>> Hi, this is
Steve Michelotti of the
Azure Government Engineering Team.
I'm joined here today by Sarah Weldon,
also of the Azure Government Engineering Team.
And we're going to talk about
the Azure Government Marketplace.
So, welcome Sarah.
>> Thank you Steve.
>> Okay, so what can we expect to talk about today?
>> Today, we're going to
talk about Azure Government Marketplace.
It is our publishing portal for allowing
third party publishers to make their software
available in our Azure Government Cloud Environment.
>> Okay. All right, so that's cool.
So, talk to me a little bit more about
what is it and why do I care
about it if I am a cloud software developer?
>> Yeah definitely. So, Azure Government
is our separate instance of Azure.
It allows our Government customers to be
operating an entirely independent environment,
yet still have all the benefits
of using Azure's capabilities.
So, because of that it is a separate publishing instance
from Azure commercial.
But, it is a great opportunity for
publishers to reach the government space,
and make their offerings
available and easy to reach from government customers.
>> With higher compliance levels and that sort of thing.
>> Yeah. So, Azure Government has
a very high compliance bar
and that's why the government
customers like to come there.
But, the happy thing is that,
that's really what's available
in our overall environment,
and publishers can publish to
the environment regardless of
what their compliance stance is.
Because it's all hosted in the customer's subscription,
they get some of that capabilities from
the environment along with it.
>> Okay, excellent. So, this sounds like
a great way to reach government customers.
What if I'm someone that already has something in
the commercial marketplace and
I want to move this to gov. How do I go about doing that?
>> It's a great question. So, happily
the government has also
served by the exact same publishing portal that
our publishers use for commercial.
So, with just a couple of clicks,
publishers can opt in to publish and
make their solution available in Azure Government,
as long as it's supported in our environment.
>> Okay, this sounds great.
Can you show us a little demo
of some of these things that we've heard you talk about?
>> Sure. I'd be happy to.
So, as you can see here,
this is the same publishing portal
that our publisher has used for commercial.
All I need to do is go in select
new offer and then as I'm going into the offer settings,
I need to type in my offer ID.
>> So, this offer ID is just some unique name to give it?
>> Yeah. It's a unique name has to fit
the small type text.
And then, publish ID is my publishing subscription.
And then, the name,
I also need to give it a unique name.
>> Alright, pretty simple so far.
>> Pretty simple and I
make sure I'm saving it along the way.
>> Okay, so as we're establishing
the initial offer ID, publish ID,
is just giving us an entry in the repository so we
can have that basis
for putting our marketplace entry in it, is that correct?
>> Yeah. Exactly. So,
each publisher will have their set of
skews that are saved in here and each time they publish,
it'll move the version forward or we
might be setting it as a new naming convention as well.
>> Okay. This is the skew ID,
I can specify whatever I want here?
>> Yep. Exactly. So, it's
just providing more information.
>> Okay. And this
is just summary information of title summary.
This is going to be displayed to
the my potential users on the marketplace?
>> Yes. The summary and description is
all stuff that becomes more visible to the user.
>> We're opening quick stuff in here,
but, for a real app,
we put nice thought out descriptions and all that stuff,
this demo purposes. Okay, great.
>> And then, we have it set as a Solution Template.
There are other offerings in
here that you can also select in as well.
But, the Solution Templates are what we support and go.
And as you can see here,
there is the bit of that
essentially lets you publish
into the Azure Government Environment.
And, this is where you want to
select in and I'll also note while
most publishers like to have
the same offering available in Commercial and in Gov,
if you have a case where you want to make changes,
specifically for your government
customers, that is possible.
So, you can create a unique skew that goes
to the government space only
and doesn't go to Public Azure.
You just select out of Azure.
>> Okay, great.
>> But, for the most cases, publishers do both.
One area where we get a lot of questions
is about certifications because there
is a Tax Dialog Box in here
where publishers can add certifications.
This is entirely optional.
But, if you want to note things that
your software has already
gotten compliance certifications for,
we wanted to make sure that we supported
publishers being able to add that information in there.
>> What certifications would we be talking about there?
>> I mean it could be FIPS,
for example on network compliances, compliance offerings.
But, for the most case,
I think a lot of the publishers like also leave this out.
And then, for Package Details this is where
you upload your actual file
that supports the Search Templates.
So, it would be your JSON File as
well as your UX definition.
>>Okay, great.
>> And then, I've prepared one in here already.
And also it has to be a Zip File.
But, publishers will be familiar with that as well.
>> Let's you use
the Version Number and that kind of thing.
>> So, the versions always got to be numerical.
And you just enter that in.
And I'll hit ''Save" again.'
And you can see here that I can now
publish to the Azure Government Environment.
It's saving right now.
And yet, if I hit ''Publish'', I'll get some flag.
So, you do have to make sure that you go through all of
the steps to fill out all of the information.
There's a lot of content in here.
>> Okay. It's pretty simple, straightforward stuff.
>> It's still simple stuff,
and I think for the most part as publishers,
if they're already publishing to the Government Space,
a lot of this content will be
already created in their system.
>> Okay, great. All right,
we'll just put as some demos stuff in
there to test, test,
and just walk through the process.
We show people what it is.
Is that marketing identifier?
This is another unique identifier for my organization?
>> So, this is actually what shows up in
the URL when you have the offering open.
So, it's just what shows up in the domain.
I think actually can't have spaces because of that.
>> Alright,but it will give
you a little help so along the way,
if you're putting in something wrong?
>> Yeah. It does.
And here is an important thing.
So, publishers that want to be able to test
their offering in the environment
before pushing it all the way to prod,
you can enter your subscription ID for
your subscription into this space.
And then, it essentially
weightless that subscription so that when
you log into the portal only you can
see the offering that you just published.
And in the government's case
you would want to get a trial or test subscription
for Azure Government and put
that subscription ID in here because
if you use a commercial subscription,
and you log into
the Government Portal, you won't see here on menu.
>> You get a mismatch.
>> Yeah, you won't see your offering.
So, what you do you want to make sure that
your government subscription is the one that shows here.
>> Okay, great.
>> And then, a couple of
other basics you just want to click
into the categories you have.
And here you need to
upload the pictures that are essentially your logos.
>> All right. So, I've got some of them from
the art department ready with
the PNG files since I'm
a developer have no concept
of how to make anything look good.
Okay, great. We're just going to select some icons here.
>> Yeah. They'll have to
meet the pixel requirements, but.
>> There's documentation on what
the pixels need to be that sort of thing.
>> Yeah, it's all flagged right there too, great.
>> Okay, great, I see the last, we're almost done,
we just have to put a little URL in for legal and
we'll just put some test text in
there for terms of use and we're going to go.
>> Great.
>> All right, so we just saved that and we're moving on.
>> We are. Now here's
just the support information
they need to be able to enter
so that when customers have questions or
need to flag a support ticket they have a contact.
>> Okay, great. So, just basic contact
information like organizations already established?
>> Yes.
>> Okay, so this essentially
completes the process of creating my marketplace item.
We literally walked there from start to finish on
the span of five or 10 minutes. So, now what?
>> Now, we can hit publish.
>> Okay. It's got the email in there, we say yes.
So, how do I know, if I'm
someone that's walking through this whole process,
how do I know what to do?
Is there documentation I can look at or how do I do that?
>> Azure has common documentation for
any publisher that's publishing
to Azure for the very first time.
And here is our documentation.
First steps for publishing.
As I said it is the same steps as commercial but we're
putting here answers to
some frequently asked questions like
compliance considerations.
As I said, you don't have to have
specific compliance requirements
for your solution before
you're allowed to publish Azure Government.
We let customers make judgments on that,
but we do make sure that you can put
any compliance information you do have in there,
and then you have the specific steps for publishing.
One thing that does come up is being able to
test your solutions specifically
in the government environment and as I said,
you need a government subscription
in order to be able to do that.
Publishers can acquire subscriptions
to the government environment by
applying for a trial account which can then be converted
to web direct EA or whatever they prefer.
But, for a client
with a trial account you do need to pass
an eligibility checks if we made it very
straightforward for publishers to be able to do this.
So it only takes a few days.
To do that you can just come to
our documentation site and get
started by clicking with just a few clicks.
>> So, what if I'm in a situation where
I don't have any customers yet,
but I want to get access, does it let me do that?
>> Yeah. So, for applying for
access once you've applied through
our trial form that's on the website,
one thing that you want to pay attention to is what
you're selecting for your organisation.
If you're a solution provider that
provides they will be
publishing your offering to marketplace,
the best fit for you is actually the second bullet here,
solution provider that's serving
US federal state government entities.
And as part of that really what you need to
do is just show that you're
registered with Sam's ID and Dan's number.
It's basically a government database
that allows them to take
basic information about a company
and just make sure that they have a record of them.
So, it's basically shows that you have
intent of doing business with the government.
You don't have to prove that you
have existing government customers,
because otherwise you'd have a chicken and egg problem,
where you had to be registered but you didn't
have customers yet until you get registered.
So, just by filling this out as long as you have for
your company you have a U.S. based
address through one of your offices,
it doesn't have to be all of them but you have to
have a U.S. based office,
then you shouldn't have
any problems with registering for Sam.
>> Okay. All right, cool.
I heard you mention certifications earlier.
So, do I need to get for example Fed Ramp first
or do I need to worry about things like having
US citizens perform and support roles?
What do I need to think about there?
>> It's good questions.
You don't have to have any of those
in place in order to publish to Azure Government.
It will mostly shape
how customers choose to use your offering.
So, it may affect adoption in certain segments,
for example like DOD, they're
going to have a pretty high compliance bar.
But, the other thing to consider is if they're
deploying your solution and their own subscription,
you might not need those exact compliance requirements
and it's better to let the customer make that judgment.
>> Okay, so this all sounds great and
we've covered a ton of information.
Just to close this out,
any final tips or
where we can go for more information if I'm
someone that's interested in making sure that
my solution works for Azure Government Marketplace?
>> Yeah, definitely.
So, we do have a number of pages
for documentation that partners can go to.
We also have a really active community in
Azure Government in Washington
D.C. as well as on our blog page.
So, definitely get integrated into our community
by joining the blog site as well as
potentially the meet up and that lets you
even get more integrated in the way
government customers are starting
to think so that you can make
your solution be really successful
with our customer base.
>> Okay great. Well, thank you for joining
us here today Sara and sharing your knowledge.
This has been Steve Michelotti with Sara Weldon from
the Azure Government Engineering Team.
Thanks for joining us.