Nicole Dezen, chief partner officer & CVP, global partner solutions, welcomed attendees with an overview of investments and updates to the MCPP, which launched in October last year.
This included the public preview availability of GPT-4 within Azure’s OpenAI service, announced this week.
“As customers around the world seek to explore the new capabilities that AI can bring to their business and their workforce, Microsoft’s partners will have a unique opportunity to serve these customer needs,” Dezen said, adding that the GPT-4 update brings the latest generation of large language models to Azure partners and customers.
“This means partners can streamline processes, save time, and improve overall efficiency so that they can focus on important day-to-day operations.”
Microsoft also announced new specialisations and specific designations for ISV partners, as well as updates to its commercial marketplace.
Julie Sanford, VP, partner GTM, programmes and experiences, said that partners’ feedback has resulted directly in key programme changes.
“Our goal with the partner programme was to drastically simplify partners’ ability to go to market with us and to better differentiate themselves in the marketplace,” she said.
The MCPP achieved this simplification, she explained, through moving to six new solution partner designations aligning to business applications, modern work, security, infrastructure, digital and app innovation and data & AI.
Last week, Microsoft launched four new specialisations aligned to the business applications solution area for Microsoft Dynamics 365: Finance, Sales, Service and Supply Chain.
“Specialisations provide partners with a way to further differentiate the organisation, demonstrate deep technical expertise, and highlight proven experiences in specific technical scenario,” Sanford told attendees during the event.
Designations will be introduced later this year for training services and support services, Sanford revealed.
“Skilling and enablement are critical to building Channel capacity and capability,” Sanford said. “In a world where technology capability is outpacing the size of the technical workforce, we are so thankful to have learning partners as core to our programme.”
Microsoft also announced it is expanding its Solutions Partner designations to include options that differentiate its independent software vendor (ISV) partners, launching in Microsoft’s fiscal year 2024.
“Our ambition is to build and scale this ISV ecosystem to deliver the highest levels of customer success,” said Casey McGee, VP global ISV sales and digital natives.
“This means collaborating across the spectrum of ISVs, and we recognise that partners’ need to succeed is unique to their business model, their size, their stage for growth. And to better support these partners, we need to provide resources, initiatives that meet their expectations.”
Designations will provide customers and Microsoft sellers the opportunity to identify ISV solutions best suited for their needs, McGee said, offering the example of solutions by industry like financial services or retail, or by use case across industries like security.
“These designations will distinguish a software solution’s specific capability, so eligibility will be based on technical criteria, Microsoft commercial marketplace presence and demonstrated customer success,” McGee said. “After attaining this designation, partners will receive benefits and help their go to market capabilities.”
Microsoft will also be introducing multiparty private officers to its commercial marketplace, aiming to empower partners to come together and create personalised offers with custom pay-outs and sell directly to Microsoft customers with simplified marketplace selling.
Finally, the company is enabling partners to self-attest for relevant diversity business classifications – partners can submit relevant diversity and social impact business classifications in the Partner Center, which will appear in their business profile in the marketplace, allowing customers to discover diverse-led businesses and their offerings in the marketplace.
On April 19, Microsoft will hold a virtual Commercial Marketplace Impact Event for diverse and minority-owned partners as well as partners with social impact solutions, focused on educating those partners on opportunities to accelerate growth.