Challenge

Establishing clear, unified messaging for a crowded HBA market

AWS needed a clear, scalable messaging framework to align sales and marketing teams speaking to independent software vendors building horizontal business applications. The category is saturated and fast-moving. HBAs face global competition, thin margins, and pressure to ship fast. Messaging had to reflect market reality, investor expectations, and AI-driven differentiation. It also had to move internal conversations from feature-led to business-led, with emphasis on profitable growth, go-to-market scale, and data maturity.

Solution

Constructing a research-driven narrative and positioning framework

I carried out independent market research and analysed client inputs to build a structured positioning and messaging framework. I mapped the HBA landscape, key growth pressures, and buying motivations across product and revenue leadership. I defined a core narrative, value pillars, proof points, and persona-specific language. The work reframed cloud technologies from infrastructure alone to a powerful growth engine: GTM acceleration, modern SaaS foundations, and cutting-edge AI toolkits. The framework included elevator pitches of varying lengths, problem-to-value mapping, and voice guidelines to support field teams and content owners. Delivered as a comprehensive document ready for internal rollout.

  • “Main Capital Partners research asserts that the success of HBA providers relies on achieving rapid market penetration and maintaining a strong ratio between customer lifetime value (CLTV) and acquisition cost (CAC). To get there, HBA providers require significant upfront investment to establish product-market fit and scale—particularly in product development, marketing, and sales. Differentiation, speed, and operating efficiency are all critical to long-term success. This is consistent with internal research, which suggests that, when engaging with hyperscalers, HBA providers are primarily interested in growth, accelerating go-to-market (GTM), and expanding customer reach through co-marketing and co-selling opportunities.”

  • “Software companies that sell horizontal business apps (HBAs) operate in one of the most competitive SaaS categories. Amazon Web Services (AWS) can help you accelerate go-to-market and increase customer exposure, modernize your SaaS architecture, and differentiate your products with AI. We have the technology, marketplace, experts, partners, and programs to help ISVs of all sizes increase market share and drive profitable growth. We’ve already helped software companies like Zoom, Dropbox, Asana, and Freshworks—and we can do the same for you. If you’re looking for a cloud partner that understands your business, not just your infrastructure, look no further than AWS.”

  • ‍ “AWS offers more than just infrastructure. Want to bring your products to hundreds of thousands of active customers? List them on AWS Marketplace. Looking to leverage revenue-driving co-selling opportunities? Leverage them through the AWS ISV Accelerate Program. Want to increase time-to-market and create differentiation with AI? AWS has the broadest set of services, with the deepest functionality of any cloud provider—including powerful AI tools like Amazon Bedrock.“

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  • “As AI adoption grows, so does the demand for cost-effective, high-performance infrastructure. AWS offers purpose-built chips—AWS Inferentia for inference and AWS Trainium for training—that are specifically designed to accelerate machine learning workloads while reducing operational costs. Whether you’re scaling AI features across a global customer base or training new models to improve user outcomes, these custom accelerators help you move faster and more efficiently. Combined with Amazon SageMaker, they enable powerful end-to-end ML workflows with better price-performance than many general-purpose GPUs—so you can deliver intelligent capabilities at scale, without breaking your budget.”

Results

Aligning teams around a targeted go-to-market message

The framework equipped AWS sales and marketing teams with a unified story that clarified how AWS supports HBA providers’ commercial priorities.

  • Strategic clarity

    Defined a consistent narrative anchored in profitable growth, distribution scale, and AI-readiness.

  • Faster alignment

    Approved quickly and built for direct adoption by sales and marketing teams.

Flexible positioning

Provided structured messaging models for campaigns, partner communications, and enablement assets.