What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Tackle Platform is that I am part of the Enterprise Cloud team, where we administer AWS, Azure, and GCP for our organization. We partner with the Partnerships Alliance team who are responsible for listing the digital products that our company makes on the marketplaces, such as AWS Marketplace. We use Tackle Platform in the company to integrate our listings and marketplace offerings onto AWS Marketplace, allowing the Alliances team to utilize Marketplace with the technical layers abstracted.
My involvement includes deploying the CloudFormation stack to AWS to create that connection. I administer the connection of Tackle Platform to our AWS Marketplace for the Alliance team.
A recent specific example of a time I used Tackle Platform in that process is when the Alliance team created a new environment within Tackle Platform for our UK listings. I went into the platform and followed the integration steps to set up that new environment with our UK AWS account by deploying the CloudFormation stack. I can also delete an old CloudFormation stack and update it through the platform, and that finalizes the connection between Tackle Platform and AWS.
What is most valuable?
Tackle Platform's best features include its documentation, which I find quite easy to follow, and I think that is very important because Tackle Platform is mainly used by salespeople or Alliance team members who only bring in engineering individuals like myself when they need something carried out. We have limited visibility of how Marketplace is actually used and how it works, making the documentation very useful to bridge that gap.
Within the platform, the steps to deploy the stack set are listed very clearly, explaining why those steps are necessary and providing estimates for how long specific tasks will take. Tackle Platform also prompts you for details to input into the platform, such as the stack ID if you are updating a stack, linking it into your AWS account, making it very efficient, quick, and easy to use.
The documentation helped me during the process by reducing errors and saving time. Since engineering teams generally do not have much awareness of how Marketplace works due to limited interaction, the clarity of the documentation would have saved 50% of the time I otherwise would have spent if the documentation were typical of a standard company.
Tackle Platform has positively impacted my organization by abstracting the technical layer for the Alliance team to create marketplace listings, which is very important as their focus and time should be on sales activities. This has saved them time, complexity, and cost, as they do not need dedicated engineers in their own team. They can use Tackle Platform that abstracts the technical layers. Then, that team can interact with my team when they need an admin activity created, ultimately saving time, cost, and complexity for the team that uses the tool the most.
What needs improvement?
Tackle Platform is an easy-to-use tool, which is good, but I imagine if the Alliance team ever wanted to migrate from Tackle Platform, it would be very complex to do that because all of our marketplace activity is deployed via this stack set owned by Tackle Platform. The lock-in feature is strong with Tackle Platform, which is a risk for people to consider if they were to use it.
Additionally, I understand the pricing can be quite high, as they charge a platform fee plus a percentage of marketplace revenue generated. For organizations selling heavily through Tackle Platform, it could become quite expensive.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Tackle Platform for just over a year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Tackle Platform is stable. I have never noticed any instability.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support is great. I have interacted with them on numerous occasions via email and meetings. Many of Tackle Platform's employees are ex-cloud, having come from AWS or Google Cloud, meaning they do not just understand how to use Tackle Platform, but also have a deep understanding of how the cloud platforms work. Their support has been brilliant and very helpful in the past.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I do not think we previously used another solution. We may have deployed marketplace configuration directly on AWS before. We started using Tackle Platform to make managing the marketplace much easier.
What was our ROI?
I see a return on investment in terms of time saved, at least 50%. This is because Tackle Platform makes it very easy for the Alliance team to manage marketplace activity through its user-friendly UI, and it simplifies my team's tasks as well since the documentation clearly outlines what needs to be deployed. Because it is a CloudFormation template, we do not have to code anything customized. We just click and deploy a template, leading to at least 50% time savings in speed.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I did not personally evaluate other options before choosing Tackle Platform.
What other advice do I have?
Our team gets involved on a rare occasion, maybe once every couple of months to update a stack or create a new stack for a new account. In terms of time saved, I estimate at least 50% time savings for the Alliance team because rather than onboarding a new technical individual and showing them how this works, and given that most of the Alliance team are salespeople rather than technical individuals, I would imagine at least 50% saved because of these factors.
I would advise others looking into using Tackle Platform to consider it if they have significant marketplace activity they want to streamline. However, for a very small organization not yet using the marketplace heavily, it may not be worthwhile due to added management and cost. For a large enterprise with many listings on the marketplace, I would definitely say it is a great tool to use. I would rate this product a 10 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
