Operating in our modern world is becoming increasingly complex, and customers are more dependent on our partners than ever to help navigate the ever-changing business landscape. Because we know just how essential you are to their success, we’re constantly investing to develop the latest tools, resources, and guidance to ensure you’re positioned to meet their needs.

Since our ecosystem is perpetually evolving, it’s important for you to be aware of these updates so you can bring the best of the Microsoft Partner Network to bear for your customers. To make sure you’re aware of the latest developments, I’ve pulled together a few of the highlights from this past quarter:

• Together with our partners, we are on a journey to realize more inclusive economic opportunity. In honor of International Women’s Day in March, we celebrated women in cloud by showcasing partner solutions from women-led organizations as part of our #BuildFor2030 campaign.

• We also recently launched the Black and African American partner growth initiative to expand the Microsoft Partner Network’s diversity of innovation and thought leadership by attracting Black and African American-owned tech partners, and to support Black and African American-owned partners.

• In response to partner feedback we launched the Global Promo Readiness Guide collection, which provides a consolidated view of all active, global promotions in a centralized location on our Operations Gallery. We plan to update this every month and keep you current on how to use our global promotions.

• The Microsoft Azure team created a YouTube playlist to make it easy for you to access content from the Open Azure Day event last November. Videos cover a variety of topics including open source, building applications, managing Linux workloads, up leveling your automation, and more.

• In response to the widespread shift to remote work over the past year, we developed the Remote Work Practice Playbook to help partners tap new revenue opportunities regarding Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop, Microsoft Identity and Access Management, and Microsoft Teams. These playbooks are developed with input from partners and can help you understand customer opportunities, the kinds of offers you can design and deliver, and how Microsoft can help you build a remote work practice.

• Our first global diversity and inclusion event, Include 2021, gathered top diversity and inclusion experts to discuss how to drive meaningful change on both an individual and systemic level. It facilitated conversation and learning on topics including allyship, unconscious bias, intersectionality, covering, and identities. If you weren’t able to join us, Include 2021 sessions are available on demand.

• At the beginning of 2021, Microsoft Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith shared a one year update on Microsoft’s 10-year strategy to become carbon negative, water positive, zero waste and develop a planetary computing platform.

• The Partner roadmap provides partners with a view of recent and upcoming changes to the Microsoft Partner Network. The view is personalized to your organization and helps you identify the investments you can make to help make the most of your partnership with Microsoft. It also provides a handy action panel view which clearly shows you what actions you need to take for your organization.   

• In response to feedback from publishers in the Microsoft commercial marketplace, we’ve released programmatic access to the commercial marketplace analytics data available for all commercial marketplace publishers. This provides programmatic access to analytic reports to monitor sales, evaluate performance, and optimize offers in the commercial marketplace. These APIs enable you to schedule custom reports of analytics data asynchronously. You can also define reporting templates based on your specific business needs, set a schedule, and get timely and trustworthy reports at scheduled intervals.

Technology will continue to fuel change for organizations across the planet, opening massive opportunities for the partners that master helping their customers with their own digital transformations. We’re committed to arming you with the resources you need to thrive, and we’ll continue to share updates as they become available. As we continue to work together, I’m confident that there isn’t anything we can’t accomplish.