Inside $439B Cloud Commits Milestone & AWS's New 'Everything Store' Marketplace Strategy
Hi, it's Roman from Partner Insight newsletter, where I deconstruct winning Cloud GTM strategies and the latest trends in cloud marketplaces.
This week, we'll examine remarkable cloud momentum: hyperscaler commitments have reached $439B with $20B added in Q1 alone. I'll break down AWS's $12B jump in customer commits, Azure's AI-fueled 33% growth, and three key marketplace trends reshaping software distribution. Plus, get exclusive insights from our recent AWS Marketplace breakfast in London, where we gathered 52 Cloud GTM leaders just before AWS's most significant marketplace policy shift in years.
Before we dive in:
We're preparing for Cohort 11 of our 5-week Cloud GTM Leader course starting in June. Already, 200+ alliance leaders from companies like GitLab, Citrix and Wiz have leveraged our program to accelerate their cloud marketplace revenue. Now's the perfect time to secure early bird pricing before it disappears soon.
Cloud Commits Reach $439B, Adding $20B in Q1’25
Customer cloud commits now reach $439B, exceeding the combined market cap of Salesforce and Adobe. This quarter alone hyperscalers added $20B in bookings, alongside impressive revenue growth. Let's break down these numbers and key trends.
Breaking Down the Numbers (as of end of Q1'25):
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Commitments: $189B
Growth in Q1: $12B (+6.8% QoQ)
Notable: AWS backlog jumped the most this quarter, while simultaneously posting 17% YoY revenue growth
Microsoft Azure Commitments: $157.5B+ (conservatively estimated as 50% of Microsoft's total $315B commercial RPO)
Growth in Q1: $8.5B (+5.7% QoQ)
Notable: 33% revenue growth with AI driving 16 points, while non-AI services/migrations actually exceeded expectations
Google Cloud Commitments: $92.4B
Change in Q1: -$0.8B (-0.9% QoQ)
Notable: Despite the minor backlog contraction, Google Cloud revenue grew 28% YoY with aggressive AI agent investments
When Will Commitments Convert to Revenue?
This massive $439B backlog will be consumed fairly soon:
Google expects to recognize ~55% over the next 24 months
Microsoft anticipates ~40% over the next 12 months
AWS reports an average remaining contract life of 4.1 years
3 Trends Emerging in Cloud Marketplace Dynamics
1️⃣ Acceleration to $500B Commits in 2025
Current growth trajectories suggest commits will cross half a trillion dollars by end of 2025 (Q1’26 the latest). The AI era is driving cloud acceleration faster, as we predicted.
2️⃣ Marketplace Policy Evolution
AWS announced a major expansion to their marketplace policy (effective May 1) to welcome all SaaS products regardless of where they're deployed.
AWS's new "Deployed on AWS" badge system signals a future where cloud marketplaces welcome all software while still incentivizing native deployments.
To count towards customer commits on AWS marketplace, products now need to be fully deployed on AWS infrastructure.
3️⃣ AI Driving Significant Consumption
Azure's AI services contributed 16% to their 33% growth.
AWS reports "triple-digit percentage YoY" growth in AI on a "multi-billion dollar revenue run rate"
Google Cloud AI efforts are driving significant growth, as it positions itself as the leader in "the new era of AI Agents"
For Cloud GTM Leaders:
These commitments show enterprises are making multi-year structural investments in cloud and AI infrastructure, with increasing portions flowing into third-party software purchases through cloud marketplaces.
With hyperscalers evolving their marketplaces to capture more software spending, your GTM strategy needs to adapt.
As commitments approach the half-trillion mark, is your organization positioned to leverage this massive pool of cloud spend? Or are you leaving money on the table?
Now, let’s break down growth and key insights from each hyperscaler. As we covered GCP last week here, I’ll focus on Azure and AWS below.
Azure's 33% Growth Shows AI driving Cloud
Azure growth reaccelerated to 33% with AI driving 16 points. Microsoft shattered Wall Street expectations this quarter, while giving us a rare glimpse into the economics of AI adoption at scale. Here is what cloud GTM leaders need to know:
"Cloud and AI are the essential inputs for every business to expand output, reduce costs, and accelerate growth," emphasized Satya Nadella, adding that "When it comes to cloud migrations, we saw accelerating demand with customers in every industry."
Numbers confirm that AI isn't cannibalizing core cloud growth; it's complementing and accelerating it.
Azure's 33% growth (35% in constant currency) signals a remarkable reacceleration in an environment where most expected moderation.
What's telling: while AI services contributed 16% to that growth, it was actually non-AI workloads that exceeded expectations.
Amy Hood, CFO stressed: "The real outperformance in Azure this quarter was in our non-AI business."
Cloud commitments continue to climb
Microsoft's commercial remaining performance obligation reached $315B - staggering $80B (34%) increase YoY.
Azure portion of commitments: $157.5B+ (conservatively estimated as 50% of Microsoft's total $315B commercial RPO), up $8.5B from last quarter.
This shows customers' long-term confidence in cloud and AI growth
AI adoption is surging across MSFT portfolio
Foundry (agent & AI app factory) used by developers at 70,000+ enterprises
100+ trillion tokens processed this quarter (5x YoY)
15+ million GitHub Copilot users (up 4x YoY)
Microsoft Fabric reached 21,000 paid customers (up 80% YoY)
Microsoft 365 Copilot customer base up 3x YoY
Microsoft remains committed to its massive infrastructure investments
CapEx reached $21.4B this quarter, while MSFT also reinforced Satya's previous commitment to spend $80B on cloud and AI infrastructure in fiscal 2025.
Despite these investments, demand is so strong that Microsoft now expects "AI capacity constraints beyond June."
Partners were repeatedly highlighted on the earnings call, as essential to Microsoft's success:
"Results exceeded expectations, driven by focused execution from our sales and partner teams."- CFO
A fascinating insight came from Amy Hood's comparison of AI economics to the previous cloud transition:
"Our margins on the AI side of the business are better than they were at this point by far than when we went through the same transition and the server to cloud transition."
This is key for partners betting on AI - the economics are potentially more favorable than the early cloud transition, but with dramatically faster adoption curves.
For cloud GTM leaders, the implications are clear:
Partner ecosystem is critical
Core cloud growth remains robust
Economics of AI are potentially more favorable than early cloud
The opportunity lies in creating clear differentiation and alignment with hyperscaler priorities.
Join 200+ alliance leaders who’ve mastered cloud marketplaces with our Cloud GTM Leader course. Our alumni are closing $MMs in marketplace deals and scaling fast. Cohort 11 starting on June 3rd! Now's the perfect time to secure early bird pricing before it disappears soon.
AWS Customer Commits Jumped $12B in Q1
AWS posted $29.3B in Q1 revenue, growing 17% YoY, slower vs last quarter. However, the story nobody's talking about is their impressive backlog growth – AWS's commits jumped to $189B, a $12B in just one quarter. Significantly outpacing commits growth of other hyperscalers.
AI Removes AWS's Ceiling of Growth
"Before this generation of AI, we thought AWS had the chance to ultimately be a multi $100 billion revenue run rate business. We now think it could be even larger," highlighted Jassy.
This vision is unfolding given Amazon Web Services (AWS) already operates at a $117B run rate – suggesting AI could potentially multiply AWS's ultimate scale.
AWS Q1 Customer Cloud Commitments hit $189B, growing from $177B just 3 months ago.
Jassy reiterated that AWS's AI business maintains "a multi-billion dollar annual run rate" with "triple-digit percentages year-over-year" growth. Their AI stack spans from silicon to applications, with differentiators including:
Bedrock's open model ecosystem with "a choice of high performing foundation models" including recent additions from Anthropic, Meta, DeepSeek, and Mistral
Trainium2 chips offering "30% to 40% better price performance...versus other GPU-based instances"
Enterprise Cloud Migrations Accelerating Alongside AI
The untapped opportunity remains vast: "more than 85% of the global IT spend is still on premises, so not in the Cloud yet."
What's changing is enterprise mindset.
"What we are seeing now over the last, call it, 16 to 18 months or so, is that enterprises realize they need to do both" AI and cloud migrations, Jassy explained. Companies are piloting AI while simultaneously recognizing they're "dropping the low-hanging fruit if they don't move their infrastructure to the cloud."
For alliance leaders, Jassy noted partner contributions - during enterprise migrations, companies sometimes use SIs alongside AWS professional services.
Strategic Capex Investment
AWS continues aggressive investment with CapEx reaching $24.3B in Q1.
AWS plans "to bring on an increasing amount of capacity in the back half of the year" to meet demand that currently outstrips supply.
"I think we could be helping more customers and driving more revenue for the business if we had more capacity," Jassy emphasized.
The Alliance & GTM Leader Takeaway
The message is clear: while quarter-to-quarter numbers may fluctuate, the underlying customer commitment growth shows enterprises are doubling down on cloud.
The twin drivers of infrastructure modernization and AI adoption (underscored by all 3 hyperscalers in the last week) are creating unique Cloud GTM opportunities.
AWS Marketplace's 'Everything Store' Strategy: Insights from our strategic breakfast in London
We hosted 52 Cloud GTM leaders at our AWS Marketplace breakfast in London on April 30th, one day before AWS's most significant marketplace shift in years. The energy was electric as AWS prepared to become "the everything store" for software, services, data and AI agents.
When Amazon Web Services (AWS) opened its marketplace on May 1st to all SaaS products—not just those deployed on its infrastructure—we're witnessing a major shift in software distribution. This strategic evolution positions AWS Marketplace to serve an even larger share of the $600B+ software market.
Three key insights emerged from this gathering with AWS leadership:
1️⃣ Marketplace is going everywhere with expanded availability (e.g. "Buy with AWS"), more co-sell opportunities, and increased attention from AWS leaders, partners and customers.
Lewis Howarth, WW Leader of AWS Marketplace Scale Adoption, emphasized the evolution and catalog expansion. He also stressed how important it is for sellers to leverage PLG (product-led growth), as this aligns with how buyers increasingly prefer to purchase on marketplace.
2️⃣ International expansion is accelerating with Phil Soane, Principal AWS Marketplace Development Manager, highlighting support for additional currencies.
The marketplace has significantly evolved from its early days—now successful ISVs mirror their core business operations within it: matching business entity presence, localizing transactions, etc.
3️⃣ Distribution partners are leaning in heavily
The strong presence of TD SYNNEX, Ingram Micro, Westcon-Comstor and others signals the channel's recognition of marketplace synergies and growth potential via the DSOR program.
Serge Durand, Head of AWS Marketplace EMEA, noted that the marketplace and channel are becoming increasingly symbiotic, creating what he called a "Power of 4" (not 3 anymore).
What struck me most was the engagement of leading software companies. A leader from Notion highlighted closing their largest enterprise deal on AWS Marketplace, while companies like Zoom and Cutover are working to make marketplace transactions a core part of their revenue strategy.
The consensus was clear: we're entering a new era where marketplace is becoming one of the primary routes to market for software and services.
For those who haven't yet prioritized cloud marketplaces in their GTM strategy, this policy change creates an inflection point to reconsider.
Are you positioned to capture your share of this rapidly expanding channel?
🤝 Special thanks to Suger.io and its CRO, Kyle Heisner for joining us and sponsoring this gathering. The Suger platform was mentioned multiple times by both speakers and attendees who use it to accelerate their cloud marketplace growth.
Most importantly, thank you to everyone who woke up at 6am on Wednesday to join us bright and early in London! The quality of discussions and connections made it worth the early alarm.
More insights and events coming soon — stay tuned!
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