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Microsoft announces investment opportunities for partners

Dubai - $9.5B in annual contracted partner revenue seen since co-sell programmed launched two years ago

Microsoft on Sunday announced new investments in technologies and programmes designed to support its partner ecosystem, aimed at helping optimise Microsoft's partner engagement for the cloud era.
"Customers and partners alike continue to move to the cloud and accelerate their digital transformation, leading us to new and different levels of partnership," said Gavriella Schuster, corporate vice-president of Microsoft's One Commercial Partner group.
"Our portfolio of programmes, offers and resources for companies partnering with Microsoft is transforming to help them capitalise on this opportunity."
Among the highlights of the news announced were on Microsoft Teams' extensions and adoption, which, just two years after its launch, now has 13 million daily active users and 19 million weekly active users. The company also announced new features in Microsoft Teams for every worker, including new ways to support healthcare organisations and firstline workers. Additional new partner integrations include support for contact centers, compliance recording and cloud solution providers.
The company also announced significant updates to the Dynamics 365 Nonprofit Accelerator and two new integrations for Dynamics 365 that address the automotive and financial services industries. In addition, the Business Applications ISV Connect programme is generally available, with new development tools and guidance, marketplace resources, joint field engagement processes and go-to-market support.
Azure Lighthouse was also introduced, giving partners a single control plane to view and manage Azure at scale across all their customers. This provides a better-managed Azure experience with higher automation and efficiency, resulting in greater visibility and security for customers. This marks the first time Microsoft has architected a solution at this scale, with partners and for partners.
The new Azure Migration Program (AMP), meanwhile, helps customers accelerate their migration to Azure. AMP offers proactive advice and tools to help mitigate risks and address common issues associated with moving workloads to the cloud.
Since the inception of Microsoft's co-sell programme 24 months ago, it has seen $9.5 billion in annual contracted partner revenue. The investments announced this week are designed to build on that opportunity.
- alvin@khaleejtimes.com