For most of the last decade this blog has been about enterprise data infrastructure under pressure. This is a departure – though less of one than it first appears. The through-line is the same: the technology enterprises run on and the messy reality of how it actually gets bought and sold.
Today I’m publishing something I’ve long wanted to exist and could never find. During six years of building cloud alliance, co-sell and marketplace motions across all three hyperscalers, I kept explaining the same concepts to the same roles, because no comprehensive, vendor-neutral reference existed. So I wrote one: the Hyperscaler GTM Playbook, 16 interconnected articles on cloud alliances, co-sell and cloud marketplace for the ISVs selling alongside AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
Here’s the problem it’s trying to solve. Almost everything written about cloud GTM comes from vendors who are commercially obliged to be cheerful about it. The mechanics are presented as simpler than they really are, the awkward parts get skipped and the large population of ISVs whose software runs in the customer’s cloud account rather than their own is quietly ignored. The result is a lot of confident material that misleads the people who most need clear answers.
The playbook takes the opposite posture. Where the programs are genuinely contradictory or the incentives don’t line up, it says so. It treats the three hyperscalers in parallel and compares them directly, rather than pretending one motion fits all three.
It’s organised around three pillars, each a standalone guide with a cluster of deeper articles beneath it:
- Cloud Alliances – building the function: partner programs, team design, funding and the tenancy model that shapes everything else.
- Cloud Co-Sell – how co-sell really works with AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud, and how to run it at scale.
- Cloud Marketplace – listings, private offers, fees and the back-office mechanics of transacting through a marketplace.
If you read only one cluster article, make it the one on tenancy – whether your product runs in your cloud account or your customer’s is the single most underrated variable in this discipline, and it quietly determines who at each hyperscaler has any reason to care about you.
Who is it for? Alliance, co-sell, RevOps and marketplace leaders at ISVs entering or scaling on the hyperscalers – plus anyone new to the motion who wants an honest primer rather than a sales pitch. It’s education, not a funnel. There’s nothing to buy at the end of it.
It’s also built to be maintained. Hyperscaler programs change every fiscal year, so each article carries a last-reviewed date and a scheduled review after the major hyperscaler conferences, with corrections logged on the page itself.
Start at the hub, or go straight to whichever pillar matches the problem in front of you. And if you find something that’s wrong, out of date or that doesn’t match your own experience, flag it and I’ll fix it – this discipline changes constantly, and a playbook that gets corrected by the people using it is the only kind worth trusting.
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