Maidenhead Bridge uses marketplace to magnify and scale worldwide

Founded in 2016, Maidenhead Bridge is a small company based in England that provides a suite of Cloud Security Connectors for customers to easily connect via any virtual platform and public cloud. The key is that this incredibly complex solution can be implemented and run with little to no technical background. Maidenhead Bridge credits the ISV Success program with its ability to successfully adopt the commercial marketplace as core to its go-to-market strategy.

Engaging the ISV Success program

Maidenhead Bridge engaged with the ISV Success program to get support in optimizing its solution to sell on the Microsoft commercial marketplace. The program is designed to help ISVs maximize their innovation using the Microsoft Cloud and go-to-market faster by selling on the commercial marketplace. Benefits included upward of $120K in cloud credits, tailored tools, one-to-one consultations, training resources, and much more.

“Microsoft is the only cloud provider that understands ISVs,” says Adrian Larsen, CEO at Maidenhead Bridge. “They know in advance our challenges and struggles to create, publish, promote, and scale our products in Azure Marketplace. With the ISV Success program, Microsoft provides us with invaluable support and training.”

Maidenhead Bridge began its journey by utilizing several program resources, including demand generation, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Azure cloud credits, and financial incentives. Using Azure credits helped expedite development and Q&A testing. It also leaned on the demand generation benefits with Marketplace Rewards―a component of the ISV Success program―to help increase its customer base and brand visibility with social media content, training assets, and email campaigns launched from within Microsoft’s social syndication tool. Maidenhead Bridge also credits the program’s onboarding documentation support for helping to create a more attractive and polished set of offerings in the marketplace.

One of the benefits of selling through the marketplace is having the built-in support structure and commerce engine. The professional services aspect of the business is handled completely through the marketplace. Maidenhead Bridge has seen 172 percent year-over-year growth since publishing its solutions on the marketplace. Additionally, the built-in support has helped the company to maintain high customer satisfaction with dramatically reduced help tickets in the last six months.

One of Maidenhead Bridge’s customers procured through the marketplace is a worldwide pharmaceutical company that has to adhere to stringent privacy policies. In the past, they were challenged with their multicloud environment. Using Maidenhead Bridge’s Cloud Security Connectors, they are now seamlessly running communication between clouds. To date, Maidenhead Bridge’s solution has facilitated more than 10 million continuous hours with zero interruptions.

Doing more with less

As Maidenhead Bridge looks to continue expanding its customer base, it will continue to rely on the marketplace as not only a primary sales channel, but as a trusted resource to help evolve its customer journeys. “This is more about how to continue, how to promote the product, and how to polish the qualification,” says Larsen. “The level of support Microsoft provides is invaluable.”

More information about Maidenhead Bridge can be found here and its marketplace offerings here.

For more details on the ISV Success program, go to www.microsoft.com/isv