Today Amazon Web Services launched AWS Marketplace, an online store that makes it easy for you to find, buy, and immediately start using software and services that run on the AWS Cloud. You can use AWS Marketplace’s 1-Click deployment to quickly launch pre-configured software on your own Amazon EC2 instances and pay only for what you use, by the hour or month. AWS handles billing and payments, and software charges appear on your AWS bill.

Marketplace has software listings from well-known vendors including 10gen, CA, Canonical, Couchbase, Check Point Software, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, Zend, and others, as well as many widely used open source offerings including Wordpress, Drupal, and MediaWiki.

AWS Marketplace brings the same simple and trusted online shopping experience that customers enjoy on Amazon.com to software built for the AWS platform, streamlining the process of doing research and purchasing software. It features a wide selection of development and business software, including software infrastructure, developer tools, and business applications. Product prices are clearly stated and appear on the same bill as your other AWS services.

AWS Marketplace also simplifies many of the challenges software companies face, such as acquiring customers, developing distribution channels, and billing for their software.

Why shop here?

The way businesses are buying applications is changing. There is a new generation of leaders that have very different expectations about how they can select the products and tools they need to be successful. Last week I met with a CIO for a discussion about how her IT department can use AWS to help make their business units be more agile and move faster. One of the stumbling blocks she mentioned was how to select the best software running on AWS, in a way that was completely in line with the “Cloud Experience”: no software to install, no sales cycle, no procurement delays, and a selection of licensing models to choose from. She jokingly asked for an “Amazon 1-Click” experience for software. I am sure she will be a very happy CIO today.

AWS Marketplace features a wide selection of commercial and free IT and business software. AWS Marketplace enables you to compare options, read reviews, and quickly find the software you want.

We wanted to shrink the time between finding what you want and getting it up and running. Once you find software you like, you can deploy that software to your own EC2 instance with 1-Click – like the CIO suggested – or using popular management tools like the AWS Console.

In addition, for most products, software prices are clearly posted on the website so you can purchase software immediately, with the payment instrument you already have on file with Amazon Web Services. Software charges appear on the same monthly bill as your AWS infrastructure charges.

Why sell here?

The Amazon Web Services have helped to create great ecosystem of ISVs that are selling software and services to other customers running in the cloud. It has had a true democratization effect: no longer does the dominant vendor in a market automatically get chosen. I have many IT decision makers ask me who are the young and exciting companies they should be paying attention to. Who are the companies that have a native cloud product, who are the ones that have innovative new licensing models, who are the young and hungry companies that break with the old style of enterprise software vending and are truly customer-centric. At the same time the up-and-coming companies often ask me how we can help them get in front of more customers such that they can compete in an open and honest way. And they also often ask whether we can help them with what Amazon.com does so well for its sellers: handle billing and charging.

AWS Marketplace includes both large, well known companies as well as exciting up and coming companies. If you’re a software provider with an offering that runs on the AWS cloud, you can gain new customers, enable usage-based billing without much additional work, and ensure that customers have a fast and easy deployment experience with their software.

AWS Marketplace helps software and SaaS providers find new customers by exposing their products to some of the hundreds of thousands of AWS customers, ranging from individual software developers to large enterprises.

Additionally, if you are interested in adding hourly billing to your software, AWS Marketplace can help. Simply upload an Amazon Machine Image to AWS and provide the hourly cost. Billing is managed by AWS Marketplace, relieving sellers of the responsibility of metering usage, managing customer accounts, and processing payments, leaving software developers more time to focus on building great software.

Summary

At Amazon we have a long experience with buyers and sellers in a marketplace. We know that something great happens when you solve problems for both the people selling things and those buying things – the market becomes more and more vibrant. We know that for buyers it is important to have very convenient ways of discovering and buying products. For sellers it is important to get their products in front of as many relevant customers as possible and make the sales process as painless as possible.

But more important that anything else for both parties is trust: easy to understand product information, high quality, relevant reviews by other customers, that the seller is reputable and has a history of delivery, and that the buyer will only be charged for his exact usage. For the seller it removes the burden of having to manage customers, measuring their usage and collecting payments for it.

The AWS Marketplace is a great step forward in making easier to buy and deploy software. It also makes it dead simple for ISVs for add hourly billing to their offerings and get their software in from of hundreds of thousands of active AWS customers.

For more information see the announcement at the AWS website, the “Introducing AWS Marketplace” video, the posting on the AWS blog and off course visit the AWS Marketplace for a test drive. Happy shopping!