Transact capabilities for SaaS apps now available in Azure Marketplace

Increasingly, customers are turning to cloud marketplaces to discover, trial, and buy cloud solutions. Software as a service (SaaS) apps are a core part of those customer needs. Azure Marketplace has long-offered SaaS apps for discovery and trial. At Build, we announced that SaaS apps can now be transacted within Azure Marketplace.

What does this mean for partners?

ISVs building and selling SaaS applications built for Azure can now not only list or offer trials, but also monetize their SaaS applications directly with customers. This allows partners:

To expose offers easily

◈ Simple listing with a Contact Me option
◈ Easy integration of a trial experience from Azure Marketplace
◈ Monetize with a subscription API service

More procurement options

◈ Offer simple, flat monthly pre-paid billing
◈ Streamline billing for customers through consolidated Azure billing and invoicing
◈ Spend less time wrestling with enterprise procurement

To get access to a global customer base and a global salesforce

◈ Gather leads immediately to a CRM
◈ Let marketplace facilitate co-selling with Microsoft sellers and help customers: find, try and buy partner SaaS applications

What does this mean for customers?

For IT Pros and Developers looking for any SaaS offer or subscription, Azure Marketplace allows those users to discover, try and now subscribe to SaaS solutions. This means customers can:

Find, try, and buy SaaS applications

◈ Find dozens of SaaS solutions to meet more business needs and enhance their Cloud Solutions
◈ Try solutions with integrated login experience (AAD trial enabled) with access to free trials and downloads
◈ Subscribe to SaaS applications with subscription offers

Reduce the friction of procurement and payment

◈ Flat monthly pre-paid billing ($/mo)
◈ Reduce procurement overhead with billing all delivered through Microsoft
◈ Manage subscriptions in one place

Easily manage subscriptions

◈ Manage all app subscriptions within Azure Management
◈ Easy cancel at any time

Get started with SaaS subscriptions

You can discover SaaS services in both Azure marketplace as well as Azure portal. You can subscribe to a SaaS service in Azure portal.

At the time of launch, the supported billing model is a flat monthly fee per subscription of the SaaS service. We are working on enabling additional business models in the future.

You can use the new ‘Software as a service (SaaS)’ experience to discover and manage all your SaaS services.

Once a SaaS service has been subscribed to, it can be in one of the following states:

◈ Pending – You have subscribed to the SaaS service in Azure. However, you have not started using the SaaS service yet. At this point, your monthly recurring payment has not started yet.

◈ Subscribed – You have subscribed to the SaaS service in Azure and started consuming the SaaS service. You will be charged the flat monthly fee every month, unless you delete your account in the SaaS service or delete your SaaS service in Azure portal.

◈ Unsubscribed – You have unsubscribed or deleted the account directly in the SaaS service. You will not be billed once you have unsubscribed from the SaaS service.

Integration with Azure marketplace to enable SaaS transactions is achieved through the following simple steps:

◈ Notify Azure whenever a user, who came to the SaaS service from Azure, signs up for a new account.

◈ Notify Azure whenever a registered user from Azure changes the plan (example: user moves from ‘basic’ plan to a ‘premium’ plan).

◈ Notify Azure whenever a registered user unsubscribes or deletes the account.

◈ Receive and act on notifications from Azure, if the user has unsubscribed from the SaaS service in Azure.