Here are the top technical and business updates that Microsoft partners can leverage to grow their business through the marketplace.

1) Do more with marketplace and join us for the Marketplace Summit, November 15:
Get a virtual front-row seat to our first Marketplace Summit, a live broadcast from Microsoft Studios featuring a dynamic agenda of speakers and demonstrations based on insights from ISVs like you. We’ll share updates on our ISV Success program and offer valuable tools and resources along the way. This two-way dialogue will give you direct access to our leaders and engineering teams, helping you develop concrete strategies to reach new customers, simplify sales, and supercharge growth.

Action: Register and share the summit with your colleagues

2) Auto-approvals for marketplace deal registrations now available in Partner Center: Microsoft is addressing the identified challenge for speedy deal registration in the marketplace. To expedite the process, enhancements have been made to the Partner Center Deal Registrations for Azure Marketplace deals. Effective June 1, 2022, commercial marketplace-registered Azure IP Co-sell deals up to and including $1M (USD) annual contract value (ACV) will be auto-approved.

Action: Read more about this announcement here.

3) Multi-year pricing for marketplace SaaS offers: With this new feature, customers can purchase long-term contracts that span from one month to three years with customized payment schedule options.

Action: Learn how to leverage this functionality here.

4) Cloud GTM support for ISVs: With the ISV Success program currently in private preview, Microsoft is investing heavily to support ISVs in building across the Microsoft Cloud and going to market through the commercial marketplace. The team will be sharing updates on the ISV Success Program as part of the Marketplace Summit—be sure to tune in. Additionally, Microsoft signed a strategic partnership with Tackle, to support ISVs in jump-starting their cloud go-to-market strategy and scale their businesses through the Microsoft commercial marketplace.

5) New Transact and Grow Incentives: Microsoft will help partners drive their business through marketplace via new incentives in FY23 (July 2022-June 2023). Our Publish, Transact and Grow incentives were announced during the Marketplace Transact and Grow Incentive Campaign. These incentives support all partners to publishing and transacting new offers on the Marketplace. Other ISV incentives that were launched recently include the ISV ACR Growth Incentive and the ISV Strategic Workload Accelerator Incentive.

Action: Partners should discuss these exciting new incentives with their PDM.

6) New and simplified Publisher Agreement: Microsoft has updated the Microsoft Publisher Agreement to clarify respective tax obligations, remove outdated terms, and make the agreement easier to read.

Action: To see what’s changed since the last version, see Change history for Microsoft Publisher Agreement version 8.0 – October 2022 update.

The Microsoft Marketplace enables Microsoft partners to reach every customer whether selling directly in Microsoft channels, scaling through partners, or co-selling with our global sales force.

Set up time with your PDM to review these Marketplace enhancements and grow your business with these new offerings.

Simply creating a listing in the marketplace gives you access to over 4 million active visitors per month across 140+ geographies. In addition, you can scale your sales force through Microsoft field sellers and partner-to-partner co-sell while earning upwards of $300K in benefits through Marketplace Rewards.

Publishing is easy – set up your account, prepare your offer, create your offer, publish, and go to market!

1.     Set up your Partner Center account

Partner Center is your home base for managing your partnership with Microsoft. It facilitates transactions, promotes relationship building with Microsoft sellers and other partners, and offers analytics.

If you’re new to Partner Center, create your account. If you are already enrolled with Partner Center, you can use an existing Microsoft Partner Network enrollment or use an existing developer program enrollment.

Your Marketplace dashboard in Partner Center is where you will:

• Create and manage commercial offers
• View engagement
• Submit support requests
• Find value collection/payout info

The Marketplace dashboard is also where you’ll manage important administrative tasks.

2.   Prepare your offer

Before you create a new offer in Partner Center, work with your sales and marketing team to define the essential characteristics of your offer.

Align your offer with marketplace customers

Microsoft commercial marketplace offers two storefronts designed for two diverse audiences. Microsoft AppSource targets business solutions (e.g., SaaS apps) and consulting services as well as direct app extensions. Azure Marketplace is intended for IT professionals and developers, and hosting solutions built on Azure.

To ensure your offer reaches the right audience, consider the target customer you are trying to reach – business or technical – as well as customer size, industry, geographic region, and the business needs driving cloud adoption. Use these characteristics to define your key messaging and present your feature set and packaging.

Choose your listing type

Choose which listing type best suits your offer:

• Contact me – prospective customers are directed to connect with you about the offer
• Free trial – customers can use your service as SaaS, IaaS, or Microsoft in-app experience for a specific duration
• Test drive – users gain access to your app for a preconfigured duration
• Get it now – users choose from a range of options including Get it now (free), subscription, bring your own license (BYOL), and usage-based pricing

Choose your offer type

After you choose your listing type, you’ll select your offer type. The offer type will correspond to the type of solution, app, or service offer that you wish to publish, as well as its alignment to Microsoft products and services.

Offer types include:

• Azure Application
• Azure Container
• Azure virtual machine
• Consulting service
• Dynamics 365
• IoT Edge module
• Managed service
• Power BI app Microsoft 365
• Software as a Service (SaaS)

Prepare a strong offer description

Creating a robust offer listing in the commercial marketplace requires planning. Have your company’s marketing collateral ready, including logo, description, contact information, and public-facing description of your offer.

Since your listing is your single most important lead generator, it’s highly recommended that you review best practices for drafting a strong offer description.

3.    Create a new offer

Now you’re ready to create your offer!  Access the Commercial Marketplace dashboard in Partner Center. On the Overview page select + New offer.

Select your plan and pricing

Depending on your offer type, you may be directed to choose a plan, which defines an offer’s scope and limits and associated pricing, when applicable.

Select the solution area and sub-areas

When selecting a solution area to align your offer to, carefully consider how customers and/or Microsoft sellers will search for your offer. In the customer-facing Properties tab, you will select a primary solution area (e.g. Azure, Modern Work & Security, Business Applications) as well as solution sub-areas (e.g. Adoption & Change Management, Meeting Rooms for Teams, Workplace Analytics), that describe the business need.

The “Properties” tab is where you choose what shows up in the customer-facing marketplace

In the Co-sell with Microsoft tab, you’ll select a primary solution as well solutions sub-areas with descriptions relevant to sellers (e.g. Advanced Networking, Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery, Hybrid Cloud Solutions).

The “Co-sell with Microsoft” tab is where you choose what Microsoft sellers will see.

Choose your publishing channels

Through Partner Center, you can create an offer once and publish to multiple audiences and platforms. All offers must be published Direct to customer via AppSource of Azure Marketplace. You may also have the option of publishing To Microsoft sellers (field/co-sell) or Through CSP or P2P (partner-to-partner).

 4. Publish your offer & go to market

Publish your offer

Once you’re ready, submit your offer by selecting Review & publish. From there, you’ll get an update status. After all pages are marked Complete and any applicable testing documented, select Publish to begin the validation process.

Next, it will be reviewed by Microsoft and placed on the appropriate storefront – AppSource or Azure Marketplace. Once your offer lands, you will receive a link to your published offer.

Keep it fresh

Remember, you own your offer listing and are responsible for keeping it up-to-date and optimized over time.

Get your offer featured

Azure Marketplace and AppSource have featured apps sections, where you can get your app featured. Learn how to get your offer featured.

Next steps: keep evolving

• Learn more at Microsoft Learn: Intro to commercial marketplace
• Join commercial marketplace webinars on the marketplace opportunity and developer office hours
• Visit aka.ms/joinmarketplace to publish your app today!
• Learn about the next steps Co-sell with Microsoft, after publishing your app

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