5 Big Features Of The New AWS Marketplace Vendor Insights

As more businesses buy their IT via the AWS Marketplace, the public cloud kingpin is making it quicker and easier than ever to procure independent software vendors (ISVs) and partner solutions through the Marketplace with its new Vendor Insights tool.

Unveiled at AWS re:Inforce today, the new AWS Marketplace Vendor Insights simplifies third-party software risk assessments by compiling security and compliance information in a single unified dashboard, cutting down the buying process by weeks and even months.

Chris Grusz, general manager of worldwide ISV Alliances and Marketplace, said the new solution will fix the software procurement “bottleneck” process which occurs when selecting a technology solution.

“So once the technology was selected, you go through the legal review, but then a lot of times an ISV would get a 200-question packet from a customer saying, ‘OK, you need to answer all these questions before we buy. Where are you at with PCI? What’s your GDPR status?’ Who’s on your board?’ All these kind of technical questions and certification questions about the technology that was being brought in,” said Grusz.

[Related: AWS re:Inforce Keynote: 7 Big Security, Ukraine, Ransomware Remarks]

“And just as soon as the ISV would finish one of those questionnaires, they would win another customer and get another packet and have to go through another 200 questions,” Grusz told CRN. “So it’s kind of a Groundhog Day event where our customers were passing these packets to our ISVs, and this was adding multiple weeks or even months to process the software procurement experience.”

AWS built the AWS Marketplace Vendor Insights tool to streamline vendor assessments which is what customers were asking for.

AWS Marketplace Vendor Insights Partner Benefit

The unified web-based dashboard gives governance, risk, and compliance teams access to security and compliance information, such as data privacy and residency, application security, and access control.

Vendor Insights also provides evidence backed by AWS Config and AWS Audit Manager assessments, external audit reports, and software vendor self-assessments. It helps buyers reduce assessment lead time to a few hours by allowing buyers to access the vendor’s validated security profile and removes the need for periodic reassessments.

Channel partners will also benefit greatly from new dashboard.

“As a channel partner selling one of these products, they’re now enabled through Vendor Insights to be able to get their deals done dramatically faster,” said Grusz. “Because oftentimes they had to play kind of the broker between the customer and the ISV to gather this information back and they became a middleman. … It’s going to simplify our channel partners role because now they won’t have to play that middle person between the ISV and customer.”

In an interview with CRN, AWS’ Grusz explains five key features of the AWS Marketplace Vendor Insights that channel partners, ISVs and customers need to know.