Why This Matters to Distributors: Amazon is giving business customers a single place to find selected hardware, supplies, and software. The offering adds competition for technology distributors’ procurement relationships by allowing organizations to bring products from both Amazon marketplaces into a purchasing portal they control.
Amazon Business and AWS Marketplace have launched a unified storefront that allows U.S. organizations to display selected technology hardware, supplies, and software in one purchasing portal, bringing together product categories that customers often buy separately.
Announced Nov. 2, the offering lets procurement and information technology teams choose which Amazon Business hardware and related supplies appear alongside software, data, and professional services from AWS Marketplace. Organizations control the products displayed, giving employees a central place to find approved technology purchases.
The storefront brings product discovery together, although checkout remains separate. Buyers complete AWS Marketplace purchases within the storefront. For Amazon Business products, they move to Amazon Business, using either single sign-on or their Amazon Business account credentials to complete the purchase.
Built on AWS Marketplace Storefront, the offering requires an organization’s IT team to establish its portal and work with Amazon Business to connect its account. The organization then selects the hardware and supplies to display alongside AWS Marketplace listings.
Purchases initiated through the storefront remain visible alongside the organization’s other Amazon Business spending, according to Amazon. That allows procurement teams to track those purchases through their existing Amazon Business spending records.
The two marketplaces cover different parts of technology purchasing. Amazon Business offers hardware and related supplies, including business pricing, quantity discounts, and bulk purchasing options. AWS Marketplace provides software, data, and professional services.
For technology distributors, the launch could increase pressure to make purchasing across product categories easier for customers. The storefront gives procurement departments a way to direct employees toward selected offerings while placing Amazon Business hardware and supplies alongside AWS Marketplace software and services.
Amazon did not disclose adoption figures, customer examples or measured purchasing savings in the announcement. The company also did not describe combined checkout or consolidated billing across the two marketplaces.
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