In the Microsoft Hybrid Cloud Partners podcast, we explore the latest opportunities for you to enhance your profitability and prepare for the future with AI. New episodes are now available in all podcast platforms and share the stories of Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) partners scaling profitably and the innovative hybrid cloud solutions behind them.

Rackspace Technology is a trusted Microsoft partner and a leading driver of Azure Arc. Read their story here and listen to this recent episode of the Hybrid Cloud Partners podcast to learn how they will save $40M in the next three years with their hybrid cloud implementation of Azure Arc.

Rackspace partners with Microsoft to reduce costs and provide more value to customers

Rackspace has been an innovator and leader in the technology services industry for more than two decades. The latest innovations in hybrid cloud led to a partnership with Microsoft around Azure Arc, transforming how they help customers, both in the security space and in managing their workloads running Windows Server and SQL Server.

“This is the perfect world for Arc. It allows us to have a single pane of glass, to be able to manage and secure our customers’ workloads. It’s a bridge to hybrid computing.” —Jeff DeVerter, Chief Technology Evangelist

When Rackspace started looking into transitioning from their SPLA SQL Server to Arc-enabled SQL, they realized the potential to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) was massive—an estimated $40 million over the next three years. Along with the financial benefit to Rackspace, Arc would enable their customers to manage, through a single pane of glass, their day-to-day business more cost-effectively and provide improved billing economics.

“Coming to us for not just our SPLA licensing but also for extended support is a huge value to our customers. They’re able to access and see in real time what their utilization is. It leads to better visibility or observability, as we like to say, which at the end of the day is what all customers want.” —Zachary Symm, Product Manager for Managed Public Cloud

Empowering partners and customers in a hybrid world

Rackspace plays a critical role in the hybrid world. Their ability to support customers in their data center and in Azure enables customers to utilize resources where it matters most. Azure Arc empowers customers to get the services they need in a more manageable and efficient way. The shift, says Symm, “opens up AI, it opens up security like Sentinel, it opens up licensing, it opens up as Microsoft evolves all these future services that they can now consume. It’s a massive transformation journey for the customer to be able to utilize all those benefits.”

Rackspace worked with the Microsoft Datacenter Optimization (DCO) team to successfully make the move to Azure Arc.

Looking ahead, Rackspace plans to continue growing their partnership with Microsoft as they continue to build out new capabilities and provide managed services on Azure and across their datacenters with Azure Arc. In Azure Arc, they now have a single management tool that reduces complexity and security risks while providing greater benefits to their customers.

Says Symm, “The ability to use all the new services from Azure and transport the scalability, the portability, all of those things, into the on-premises or multi-cloud world is a massive opportunity for all MSPs.”

Next steps

Learn more about this story in the latest episode of the Hybrid Cloud Partners podcast.

Subscribe today to listen wherever you get your favorite podcasts:

YouTube* | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music | RSS

*With closed captions in Spanish, Portuguese, and French.

For exclusive resources and to become part of the Microsoft DCO community, visit dco.microsoft.com.

Join the conversation

Want to explore this and other topics you care about with Microsoft and other US partners? Head over to the Microsoft Americas Partner Community on LinkedIn.

Microsoft Fabric is a comprehensive data and analytics platform designed to help organizations democratize data, share insights, and drive data-driven decision-making. Fabric presents Microsoft partners with the opportunity to provide leading analytics capabilities to customers in a SaaS solution, and at a price point that resonates with customers in the small and medium enterprise range. Leverage Fabric to help your customers improve data literacy and drive business.

Let’s look at a successful implementation by one of our partners.

Anatomy of a partner win

Microsoft partner Wipfli is a seasoned digital and business services consulting firm that delivers integrated solutions to help organizations transform through digital innovation. Microsoft Fabric fits well with Wipfli’s strategic “listen and learn before we advise” approach, having completed implementations of Microsoft Fabric to simplify, unify, and accelerate their customers’ digital transformation journey.

The challenge

In a recent customer deployment, Wipfli was working with a customer in the nonprofit industry that was having difficulty measuring the impact and effectiveness of their programs across disparate locations. The customer was actively using Microsoft Power BI, but they hadn’t seen widespread adoption across the organization and were looking for a more comprehensive solution. The decentralized nature of the business resulted in siloed data that required extensive data cleansing and made broader performance and production reporting difficult, labor-intensive, and inconsistent.

Additionally, the customer’s limited infrastructure support team was burdened with extensive data engineering work for Azure SQL and other Microsoft data tools without a cohesive data strategy in place, which resulted in fluctuating, unpredictable costs.

They needed a solution that would provide centralization and visualization, while capitalizing on existing investments.

The considerations

Wipfli went to work developing a strategic data foundation roadmap to meet their customer’s needs. The customer had existing investments in Microsoft technology (PowerBI, Azure SQL Server Database, Azure Data Factory) and was looking for options that would limit total implementation costs.

Wipfli knew that part of the project would entail building out a centralized data hub to allow all the customer’s locations to leverage and access a single data source. A centralized hub would better support local reporting and analytics, along with several automated reporting and benchmarking capabilities for different business groups.

 “Fabric is specifically designed to bring information together, centralize how you manage data, standardize how you structure it for reporting, create a single source of truth, and then report off that one source of truth instead of a number of different siloes,” says Matt Sabo, Director of Analytics Delivery at Wipfli.

Microsoft Fabric was the right tool for the job. Fabric is also able to support the need for diverse system integrations with its multitude of community partnerships through OneLake, a consolidated data repository that can leverage and allow queries across all data types, both structured and unstructured.

The sales win

Wipfli proposed Microsoft Fabric as a comprehensive data management and analytics platform to help streamline costs and utilization of Azure toolsets while consolidating, managing, and analyzing data all in one place. Fabric also provides simplicity and predictable pricing by “bundling” tools that the customer was already using with new capabilities. The customer would avoid having to manage usage and costs of each individual component.

Wipfli also used as a selling point the customer’s existing Power BI Premium investment automatically transferring to support Fabric workloads.

“That’s part of what has made this a really easy conversation,” recounts Dean Roder, Director of Alliances at Wipfli. “We’re able to show them, here’s this new consolidated set of tools you were already using and paying for, with added functionality and simpler management, and you don’t have to buy anything additional or swap anything out. It was a really easy ‘yes’ for them.”

To empower its diverse organization with access to consolidated datasets and insights to improve reporting, decision-making, and experiences, Wipfli used their “Level-Up initiative” to digitally transform their data estate and ensure that the implementation was successful.  Delivering technology requires training customers and ensuring that stakeholders are able to make the most of their investment.

The implementation

Leveraging Microsoft Fabric to transform the customer’s data estate is accelerating the delivery time for Wipfli by roughly 20 percent (as compared to previous customer implementations using Azure PaaS solutions), with less effort spent on data engineering and navigating complications.

Fabric is also much simpler to manage and administer than individual tooling, enabling the customer to adopt a powerful data management and analytics platform without staffing a high-cost IT specialist.

“Microsoft took all the tools we love the most and use all the time and put them together in a perfectly aligned, engineered framework with a simplified pricing model and made our lives a lot easier in doing what we need to do,” remarks Sabo.

“They don’t need to have someone who understands all the working components of the individual Azure products, they only have to learn one thing—Fabric, and how to manage it. Everything is lined up to work together so it makes it much easier for them.”

Furthermore, Fabric creates an ideal foundation to facilitate future artificial intelligence (AI) vector models and queries as their data maturity progresses.

“I really think it’s amazing that Microsoft can make something like this, a best-in-class platform for cloud data management, attainable for a non-profit like Junior Achievement. Fabric is providing an easy, affordable path for companies that already have a PowerBI Premium license to bring a lot of tools together for even greater capability. You’re getting a database, data science, real-time analytics—it really delivers a lot of value for the money,” remarks Sabo.

Next steps

Interested in learning more about Microsoft Fabric? Get started with Microsoft Fabric or register for a virtual technical workshop live event on June 11-13, 2024.

Join the conversation

Want to explore this and other topics you care about with Microsoft and other US partners? Head over to the Microsoft Americas Partner Community on LinkedIn.

Cloud migration is the next step for partners looking to grow their managed services practice.  Selling cloud services provides benefits to customers, and opportunities for you. Microsoft estimates a $13.7 billion migration opportunity in the SMB market,¹ and Microsoft partners earn an average of $7.51 in follow-on services for every dollar in Azure consumption.²

Customer interest in cloud solutions is also increasing, but security remains top of mind as a key challenge for many.  According to a Flexera report, 79% of organizations list security as a top challenge to address in their cloud adoption strategy.³ 

As a Microsoft partner, you can capitalize on this opportunity by helping customers securely and efficiently migrate to Azure. You can then provide valuable management services to ensure that they’re spending efficiently and staying secure as their environments change.

Why Azure?

The Microsoft Cloud is the most trusted and comprehensive commercial cloud available to help protect and defend your customer’s business. To help them migrate securely, leverage our Azure-focused partner enablement resources, including our Azure bootcamps and our Azure Depth Enablement series.

Another benefit of the Microsoft Coud is that it brings with it our ecosystem of partners that have built solutions to help you deploy, manage, and secure customers in the cloud. To help you securely migrate your customers to the cloud, we’ve partnered with Datto to develop Datto Backup for Microsoft Azure (DBMA). Backup and disaster recovery services are often the first workloads that customers move to the cloud, and they want a trusted solution with easy-to-understand pricing. Designed specifically for managed service providers (MSPs), DBMA is a complete business continuity and disaster recovery solution with simple pricing and native integration into Datto’s suite of tools.

Learn more about this opportunity by registering to watch the on-demand webinar, How to quickly and safely migrate your clients to Azure with Microsoft and Datto.

Next steps

If you’re ready to get started moving your customers to Azure, register for an upcoming workshop in the Kaseya + Datto Connect Local series. In the coming weeks we’ll be hosting joint events in cities across the globe. We look forward to seeing you there!

And let’s continue the conversation through the Microsoft MSP Community Hub!

Related posts

Maximize your cloud hosting strategy in 2024: Success stories from our partners | Microsoft
Help your customers secure their cloud workloads | Microsoft
Showcase the value of Azure migration with Solution Assessments and Evaluations | Microsoft

Join the conversation

Want to explore this and other topics you care about with Microsoft and other US partners? Head over to the Microsoft Americas Partner Community on LinkedIn.

¹ Estimate from Microsoft data based on on-premises install base and average cloud server spend
² Microsoft internal data
³ Flexera 2023 State of the Cloud | Report

Mark your calendar for the next Americas Partner Insider Call on March 6 at 10:00 AM PT

Vince Menzione, CEO of Ultimate Partner and host of the Ultimate Guide to Partnering podcast, will share how to thrive and survive as the Ultimate Partner in the Microsoft ecosystem.

Register today!

The event will be held in English, with closed captions in Spanish, Portuguese, and French.

Partner Audience: #AllPartners #CSP #ServicesPartners #MSP
Relevant to: #Event #GrowYourBiz #CrossSolution

Are you looking for resources and guidance to help you grow your managed services practice?

We’ve got you covered. First, attend our February 27, 2024, Managed Services Provider (MSP) Community Call. You’ll learn about Lighthouse 365 multi-tenant management and propensity list creation tools.

Register here.

This event is delivered in English, with closed captioning in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French.

Next, jump into the conversation in our newly launched MSP Community for Americas partners (in English). We invite you to share your ideas and engage with other partners. We want to hear about your experiences talking to customers about their cloud solutions, navigating the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, and building solutions. And our Microsoft Americas MSP experts will keep you informed about resources from Microsoft to help you along the way. See you in the community!

Partner Audience: #AllPartners
Relevant to: #UnderstandBenefits #ProgramOfferUpdate #CrossSolution

Expanded opportunity for partners: Copilot for Microsoft 365 is now available to transact through CSP

As of January 16, 2024, Copilot for Microsoft 365 became generally available across all sales channels including Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) new commerce.

This step expands access to more customers and creates more opportunities for the partners who serve them. Hear what partners are saying and find out how you can get started in this blog from Nicole Dezen. Learn more on how to transact Microsoft 365 Copilot in this Partner Center announcement.

As businesses shift their operations from on-premises to the cloud, security has become a top priority. Cloud workloads are the applications, data, and other IT assets that run on cloud platforms including Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. Securing cloud workloads is essential to preventing unauthorized access, data breaches, cyberattacks, and compliance violations that could compromise the performance, availability, and integrity of your cloud services. Let’s explore what you can do to help protect your customers’ cloud environments.

Minimize the risks with a cloud workload protection platform

A cloud workload protection platform (CWPP) is a cloud security solution that helps protect cloud workloads—offering unified cloud workload protection across multiple providers. By using a CWPP, your customers can leverage the benefits of cloud computing while reducing the risks and challenges of cloud workload security.

According to a report by Wiz, a cloud security company, 50 percent of the public cloud environments they analyzed had at least one critical vulnerability associated with unsecured APIs. Examples of vulnerabilities associated with unsecured APIs include suboptimal access controls, weak authentication protocols, wrong rate limits, and accidental exposure. These oversights can leave the interfaces vulnerable to malicious activities, so it’s important to secure cloud workloads by using a CWPP that can monitor and remediate API-related issues in near real-time.

Why Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

For many, a CWPP is part of a larger cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP). A CNAPP combines the workload protection tools from a CWPP along with cloud security posture management (CSPM) solutions, which focus on the accounts associated with cloud applications.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a CSPM and CWPP designed to protect your customers’ cloud environments. Among other benefits, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can help your customers:

• Detect and respond to cyberattacks in real time across multiple cloud platforms, as well as on-premises workloads.
• Reduce attack surface by identifying and remediating vulnerabilities before they’re exploited and automatically safeguarding new workloads as soon as they’re deployed.
• Integrate their unified security operations platform and provide connected investigation and hunting with Microsoft Defender XDR and Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence.
• Customize their security with the right cloud workload protection plan for their resources, such as servers, storage, containers, databases, and APIs.

Figure 1. Microsoft Defender for Cloud pillars: Unify your DevOps security management, strengthen and manage your cloud security posture, protect your cloud workloads.

To learn more about Defender for Cloud, see:

• What is Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
• Microsoft Defender for Cloud product page
• Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing page

Earn partner incentives

Not only is Defender for Cloud a powerful technology for securing cloud workloads, as a Microsoft partner you can also earn incentives on it. Part of the Microsoft Commerce Incentives (MCI) portfolio, the Workload Acquisition & Nurture incentive (WANI) rewards qualifying partners for landing new workloads on Azure. WANI offers up to $9K per customer per workload for acquisition and 30 percent on month-over-month growth of partner-led Azure consumed revenue (PAL ACR) for nurture. This incentive is available to partners who deliver top-notch Azure solutions across various scenarios, such as security, migration, modernization, and hybrid.

Learn more

Cloud Workload Protection Solutions | Microsoft Security

Azure Foundations: Security & Defender for Cloud (microsoft.com)

Related posts

Join the MSP Partner Community and expand your service offerings with Microsoft | Microsoft

Drive security with the new Secure Multicloud Environments campaign and other partner assets | Microsoft

Join the conversation

Want to explore this and other topics you care about with Microsoft and other US partners? Head over to the Microsoft Americas Partner Community on LinkedIn.

How to quickly migrate customers to Azure with Microsoft and Datto. Join Henrik Gutle, Azure GTM Leader for Microsoft Americas, and Brent Torre, Datto GM of Unified Backup, for a conversation on the customer opportunity to securely migrate cloud workloads to Azure with Datto Backup for Microsoft Azure. Register here for this on-demand webinar.

As the pace at which organizations are moving their workloads to the public cloud continues to accelerate, understanding their current IT landscape is critical to a smooth migration. Together with our partners, we aim to empower SMB customers to harness the full potential of Microsoft Cloud Services in their cloud migration and modernization journey.

To this end, Microsoft has launched the SMB Assessment Desk to deliver evaluations, rapid cloud migration, and security assessments for SMB customers with Azure Migrate. Partners can leverage this service to provide customers with a comprehensive understanding of their current IT landscape through actionable reports that help speed the pace of migration.

US partners: Fill out this form to request a Solution Assessment for your customer.
CA partners: Fill out this form to nominate your customer for a Microsoft Evaluation.

Learn more about Solution Assessments.

How do Assessments and Evaluations benefit you and your customers?

Solution Assessments and Evaluations are valuable tools to help showcase the value of migration to your customer, and to guide them to a successful implementation through our tried and tested Cloud Adoption Framework. Assessments can be an integral part of your customer’s cloud migration journey and an opportunity for you to present the full benefits of migrating to the cloud.

Migrating to the cloud has a financial, business, and operational impact on how a customer runs their business. With support from Microsoft, you can guide them through this process by showing performance impacts, total cost of ownership comparison, and a detailed breakdown of what their cloud environment would include. Evaluations provide a more holistic view of the customer’s environment. Evaluations are an opportunity to provide your customers with a comprehensive look at their IT environment and recommendations for potential technology solutions that can drive efficiency and cost savings in their operations.

What is Azure Migrate?

Azure Migrate is one of the Assessment tools available. It’s a free tool that simplifies Azure migration and modernization with a unified platform. Use Azure Migrate to assess a customer’s environment and provide an actual cost estimation so you can offer specific recommendations based on their actual environment. And now, Azure Migrate has a business case built right into the tool. Use the business case capability to build a business proposal to understand how Azure can bring the most value to your customer’s business.

Partner incentives

We recently launched a new Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) incentive for new customer acquisition and we want to make sure you have the tools you need to successfully migrate customers. Check out the Partner Incentives page for details on our Microsoft Commercial Incentive Launch for Azure Customer Adds (ACA). Direct and indirect resellers can earn 15 percent on new customer adds over $100 for the first year, up to $250K. Indirect providers can earn 11 percent on new customer adds over $100 for the first year, up to $250K.

Additional resources

Introduction to the Azure migration guide – Cloud Adoption Framework | Microsoft Learn

Join the conversation

Want to explore this and other topics you care about with Microsoft and other US partners? Head over to the Microsoft Americas Partner Community on LinkedIn.

Microsoft is committed to supporting our partners and customers by providing tools and resources that will increase productivity and efficiency—and help transform your business. One of the avenues for our on-premises customers running on GP, SL, NAV, AX, or on-premises Business Central platforms is to migrate to the cloud with Business Central and unlock the prowess of AI with Dynamics 365 Copilot. 

Why should customers care?

While it’s clear that the power of AI and Copilot comes via the cloud, there are some risks and downsides to remaining on-premises. Customers need to be aware of and consider the risks as they look to improve productivity and efficiency. Some of the risks include: 

• • Security concerns. On-premises enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are more vulnerable to cyberattacks and data breaches than cloud-based systems. This is because on-premises systems are hosted on local servers, which are more susceptible to physical damage, theft, and hacking. 
  • Scalability issues. On-premises ERP systems are limited in terms of scalability. This means that businesses that rely on on-premises systems might find it difficult to expand their operations or add new features to their systems. 
  • Higher costs. On-premises ERP systems require businesses to invest in expensive hardware, software, and IT infrastructure. This can be a significant financial burden for businesses and will block capital that can be used for other business expansion needs. 

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a comprehensive business management solution that helps small and medium-sized companies connect their finance, sales, service, and operations teams within a single easy-to-use application. With Dynamics 365 Business Central, customers can confidently move to the cloud and unlock the insights needed to adapt faster, work smarter, and perform better. Watch this video for an overview. 

What are the benefits of Dynamics 365 Business Central?

Dynamics 365 Business Central in the cloud provides a range of benefits, including: 

AI-powered experiences. Dynamics 365 Business Central in the cloud brings the power of AI to small and medium-sized businesses with features that help companies work smarter, adapt faster, and perform better. For example, Dynamics 365 Copilot introduces the next generation of AI-powered experiences to Microsoft Dynamics 365 business applications. Dynamics 365 Copilot provides AI assistance directly in the flow of work using natural language technology, automating repetitive tasks, and unlocking creativity. With Copilot in Business Central, product managers can save time and drive sales with engaging AI-generated product descriptions. Banish writer’s block with unique, compelling marketing text created in seconds using product attributes such as color, material, and size. Tailor the descriptions to your brand by choosing a tone of voice, as well as format and length. This is the AI power that an organization won’t have access to being on-premises. Watch this video to learn more. 

Cost savings. Dynamics 365 Business Central in the cloud can help slash operating costs for your business when it comes to labor, equipment, warehouse space, admin, deployment, and more. Plus, businesses that make the move to the cloud can expect to reduce their IT costs. 

Flexibility and scalability. Cloud solutions like Dynamics 365 make it easier to control where data is stored, who has access, and what resources a business is using at any given moment. Migration can reduce the risk of ransomware attacks and data breaches and provide greater data security for customers. Arguably the most tangible benefit of migrating to the cloud is the ability to access data and business tools from any device or location, and move seamlessly between laptops, tablets, smartphones, and desktops without losing critical data or hours of work. The cloud advantage is a must-have today considering the remote teamwork experiences and global partnerships. 

Move to the Cloud with AIM

We’re pleased to announce our FY24 Migration Program framework: AIM. With AIM, you can expedite your customer migration conversations by leveraging our investment offers, migration tools, and support for qualified customers. It’s easier than ever to help customers and partners migrate data from on-premises to Dynamic 365 Business Central and help boost business productivity and efficiency. 

Within the AIM program, we’ve created top-notch offers for customers that will help save costs in their cloud migration journey. There are also incentive levers that our partners and customers can leverage, along with a support ecosystem for qualified opportunities that will help with the actual migration. This support ecosystem is comprised of both internal Microsoft architects and our network of partners with Dynamics 365 Business Central migration expertise.  

Watch this Inspire session on demand to learn more. 

Get started today

Ready to get started using Dynamics 365 Business Central? Get an overview and a guided tour. 

To help your customers move to the cloud with confidence, go to the Dynamics 365 Partner Portal for resources and assets. 

Related posts

Catch up on what you missed at Microsoft Ignite 2023 | Microsoft 

Transform work with Copilot in Dynamics 365 Business Central – Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog 

Join the conversation

Want to explore this and other topics you care about with Microsoft and other US partners? Head over to the Microsoft Americas Partner Community on LinkedIn. 

Partner Audience: Services partners
Relevant to: #ProgramOfferUpdate, #GoToMarket, #Azure

In the face of changing market conditions and pressure to accelerate growth while reducing costs, the ability for customers to do more with less is critical. While the cloud has long been the north star for realizing efficiencies and accelerating innovation, we understand that these benefits also need to happen outside of the cloud.

Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server allows customers to build new cloud-native applications on any infrastructure, in their on-premises environments, and across other public clouds. This enables customers to make the most of their legacy applications, with the flexibility to innovate quickly and save on costs.

Switch to pay-as-you-go (PAYG), a cloud billing model for all SQL workloads, and reduce your SPLA costs

If you’re a Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA) partner, offering SQL Server to customers and using the Core licensing model, keep reading to learn more on the cost-savings opportunity to follow! We’re excited to provide partners and customers with a new consumption-based, cloud billing model that provides flexibility to innovate quickly and save on costs versus SPLA. With pay-as-you-go billing on SQL Server, you can benefit from flexibility, improved cost efficiencies, and support for multicloud and hybrid deployments with consistent billing for your entire SQL environment, no matter where they reside. If you have customers on SPLA with SQL, shifting to Azure Arc for billing versus the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program can save up to 30%!¹

Bring Azure Innovation to SQL Servers anywhere

With Azure Arc, customers can unlock more robust functionalities:

• • Manage their entire SQL estate in the Azure portal and leverage SQL Best Practice Analyzer to automatically evaluate SQL Server environments for performance, scalability, and business continuity, all at no additional cost.
  • With Azure Arc, SQL Server customers will have Purview access policies readily available for those on-premises environments to centralize insights and governance across their entire data estate.
  • We also enabled Microsoft Defender for Cloud for SQL Server. Microsoft Defender enhances the security posture of a customer’s SQL Server environments, no matter where they reside. Your SQL Server 2022 customers will also be able to benefit from single sign-on (SSO) with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to secure identities.

Innovate anywhere with Azure Arc today

With Azure Arc, your SQL Server customers will be able to maximize the value of their investments with technology that allows them to do more with less.

To learn more and get started, reach out to the Microsoft Datacenter Optimization (DCO) team today!

Additional resources

• • Podcast: Microsoft Cloud Hosting Partners
  • Webinar recording: Azure Arc Opportunity: Meeting customers where they’re at
  • Microsoft Learn: Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server
  • Billing model and how to Manage, secure, and govern your SQL Server estate from Azure
  • Pricing for SQL Server 2022 and the new pay-as-you go options
  • More about Azure Arc-enabled data services

Join the conversation

Want to explore this and other topics you care about with Microsoft and other US partners? Head over to the Microsoft Americas Partner Community on LinkedIn.

¹You can achieve up to 30 percent in incentive earning opportunities in CSP by combining Partner Earned Credit; Modern Commerce Incentive; New Customer Add Incentive. Eligibility rules apply. See https://partnerincentives.microsoft.com/ for more information on available incentives.

Microsoft provides flexible options to keep your customers’ servers secure. With the end of support (EOS) milestone for Windows Server 2012 on October 10, 2023, along with that of SQL Server 2012 in 2022, it’s important to understand your options and the actions needed to keep your customers’ legacy systems secure and compliant.

This Security Update for SQL Server 2012 was released in February 2023. Using the following guidance, you can provide your customers with access.

Meet your customers where they’re at

Your customers have three options to choose from when evaluating the best path forward for securing their legacy end of support workloads:

1. 1. Move to Azure and unlock new capabilities. You can securely migrate the infrastructure and databases to Azure or modernize on premises with options such as Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server and Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance.
   2. Go hybrid and get free extended ESU for three years after end of support. This includes hybrid destinations like Azure Stack, Azure VMWare Solution (AVS) and Nutanix Cloud Clusters on Azure to give flexibility to partners and their end customers.
   3. Deploy ESUs with Azure Arc. Purchase Extended Security Updates directly through the Azure portal by Arc-enabling their Windows and SQL 2012 servers.

Now let’s take a closer look at the latest option that Azure Arc has brought to the table. When you onboard legacy Windows Server 2012 or SQL Server 2012 with Azure Arc, it opens a world of possibilities. Specifically, it empowers you to offer ESUs directly through the Azure portal, utilizing your customers’ Azure subscriptions as the conduit.

This approach introduces a flexible billing mechanism, where ESUs are billed on a monthly basis. It’s worth highlighting that when a partner deploys ESUs, the billing takes into account the release date of the ESU. For instance, if ESUs are purchased in December, the customer will still be billed for October and November, aligning with the ESU release timeline.

The ESU opportunity creates additional opportunities for our hosting partners. For the first time, Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) licenses are eligible for ESUs, offering your customers the chance to extend their upgrade timeline. It also sets the stage for a host of new opportunities. With Azure Arc infrastructure deployed and a CSP relationship established, you can provide your customers with a broader range of services and solutions, all within the Azure ecosystem. This transition not only enhances your service offerings but also strengthens your position as a trusted partner for your customers’ evolving needs. It’s also worth mentioning that if you’re managing infrastructure on other clouds, you can use the same Azure Arc deployment to provide ESUs and additional services to those customers as well.

What is Azure Arc?

Azure Arc acts like a bridge to extend the Azure platform to secure, view, organize, and govern IT inventory anywhere. With Azure Arc, your customers will have clear visibility into the entire IT estate, enabling them to make intelligent decisions about which servers require ESU. Once ESUs are purchased through the Azure portal, security updates can be directly assigned to server workloads in the same interface. On top of that, patches for these servers are also delivered through Azure or an existing patch management solution, so everything necessary for managing ESUs can be done through the portal.

To summarize, the Extended Security Updates through Azure Arc offer:

1. 1. Flexible billing and savings through a monthly billing model centralized in Azure to run end-of-support operating systems.
   2. Visibility and reliability to ensure consistent performance with high availability and visibility of the entire data and server estate.
   3. Security and compliance.

Azure Arc offers management, governance, and security
Azure Arc offers much more than just ESU updates. With Azure Arc, customers can also bring the power of Azure cloud tools to their on-premises servers. Azure Arc provides capabilities like support for Azure Monitor, Update Management, Guest Configuration, and many other tools for managing hybrid server workloads. Customers that onboard their on-premises/hybrid workloads with Azure Arc get management and governance with a common toolset in a single pane of glass.

Azure Arc also makes it simple to protect and secure their on-premises/hybrid servers using tools like Microsoft Defender for Servers and Azure Sentinel. With Azure Arc, Defender can be deployed as an extension to an Arc-enabled server. Once deployed, customers get vulnerability assessment, just-in-time access, malware protection, and other tools to protect server workloads. Defender also provides a robust set of compliance controls and a Compliance Dashboard to help customers with industry and regulatory compliance requirements.

Now, with Azure Arc-enabled SQL Servers connected to Azure, you have the option of purchasing SQL Server using a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model instead of purchasing licenses. This model is a great alternative if you’re looking to save costs on SQL Servers that have variable demand for compute capacity over time; such as when you can turn off a SQL Server at night or on weekends, or even just scale down the number of cores used during less busy times. It’s also a great option if you only plan to use SQL Server for a short period of time and then won’t need it anymore. Pay-as-you-go, billed through Azure, is now available for all versions of SQL Server from 2012 to 2022.

How to purchase ESUs

Extended Security Updates can be purchased for both Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server 2012. To purchase and configure ESU for Windows Server 2012, follow these few simple steps:

1. 1. Access Azure Arc through the Azure portal.
   2. Onboard your customers’ servers to Azure Arc by deploying the Azure Connected Machine Agent.
   3. View their complete server inventory and determine which servers will need ESU.
   4. Purchase and activate ESUs and apply to their servers. ESUs can also be deployed through Azure Policy.

The process for deploying SQL Server ESU is similar and can also completed through the Azure portal:

1. 1. Open the Azure portal and onboard SQL Servers.
   2. View your customers’ entire SQL Server inventory and select the servers where you want to apply ESU.
   3. Subscribe to ESU and configure how patches will be delivered.

Next steps

Are you ready to explore how Azure Arc can help you manage your customers’ legacy Windows and SQL Server workloads, keeping them secure and compliant? Get started with these Microsoft Learn resources:

Lifecycle FAQ – Extended Security Updates

Extended Security Updates for Windows Server Overview

How to get Extended Security Updates (ESU) for Windows Server

Extend Azure services to your SQL Server instances with Arc-enabled SQL

Related posts

Manage, govern, and secure all your SQL Servers with new hybrid capabilities enabled by Azure Arc  – Microsoft SQL Server Blog

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Managed services are a key driver of partner profitability and revenue growth. Security services represent the largest opportunity for partners, due to the increasingly complex state of cybersecurity that’s driving businesses of all sizes to look for help. Protecting customers’ endpoints and workloads against advanced threats, improving permissions and access management, and battling increasing economic pressures are all top of mind. Whether you’re new to security, a longtime Microsoft partner, or anywhere in between, we’ve made it fast and easy to extend a Microsoft-powered managed security service.

Quickly spin up a robust Microsoft-powered managed security service

After years of working with managed service provider (MSP) partners, a few key areas have emerged as most strategic for ensuring an MSP can operate a new service that will yield sufficient ROI:

Effective multi-tenant management
The ability to manage multiple independent customer environments simultaneously generates huge advantages for an MSP. Microsoft 365 Lighthouse enables Cloud Solution Providers (CSPs) to grow their business and deliver managed services to customers at scale through a single pane of glass. With the new “Exposure Score” capability that enables MSPs to identify which customers are at high risk, coupled with the ability to perform remediation actions for individual customers, Microsoft 365 Lighthouse is ideal. Not to mention, Microsoft 365 Lighthouse is free of charge for partners, which helps in getting a new security service up and running quickly.

Proven technology from a company with staying power to build on
When expanding into security, the foundation you build on needs to be thoroughly vetted. Of course, the most important aspect of your offering is that it will enable you to successfully protect your customers against advanced threats in various scenarios. To this end, Microsoft security technologies:

• • Are fueled by the world’s largest threat intelligence network for superior protection.
  • Have built-in AI and automation for additional ease of scale.
  • Include ongoing assessment, visualization, and recommendations for best practices.
  • Have achieved high rankings by major analyst firms.

Some of the best options for building an endpoint detection and response (EDR) or a managed detection and response (MDR) practice include Microsoft Business Premium, Microsoft 365 E3, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

It’s also important to select a company with whom you can innovate and grow. Partnering with Microsoft will help you differentiate your services. You’ll also be well-positioned to integrate Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Security Copilot for exponential efficiencies that are sure to set you apart from the crowd.

Easy licensing, cost-effective operations, and partner profitability
Underestimated administrative overhead is the sleeping giant waiting to squash MSP success. It’s very important to choose a company with a licensing model for recurring business that can be efficiently managed across hundreds of customers with several scenarios for up-sell, cross-sell, and license ownership. Microsoft’s CSP model paired with strategic SKUs and tools offer:

• • Monthly licensing.
  • Flexibility of license ownership between you and your customers.
  • Unmatched cross-sell and up-sell—across Microsoft 365 Business Premium/Microsoft 365 E3 bundles, Sentinel, Defender for Cloud, and beyond to the vast portfolio of Microsoft technologies, even outside of security.
  • No charge to get started for customers that already own Microsoft Business Premium or Microsoft 365 E3, which include security workloads. In addition, Microsoft 365 Lighthouse is also offered free of charge to partners.
  • A 15 percent discount on Microsoft 365 E3.

Demand and pipeline generation help
Getting your service spun up is half the challenge. The other half is knowing how to fill your new managed security services pipeline. Microsoft understands this challenge and is well-positioned to help you hit the ground running. For example, we recently launched Sales Advisor, which uses AI-driven sales insights to help you identify which customers are highest-value opportunities. Now available to partners and built into Microsoft 365 Lighthouse, Sales Advisor can help you acquire new users, improve retention, and drive growth.

Even more, Microsoft tools like campaigns-in-a-box, available via Digital Marketing Content OnDemand, give you the option of highly customizable assets that you can integrate into a campaign of your own, or content and a platform for a six-week automated drip campaign.

Learn more

• • Watch the MSP security managed services webinar series.
  • Download the Microsoft Managed Services Partner Security Kit.
  • Read how to deploy and configure Azure Firewall Basic.
  • Read how to defend against DDoS attacks with Azure DDoS IP Protection.

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Join the conversation

Want to explore this and other topics you care about with Microsoft and other US partners? Head over to the Microsoft Americas Partner Community on LinkedIn.