Marketplace Overview

The Windows Azure Marketplace (WAM) is an information and application marketplace that changes the way applications and information are distributed. The Marketplace collects data, imagery, and real-time web services from leading commercial data providers and authoritative public data sources. Marketplace simplifies the purchase and consumption experience for developers and end users. You can use the Marketplace to find and leverage premium data to: Drive your business and consumer applications. Bring various datasets together in creative ways to get new insights into your business performance and processes. Visually explore APIs across multiple content providers’ blog, structured and real-time web services. Easily consume third-party data inside Microsoft Office and SQL Server for rich analytics and reporting. Discover and license valuable data to enhance existing applications or reports. The Marketplace also provides a central location for developers and users. Developers can make their Microsoft Azure applications broadly available. Users to find and subscribe to useful Azure applications.

Benefits

Information Workers

Marketplace data can be consumed in the LOB and Productivity Software you already use. The Marketplace provides easy integration with PowerPivot so you can work with the data in Microsoft® Excel. Pricing is low-cost and predictable with the convenience of single source billing and data.

If you need a custom application, you can save development costs by searching for and subscribing to the application on the Marketplace.

Developers

The Marketplace gives the developer consistent REST based OData APIs across all datasets to ease development in any platform. When you use Add Service Reference in Visual Studio, you get instant object models and eliminate the tedious and costly need to write abstraction layer code. You can visually build and explore APIs, and preview results without making costly investments in development.

The Marketplace also simplifies marketing your application. When you sell your application through the Marketplace you have immediate access to a large network of potential customers through Microsoft's network of end users.

Data Publishers

The Marketplace enables you to expand your market through integration in Microsoft’s Information Worker software. Leverage Microsoft’s cloud computing platform for scaling, delivering, reporting, and billing. Use the Marketplace to reduce the cost of sales to new customers, longtail customers, and smaller developers.

The process for registering as a data publisher and offering your data on the Marketplace for subscription is quick and straightforward. See the topic Publish on the Marketplace.

See Also

Concepts

What's New in the Public Marketplace
Use Marketplace Data and Apps
Develop a Marketplace Application
Publish on the Marketplace