One of the reasons that the cloud is so popular, and that cloud native architectures are becoming the normal method of designing workloads, is due to the procurement and consumption model used. The easy way to think about this is the ability to procure using operational expenditure (OpEx) instead of the traditional capital expenditure (CapEx), which can have a large impact on the way a company handles revenues, taxes, and long-term depreciation of assets. However, that is just the surface of the impact that the cloud has on the way organizations procure their IT resources.

The shift to pay per use consumption by cloud vendors has enabled ISVs to also align their business model, making their products easier to consume alongside the chosen cloud vendor services. This change can have a significant impact on the way that organizations negotiate contracts with ISVs, often lowering their overall bill by only paying for what they used instead of long-term contracts based on the number of CPUs the software sits on. In addition to third-party ISVs modifying their procurement model, cloud vendors often offer a cloud marketplace, allowing ISVs to have a digital catalog to list their wares, making it easier for customers to find, test, buy, and deploy software.

All of these changes are designed to allow customers to fundamentally change their purchasing behaviors to be user-friendly, with faster alignment to business requirements and easier identification of offerings that can solve their business problems.