Since agentic AI entered the scene last year, the battle between hyperscaler marketplaces has been heating up. Marketplaces, which also include partner solutions, are sales channels reportedly worth tens of billions of dollars. AWS now claims over 30,000 product listings, including an AI Agents and Tools category launched last July, and agent mode that was launched later in the year for AI-enhanced search for buyers.
Microsoft rebuilt its marketplace last September after merging its Azure Marketplace and AppSource, a storefront now featuring over 3,000 AI apps and agents. Adding AI Agent Marketplace last year, Google differentiates on a cost basis, cutting its fee from a flat 3% down to 1.5% for certain deals.
“Struggling for years on trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, telcos are recognising the online storefronts as a prime route to sales growth by leveraging agentic AI to streamline enterprise delivery of network services,” said Charlotte Dunlap, research director, GlobalData. “Factors range from agentic AI-driven product procurement through conversational discovery of solutions, to improved productisation of infrastructure services.”
“Advancements in open-source software (OSS) have resulted in more carrier solutions being listed on marketplaces, alongside standardised APIs,” she added, noting this is enabled through MCPs, GSMA Open Gateway, and CAMARA for streamlined connectivity.
Solutions like networks-as-code are evolving and becoming more consumable and programmable via enterprise agents, with no complex coding or integration required by enterprises. Ericsson-led network-API operator alliance, Aduna, is a good example of such activities. Nokia’s contribution of Network-as-Code APIs to Google Cloud Marketplace is another.
Telcos are filling key roles through marketplace channels, including fulfilling private wireless deals, reselling software and platform services, and offering enterprise customers valuable consulting and integration services.
This infra productisation couples nicely with another trend in marketplaces. Agent mode UX innovations have appeared across marketplaces, supporting conversational discovery experiences for software procurement. These are significant for their role in broadening the audience of less technical buyers.
Within the last year, AWS released its version of a conversational discovery experience for software procurement called agent mode alongside AI-enhanced search as part of its marketplace. Buyers describe to the agent a use case, including specific requirements, to gather product details and compare options. These conversational queries in marketplaces are significant to sellers for their role in expanding the audience to include less technical buyers looking to solve their companies’ digitisation issues.
Google and Microsoft also released chat-style methods to discover appropriate solutions on marketplaces. Google’s AI-powered search experience moves beyond keyword searches to provide users with natural-language discovery across its services and AI agent catalog. Its approach is similar to AWS by allowing users to describe their goals or a technical problem to order to better identify appropriate products, including third-party offerings. Microsoft brands its conversational AI experience as “intelligent discovery,” with interactive chat-enabled evaluation and comparisons of products.
