Microsoft Launches Unified AI Marketplace to Streamline Enterprise AI Adoption

Microsoft will compete with AWS to offer a marketplace of AI apps and agents

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways * Microsoft Marketplace offers more than 3,000 AI apps and agents. * It's a fusion of Azure Marketplace and AppSource. * The idea is to make it easier for businesses to shop for AI tools. Microsoft is getting into the AI dealership business. On Thursday, the company announced the launch of Microsoft Marketplace, a virtual shopping center built atop Microsoft Cloud where businesses can shop for cloud services, as well as more than 3,000 AI apps and agents. Also: AI helps strong dev teams and hurts weak ones, according to Google's 2025 DORA report "Microsoft Marketplace gives you access to thousands of AI apps and agents from our rich partner ecosystem designed to automate tasks, accelerate decision-making and unlock value across your business," Alysa Taylor, Chief Marketing Officer at Microsoft's Commercial Cloud and AI division, wrote in a company blog post. The new marketplace is a fusion of Microsoft's Azure Marketplace, which launched in 2014 as an online directory for cloud services, and Microsoft AppSource, which debuted two years later as a virtual marketplace for business apps. It's available now across the US and will be available in more global markets soon, according to Taylor's blog post. Also: AI just passed a brutal finance exam most humans fail - should analysts be worried? While Microsoft aims to become a trusted provider of AI services for its massive cloud services customer base, it's simultaneously working to expand its AI offerings through Copilot via a partnership with Anthropic. It's also reportedly building a first-of-its kind marketplace where publishers can sell their content to be licensed for use by Copilot and eventually other AI products. Finding the AI needles in the haystack The core idea behind Microsoft Marketplace is to streamline the process of shopping for and deploying AI solutions for enterprise customers at a time when new AI-powered apps and agents are proliferating at a breakneck speed. All of the apps and agents now on offer through the marketplace are compatible with Microsoft Cloud, meaning that any business that already relies on Microsoft's cloud computing services can quickly and easily integrate the new tools into their workflow across platforms like Azure, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Security. Also: 6 insights service leaders need to know about agentic AI That also means that customers using the new marketplace don't have to worry about cybersecurity risks that the onboarding of a new AI tool might otherwise carry with it. "By integrating offerings from Marketplace directly into the Microsoft Cloud, IT is equipped with management and control tools that enable both innovation and governance," Taylor wrote. "When you acquire a Copilot agent or an app running on Azure from Microsoft Marketplace, it's provisioned and distributed to team members aligned to your security and governance standards." Also: OpenAI tested GPT-5, Claude, and Gemini on real-world tasks - the results were surprising Microsoft isn't the only company betting that it can profit by serving as an intermediary between AI developers and businesses that are looking to onboard the technology (and which are also perhaps a bit baffled by the sheer variety of new apps and agents that are available). Amazon Web Services recently launched its own virtual marketplace through which customers can shop for agents from developers like Anthropic, IBM, and Perplexity. Software company CrowdStrike and Meta have also developed a set of benchmarks intended to help businesses sift through a growing selection of AI-powered cybersecurity tools.

Microsoft merges business-focused AI app stores

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab has combined the separate marketplaces for its artificial intelligence tools aimed at businesses into one offering, it said on Thursday. It previously offered tools for software developers, who use its Azure cloud computing service, on one marketplace and applications and so-called "agents" - AI tools designed to carry out tasks on behalf of human users within applications - on another. Starting on Thursday in the United States and rolling out globally in the coming weeks and months, Microsoft will be moving them all onto its new "Microsoft Marketplace" aimed at corporate technology buyers. Apps and services on the marketplace will be streamlined for easy use with existing Microsoft products. And Microsoft customers will pay for them via their existing Microsoft billing relationships, Alysa Taylor, the company's chief marketing officer for commercial cloud and AI, told Reuters. Unlike consumer app stores, Microsoft will not charge a commission on apps available on the marketplace. Instead, Microsoft charges a publishing fee to apps listed there, and then makes money from whatever Microsoft cloud services developers selling on the marketplace may be using, Taylor said. Apps on the store must pass a security and compliance review from Microsoft to ensure that businesses using them will be able to control what corporate data they access, she added. "There's a gate to get into the marketplace," Taylor said. Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Joe Bavier Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Microsoft Marketplace opens for AI apps, agents

The unified storefront provides a platform for customers to try out and buy solutions, bridging the gap where AI adoption requires a mix of third-party and in-house tools. Microsoft has launched Microsoft Marketplace, a unified storefront website for AI apps, agents, and enterprise solutions to boost AI adoption. Unveiled September 25, the marketplace is intended for scenarios where the adoption of AI agents requires a mix of in-house and third-party tools. The marketplace offers a secure, scalable mechanism for customers to try out and buy solutions, whether on the web or directly within Microsoft products, according to the company. Featuring an AI Apps and Agents category, the marketplace simplifies enterprise purchasing by uniting apps and agents with solutions such as Copilot and Azure AI Foundry in a single, governable platform. Software developers and partners can use the marketplace to reach more customers and simplify selling apps, agents, and other enterprise solutions. Uniting Microsoft's AppSource and Azure Marketplace web storefronts, Microsoft Marketplace has a unified taxonomy and a combined catalog, with search and category-based recommendations. The marketplace supports purchasing both on the web and directly in-product.

Microsoft Marketplace Promises Simpler AI Agent Purchasing Experience

'Channel partners are building agents, and this is a fantastic place for them to showcase those skills,' Microsoft Chief Partner Officer Nicole Dezen says. Microsoft has released in the U.S. a new marketplace that aims to simplify artificial intelligence application and agent discovery, purchasing and deployment while also unifying its Azure Marketplace and AppSource marketplaces, with plans to introduce Microsoft Marketplace worldwide. A resale-enabled offers capability in private preview for the Microsoft Marketplace allows software companies to authorize channel partners to sell private offers on the vendor's behalf. And the marketplace has an "AI apps and agents" category users can select for 3,000-plus AI offerings from Microsoft itself and other vendors, according to the Redmond, Wash.-based AI and cloud vendor. Nicole Dezen, Microsoft's chief partner officer and corporate vice president of global channel partner sales, told CRN in an interview that for channel partners, the marketplace will enable further customer reach and faster time-to-value delivery. Just three months into the fiscal year, Microsoft has seen customer purchases of AI products through the marketplace double. "Channel partners are building agents, and this is a fantastic place for them to showcase those skills," Dezen said. [RELATED: Microsoft Unveils 'World's Most Powerful AI Datacenter,' President Brad Smith Says] Microsoft Marketplace As an example of how Microsoft partners are transforming their business to meet customer needs in the AI era, Nyasha Tunduwani, founder of Seattle-based Microsoft solution provider Real Impact, told CRN in a recent interview that he and his team have been building greater capabilities around Microsoft's Fabric analytics platform. Fabric is one of Microsoft's tools that is making data accessible and usable beyond back-end analysts, representing the promise of new AI tools democratizing data insight for a larger share of the workforce, Tunduwani said. His company does a workshop on becoming a Fabric analyst in a day that has proven popular. "I don't want to call us 'plumbers,' but we're essentially putting [in] that back-end infrastructure, knitting those pieces together," he said. Making AI apps and agents available through the marketplace should cut down on configuration time and lower operating costs, according to Microsoft. Distributors that are integrating the Microsoft Marketplace catalog into their own marketplaces include Arrow, Crayon, Ingram Micro, Pax8 and TD Synnex. Microsoft Marketplace launch partners include CRN 2025 Solution Provider 500 members Infosys, Avanade, Kyndryl, Cognizant and Capgemini. Resale-enabled offers allow other vendors to expand their reach through authorizing channel partners to resell products by geography. Vendors can adjust or remove authorization at any time. Microsoft expects to expand access to resale-enabled offers later in the year. Customers with Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitments (MACCs) can leverage that for buying thousands of "Azure benefit eligible" offers. IT teams can integrate products from the marketplace into Microsoft Cloud with management and control tools to ensure security and governance standards. MACCs provide competitive Azure infrastructure pricing and help facilitate larger long-term deals that can reach up to five years, according to the vendor. The marketplace's other categories range from data and analytics to productivity and collaboration and include industry-focused offerings, according to the vendor. Users can also continue to procure third-party and Microsoft-made AI products within Microsoft products. Microsoft's Agent Store in Microsoft 365 Copilot, for example, has Copilot agents from the Marketplace catalog. Microsoft is also working on future experiences with thousands of Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, according to the vendor.