ISVs (Independent Software Vendors), Explained in Less Than 500 Words

With over 7,000 MarTech companies battling each other to win a spot in the technology stack of businesses today, sticking out from the crowd has never been more difficult. Almost every industry under the MarTech umbrella is saturated, so traditional inbound marketing can only turn so many heads.

Fortunately, computer hardware, operating systems, and cloud platforms have decided to help their smaller tech counterparts out. In recent years, these platforms have built marketplaces where MarTech companies can offer their software solutions to the platforms’ unique customers, which has increased a lot of MarTech companies’ visibility and, in turn, their revenue.

These MarTech companies who partner with computer hardware providers, operating systems, and cloud platforms to resell their software solutions on their marketplaces are called independent software vendors. Read on to learn exactly what an ISV is, what it means to be ISV certified, and what an ISV partner is.

What’s an ISV?

An independent software vendor, or ISV, is an individual or organization that develops, markets, and sells software solutions that run on one or more computer hardware providers like Macintosh, operating systems like iOS, or cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services.

For instance, any company that offers their software solution on a marketplace like HubSpot Connect or Salesforce AppExchange is an ISV.

ISV Certified

Computer hardware providers, operating systems, and cloud platforms will all test independent software vendors who want to offer their software solutions on their marketplace. But they’ll only allow, or ISV certify, the independent software vendors who can offer the most relevant and best software solutions on their marketplaces.

For example, Microsoft, a company that develops computer hardware (Xbox), operating systems (Windows), and a cloud platform (Azure), offers silver and gold ISV certifications to independent software vendors whose products can pass their rigorous quality tests and prove they can offer the top software solutions to Microsoft’s customers on each of their marketplaces.

What’s an ISV partner?

An ISV partner is essentially the same thing as an ISV certified independent software provider — they can resell their software solutions on a computer hardware provider’s, operation system’s, or cloud platform’s marketplaces. The only difference between the two is that most ISV partnership programs are not as exclusive as ISV certified programs. 

For instance, if you want to get into Dell’s or Red Hat’s ISV partner program, you just need to verify your organization, apply to the program, get accepted, agree to their terms and conditions, and stay in good standing with the platform to maintain your membership.