Overview of marketplace offers
Appropriate roles: Admin agent
As a partner in the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program, you can provide solutions published by independent software vendors (ISVs) to your customers and bundle them with other Microsoft solutions to better serve your customers' individual business needs.
Commercial marketplace
Two public, online Microsoft storefronts sell solutions from independent software vendors:
Microsoft commercial marketplace specializes in business solutions, such as software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and apps that extend directly into Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Power Platform.
Azure Marketplace specializes in solutions that are built on or built for Azure and intended for IT professionals and developers.
Together, these platforms make up the Microsoft commercial marketplace.
Note
If you are an ISV and want to publish in the Microsoft commercial marketplace, see the marketplace publisher documentation.
When an ISV publishes a product or solution to the commercial marketplace, they can choose to make it available for partners in the CSP program to purchase and resell to their customers. They might even choose to create a private offer in which they can extend margins on their published solutions to specific CSP partners to incentivize them to sell those solutions.
There are various advantages to using Partner Center as a platform to discover, purchase, and manage ISV solutions that are opted into the CSP program:
- Ability to expand your catalog of offerings by selling ISV solutions in addition to Microsoft products
- Opportunities to build new relationships with ISVs
- Opportunities to receive margins on ISV solutions
- A centralized platform where you can purchase both ISV and Microsoft software for your customers
- Consolidated billing for both ISV and Microsoft solutions
- A single integration with Partner Center across all ISV solutions, which lends operational and procurement efficiencies
- Ability to use Partner Center APIs to bring the end-to-end experience into your own custom storefront
Note
To learn about the ISV-to-partner private offers feature that enables CSP partners to receive margins on ISV solutions, see Marketplace margins (ISV to Partner private offers).
Using Partner Center
If you're a partner in the CSP program, there are many commercial marketplace activities that you might want to perform regarding ISV offers.
To learn more about each activity, see the following table.
| If you want to: | Read: |
|---|---|
| Learn how to find available ISV offers/products, pricing, and product details | Discover marketplace offers |
| Learn how to purchase and activate an offer for your customer | Purchase marketplace offers |
| Learn how to cancel or renew a subscription or add or remove licenses | Manage marketplace offers |
| Learn how billing works | Billing for marketplace offers |
| Learn about support roles and responsibilities | Understand support |
| Learn about contracts and the responsibilities of CSP partners and ISVs | Understand contracting |
| Learn about ISV-to-Partner private offers | Marketplace margins |
SaaS subscription management responsibilities
The following table shows who does what and where to manage SaaS subscriptions.
| Action: | Who does it: | Where it happens: |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase | CSP | Partner Center or Azure portal |
| Generate SaaS activation link | CSP | Partner Center or Azure portal |
| Activate SaaS subscription | ISV | ISV's own portal |
| Subscription management (suspend, cancel, autorenew, and so on) | CSP | Partner Center or Azure portal |
| License management (per user SaaS) | ISV | ISV's own portal |
| Support related to billing | CSP to contact Microsoft | Partner Center |
| Technical support related to third-party publisher (3PP) app | CSP to contact ISV | ISV's own portal |