The Marketplace Playbook: Start with the Customer, Scale What Works

A marketplace can help technology providers expand distribution and simplify buying when it’s built around a clear customer need. Leaders from Vodafone Business, T-Mobile, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Workday recently shared practical lessons on choosing a focused catalog, weighing build versus buy, connecting with hyperscaler channels, and exploring AI to improve discovery while keeping customer trust and human support in view. Building a marketplace is a series of choices: which customer problem to address first, what to bring to market, and what to scale once it works. In a Thrive 2026 main-stage panel session moderated by AppDirect CTO Emanuel Bertolin, leaders from Vodafone Business, T-Mobile, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and Workday shared the decisions behind their marketplace strategies—and the lessons other providers can put to work. Though their marketplace journeys are at different stages, the discussion focused on a shared question: how should a marketplace help customers buy—and support the provider’s business? Together, their experiences offer a practical starting point: define the customer need and business goal your marketplace should serve before choosing a platform or catalog, then build around the capabilities that remove friction and scale what works. The panelists’ examples show what that customer-first approach looks like in…