AppDirect Announces New Cloud Marketplace Manager, Additional Partnerships and Record Growth

AppDirect increases user base by more than 35% per month, grows number of services on network by 30% per month, and delivers impressive conversion rates for distribution channels

San Francisco, CA, February 29, 2012 — AppDirect, the leading cloud service marketplace and management platform, announced today the launch of the AppDirect Marketplace Manager. Since launching its first marketplace in late 2010, AppDirect has experienced record growth in customer reach, and has added high-profile apps such as New Relic, SendGrid and Google Apps to its syndication network. AppDirect’s new Marketplace Manager provides the tools channel partners need to better service the surge in end users and developers joining the AppDirect network. The Marketplace Manager enables AppDirect’s channel partners, such as Telcos and hosting providers, to efficiently manage the most crucial settings and components of their cloud application stores in one place. Channel partners now have the power to seamlessly roll out next-generation services, app bundles and promotional offers to their small business customers.

“At AppDirect, we are committed to enabling our partners to generate new revenue streams from the explosive growth in the cloud services,” said Daniel Saks, president and co-CEO of AppDirect. “With the Marketplace Manager, our partners are able to quickly deliver revenue-generating products as well as instantly access marketplace insights, reports and performance metrics that drive customer conversion and retention.”

The AppDirect Marketplace Manager allows channel partners to take a hands-on approach to administering their cloud service marketplace, from product catalog and settings to customer service, marketing and billing. Key Marketplace Manager features include:

• Catalog Management: Take control of the marketplace products. Highlight specific apps to grab customers’ attention, create customized categories to target demographics, and enforce quality standards for newly-integrated products.
• Customer Management: Leverage tools and analytics to gain powerful insight into customer issues. Provide quick resolutions that drive conversion and retention rates.
• Billing and Payment Management: Automate the marketplace’s back-office transactions, including support for recurring subscriptions, invoicing, payments and reconciliation management.
• Marketing Platform: Drive sales with bundles, discounts and promotions. Target customer demographics instantaneously.

These tools enable channel partners to manage their own marketplaces. They provide added value to the end user that will drive conversion rates even higher than the current 10 percent seen across AppDirect's network of marketplaces reaching three million small and medium businesses (SMBs). With the number of end user signups exceeding a monthly growth rate of 35 percent on the AppDirect network of marketplaces, it’s essential that channel partners equip themselves with the right toolset to manage the influx of business customers.

"End user organizations are increasingly looking for greater flexibility in sourcing public cloud services and solutions. To address this demand, Gartner predicts¹ that by 2015 virtually all Communication Service Providers (CSPs) will complement their cloud computing portfolio with a cloud brokerage model,” said Gartner Research Director, Gregor Petri. “However, a successful brokerage model will require CSPs to adopt a robust partnering strategy for technology, process and professional services (such as integration and regulatory/legal). Enabling platforms and services are especially critical for CSPs looking to differentiate themselves from direct providers and other cloud brokerage competitors.”

Channel partners can now choose from any of the AppDirect network’s pre-integrated applications, providing unified identity and access and subscription billing management. There are hundreds of products across countless categories on the AppDirect Application Network, which is growing by over 30 percent per month. Recent additions include Google Apps’ suite of productivity solutions, New Relic’s industry leading web application management solution and SendGrid’s innovative email infrastructure. In addition to giving channel partners access to leading solutions, the AppDirect’s Marketplace Manager also supplies all the tools channel partners need to build and manage a native developer community.

“AppDirect is an outstanding and widely used platform, both for app developer tool discovery as well as for extending reach via AppDirect’s network of partner marketplaces,” said Denise Hulce, Vice President of Sales and Business Development. “Eliminating developer headaches remains at the core of the SendGrid mission, and our partnership with AppDirect is another fortifying step in this direction.”

For more information about the AppDirect Marketplace Manager, click here.

^{1 Predicts 2012: CSPs Need to Redefine Their Business Scope and Focus on Operational Efficiency, Published:15 November 2011}

About AppDirect

As the leading cloud service marketplace and management platform, AppDirect connects application developers with small businesses through a network of white-label marketplaces. AppDirect provides a suite of cloud service delivery solutions that enable channel partners to become a gateway for businesses to find, buy, and use web-based software. With one seamless interface, SMBs can subscribe to applications, assign colleagues to multiple apps, and pay just one monthly bill for all their subscriptions. Through its network of branded Marketplaces, AppDirect provides application developers with a single point of integration to reach millions of businesses across the globe.