Our guest contributor for this blog is Yvonne Muench, Senior Director, Marketplace & ISV Journey. 

Today at Microsoft Inspire 2023, we announced general availability of ISV success, the pathway within the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program for partners who develop software, or Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). We gathered with our 400,000 partners to celebrate our shared contributions and impact on businesses and industries worldwide. As we continue our journey together, we are thrilled to share a range of new announcements designed to empower partners of all sizes, which include new expanded benefits, multi-year investments, AI for ISVs, and a simplified journey uniting multiple ISV programs into the AI Cloud Partner Program as part of ISV Success. These investments are strategically aimed at helping ISVs meet customer needs, accelerate innovation, facilitate go-to-market strategies, and cultivate a thriving business environment. 

ISV Success in general availability: an offering for all ISVs 

Furthering our commitment to ISVs across the globe, we are excited to share that ISV Success, within the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, is now generally available. Whether you’re building your first app, migrating from another cloud provider, or selling your established solutions through Microsoft, we’re defining clear pathways toward your goals. With ISV Success, you gain access up to $126,000 (USD) of benefits, guidance, and resources for a full year to build well-architected apps across our cloud and publish and sell on our commercial marketplace. Sign up today and join the thousands of ISVs already taking advantage of these benefits and resources.  

Partner benefits in ISV Success 

To help you innovate rapidly, ISV Success offers an unparalleled package of core benefits including cloud sandboxes, developer tooling, one-on-one technical and business consultations, and a dedicated community within the Microsoft Partner Community. Once your app is built and ready to be published, you can unlock additional go-to-market benefits that grow alongside your sales performance.   

A central aim of ISV Success is to help partners use the commercial marketplace to reach customers and grow sales, whether that’s directly through storefronts, our partner channel, or our sales force. For the latter, marketplace is now the foundational platform to earn Azure IP co-sell benefits. ISV Success helps partners meet new co-sell requirements with benefits to upgrade existing listings to transactable, and benefits to generate marketplace billed sales, which offer an accelerated path to advanced partner co-sell benefits such as accessing a customer’s cloud consumption commitments and selling collaboratively alongside Microsoft’s field sellers. 

We are constantly evaluating and improving the benefits for partners, and aligned with the announcement of the new Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, we have some exciting updates to share specific to ISV Success: 

• New expanded benefits: As your business grows, so do the rewards. Eligible partners can now access additional Cloud credits and up to 50 hours of valuable business and technical consultations. In addition to sales performance, these enhanced benefits require a commitment to publish transactable solutions and actively transact in the marketplace.  
• Multi-year investments: After your first year in ISV Success, you can earn ongoing discounted benefits. These benefits are designed to assist you in continuing to build, publish, and sell applications, ensuring a sustained growth trajectory for your business. 
• A simplified journey: To support your app development across the Microsoft Cloud and your journey as you build, publish and sell apps through marketplace, we have united ISV programs into ISV Success. Microsoft 365 benefits program, ISV Connect, and Marketplace Rewards are now part of ISV Success, within the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. 
  • M365 benefits program participants now gain access to cloud licenses across the Microsoft Cloud with Azure and Dynamics to complement the M365 developer SKU they already enjoyed. They also gain access to best-in-class developer tools such as Visual Studio and Github to accelerate building applications. 
  • ISV Connect participants will now enjoy additional benefits to support them earlier in their journey as they build and publish apps, such as 1:1 technical consults and best in class developer tools. They’ll also gain access to cloud licenses across the Microsoft Cloud with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365, to complement the D365 SKUs they already enjoyed. 

• AI for ISVs: The era of AI is transforming how apps get built and what they can deliver. Here’s just the beginning of the benefits ISV Success participants will enjoy to build AI-powered apps: 
  • Gain entry to limited access Azure AI services such as Azure OpenAI, Face API, Computer Vision, Azure Video Indexer, Custom Neural Voice, and Speaker Recognition.  
  • Learn more about upcoming feature roadmaps and share feedback on in-development work, and engage Microsoft 365 product groups with the Technology Adoption Program (TAP).
  • Build applications faster with GitHub Copilot and AI-powered code suggestions — a benefit coming by end of 2023.

At Microsoft, we recognize the vital role ISVs play in the ever-expanding cloud solutions landscape. We have the privilege of acknowledging the immense value of our partner ecosystem. With the general availability of ISV Success as a pathway within the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, and a suite of new benefits, we are dedicated to empowering ISVs of all sizes to achieve their full potential. Together, we can meet customer needs, drive innovation, optimize costs, and forge a prosperous future in the digital era. As Microsoft Inspire 2023 commences, we look forward to embarking on this transformative journey with our valued partners. 

Join ISV Success today and accelerate the growth of your business.