Photo: Channel Partners VP Robert DeMarzo (left) interviews Microsoft Marketplace GM Kevin LeBlanc (right).

Kevin LeBlanc, GM of partner and marketplace marketing for Microsoft, Tuesday outlined how partners can help customers use the marketplace to become AI-first companies and master “Frontier Transformation.”

In a Channel Partners Conference keynote interview, LeBlanc defined Frontier Transformation and how Microsoft Marketplace can help customers achieve that.

“Microsoft's objective is to really help customers become AI-first,” LeBlanc said. “When you hear us talk about AI and AI-first, you might have heard the term Frontier Transformation. What that means is, how do we help organizations move from experimentation of AI to getting real, quantifiable business outcomes and value each and every day? And we look at that across at least four key areas.”

Those areas are:

• Empowering employees
• Using AI to provide more personal and meaningful interactions with customers
• Making business processes more efficient and
• Driving innovation by giving teams tools and intelligence to bring new ideas to market faster.

The Microsoft Marketplace launched last fall, combining Azure Marketplace and AppSource. LeBlanc joined Microsoft last October to run marketplace marketing, bringing decades of experience at companies such as AWS, Splunk, Intel and RSA. He said Microsoft Marketplace lets customers find, try and buy hardware, products, cloud services, AI applications and agents.

“Marketplace is a scale engine for our partner ecosystem,” LeBlanc said. “It’s the foundation of how we transact. It's the foundation for how we co-sell, and it's how we grow together and help our customers become AI-first companies.”

LeBlanc cited Omdia research that found the Microsoft Marketplace revenue for partners will hit $300 billion by 2030, and most of the revenue flowing through cloud marketplaces will be channel-led. He cited a fundamental shift in how today’s customers want to buy services and products. During his Tuesday data-driven insights keynote, Omdia analyst Jay McBain said 96% of marketplace deals include partners.

“The partner opportunity with marketplace has never been greater, and some of that is because of the market dynamics that are in play, but then also some of it is the investments that we're making,” LeBlanc said.

“People think that it requires a different selling motion. But the reality is, with Microsoft Marketplace, the channel partner owns the entire end-to-end relationship with the customer. That spans from the earliest stages of the customer engagement interactions all the way through the transaction. Where Microsoft steps into place with the marketplace is we handle a lot of the complications of the procurement process such as collections, billings and tax.”

He said 75% of partners report that they’re closing transactions faster and 69% are seeing deal sizes increase using marketplace versus traditional sales motion. He said Microsoft Marketplace benefits software developers building tools as well as partners buying individual AI tools and getting them to work together.

“We're finding that Frontier Transformation requires the right ecosystem, and that's much more than just Microsoft,” LeBlanc said. “It's Microsoft and the partners, products and services. This is where marketplace comes into place as a platform.”