Tag: Microsoft Partner

Today, we mark the official launch of the new Microsoft Cloud Partner Program. It is my pleasure to welcome all our partners to this evolution in how we develop and deliver cloud applications, services, and devices for customers everywhere. With the global reach, strategic investments, and technology stack from Microsoft, we empower our partners to create and sell differentiated products and end-to-end solutions for customers in any scenario and every industry. Additionally, we are committed to making the Cloud Partner Program a beneficial place for all partners, whether you build and sell services, software solutions, or devices. I’m excited to share a bit more about today’s launch and what we have in store for the coming months.

Through the Cloud Partner Program, our commitment is to provide you with investments and global reach to differentiate your offering, scale your customer connections, and position for long-term profitability:

• Tap into the largest technology ecosystem: With the breadth of the Microsoft technology stack, purpose-built partner offerings, and our extensive customer reach, the Cloud Partner Program offers opportunities for you to quickly develop and sell competitive solutions to customers around the globe. By partnering with us, you can grow your business at the scale of Microsoft and expand your customer connections in markets and industries across the globe.
• Innovate on the most comprehensive, end-to-end cloud platform: Whether you want to develop or extend on the Microsoft Cloud, provide customers with best-in-class solutions and services, or sell cutting-edge devices, the Cloud Partner Program is how we support your goals. As a partner, you can get more out of Microsoft’s investments to keep you and your customers at the forefront of cloud innovation.
• Do business with a partner you can trust: By choosing to partner with Microsoft, you choose a partnership secured on a strong foundation of trust built over multiple decades. The Cloud Partner Program is how we remain accountable to you and your customers. With our combined deep understanding of what businesses need to meet evolving opportunities and drive long-term profitability, we can work together to empower people and organizations everywhere to achieve more.

Let’s take a closer look at what today’s changes mean for your business.

Differentiating with Solutions Partner designations

In the months leading up to today’s launch, we’ve shared information about the new Solutions Partner designations, which are replacing legacy silver and gold competencies. The six designations aligned to the Microsoft Cloud — an important method of validating your skills and experience — are now generally available to all partners.

Those of you who have already met the requirements for a designation will receive it immediately if you have legacy benefits, or once you have paid the fee if you’re attaining benefits for the first time. Congratulations! You can visit Partner Center today to download and display your new badge to begin differentiating your organization in the market. You can also visit the Solutions Partner dashboard in Partner Center to view how you’re tracking towards Solutions Partner designations (Global and MPN Admins have access). I recommend that all partners check the latest requirements for each designation and refer to the Solutions Partner benefits guide to ensure you have the latest information so you can choose whether to move to the new benefits on your anniversary date or retain the legacy benefits.

While the initial set of Solutions Partner designations is geared towards partners who sell services, we are working on creating additional industry designations for partners who build software as well. At Microsoft Inspire this year, we also announced that we’re adding industry designations to differentiate solutions based on partners’ demonstrated performance with customers, technical maturity, and customer success. We’ll be prioritizing industry designations anchored on the Microsoft Industry Clouds and aligning across both the Solutions Partner and ISV programs.

Following the launch of these new designations, a reminder that legacy silver and gold competency badges are no longer valid. Partners will continue to receive legacy benefits until their next anniversary date. On a partner’s first anniversary date after today (October 3, 2022), those who attain a Solutions Partner designation can choose to move to the updated Solutions Partner benefits or retain their legacy benefits, and pay the corresponding fee. Partners who do not meet the requirements for a Solutions Partner designation, but who renewed a competency by September 30, 2022, will have the option to continue to pay the fee to retain their legacy benefits at the time of their next anniversary date.

ISV partners and the Cloud Partner Program

We’re investing in simplifying the offerings we provide for partners through the Cloud Partner Program and as part of our efforts to increase available resources for ISV partners, we recently announced the ISV Success program. Currently in private preview and moving to public preview later this year, the ISV Success program is the pathway for ISV partners within the Cloud Partner Program. Through this resource we’re helping ISV partners access benefits to build and publish apps faster, accelerate innovation, and reach more customers. Read more about this pathway for ISVs here.

Personalize your path to success

I have seen firsthand how each of our partners are on a unique journey to success. As we embrace our new, evolved relationship, we have prepared a Training Gallery for you to find a centralized destination for a variety of reference materials including walking decks, demo videos, Solutions Partner benefits guide and FAQ.

Microsoft partners make more possible. Whether you’re building your first app, developing complex integrations, helping customers migrate to the cloud, or exploring new services offerings, we’re here to empower you to achieve more. This evolution of our network was designed to have the most relevant benefits for you, our partners. Thank you for your continued partnership as we find new ways to meet customers’ emerging needs together.

Like a lot of people in their senior year of college, Alexa Carlin had a lot to look forward to. In January 2013, the South Florida native was set to graduate from the University of Florida in a few months, then start her dream job in New York that summer. She was also hours away from a party celebrating a major milestone in the latest of her entrepreneurial endeavors.

But all that came to a sudden halt when she ended up in a hospital, induced into a medical coma, with a 1% chance to survive.

She beat those formidable odds, but not without a lot of lessons learned along the way – and facing another health crisis soon after that would prove even more challenging.

“My whole life just changed. My near-death experience was in my past. And I overcame that. But my autoimmune disease is something I’ll never overcome,” says Carlin, now 31, recently married and based in Raleigh, North Carolina. “I realized, nothing’s going to change unless I decide to change. And I had to learn how to adapt to what I couldn’t control and say, this autoimmune disease is part of me, but it does not have to define what I can or cannot do with my life. And I at that moment stopped asking myself, why did this happen to me and started asking myself, why did this happen for me? And that really was a pivotal moment.”

Up until that time, Carlin had been on a fast and upward trajectory, a burgeoning businessperson, a trait she seemed to inherit from her dad, who was also an entrepreneur, specializing in sporting goods equipment. She says she always had this internal drive, which led her to being the first Student Body President elected as a junior (holding the position for two consecutive years), even though she was the shy new girl who had moved to a new town in middle school. Toward the end of her high school years, she founded her first business at the age of 17, designing and selling jewelry, donating a percentage of the proceeds to help build schools in Africa.

After selling out her first run of bracelets, she kept that business going while she was in college, but it didn’t last past then. She admits that a lack of confidence held her back, as she wasn’t widely sharing what she was doing beyond word of mouth. She wanted to fit in, make new friends and so she never really spoke about her passion. She did the sales venture on the side and only her roommates knew.

“I’d ride my bike to the post office after class and just kind of did what I had to do to make it happen,” she says.

Carlin was determined to learn from that experience to step out of her comfort zone, and started a blog called Hello Perfect – aimed at helping young women gain confidence in themselves.

She was about to celebrate with friends and family after gaining 1,000 likes for the blog on Facebook. But Carlin recalls not feeling good the week leading up to the event, until her mother insisted she go to an emergency room, where she was diagnosed with septic shock due to bacteria that had entered her blood stream. Doctors told her mother her daughter might not live 24 hours.

Carlin stayed in a coma for six days, waking up not being able to move or speak on her own. To focus on something other than the pain as she recovered, she redirected her thoughts as a way to heal. She pictured running on a high school track toward family and friends at a finish line.

“It taught me one of the most powerful lessons in business and in life, and that is to focus on the things that you do have control over,” says Carlin, who was able to graduate with her class in May of that year. But then another setback occurred, this time while she was in New York City starting her dream job at a magazine. She was sick again. And it was constant. After a year there, she found out it was an auto-immune disease – ulcerative colitis – and moved back home to heal with the help of her family.

For eight months she stayed mostly isolated inside their house, where she ended up writing a cookbook as she converted to gluten-free and vegan eating. But it was a frustrating time in her life.

“I remember just feeling so fed up because all I was doing was waiting, waiting for me to get my life back, waiting for me to be healthy, waiting for a doctor to give me something that would actually work, waiting for just anything to change, because every morning I woke up so sick,” says Carlin, who tried to find solace and answers from motivational speakers. But they didn’t help. “Who wants to spend their entire life waiting to overcome all these challenges and obstacles that come our way, versus making the best of it and turning those obstacles into opportunities? That’s what really inspired me to start sharing my story, vulnerably and authentically.”

Carlin used the now-discontinued Periscope app to film a daily show called “Morning Motivation with Alexa” – short videos meant to inspire her audience, which was slowly but steadily growing. She was still too sick to do in-person presentations, so she turned to social media to share her experiences. Technology had never been more important to her than when she was livestreaming from her bed.

“Technology has been game changer for me because I am able to get my message to the masses even when I’m not well enough to travel or to meet people and network in person,” says Carlin, who uses a Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 to run her business from anywhere. Samsung is among the many companies she works with and has provided her with a new Windows 11 laptop as one of its brand ambassadors. “It changed my life because I didn’t feel as alone.”

By 2016, she had focused her work on telling her story and inspiring others, starting a company called Women Empower X, “with the mission to help more women pursue their passions and get to the next level in their career and life.” She’s built up an all-virtual team, who help with creating and editing content and planning speaking engagements.

Carlin uses Microsoft 365 for most of those tasks. With Windows 11, her favorite feature is Snap Layouts, which allows her to have OneNote or Word on half of her screen while on the other half, she’s in a meeting with her team, so it’s easy for her to save changes she wants in an outline or script without leaving either app.

Whatever work she’s doing, she needs it to sync up to all the devices she uses, and OneDrive helps her do that on her phone, PCs and tablet. She also needs to be able to connect online reliably, showcase videos and edit at the last minute.

But oftentimes, she’s able to do a lot with just one key device.

With her Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360, she can do all that, appreciating especially its ability to transform into a tablet to watch movies in hotel rooms, write on it to take notes, sketch out new ideas for her next book or speech, and give feedback to her team on edits.

While the tech tools are enabling, her tenacity and resilience are just as important.

“I pitched myself to 60 different small events and received 60 letters of rejection – or no responses,” she recalls. “I let that rejection sit with me for a few months before I stopped putting my dreams in the hands of strangers. I created my own events.”

She spoke for free at first, to very small meetups – five to 30 people at a time. Then she started getting paid. Now she’s talking to hundreds, sometimes thousands, of women at each event. And reaching even more online.

“I realized I needed to create a career that helps me achieve my dreams and my mission, while still understanding things out of my control,” Carlin says. “People needed to hear that my life’s not perfect. I don’t have it all together. I’m still going through all these challenges. But regardless of all those obstacles, I’m still chasing after my dreams. I’m still going after what I love.”

Historically around this time of the year, I like to share an update on the state of the partner ecosystem from Microsoft’s One Commercial Partner (OCP) organization. Given the impact and magnitude of the COVID-19 situation, I think now more than ever, it’s important to continue to focus on our path forward. In this vein, you may have seen the information I recently shared on resources and program updates to specifically help partners navigate through the COVID-19 world we are all now operating in.  

The Microsoft partner community is a powerful ecosystem. For decades, it has been and continues to be at the center of how we bring technologies and business transformation to customers in markets around the world. Today, Microsoft partners are playing a critical role helping companies everywhere adjust to a new way of working. The remote-work, business continuity solutions and services they’re delivering during this global pandemic will be the foundation of workplace productivity moving forward. 

With this in mind, I’d like to share some updates on where we’re going and what we’re doing to help our partners continue to make more possible in the months and years to come. 

Updates

We support partners in several ways through our extensive technology portfolio, global reach, training and skill investments, but we are continuing to evolve how we work together in order to maximize the value of their partnership with Microsoft. Here are some of the things we’re working on:

Program updates:

• Increased learning opportunities: We’re giving partners increased access to training, support and go-to-market services. 

• Focus on differentiated value: Partners will have more options to differentiate their skills and expertise to customers with new competencies, advanced specializations and through the Azure Expert MSP Program.  

• Rewarding customer success: Partners are increasingly earning rewards for driving strong results and positive outcomes for their customers, with reward models specifically designed to help build and accelerate growth. 

Enhanced tools:

• Partner Center: Partners are onboarding this year to Partner Center, which provides a centralized experience for partners and a single place to manage their relationship with Microsoft, their customers and other partners. Streamlining a number of processes into one place makes it easier for partners to do business with Microsoft.

• On-demand support: We’re working on new ways to give partners quicker and easier access to Microsoft support to help them better solve challenges and meet customer needs.  

• Evolved co-selling programs: To further support our commitment to shared growth and profitability within ecosystem, partners can access co-selling programs so they can accept and share referrals from Microsoft (first-party solutions) and other partners (third-party solutions).  

These capabilities are just the beginning. They only scratch the surface, as we continue to prioritize investments that support new opportunities to position our partners for growth in the future. 

Investment strategy 

Fueled by the market opportunities we see through tech intensity, digital transformation, and the cloud, we need to continue evolving in order to meet emerging customer needs and expectations. We’re committed to investing in and delivering what partners need to innovate, grow their businesses and deliver on the promise of digital transformation for customers across organizations and industries.  

As we look ahead, here are just a few of the areas for partner opportunity we see:  

• Teams for modern business: Now more than ever, the ability to connect remotely is vital, whether that be with coworkers, friends or family. Partners have an opportunity to support activation and usage for their customers. We’re seeing adoption and change management partners focus on extensions to further customize to their customers’ business needs.  

• Tech intensity: Partners have an increasing number of ways they can help meet customers’ emerging needs and expectations. One is supporting their movement toward tech intensity, as organizations move past adopting the latest technologies and develop their own digital capabilities. 

• Azure migration: The latest versions of Windows Server, SQL Server and Windows Virtual Desktop offer tremendous opportunity for businesses to secure and modernize their workloads. Our partners are in a unique position to help customers migrate to the cloud and unlock the benefits of Azure to transform workloads with the latest data and AI capabilities. 

• Security: While the cloud has opened the door for a myriad of possibilities, it has also made security a top priority for customers. Security is engineered into our products, but we are counting on partners to help secure the customer’s environment from endpoint to datacenter. 

New offerings 

To ensure our partners have the resources and support necessary to grow their businesses, we are consistently listening to feedback and ideas. This helps inform the investments we’re making and the ways we’re evolving to drive even greater value.  

Below are two offerings we’ve recently launched:   

• New advanced specialization: Competencies remain important for all partners, but advanced specializations provide the opportunity to further highlight technical scenarios where partners are delivering high quality services and differentiate themselves from the competition. At Inspire 2019, we unveiled five new specializations, and recently added one more to the mix on April 7. The Adoption and Change Management Advanced Specialization allows partners to showcase proven expertise in Adoption and Change Management to drive usage of Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and Yammer. 

• New Teams Practice Development Playbook: The Teams Practice Development Playbook, launched on April 6, is designed to help partners understand the growth opportunity that Microsoft Teams provides to them as well as to their customers. Topics covered include which areas of Teams to focus on, how to cross-sell, suggestions for approaching governance, and an overview of add-ons and customizations.  

In addition, we’re proud that another one of our partners – Wipro Limited, a leading global information technology consulting and business process company – recently launched a dedicated Microsoft Business Unit (MBU).  Wipro’s new business unit will focus on the development and evangelization of solutions leveraging Microsoft’s enterprise cloud services. Earlier this year, Tata Consultancy Services and HCL announced their own MBUs. 

It’s exciting to see three new MBUs since the start of the fiscal year as it continues to affirm the benefits our partners see when they can dive deep with our solutions. 

Global partner impact 

We know that partners help make more possible. That sentiment rings especially true during the unprecedented times we’re operating in today. Every day I hear stories of partners stepping up to address scientific and business continuity needs related to COVID-19. Here are just a few: 

• Rescale: Researchers, engineers and scientists are in a race against time, running countless computer simulations to develop test kits and a vaccine. Unfortunately, researchers often face barriers to running large-scale simulations. Rescale, a leader in enterprise big compute, has joined forces with Microsoft Azure and other tech companies to create a new initiative entitled “Tech vs COVID” that immediately offers high performance computing (HPC) resources at no cost to teams working to develop test kits and vaccines for COVID-19.  

• BlueYonder: COVID-19 is having an enormous impact on global supply chain. There is high demand for medical equipment and supplies, and a shortage of medical parts and products. Through real-time visibility, AI and machine learning, BlueYonder’s data science team is feeding data into its AI-driven Luminate Control Tower platform to help visualize and predict current and future impacts of the coronavirus. The insight is helping governments and companies have better inventory visibility, predict shortages and adapt to the dynamic supply chain challenges. 

• Velrada: Specially-trained Red Cross volunteers are calling Australians who are currently self-isolating, providing psychological first aid support during the COVID-19 pandemic. Working with Microsoft partner Velrada and using Dynamics 365 and Power BI, the Red Cross has deployed an easy-to-use platform that lets volunteers work from home as they make the calls and check on an individual’s well-being.  
   

These incredible stories are a testament to the impact our partners have in “normal” times and extraordinary times like we’re experiencing today. Satya recently noted that, “No one company is going to solve a challenge like this alone…Our unique role as a platform and tools provider allows us to connect the dots, bring together an ecosystem of partners, and enable organizations of all sizes to build the digital capability required to address these challenges.” 

Echoing his sentiment above, as we navigate this unpredictable environment together, I want to assure our partners that Microsoft is committed to working to safeguard business continuity and ensure our ecosystem is set up to reach its full potential. We look forward to continuing to evolve our relationship with all of our partners in the months and years to come.