Shared Marketplace/Software Purchases

🏢 Enterprise · ☁️ MSP

The Challenge

You purchase third-party software through a cloud marketplace - security tools, databases, data platforms, monitoring agents - and it's billed as a single line item on your cloud invoice. Multiple internal departments or teams use the product, but usage isn't necessarily seat-based - it could be data volume scanned, API calls made, hosts protected, or compute hours consumed. Without allocation, finance sees one lump charge and can't tell which department is actually driving the cost.

For example;

Marketplace Product	What's Billed	Usage Metric to Bring In
MongoDB Atlas (via Marketplace)	Per compute-hour of the managed database cluster	`queries_executed` or `compute_hours` per department using the shared cluster
Snowflake (via Marketplace)	Per compute-credit consumed	`query_credits_consumed` per team/department
Confluent Cloud (Kafka, via Marketplace)	Per-throughput (GB in/out)	`messages_produced` or `throughput_mbps` per team publishing to shared topics
Splunk / Datadog (via Marketplace)	Per-GB ingested or per-host	`gb_ingested` or `hosts_monitored` per department

The Solution

Bring in per-department usage data for the specific product - whatever metric reflects real consumption for that tool - as a telemetry pipeline in Umbrella, and allocate the marketplace line item proportionally. The cost is already in Umbrella from your existing billing export; you're only adding who used how much.

Dataset Needed

Each row of your telemetry source should tie a customer to a usage measure at a point in time. Typical fields:

fiels	Type	Example	Purpose
`timestamp`	Dimension	`2026-05-27T15:04:05Z`	Aligns usage with billing period
`payer_account_id`	Dimension	`123456789012`	Ties usage to the correct cloud account
`department` / `team`	Dimension	`Security`	The unit cost will be broken out by
`usage_measure` (product-specific - e.g. `gb_ingested`, `compute_hours`, `query_credits_consumed`)	Measure	`1,850`	The allocation key - determines each department's proportional share

📘 Note on cost
You don't need to bring in cost - the marketplace charge is already itemized in your AWS/Azure/GCP billing export as a service line item. This pipeline only needs to supply the usage side, using whichever metric genuinely reflects consumption for that specific product.

KPIs to Build

KPI	Formula	What it represents
Cost per Unit of Usage	`Amortized Cost ÷ usage_measure`	Normalized cost efficiency per department for that specific tool
Department Share of Marketplace Spend	`usage_measure (dept) ÷ usage_measure (total) × 100`	Each department's percentage share of the shared purchase

Business Mapping to Create

Field	Value	Purpose
Type	`Telemetry-Based Group By`	-
Rule → Condition	Service is the specific marketplace product line item (e.g. `AWS Marketplace: Splunk`)	The cost slice to allocate
Pipeline	`Customer Stats`	Where the usage data lives
Custom Dimension (Group By)	`department`	The field the cost will be broken out by
Allocation Metric	The product-specific usage measure (e.g. `gb_ingested`, `compute_hours`)	The field the cost will be broken out by
Time Granularity	Daily	Matches the billing period granularity
Include Unmatched Costs	On	Costs with no matching usage go to a "Not Allocated" bucket instead of being dropped
Mapping Name	Cost per Customer	Becomes the group-by option in Cost & Usage Explorer

How to Display It in the UI

Build these as saved views in Cost & Usage Explorer, then pin them to a dashboard:

View	Group By / Measure	What it shows
Marketplace Cost per Department - Table	Group By → Business Mapping	Cost split by department for the specific product
Cost per Product - Trend	Filter by specific marketplace line item, chart over time	Tracks growth of a specific product's cost over time
Top Consumers - Ranked Table	Sorted by usage measure descending	Flags the department driving the most consumption
Customer Drill-Down	Department → Underlying Resource/Instance	Ad hoc investigation into what's driving a department's usage