Getting started on Google Cloud Marketplace: A guide for ISVs 

Google Cloud Marketplace (formerly GCP Marketplace) launched in 2018 and has made a fast rise as one of the top cloud marketplaces for ISVs looking to deepen their partnership with Google while selling into Google’s expansive customer base. 

With year-over-year growth rates of 140% across the Google Cloud Marketplace, it’s no wonder more and more ISVs are exploring how to list on the cloud marketplace and if listing on GCM makes sense for them. 

Benefits of selling on the Google Cloud Marketplace: 

• 32% bigger deal size
• Access to customer commit drawdown
• 100% of your cloud commit can be spent on marketplace applications 
• 42% deal acceleration
• 200% YoY growth in marketplace transactions (2023)

Just to name a few. 

If you haven’t yet listed your application on the Google Cloud Marketplace, you will want to review the Google requirements before you get too far down the road of listing. We’ve broken these requirements into product, organizational and operational requirements. We will call out early that one of the largest requirements is that your software solution is primarily hosted on Google Cloud. Note there are six patterns of types of infrastructure your solution needs to fit in. You should work with their product/engineering teams for the diagram (more details here). 

Let’s start with the product requirements so you can identify if your solution is Google Marketplace ready. 

Google Cloud Marketplace Product requirements 

• Your product must be production-ready (not alpha or beta) to be publicly listed and sold through Google Cloud Marketplace.
• Your product must be enterprise-ready, including a professional online presence, a defined sales motion, customer support, and adherence to strong security best practices.
• Your product must not include known vulnerabilities, viruses, spyware, Trojan horses, or other malicious code of any kind.
• You must verify to Google Cloud through an approval process during onboarding that you host your software product primarily on Google Cloud. 

That last requirement is a big one – you must be able to prove that your software application is hosted primarily on Google Cloud. 

Organizational requirements for Google Cloud Marketplace listing 

• Step 1: Join and maintain good standing in Partner Advantage. You can sign up for Partner Advantage here. Besides being a requirement to list your application on the marketplace, signing up for Partner Advantage gets you access to the Partner Hub. Here you can find training, resources, and “powerful tools to leverage the cloud for your business and customers”. 
• Step 2: Select “Build Engagement” Status 
• Step 3: Confirm that your organization is incorporated in one of the supported regions. You can find the full list of regions here. 
• Step 4: Sign your Cloud Marketplace Vendor Agreement.Details on the vendor agreement can be found here.
• Step 5: Set up your payment profile.You have two options for your payment profile. Option 1: Create a payments profile directly and Option 2: Use payment settings from an existing project.

Set up your profile here.

Operational requirements for getting listed on Google Cloud Marketplace (GCM) 

If you want to offer products on Google Cloud Marketplace, then in addition to meeting the listing requirements for the Cloud Marketplace, you must also maintain the following operational best practices, which depend on the types of products that you’re offering:

• Offering Kubernetes apps
• Offering VM products
• Offering SaaS products
• Offering container image products
• Offering dataset products

To use Private Offers to send custom offers for products, you must ensure that your offers meet the operational requirements for private offers. Private offers allow your organization to offer special pricing and customized offers to your customer so it is well worth ensuring you meet the requirements. In fact, Google has seen a 10x increase in the number of private offers going through GCM over the past 4 years. 

Setting up pricing on Google Cloud Marketplace

There are a few options when you choose how you want to price your application. Your options are Free, Subscription-based, Usage-Based or Combined. You will want to ensure you know how you want to price your solution prior to listing. Keep in mind when setting your price that Google does have a revenue sharing model. 

Understanding Google’s rev-share model 

Once you’ve confirmed you have the right product and business case fit, you also do need to be clear about the revenue share model that Google requires to list on their marketplace. As of 2021 – that standard percentage was 3%. If your product doesn’t meet the requirements, or doesn’t pass the business case review, but you want to proceed with offering that product through Cloud Marketplace, Google might offer you an adjusted revenue share at a higher rate.

The “Cloud Application Security Assessment (CASA)”

Before you will be able to publish your application, it will go through a multi-tiered evaluation where applications seeking access to restricted user data on Google Cloud are assessed by a third-party security firm against industry standards like the OWASP Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS), examining aspects like access control, data protection, architecture, and threat modeling to ensure secure data handling and user privacy; apps with high-risk access may need to undergo a more rigorous review process. 

Things to know about the Google Cloud Cloud Application Security Assessment 

• Based on industry standards: The assessment uses the OWASP ASVS as a foundation for evaluating application security. 
• Risk-based approach: The review process considers the level of access an app requests to user data, with apps requiring access to sensitive information undergoing more thorough security checks. 
• Third-party assessment: Developers must submit their applications to a third-party security firm to conduct the CASA assessment.
• Areas of evaluation: Key areas reviewed include access control, data protection, architecture, threat modeling, error handling, and data deletion upon request. 
• Compliance requirements: Applications must meet specific security requirements to be listed on the Google Cloud Marketplace. 

It may seem like a lot of work to get listed and start transacting on the Google Cloud Marketplace, but the statistics tell us that there is money to be made embracing this channel:

• Co-sell transactions through Google Cloud Marketplace have seen 200% YoY
• Q2 2024 cloud commits topped $72.5B

For organizations who want an extra advantage and faster time to market with Google, consider partnering with Invisory. Our experts led GTM strategy and Cloud GTM software help streamline listing through transacting and lasting success. 

Contact us to learn more.