I want to start by first wishing everyone a Happy New Year. As we mark the beginning of 2023, I also want to express my gratitude for our joint growth and innovation over the past year, as well as my optimism for the road ahead. Our partner community had an impactful 2022, and I am thankful for your contributions in delivering on our shared mission for our customers.
In the six months that I’ve been in my role as Chief Partner Officer, I have enjoyed personally connecting with many partners and hearing about your experiences firsthand. This feedback has been invaluable in making plans for the coming year. Microsoft partners are absolutely key in how we deliver for and serve our customers, because it’s through our partners that we’re able to provide customers with the right software, services and device solutions for any scenario. We’re already in a strong position thanks to recent investments in the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program, ISV Success, and Azure Migration and Modernization Program (AMMP) Partner-led. These new investments are designed to support partners as you continue building and growing your business, by providing the cloud technology for you to innovate, connecting you to customers, and addressing specific partner needs that we’ve heard. I am confident in the opportunities these investments will create. To kick off the year, let’s revisit these:
Driving success through the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program
Last October, we officially launched the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program — an evolution of the Microsoft Partner Network that empowers all partners to create and sell solutions for customers in any scenario or industry. This investment in the partner ecosystem allows you to tap into the full Microsoft technology stack and global reach, innovate on the most comprehensive end-to-end cloud platform, and connect customers with a trusted solution provider. New Solutions Partner designations, optimized for partners who develop and sell services, offer a revitalized method of differentiating your organization with customers, with options aligned to customer solution areas and anchored on the Microsoft Cloud. This first set of designations is just the beginning and we’ll continue to build out new offers for all partner types. This new structure empowers partners along their own unique journey to success.
Empowering ISVs to build and sell with the Microsoft Cloud
Now in public preview, ISV Success is a simplified path forward within the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program for all ISVs and SaaS providers. The program connects partners with dedicated support for wherever you are in the application growth cycle — whether building on the Microsoft Cloud, publishing to the commercial marketplace, or growing through go-to-market channels.
ISV Success also integrates Marketplace Rewards, creating one single, easy-to-use benefits offering within the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program. Marketplace Rewards offers ISV partners listing optimization, best-in-class marketing support, and additional cloud credits based on sales — as a result, ISVs that use Marketplace Rewards see a 5x increase in sales compared to those that don’t. In other words, the more you sell, the more you earn!
Investing in the Azure Migration and Modernization Program (AMMP)
Customer demand continues to increase, and we’re excited to help partners scale with the AMMP Partner-led option. Through the new AMMP Partner-led site, Azure Expert MSPs and partners with an Azure specialization (formerly called Azure advanced specializations) can nominate customers for migrating and modernizing through AMMP. Benefits include:
- Nominate customer engagements directly: partners can now directly nominate and access investments to help accelerate customer migration and modernization engagements.
- Faster approval via standardized offers: AMMP Partner-led uses pre-determined offer sizes to expedite approval times and enable agility and scale.
- Self-serve dashboard to nominate and track: nominate aligned customers into AMMP through Microsoft Commerce Incentives (MCI) and access a self-serve dashboard to track approval status and receive payment upon engagement completion.
In times when organizations are looking for ways to do more with less, our partners can be confident in Microsoft’s commitment to offering efficient and effective support. Over the coming year, we will continue to build on the foundation of the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program and create more partner opportunities for growth.
- Multi-party partner private offers will move to private preview this year, ahead of general availability. This functionality empowers any set of partners to create personalized offers with customized payouts, sell directly to customers through the commercial marketplace and have the sale count toward the customer’s cloud consumption commitment.
- We’ll continue to build out new offerings that help partners differentiate themselves in the market. This includes industry designations to differentiate solutions based on their demonstrated performance with customers, technical maturity and customer success. We are co-designing these new designations with and for our ISV partners and we’ll share more in the coming months.
- We’ll continue to invest in and provide technical and sales training aligned to the customer solution areas to help your teams build their skills. You can register here for our next technical Cloud Week or register here for our next Sales Bootcamp. By registering for both events, you will also get access to previously delivered skilling content and can check back anytime to see upcoming events.
I’m so optimistic for what we’ll achieve together. There’s a proverb I love: if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. Let’s go far together in 2023.