die.
The numbers make that case look strong. Omdia, which now owns Canalys, projects that enterprise software sold through hyperscaler marketplaces will grow from $30 billion in 2024 to $163 billion by 2030. Some vendors already clear a billion dollars a year there.
Read one line further in the same research, though, and the plot twists. By 2030, Omdia expects partners to facilitate nearly 60% of all marketplace transactions. Today, more than half of third-party marketplace spend still bypasses partners entirely. In other words, the marketplace is not replacing the channel. It is becoming the channel’s newest checkout counter.
So, who still needs a distributor? Quite a few people, as it turns out. Just not for the reasons they used to.
How marketplaces actually work for partners
Strip away the branding and a hyperscaler marketplace does three things well. It gives the customer one bill. It lets them burn down committed Cloud spend, the multi-year commitments enterprises negotiate with AWS, Microsoft, or Google. And it removes procurement friction, because the hyperscaler is usually an approved supplier already.
Omdia estimates that close to $470 billion in Cloud commitments sits across the three big platforms, and part of that can be spent on third-party software. For a CFO staring at an unused commitment, buying a security tool through the marketplace feels like free money, or at least money already spent.
Partners plug into this through private offers. On AWS, Channel Partner Private Offers let a reseller set its own price and terms on a vendor’s listing. Microsoft’s multiparty private offers and Google Cloud’s reseller private offers follow similar logic: the vendor authorizes a partner, the partner negotiates with the customer, and the transaction still flows through the hyperscaler’s billing. The partner keeps a margin, and the customer keeps its commitment drawdown.
It works. US reseller Presidio became the first to pass $1 billion in sales through AWS Marketplace. That is not the behavior of a dying channel.
What marketplaces do not solve
The marketplace is a superb cash register and a mediocre store manager. Think self-checkout: fast, efficient, and no help at all when the barcode will not scan.
Multi-vendor bundling: An SMB buying backup, endpoint security, productivity licenses, and monitoring wants one package and one price. Marketplaces sell listings, not solutions. Building a bundle across three vendors and two Clouds is still manual work.
Local billing and credit: Hyperscaler billing is built for enterprises with procurement departments. A small MSP in Poland or Portugal needs invoices in local currency, VAT handled correctly, payment terms, and a credit line. Distributors have run those balance sheets for decades. Hyperscalers have little appetite for underwriting the receivables of thousands of small partners.
Compliance: European customers increasingly ask where their data sits, which jurisdiction governs the contract, and how a vendor supports their NIS2 or DORA obligations. Those questions do not fit in a marketplace listing field.
Enablement: Nobody learns to sell, deploy, or support a product from a storefront. Training, certification, pre-sales engineering, and proof-of-concept labs remain human, local, and expensive.
There is also a European twist. With the proposed Cloud and AI Development Act turning sovereignty into a procurement criterion for the public sector, a growing slice of European demand will want routes to market that are not tied to a single US platform. Distributors with European-owned cloud portfolios have a story to tell there, and the Sovereign Cloud spending data suggests buyers are listening.
Fragmentation is real, too. Three hyperscalers mean three rulebooks, three partner programs, and three sets of reporting, which is about as relaxing as assembling three different flat-pack wardrobes at once.
How distributors are repositioning
The big distributors read the same research and moved accordingly. The play has shifted from logistics to platforms, services, and enablement.
Look at what the majors now lead with in their annual reports and investor material. Ingram Micro has organized its business around Xvantage, its digital platform for ordering, provisioning, and billing. TD SYNNEX pushes StreamOne as its Cloud and subscription platform. ALSO’s Cloud Marketplace aggregates cloud services for European resellers. The common thread is clear: become the operating system for partners who sell recurring services, regardless of which cloud underneath collects the payment.
Several distributors have also become authorized resellers inside the hyperscaler marketplaces themselves. The distributor runs the private offer, finances the deal, and manages the partner relationship, while the end customer still gets its commitment burn-down.
Then there is AI. Most partners lack the in-house talent to build an AI practice from scratch, which puts distributors in the aggregator seat: curating vendors, running demo environments, and packaging services that partners can resell under their own brand.
What this means for MSPs and vendors
For MSPs, the marketplace is an option, not an obligation. The real question is not “marketplace or distributor?” but “which deal goes through which door?”
Enterprise customers with large cloud commitments will increasingly insist on buying through the marketplace, and an MSP that cannot transact there will lose those deals. The SMB core of most MSP businesses, however, still buys through distribution, where bundling, local billing, and credit matter more than commitment drawdown. And as AI starts to reshape service delivery (see our look at the agentic MSP), an MSP’s value shifts further toward the services wrapped around a product rather than the product itself.
For vendors, the danger is channel conflict by algorithm. Selling directly through a marketplace is easy, and it can quietly undercut the partners who found and educated the customer. Vendors that publish clear rules on deal registration, partner-attached private offers, and margin protection will keep their channel. Vendors that do not will discover that partners have very long memories.
So, who owns the customer?
The blunt answer: nobody. Call it the One Ring problem: whoever insists the customer is “my precious” ends up alone in a cave. Customers own themselves, and they reward whoever makes their lives easier.
The hyperscaler owns the transaction. The vendor owns the product. The partner, whether MSP, reseller, or systems integrator, owns the day-to-day relationship: the call when something breaks, the quarterly review, the recommendation for what to buy next. Distribution owns the infrastructure that lets thousands of those partners operate at all.
The Marketplace Era does not change that structure. It just adds a new counter where the receipt gets printed.
What to do now
Distributors: Offer marketplace operations as a service. Run private offers, finance them, and report on them for partners who cannot do it alone. Treat the hyperscaler as a payment rail, not a rival.
MSPs: Become transactable on at least one marketplace where your customers hold cloud commitments, and keep your SMB business in distribution, where bundling and credit live.
Vendors: Publish marketplace rules of engagement. Protect partner margins on partner-sourced deals, even when the transaction runs through a cloud.
Everyone: Track the data. Ask hyperscaler and distribution partners for partner-attached marketplace metrics every quarter, and benchmark them against Omdia’s 60% forecast.
The channel’s next chapter gets written in person. Meet distributors, vendors, hyperscalers, and MSPs at CloudFest Global, March 15–18, 2027, at Europa-Park. Registration is open.
