15X AWS Co-Sell Visibility Secret + JFrog's “Mega Deal” Cloud GTM Playbook
Hi, it's Roman Kirsanov from Partner Insight newsletter, where I deconstruct winning Cloud GTM strategies and the latest trends in cloud marketplaces.
This week we break down:
JFrog shares up >50% YTD, boosted by 45% YoY cloud revenue growth—CEO reveals how AWS, Azure, and GCP cloud marketplaces drive mega-deals
Why AWS's AI gives some partners 15X more co-sell matches than others—the exact optimizations, data and specialization moves to boost your visibility to thousands of AWS sellers
BCG's research: enterprise software budgets shrinking everywhere except AI and cloud—while 6 other categories face cuts up to 34%. Your action plan inside.
Want the full marketplace playbook? Our comprehensive 5-week Cloud GTM Leader course brings you battle-tested growth strategies. Join Cohort 12 starting September 9th and learn from top alliance leaders who scaled to $MM+ with AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud marketplaces.
Early bird pricing ends tomorrow—secure your spot now.
>50% YTD: What JFrog knows about Cloud GTM that others don't
JFrog shares up 53% YTD - impressive performance for non-AI-native software (e.g. GitLab down 24% in the same period). What's driving their growth and market buy-in? JFrog's cloud revenue and strategic marketplace focus.
JFrog cloud revenue hit $57M in Q2, up 45% YoY, now representing 45% of total revenue vs 38% a year ago.
But what caught my attention is how cloud marketplaces became their mega-deal engine.
CEO Shlomi Ben Haim revealed during the Q2 call:
"The collaboration with the cloud providers is very important because it helps us to accelerate deals, especially mega deals that are coming in, that mainly through the marketplace and with a lot of collaboration from AWS, GCP and Microsoft Azure."
It's not just co-selling, but also co-building:
"This is not just co-sell and partnership. This is also kind of co-services even when we are going with the customer, scaling with the customer" - he highlighted.
JFrog doubled down on cloud collaboration with AWS SCA
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Strategic Collaboration Agreement signed in February also emphasized marketplace:
"JFrog's agreement with AWS will directly benefit customers, delivering accelerated cloud migration and increased resources to help customers leverage AWS Marketplace for seamless procurement."
Customer Fortra confirmed the value: "procuring JFrog through AWS Marketplace has streamlined the acquisition process."
JFrog purchase obligations up >60%
JFrog's non-cancelable purchase obligations (which include cloud commits) jumped $30M+ in Q2 – from $48M to $80M, closely following this SCA announcement. Coincidence?
Meanwhile, CEO stressed their disciplined cloud strategy in Q2:
"we are optimizing the contracts with this hyperscaler... being very responsible to how we grow in the cloud.
So not just pushing the pedal all the way down, but also to do it in a responsible, smart way."
Possible explanation: new commits secured better economics.
Platform consolidation working at scale
55% of JFrog's revenues now come from Enterprise Plus subscriptions - customers are buying its platform, not just point solutions.
RPO surged 75% YoY to $477M, signaling customers' commitments.
Looks like multi-product are also resonating in large, multi-year marketplace deals.
AI tailwind is real but longer-term
JFrog's platform is now part of NVIDIA's Enterprise AI Factory validated design, where it's the central artifact repository and secure model registry for agentic AI/MLOps stacks. Exciting move.
3 lessons for alliance leaders
Marketplaces are the tip of the spear for "mega deals" - not just a procurement shortcut but as co-sell + co-services motion
SCAs create multi-faceted value - driving cloud migration, marketplace growth, and better economics
Platform strategies are clearly resonating with customers
What's your take?
Why AWS's AI gives some partners 15X more co-sell matches
AWS just broke down how their AI decides which partners to recommend to AWS sellers and how to optimize your discovery. The difference is massive: partners with specializations get recommended 15X (!!!) more often.
Here's what many leaders miss:
Amazon Web Services (AWS)'s AI partner recommendations engine isn't waiting for sellers to search for you. It's proactively surfacing recommendations inside their CRM during live customer opportunities.
Think about that – your visibility is being determined by an AI analyzing every opportunity description, every pipeline update, every customer interaction pattern.
The engine uses a hierarchical approach that first classifies the customer problem, then matches partner expertise, and finally selects specific products. It's not about having hundreds of wins – even a single relevant win in a specific use case gets you into the conversation.
But here's the kicker: the quality of your data, including marketplace and CRM descriptions are now key.
AWS highlighted the exact multipliers:
CRM integration drives a 50% boost in recommendations
AWS Marketplace presence adds another 40%
Right tagging in ACE? Extra 100%
But specializations? That's where it gets interesting – partners with AWS specializations see a 15X increase - explained Luca Gorgoglione Certini, Head of Product Management at AWS
The uncomfortable truth for alliance leaders:
Your sales team's success on AWS increasingly depends on how well you feed their machine learning models. Every stale opportunity, every generic solution description, every missing product tag is literally reducing your algorithmic visibility.
Here's your tactical playbook:
Fix your ACE sync and hygiene – Automate pipeline sync via APIs or connectors.
Update opportunity stages in real-time, tag solutions to opportunities, include AWS services in descriptions. This isn't admin work; “your data is your GTM” - highlighted Abhisheikh Lahoti, Director, AWS Partner Engineering at the announcement.
Write solution descriptions both for AI and customers
Add descriptions that specify industry, use case, and customer segment. Link Partner Central and Marketplace, because AI now analyzes both.
Pursue specializations strategically
That 15X multiplier is the difference between 5% and 95% visibility to AWS sellers.
Monitor your score
AWS now shows your co-sell recommendation score in Analytics & Insights. This is your direct feedback loop into how their AI sees you.
As Matt Garman emphasized at last re:Invent, AWS wants partners in every customer account. They're now using AI to match thousands of partners to millions of customer opportunities.
For alliance leaders:
Your partner strategy isn't just about relationships anymore. It's also about optimizing for AI discovery while building human trust.
PS. Check AWS blog with breakdown of how to improve your visibility to AWS Sales
Which 2 software categories grow, while all others shrink (BCG)
Enterprise software budgets are shrinking everywhere except AI and cloud —BCG's new research reveals.
Here's how to navigate the perfect storm of cost pressure and application sprawl.
Boston Consulting Group (BCG)'s latest research surveying 300+ C-level leaders and 600+ IT buyers highlights that companies plan net consolidation in 6 out of 8 software application categories.
The only growth areas? AI/ML with +35% net expansion and cloud services growing steady. Everything else faces net cuts – from CRM (-27%) to collaboration tools (-34%) in a massive budget migration.
3 pressure points creating this shift:
1. The math doesn't add up
IT budgets grew just 3% annually post-pandemic – below inflation – while application spending stayed at 30% of total IT spend for a decade. With 75% of decision-makers citing cost as their top concern, something has to give.
2. Complexity hit a breaking point
The average enterprise runs 1,000+ applications with only 29% data integrated. This fragmentation creates massive hidden costs in maintenance, security, and lost productivity. Result? 63% plan to consolidate vendors in the next 5 years.
3. AI changed the value equation.
Companies are reshaping their tech stacks. While planning to cut traditional apps, 50% are extending the use of AI; also investing in cloud and data.
Why this matters for alliance leaders:
Your customers are making hard choices. But they're not anti-spend; they're pro-ROI.
They seek to reduce complexity and expand in AI and cloud (+7% vs 2024) while cutting collaboration (- 19% vs 2024) and other tools.
5 moves to consider making:
Lead with AI capabilities
Don't just add AI features. Highlight how your AI capabilities can replace other point solutions.
Prioritize cloud marketplaces and co-sell
With cloud services expanding and companies shifting to cloud-based or SaaS solutions, marketplace presence and co-sell with hyperscalers becomes critical for distribution
Solve the integration crisis
With 71% of applications still siloed, integration is your competitive moat. Emphasize seamless data flows, unified experiences, being part of cloud stack and single marketplace bill.
Align with cloud commitments
Enterprises have billions locked in cloud commits. Make it easy to draw down these budgets via cloud marketplace transactions and cloud-native architectures.
Highlight cost-to-value math
If you're asking for budget while others face cuts, you need strong and clear value propositions
The reshaping of the tech stacks wave is real, but it creates opportunities for those who understand the shift.
Companies aren't just looking for more new tools – they want fewer, AI-enabled, cloud-native solutions that justify their place in a streamlined stack.
What's your take on navigating this?
Research source BCG
Master Marketplaces Like Our Alumni Who Drive Multi-Million Growth (Cohort 12 Starts Sept 9)
While many companies struggle with growing on cloud marketplaces, our alumni results are truly inspiring: many grew from $0→$M+, others scaled $M→$MM in marketplace revenue, some achieving 4X+ YoY growth.
I'm thrilled to invite you to join Cohort 12 starting on September 9!
Our Cloud GTM Leader course has grown into the industry's leading program for mastering cloud marketplaces, with 250+ alumni accelerating their growth on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
Why is it more relevant today than ever before?
The playbook to grow on cloud marketplaces isn't obvious and constantly evolving.
Cloud commitments hit a record high $469B and are on track to reach $500B this year.
PLG, free trials, and co-marketing with hyperscalers are becoming more critical than ever.
The AI agent explosion is rapidly accelerating cloud adoption and turning marketplaces into "everything stores" for SaaS, data, and agents - right before our eyes.
That's why we've been partnering with 50+ exceptional speakers and mentors who share their actual battle-tested strategies in our courses.
Why join Cohort 12?
Learn directly from VPs of Partner of the Year winners, hyperscaler experts and our incredible mentors
Master co-sell tactics that drive real pipeline ($0 to $200K+ in sales and $7M pipeline in 8 weeks for one alumni, who since then scaled on marketplaces)
Get practical frameworks to get your entire org on-board and accelerate cloud GTM together
Join a growing community of 250+ cloud alliance leaders
But don't just take my word for it.
Here's what our recent alums highlighted:
"I came in knowing almost nothing and now I feel equipped to have in-depth conversations with leadership and stakeholders."
"The highlight was learning a clear, actionable GTM framework and how to align teams around cloud buyer needs through ecosystem partnerships."
Our alums loved the "open discussion with peers from different business functions and companies covering SaaS, Cybersecurity and Hyperscalers" and the "tactical elements and measurement tools to measure progress."
"People with real experience sharing the how - how did they win, how did they fail, how did they tackle challenge X or Y."
"Finding Partner Insight's Cloud GTM Leader course was exactly what I needed. Roman is so well connected, bringing key players across AWS, GCP and Microsoft. I really appreciated hearing from both large and small companies on their selling journeys in the marketplaces."
Ready to transform your growth on cloud marketplaces? Join our Cohort 12 starting September 9th. Early bird pricing ends tomorrow—secure your spot now.
P.S. Made it to the end? Appreciate you!
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