Presidio Vice President Kevin Corace takes a deep dive with CRN on Presidio’s AWS Marketplace practice, how its generated $1 billion in sales, and why Corace believes he doesn’t ‘see a future where you can be an effective reseller without having marketplace expertise.’
Amazon Web Services superstar Presidio is paving the way for the future in terms of how channel partners offer and sell solutions to businesses across the globe after generating a historic $1 billion through the AWS Marketplace.
“I do not see a future where you can be an effective reseller without having marketplace expertise across the hyperscalers,” Presidio’s Kevin Corace, vice president of sales, enterprise licensing and business development, tells CRN.
Presidio has built a revolutionary consulting approach via the AWS Marketplace that is driving revenue, simplifying customer contacts and saving client money via Marketplace discounts and incentives.
“We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars of software transacting every year through the Marketplace now through Presidio,” said Corace, who oversees billions of dollars in revenue as Presidio’s software and services leader.
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The New York City-based company, which made CRN’s 2025 MSP Elite 150 list, uses the AWS Marketplace to sell custom marketplace listings, private offers, solutions on behalf of ISVs like Cisco and Pure Storage, ongoing support, and contract evaluation to help customers optimize their spend commitments and savings opportunities.
“We saw, hey, these different ISVs can transact point products, but they can’t transact complex agreements through the AWS Marketplace,” said Corace. “Then we went and we solved for that.”
The AWS Marketplace is an online store with a catalog of thousands of solutions that make it easy for businesses of all sizes to find, test, buy and deploy software and IT solutions from AWS partners and ISVs.
Corace oversees Presidio’s cloud marketplace team, dedicated solely to cloud marketplace transactions as the company sees more and more customers flocking to marketplaces compared to traditional IT procurement and sales processes.
Corace takes a deep dive with CRN about how Presidio wins new customers, generates billions in sales, and how Presidio is able to make complex, multi-vendor solutions into an easy button click for customers via the AWS Marketplace.
“You want a customer to be able to point, click, and order. Now think about the large technology providers that have these complex enterprise agreements, and you’re going to combine 20 different products. It doesn’t align to that specific sales motion,” he said.
“So Cisco, Pure Storage and some other ones we’ve partnered with, and then with AWS, we actually build Presidio listings that say, ‘I’m going to enable that point, click, buying experience for these ISVs when their traditional model just can’t support it.”
Here’s more of CRN’s interview with Corace:
Presidio has now eclipsed $1 billion in AWS Marketplace sales. First off, describe your AWS Marketplace practice?
Our marketplace practice goes from creativity and building offers to strategic consulting with customers to execution.
We have people dedicated to doing nothing but marketplace. It’s an entire team. There’s hundreds in our cloud group. We have some that are very specific for nothing but cloud marketplace transactions. We will help you with all three [AWS, Microsoft, Google]. AWS is by far our largest partner.
Wherever you’re at in terms of marketplace journey, I’m going to have someone that’s going to meet you there. Meaning, if you’re going to do your first AWS Marketplace transaction, my team does an actual workshop with customers to educate them on the ‘why.’ Educate them on the ‘how.’ Educate them on security, on process, on policy.
We’ll literally walk a customer through, ‘Hey, here’s what it means to your organization. Here’s why other organizations are doing this. Here’s the benefits that they’re getting.’ It’s about education.
Now, once you have that customer educated, then they typically come to us, ‘Alright, I’ve done 10 of these marketplace transactions. Here’s what I want to do to be more strategic. If I want to structure a larger commitment with a hyperscaler so that I get better discounts in return, how can you look at what I have and help me plan it out for three years?’
So we will literally do strategic, multi-year planning to say: of your IT estate and all of your software and SaaS business, here’s the 60 percent that’s eligible to go through Marketplace. Here’s what your large renewals are. Here’s how I’d break it up. Then we’ll talk about the financial goals.
How does your cloud marketplace team help customers save money?
After providing consulting services, renewal specialists, contract specialists, post sales services, etc. We overlay our marketplace team and they say, ‘Wait a second, you’re getting ready to spend this large amount to consolidate all this spend. Let’s look at the advantages and the benefits: are there incentives from that manufacturer for going through AWS? What does it do for your EDP [enterprise discount program] commit and your PPA [Private Pricing Agreement] burned down? And by the way, we own a finance company. So do you want to prepay this in the marketplace, but then still make annual payments to Presidio?’
We start talking about all these different knobs and levers and literally fine-tune them to what is the best possible outcome for a customer.
And how do we figure out: ‘Here’s where you’re at today. Here’s the most efficient where you want to be.’ And we’ll present you all the different options along the spectrum.
That piece right there has really driven significant growth, because you now have these really large chunks going through Marketplace, while at the same time that marketplace team can also evaluate, ‘Hey, these 100 smaller contracts that it doesn’t make sense to aggregate into a strategic buying program, here’s how to be the most efficient, and here’s the ones to take through Marketplace where it makes sense so that you have more renewals consolidated in one spot.’
How do you sell other vendor technologies, like ISVs, on the marketplace to drive sales and new customer wins for Presidio?
One thing our Marketplace team does that is extremely unique is we actually build offers on behalf of the ISVs.
When marketplace first came out, it was extremely transactional. You want to list something in the marketplace. You want that Amazon buying experience. You want a customer to be able to point, click, and order.
Now think about the large technology providers that have these complex enterprise agreements, and you’re going to combine 20 different products. It doesn’t align to that specific sales motion.
So Cisco, Pure Storage and some other ones we’ve partnered with, and then with AWS, we actually build Presidio listings that say, ‘I’m going to enable that point, click, buying experience for these ISVs when their traditional model just can’t support it.’
There’s no way to take something that’s so complex that you write a custom agreement for and have the ISV typically list it in AWS. Some of them have done it. But for many others, that’s where we come in and we bridge that gap from the customer to the technology provider.
We’re saying we will do all the work in AWS for you. You don’t have to invest the resources, Presidio will. That way, the customer gets that knowledge and consistent experience.
So how does Presidio, AWS and ISVs bundle offerings together? How much easier does it make the customer buying process?
When you think about a customer wanting ease, we cater to that flexibility. Meaning, Presidio puts into practice certain things that transition customers from their purchasing today through Marketplace. So that means I can take a solution and quote it for you today.
It’s a Presidio quote that you’re familiar with. It goes through your systems. It’s how you buy hundreds of different products from us today.
I take that same exact quote and I literally attach it to your AWS offer.
So then when you go to purchase it on the AWS Marketplace, you can actually look at the Presidio quote that’s 100 percent familiar to you, that your procurements used to, that everyone’s already signed off on language—everything about it.
Then if you still need the benefits of AWS Marketplace, but you also want to be able to issue a traditional PO [purchase offer] so that they can track it, that’s fine.
I have customers that will issue us a traditional PO. We will accept it and post that PO and PO number into the AWS Marketplace so that they can still have one team that wants to track it the way they always have, but one team that wants to recognize the AWS Marketplace benefits. So they know that this is a marketplace transaction, but I can still track it in my traditional systems.
How much does this speed up the whole buying and selling transaction process for the customer and partner?
It definitely accelerates that motion for customers and the buying because things can become more streamlined.
For example, when a customer has a documented process in place with their security considerations. These are the people authorized to make that decision to purchase AWS Marketplace. They have control around it. So you know exactly who’s going to be accessing that AWS console and purchasing it.
So a lot of the customers that get into that maturity curve and doing all the transactions to the Marketplace, well now they have one place to go to look for everything. So you’re not tracking down, ‘Hey, where was that original PO? Did that get to this vendor? What’s the status on it, etc?’
You’re now looking at, ‘I want to be able to accept these private offers instantly. Not have to wait for PO to cut; not have to track it, not have to look for it. It’s all going to show up on the console.
Now you can streamline everything with Marketplace. We’re seeing an extreme acceleration.
How many Presidio offers are on the AWS Marketplace today?
We have multiple Presidio-specific listings for our ISVs that just need help transacting.
We have Presidio service offerings, so you can go out and see a Presidio service: click and purchase it today.
Then we leverage the CPPO [Consulting Provider Private Offers] in Marketplace. So as your consulting partner, we’re going to work to get the information from Palo Alto Networks or from any of those other manufacturer ISVs—work with them, present it to you with our quote, and you’ll transact that way.
You’re talking hundreds of manufacturers, multiple Presidio-specific listings of either us enabling ISVs or listing our own Presidio services. It’s driven a significant amount of growth.
