AWS Marketplace now enables administrators to create unique sets of distinct curated, third-party software products for different AWS Marketplace accounts in their organization. This launch expands the Private Marketplace functionality by empowering administrators to scale their software governance for diverse user groups, increasing agility and enabling a faster software procurement process for their users.

AWS term definitions

• An organization is a company or entity, and may contain multiple AWS accounts. Customers may organize their account using AWS Organizations.
• An AWS account may represent a department or team. It may also be a specified as an environment type within an organization, such as for live production or for development.
• Account groups are sets of AWS accounts that have been bundled for association to an experience.
• A Private Marketplace catalog includes an experience and one or more associated account groups.
  • Private Marketplace experiences are what users see within AWS Marketplace, including a list of approved products and branding elements. Users are governed by this product list.
• An association is the act of assigning an account group to an experience. Once associated, the users within the account group will be governed by the associated experience. Private Marketplace catalogs can be associated with a single account or with multiple accounts in the organization.

Why use Private Marketplace and AWS Marketplace APIs for Private Marketplace?

Using Private Marketplace, administrators can create and manage multiple Private Marketplace catalogs. A Private Marketplace catalog consists of an experience containing approved products and branding elements for a specified audience of AWS accounts, known as an account group. When an account group is associated with a specific Private Marketplace experience, users in the account can only subscribe to that experience’s set of approved products. Administrators can create experiences of approved products for each account group, eliminating the need for blanket approvals and ensuring users have access to products vetted for their use.

The AWS Marketplace APIs for Private Marketplace can programmatically manage and govern Private Marketplace catalogs across the organization. They can also integrate with existing ticketing and approval systems to streamline approvals. For more information about using APIs to manage multiple Private Marketplace catalogs, see Working with a Private Marketplace in the AWS Marketplace Catalog API Reference.

How to use create and manage multiple AWS Marketplace Private Marketplace catalogs

Private Marketplace administrators and users can access the multiple Private Marketplace catalog functionality through the admin portal within the AWS Marketplace website or by using the AWS Marketplace Catalog API. The following tutorial explains how to use the Private Marketplace portal to create and manage multiple Private Marketplace catalogs for your organization’s accounts.

This tutorial shows you how to create a Private Marketplace within your organization. It also shows how to create an experience, associate account groups, make an experience live, manage an experience, and manage your Private Marketplace catalogs. For this tutorial, I’m creating a Private Marketplace for my security team’s use. My security team needs access to specific products with AWS Marketplace that others in my organization should not have access to purchase. Using Private Marketplace, I will create an experience of approved products curated for their use, assign it to their account group, and manage the catalog for meet the needs of the team.

Step 1: Enable Private Marketplace for your organization

If you already have a Private Marketplace enabled for your organization, proceed to step 2.

First, you must enable Private Marketplace for your organization. To do so, log into your AWS management account. This is the only step in the Private Marketplace setup that require you to use your AWS management account. You can perform all other actions using any AWS account with the necessary AWS Identify and Access permissions.

Navigate to the Private Marketplace getting started page. In the middle of the page, choose Create Private Marketplace. If your organization already has a Private Marketplace enabled, you are automatically redirected to the Private Marketplace administrator’s page.

Step 2: Navigate to your Private Marketplace admin portal

If you created a Private Marketplace in step 1, you are automatically redirected to the Private Marketplace admin portal. If you have an existing Private Marketplace for your organization, log in to Private Marketplace as an administrator. On the AWS Marketplace webpage, navigate to the upper right-hand corner next to your user name and choose Your Private Marketplace.

The Private Marketplace administrator’s page displays your existing Private Marketplace catalog. The following screenshot shows the Dashboard page. It shows approved, declined/blocked, and all AWS Marketplace products that can be managed in your experiences.

Step 3: Create a Private Marketplace experience

3.1 Navigate to Experiences

Next, you create a Private Marketplace experience which includes your list of approved products and branding elements.

To illustrate, I am creating a catalog of approved products for my security team who sits within a specific AWS account in my organization.

To start creating a Private Marketplace for my account group, in the navigation pane, choose Experiences. The following screenshot shows the Experiences page with its resource list of one existing Private Marketplace experience.

3.2 Create your experience

To create the experiences containing your approved products and branding, in the Private Marketplace experiences section upper right, choose Create experience. Enter a name and description for your experience. I entered US-Security-Production for the name. Choose Create experience. I recommend using a consistent naming scheme, such as departments, divisions, or environment type. This helps identify the experience’s use and simplifies searching in the portal.

3.3 Curate products for your experience

Once your experience is created, you can curate the list of approved products. To do this, follow these steps:

• On the Experiences page, select the experience you want to modify. I selected US-Security-Production.
• On the new experience’s details page, under the Products section, choose the All AWS Marketplace products
• To search for and add products, in the Products tab, select the All AWS Marketplace products Enter a product keyword into the search bar. Find the products you want to add to the initial list of approved products for the security team’s use. Check the checkbox on the left side of the product row, then select Add on the right side of the grid. The following screenshot shows the Products tab of the experience’s details page with a section for pending request from users as well as eight products that are already approved.

 3.4 Add branding to your experience

To add branding to your experience, do the following:

• On the Settings tab, update the branding for the experience. The branding is visible to the security team when they log in to AWS Marketplace. Updating the experience’s title, description, color scheme, and logo ensures that your users know that this is a catalog curated for their use.
• On the Settings tab, upload your logo, update your experience name, enter a description, and choose a color scheme. I added my company logo, updated the Name to US-Security-Production, and added the Description to Products in this Private Marketplace are approved for the US security team’s production environment. Contact your administrator at admin@yourcompany.com with any questions. I also selected blue as the theme color and chose

 The following screenshot shows my Profile settings section of the Settings tab with the changes I just made.

Step 4: Associate an account group with the experience

To associate your account group with the experience you created in steps 1-3, you must first add the account group to the Private Marketplace portal. I am associating my security account group to the US-Security-Production experience created. To do this, do the following:

• In the navigation pane, choose Account group. Choose Create account group.
• On the Create new audience page, enter a name and description for the account. You need them to locate this account on the Account group page in the future.
• In Associate AWS account, enter the security team’s account ID. You can enter up to 50 accounts using a comma to separate each account entry. Your account IDs are your AWS accounts and can found within your AWS console. Refer to AWS documentation to learn more about finding your accounts.
• For Associate experience, choose your experience. I select my experience, US – Security – Production. You can also associate account groups with experiences on the Experiences page.

Step 5: Make the experience live

To enable the new experience to govern the security team, you must make the experience live. To do this, do the following steps:

• In the Private Marketplace portal navigation pane, choose I choose the experience, US – Security – Production, created in steps 1-4.
• On the experience’s details page, choose In the Status and requests section, for Experience status, select Live.

Now all your users in the account can see the Private Marketplace experiences and are governed by the set of approved products curated in that experience. My users in the security account group are governed by the approved products and branding created in the US-Security-Production experience.

Step 6: Manage your Private Marketplace catalogs

6.1 Modify available products

After making the experience live, you can modify the products available to the accounts that the experience governs. To do this, in the Private Marketplace portal navigation pane, choose Experiences, and then choose the experience you want to edit. Make your edits on the experience’s product page. For example, you can add or remove products to the approved list.

6.2 Add account groups to an experience

If you want your experience to govern other account groups, you can associate additional account groups. I am adding account groups to my US – Security – Production experience, allowing these additional accounts to have access to the product approved in the experience. To do this, do the following:

• In the Private Marketplace portal navigation pane, choose Experiences, and then choose the experience you want to edit. I choose US – Security – Production.
• You are directed to the Associated audiences In the upper right, choose Add association.
• To remove accounts, select the account groups to remove in the Associated audiences tab and then choose Remove Accounts.

6.3: Bulk add or remove products

To add or remove multiple products for multiple Private Marketplace experiences, you can use the bulk functionality in the left sidebar. This is helpful after you have created several experiences that you want to update in one action. To bulk add or remove products, do the following:

• In the Private Marketplace portal left sidebar, choose Bulk add/remove products. Select Bulk add products, as shown in the following screenshot.

• To find the products you want to add, under Select AWS Marketplace products, enter a keyword into the Search for AWS Marketplace products In the search results, select the products to add to your experience queue. Add them to your queue by selecting Add products to queue. Choose Continue.
• To find the experience to add the products to, under 2. Select Private Marketplaces, enter a keyword into the Search Private Marketplaces To add to the experience I created in steps 1-4, I enter security.
• From the search results, select the experiences you want to add the products to then add the experiences to the queue by choosing Add experience to queue. Once all experiences are added to the queue, choose Bulk add selected products. All selected products are added to the selected experiences.

Conclusion

Using multiple Private Marketplace catalogs makes it easy for you to authorize sets of approved products for specific accounts and account groups within your organization. Your users can quickly find, buy, and deploy the products in AWS Marketplace needed for their use, while you maintain procurement controls and governance. For more information about creating and managing multiple Private Marketplace catalogs, see Private Marketplaces in the AWS Marketplace Buyer Guide.

About the Author

Murphy Tiggelaar, Product Manager, AWS Marketplace

Murphy Tiggelaar builds and manages products and features that help customers purchase within AWS Marketplace. She loves launching products that enable customers to govern and customize their experience on AWS Marketplace. Murphy is located in Austin, Texas and enjoys traveling, cooking, and exploring all the great food, music, and nature Austin has to offer.