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Business Intelligence specialization

Program Overview and Requirements

Program Overview

The Business Intelligence specialization validates a partner's deep expertise in creating and deploying Microsoft BI solutions with Power BI interactive reports, real-time dashboards, and powerful analytics, enabling customers to visualize their business data and generate actionable insights to help build BI solutions at enterprise scale.

Microsoft has been consistently recognized as a Magic Quadrant Leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Analytics and BI, and a BI specialization with Microsoft technologies offers partners a deeper set of capabilities to profit from this large, high-growth opportunity.

Partners with the BI specialization further differentiate their organization beyond an active Solutions Partner for Data & AI (Azure) or Solutions Partner for Business Applications designation with demonstrated knowledge, validated experience and capabilities, and documented success in supporting customer adoption of BI solutions.

Partners who meet the comprehensive requirements and attain the specialization:

  • Will receive a customer-facing label displayed on their business profile in Microsoft AppSource under the Business Intelligence specialization filter.
  • Gain access to specific Microsoft go-to-market programs.
  • Are prioritized in customer searches to drive new business.
  • Can generate a certified letter from Microsoft that verifies the specialization they've earned.

  

How long will my specialization stay active?

Your organization's Business Intelligence specialization will remain active for one year. After that, you can renew it, provided you meet the requirements at that time. 

How do I earn this specialization?

There is no application process for the Business Intelligence specialization. If your organization has a relevant Solutions Partner designation and meets all the below requirements, you'll be notified in Partner Center that it has been awarded the appropriate specialization.

What are the requirements?

Eligible partners must meet the highest service delivery and support standards. Microsoft and/or a third-party vendor will verify the requirements, which are subject to change.

Details

Your organization must have an active Solutions Partner for Data & AI (Azure) or Business Applications designation.

Learn more about Solutions Partner designations.

Details

Your organization must have at least five unique Power BI customers as new deployments, each with at least one Enterprise Power BI project deployed in that customer's production environment, and meet the following criteria within the trailing 12 months (TTM):

  • An Enterprise Power BI project is defined as a project deployed in a customer production environment with at least one dataset and at least 100 monthly active users (MAU) in the prior 28 days. 
  • The project must be built on paid eligible SKUs: Power BI Pro, Power BI Premium per user or per capacity, or Microsoft 365 E5. Learn more about Power BI pricing.

 

AND

Your organization must achieve growth in Power BI MAU of at least 25 percent across your customer base in the TTM. To be eligible for the growth calculation, your customer base must have at least 1,000 MAU at the start of the TTM.

Growth in MAU is calculated as follows:

  • Across the PAL-associated datasets in your entire customer base over the past 12 months. 
  • MAU is counted at the production tenant level and summed up across only the paid licenses under the tenant.
  • MAU is calculated at the end of every month.
  • At the dataset level, only paid subscriptions under the customer's tenant will qualify.

 

You must have PAL associated with your Partner Center account to earn this specialization. You must perform this association for all your customer deployments. PAL will be used to calculate all the requirements listed above. Learn more about linking a PartnerID to your Power BI accounts.

 

Details

Your organization must have individuals earn the following certifications:

Five (5) individuals must earn the Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate.

AND 

Two (2) individuals must earn the Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate.

AND

One (1) individual must earn the Microsoft Certified: Azure Enterprise Data Analyst Associate* OR the Microsoft Certified: Fabric Analytics Engineer Associate.

Your organization must have at least five individuals with the certifications listed above. The certifications can be held by the same or different individuals.

*This certification retired on April 30, 2024; however, it will remain eligible until April 30, 2025.

Details

Your organization must have at least one Power BI consulting service offer published on Microsoft AppSource with Power BI as the tagged product offer.

Learn more about publishing consulting offers.