CloudBlue, an Ingram Micro Company, Irvine, California, United States: CloudBlue's Cloud Infrastructure

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CloudBlue, an Ingram Micro business, headquartered in Irvine, California, enables businesses to build their own digital ecosystems. CloudBlue is a SaaS company serving over 180 companies globally, representing 30 million cloud subscriptions, and helps businesses transform themselves, whatever their position in the supply chain. CloudBlue’s managed marketplace platform takes the complexity out of distributing subscription-based solutions and its technology does the heavy lifting for all processes that make everything-as-a- service commerce a reality.

Hyperscalers allow businesses to build cloud infrastructures and develop tailored solutions through a range of ‘off-the-shelf’ options. This helps customers reduce costs, scale faster and increase interoperability. CloudBlue technology does heavy lifting for all processes that make everything-as-a- service commerce a reality, so our customers’ businesses can become more efficient and [REDACTED FOR PUBLICATION] profitable. Our managed marketplace platform takes the complexity out of distributing subscription-based solutions in the everything-as-a-service world. The last update was in January 2023.

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Automation is key to harnessing the full potential of hyperscaler marketplaces, which means organizations need to rebuild their product delivery processes and integrate new management solutions. Developed to specifically address the challenges connected to selling on hyperscaler marketplaces, CloudBlue provides a low-code way to tap into the leading marketplaces and transform the sales potential of your products.

With a set of powerful pre-configured tools and market-ready integrations, CloudBlue lets you publish to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Marketplaces – managing the sales and fulfillment lifecycle of every listing from a single platform.  

Assisted onboarding aids product set-up, while keeping businesses in control of branding, order parameters and subscription deals. By centralizing operations, CloudBlue also helps to automate more stages of the process. For example, product changes need to be configured just once and the updates will apply to every marketplace where you publish your products and services. 

Real-time validation parameters ensure that sales orders relate to fulfillment capabilities and automate complex billing usage calculations for each individual customer or partner subscription. With operational control at your fingertips, you can expand and scale across the cloud supply chain without limit.  

With our cloud platform, you can customize and scale your subscription operations through several features:

• Publish to AWS Marketplace, Microsoft Commercial Marketplaces, and Google Cloud Marketplace without additional integration. Cut development costs and accelerate time to market 

• Configure product details to suit your requirements. Model sales by seat, by license or by usage rates and receive automatic billing information based on the configuration

• Automate product fulfillment workflows using order parameters that validate in real-time. Easily manage complex sales, vendor agreements and partnership subscriptions 

• Manage the entire fulfillment lifecycle and multi-subscription process. CloudBlue includes extensions that manage service status updates, including purchase, suspend, resume, and support recurring billing

• Brand the customer experience. Use tools to fully customize and ensure customers interact with your brand and product experience on every marketplace

Building an ecosystem of partners helps businesses accelerate growth and cultivate customer loyalty, whatever their position is in the supply chain.

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Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that actively seek opportunities to join public marketplaces and ensure buyers have easy access to their products stand to gain a competitive advantage. CloudBlue’s enterprise architecture (EA) team is dedicated to a series of principles to drive business outcomes and sustain our infrastructure’s value for stakeholders. We ensure our best practices are aligned with sustainable business goals and can deliver tangible value:

• Accountability: By actively engaging stakeholders, incorporating their input, and fostering communication, we build trust and accountability

• Agility: We embrace agility, quickly responding to customer preferences and market changes. Our agile methodologies help us prioritize customer-centric features and deliver value rapidly

• Continuity: We proactively track emerging trends, industry best practices, and evolving business priorities. By regularly updating our technology roadmap we ensure it stays relevant and can support long-term objectives

• Influence: We recognize the need to be influential in driving business outcomes. We engage with key stakeholders to shape strategic decisions. By showcasing the value of enterprise architecture, we have become trusted advisors and have gained influence

• Pragmatism: We embrace a practical approach, considering feasibility, resource availability, and organizational constraints. By recommending achievable solutions aligned with capabilities, we ensure our recommendations always deliver value within the given context

Value: We establish KPIs aligned with business objectives and the greater good of the ecosystem. By measuring relevant metrics, we demonstrate the value of EA in achieving organizational goals. This sustains EA's value and credibility with stakeholders. In addition to Forrester's principles, our EA team leverages other valuable principles, such as innovation, security, scalability, interoperability, and sustainability

These principles further address broader organizational needs and future-proof the technology landscape. By diligently implementing these principles, the architecture team at CloudBlue aligns tech initiatives, delivers value, and sustains relevance. This builds accountability through stakeholder feedback and adapts to changing market dynamics. It also ensures continuity by tracking emerging trends, gains influence through engagement, takes a practical approach, and establishes value through measured outcomes. By integrating these principles, the team enhances alignment, drives value, and sustains the importance of enterprise architecture to stakeholders.

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We have included slides to illustrate our technology and how we connect a global community. We have also included videos demonstrating the benefits of our architecture.