With Microsoft Build 2024 coming soon, we’re excited to share how the Microsoft commercial marketplace is scaling innovation. As we enter the AI era, developers are leveraging the marketplace to enable cutting-edge AI tools that accelerate the adoption of next-generation solutions by organizations. At the same time, more customers than ever are using marketplaces to quickly discover, try, and adopt new AI solutions. Ultimately, the Marketplace, an extension of the Microsoft Cloud, is a way to discover and deploy AI and Microsoft Copilot applications.
Microsoft Commercial Marketplace
Find, purchase, and deliver cloud solutions that fit your organization’s evolving needs.
At the heart of the market is Microsoft’s strong network of partners and its extensive catalog of solutions from software development companies. These solutions are evident not only in stores but throughout the in-product experience. Today, the market supports a diverse catalog of AI-based solutions, including AI-enabled Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products, Copilot extensions, AI-enabled Microsoft Teams applications, and machine learning models from partners such as Mistral AI. And more. Microsoft supports many ways for partners to build AI-based technologies, but the Marketplace is where customers can find all of these solutions from a single, trusted source.
Partner innovating with AI
We’ve seen tradable AI offerings published on the Microsoft commercial marketplace grow at a triple-digit rate year-over-year. And customers want to find the AI solution that best suits their unique needs. Visits to our stores’ AI solutions pages have increased by more than 700% year-over-year, and AI solutions continue to represent a rapidly growing percentage of sales transacted through our marketplace.*
During the Microsoft Build session, you’ll hear from two partners who are leveraging the Microsoft Cloud and building exciting AI solutions now available through the Marketplace.
- pine cone Helping businesses build generative AI applications faster using vector databases. Pinecone can be deployed on Microsoft Azure and a variety of data sources, models, and frameworks. Coming soon to market, Pinecone Serverless will deliver generative AI applications faster and at up to 50x lower cost.
- UiPath’s business automation platform AI-powered automation helps customers maximize productivity, transform user experiences, and innovate faster. With over 80 platform integrations, customers can leverage UiPath enterprise-grade automation capabilities directly across Microsoft 365, Azure, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Copilot.
Buy smarter in the marketplace
Microsoft is the only company that can support the entire AI ecosystem with Copilot, from the infrastructure and data layer to the front-end user experience. This allows developers to quickly build the next generation of AI tools and partners to connect their AI solutions to the Microsoft customer base through the marketplace, making it efficient and scalable to help organizations discover and adopt AI broadly. Throughout this AI transformation, the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace is a way to help businesses of all sizes access the solutions they need.
Rapid technological advancements make it more important to balance the need to innovate with meeting business requirements. By aligning your SaaS strategy with your market, organizations can unify their data to make the most of their AI investments.
- Try before you buy. The marketplace allows you to try out new solutions before making a larger commitment. Using a free trial or purchasing a few licenses directly allows you to see if the technology is right for your organization before making a large investment. The marketplace also supports proof-of-concept through private offerings, allowing you to further investigate your solution prior to mass adoption.
- Innovate faster. Centralizing your cloud portfolio can accelerate time to value. AI solutions are part of one comprehensive catalog and are pre-certified to run on Azure. Suppliers can be onboarded immediately and billing is simplified through a single invoice.
- Maximize your investment. Organizations can optimize their cloud spending by calculating the solutions needed for their Azure consumption commitments. Microsoft helps you get discounts on Azure infrastructure by automatically calculating 100% qualifying offers for your commitment.
- Create alignment across teams. The marketplace makes it easier to keep your team aligned using approved solutions. The private Azure Marketplace allows administrators to pre-select approved solutions, ensuring teams have compliant access to what they need. If the solution you need isn’t already approved, team members can easily request additions, empowering innovation with the right guardrails to protect your investment.
Management and control through private Azure Marketplace
All of this leads to huge savings in time and money. In the 2023 Total Economic Impact™ study commissioned by Microsoft, Forrester Consulting found that marketplaces deliver customers a 587% return on investment (ROI) over three years with a payback period of less than six months.
Join Microsoft Build
We are excited to accelerate the AI era by setting the standard for the creation and commercialization of AI solutions. If you’re a developer building a new solution, discover the tools and benefits of ISV Success to help you make this innovation happen. Partners can also use Marketplace Rewards to accelerate market growth and create high-impact opportunities.
We’ll share more about the value of marketplaces for organizations in future sessions at Microsoft Build. Whether you’re attending in Seattle or virtually, we invite you to learn more with our experts.
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*Internal data from our data analysis team
