Amazon rolls out Buy with AWS button to let software vendors more easily sell to its cloud customers

In 2022, Amazon introduced the Buy with Prime button, allowing premium subscribers to make purchases using their Amazon account even when shopping on other websites.

Now the company is bringing a similar concept to its cloud-computing business.

At its Reinvent conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Amazon Web Services said a new Buy with AWS button will be available for cloud software partners to embed on their sites as a way for customers to pay.

AWS is the leading provider of cloud infrastructure, ahead of Microsoft and Google, reeling in over $100 billion in revenue in the past four quarters. Prominent cloud software vendors like Databricks, Wiz and Workday run their products on top of AWS, as well as other clouds, and will now be able to sell services directly to users with AWS accounts via the new button. The checkout option will allow buyers to take advantage of previously agreed-upon discounts.

“The intention here is to increase customer loyalty and partner loyalty and, ultimately, win rates,” Matt Yanchyshyn, AWS’ vice president of marketplace and partner services, told CNBC in an interview.

For software companies, the only requirement is that they need to be selling their products through the AWS Marketplace. Amazon reduced fees to 3% or lower in some cases this year, after Microsoft and Google decreased their rates.

On the consumer side, Amazon has an estimated 180 million Prime subscribers in the U.S. The $139 annual subscription includes speedy shipping as well as two-hour grocery delivery and digital services like Prime Video and Amazon Music.

Retailers that want to take advantage of Prime’s massive customer base can pay a fee to add Buy with Prime to their site, and utilize Amazon’s fulfillment network when purchases are made using the button. Amazon said in September that Buy with Prime orders through merchants’ sites are up more than 45% this year from a year earlier.

Buy with AWS has one key difference in that it’s free for software companies to embed. Because the services are running on top of AWS, the purchases result in more revenue for Amazon.

“Buy with Prime is a separate initiative, but we’re very close to that team and collaborate on technical implementation,” Yanchyshyn said. He added that, while “we definitely sort of trade notes on success,” Buy with AWS is “ultimately a very different use case.” 

Yanchyshyn said that Matt Garman, who was tapped to lead AWS earlier this year, is focused on making partners the center of the customer journey.

“It’s not lip service. He means it,” Yanchyshyn said.

Databricks has enjoyed a clean integration with Microsoft’s cloud since Microsoft started selling a service called Azure Databricks in 2018. Setting up Databricks on AWS has been more complicated, said David Meyer, senior vice president of product management at the data analytics software startup.

Buy with AWS should lead to a higher share of revenue coming from Amazon deployments, he said.

“We should really see an acceleration of people that go and use it on AWS, because it’s so easy,” Meyer said. “I would say that this will give AWS the advantage over other clouds, because AWS will be simpler than the other ones, much like historically Azure was simpler for Databricks.”

Workday plans to employ the button on its Adaptive Planning product, stemming from the $1.5 billion acquisition of Adaptive Insights in 2018. The company, which sells finance and human resources software, wants to see if procurement will be faster when buyers use the button and go through the AWS Marketplace.

“Can we get software in the hands of business users faster with this? That’s the theory that were testing with this capability,” said Matthew Brandt, Workday’s senior vice president of global partners.

Brandt said that if the evaluation goes well, Workday could use the button for more products.

“We have buyers who are not as familiar with us who are very familiar with AWS,” he said. “It validates Workday as a potential provider.”

Ed Anderson, a vice president at industry researcher Gartner, said he wouldn’t be surprised to see other cloud providers launch buy buttons for third-party websites.

“It’s generally all upside,” he said.

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