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.

This year there was one session specifically designed for US partners. The US Local Connection session featured Deb Cupp, President of North America, and Tyler Bryson, CVP, US Global Partner Solutions, provided an opportunity for US partners to hear directly from US leaders to look back on what we’ve accomplished together in FY22 and what we need to focus on in FY23.

US Local Connection

Deb Cupp and Tyler Bryson led the US Local Connection. Below are the key topics covered. Click here to view the US Local Connection. Specific action items included:

• Pursue solution area specialization
• Run the solution plays
• Focus on industry
• Engage in co-selling
• Leverage Marketplace
• Invest in partner-to-partner motion

The US General Session is now on-demand at Your home for Microsoft Inspire.

Industry

Listen to Nick Parker, President, Industry & Partner Sales, and Alysa Taylor, CVP, Industry, Apps, and Data Marketing, talk about why focusing on industry is important to support our customers.

Microsoft Cloud Partner Program

Grow your business with the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program will help you learn how the program can help you stand out from the crowd and start attracting new leads. Julie Sanford, VP, Partner GTM, Programs & Experiences, Catherine Mikhlin, Program Lead, and Dan Rippey, Director, Cloud Partner Program, unpack the value of the Microsoft Cloud Partner program across Action Pack, Solutions Partner, Specializations, and coming investments related to the Microsoft clouds for industry.

Recommended Sessions

Recommended sessions on Modern Work SMB

• ODBRK83 – Windows makes hybrid work, work
• OD46 – New opportunities to grow your practice with Azure Virtual Desktop
• BRK41 – Grow revenue by accelerating customer adoption of Azure infrastructure
• Insights into the SMB Landscape and Opportunities
• How to win in SMB with a High-Volume Business Applications Practice

Recommended sessions on Core Theme

• TS02 – Power innovation across the digital estate
• TS03 – The digital imperative in hybrid work
• TS04 – Help customers streamline their security across clouds and platforms

Recommended sessions on Azure

• BRK22 – SAP on the Microsoft Cloud: new ways to accelerate your business
• BRK41 – Grow revenue by accelerating customer adoption of Azure infrastructure
• BRK43 – Addressing sovereign requirements with the Microsoft Cloud

Recommended sessions on Modern Work

• BRK33 – Unlock business growth with Microsoft Teams
• BRK32 – Enable digital employee experience with Microsoft Viva
• OD57 – Unlock Hybrid Work Opportunities with NextGen Windows Experiences

Recommended sessions on Security

• BRK42 – Learn about the top go to market investments to help you win customers with Microsoft Security
• BRK40 – Differentiate your security offers with co-marketing investments from Microsoft
• CATE42 – Ask the Experts: Help customers streamline their security across clouds and platforms

Recommended sessions on Marketplace

• BRK04 – Make Marketplace your growth multiplier
• BRK10 – Create new revenue channels with partner-to-partner selling

Recommended keynotes and themed sessions

• KEY01 – Inspire Opening – Keynote Day 1
• KEY05 – Microsoft Inspire Into Focus: Sustainability
• KEY08 – Nick Parker and Nicole Dezen partner conversation
• KEY09 – Delivering customer value with Microsoft Cloud

We believe that simplifying the app procurement process through platforms like Azure Marketplace is key to driving modernization and innovation efforts in the cloud and want to share that vision with customers and partners alike.

That’s why Microsoft is hosting the first-ever Azure Marketplace App Fair on April 27, 2022, at 11am PDT. During this virtual event, attendees will learn about five of our most popular third-party solutions for solving business challenges around cloud management, security, big data, and app delivery—and how Azure Marketplace makes them easy to procure and deploy.

We encourage partners to register and invite your customers for this unique opportunity.

Azure Marketplace and Apps Fair feature unique GTM opportunities for partners

Microsoft cloud solutions are equipped with industry-leading out-of-the-box features that meet the needs of a wide range of customers. However, depending on the nature of a customer organization’s business, they may be interested in more targeted solutions to enhance agility, speed to development, and security, which can be found among the third-party solutions on Azure Marketplace.

During the Azure Marketplace Apps Fair, you’ll have a chance to familiarize yourself with some of the leading third-party apps, which may complement your own practice’s offering and provide additional value to your customers. These include:

• Datadog. This monitoring and analytics platform aggregates data for large-scale applications and simplifies monitoring of servers, clouds, metrics, and apps, with more than 400 integrations for troubleshooting, alerting, and graphing.
• Informatica Intelligent Data Management Cloud. An end-to-end data management solution powered by AI and a cloud-first, cloud-native platform, Informatica IDMC connects, manages, and unifies data across any multi-cloud, hybrid system.
• Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud. This fully managed event streaming platform, powered by Apache Kafka, streamlines the management of Kafka, Schema Registry, Connect, and ksqlDB so you can focus your time on modern app development.
• F5 BIG IP. Use Azure Marketplace to deploy a range of F5 services for application security, online fraud prevention, application delivery networking, application availability, and access and authorization.
• Zscaler Internet Access. Download Zscaler from Azure Marketplace to get fast, secure, and direct access to apps without appliances. Use Azure Active Directory to manage user access, provision user accounts, and enable single sign-on.

The Azure Marketplace App Fair is also an excellent chance for you to:

1. Hear from customers about their business challenges and needs through the live Q&A chat
2. Familiarize yourself with the business benefits of listing your own solution on Azure Marketplace
3. Learn about solutions that can solve your own internal business challenges
4. Discover more opportunities to go-to-market with Microsoft and ecosystem partners

Register now

Register for the Azure Marketplace App Fair today and invite your customers to join!

Learn more about Azure Marketplace

• Learn more about how to build solutions designed for scale and grow your business with Azure Marketplace – US Partner Community Blog – Microsoft

Discover how you can grow your business with Azure Marketplace