As we move further into 2022, we’ve rounded up some of the top news for partners from the past few months. We’re continuing to evolve and improve the partner ecosystem, making changes in response to partner feedback and creating new opportunities for customers:

General Partner Network Updates

Redesigned partner incentives website: We’ve transformed our partner incentives content on the Microsoft Partner website to match our revamped approach to incentives, now based on solution area and customer lifecycle activities.

New Windows 365 resources: We believe Windows 365 and the Cloud PC are the future of work, and have launched new resources to help partners deliver a complete endpoint solution with all the latest capabilities.

Updated pricing for Microsoft 365 for nonprofits: We are updating the nonprofit prices of five Office 365 and Microsoft 365 products on September 1st, 2022. These changes will not impact any of our existing nonprofit cloud grants. More information is available in the Microsoft 365 nonprofit pricing partner FAQ to assist in defining next steps with nonprofit customers.

Appointment scheduling of support requests: As Rodney Clark shared at last year’s Inspire conference (and at the top of the year), we’re committed to strengthening our digital capability. In March, we made it easier for you to connect with support agents at a time convenient for you through scheduled appointments.

Investing in Black partners through the Black Partner Growth Initiative (BGPI): As part of February’s Black History Month celebration, we spotlighted a few members from our BGPI community who have helped shape this initiative while growing their businesses.

New Learning Opportunities

Upcoming Cloud Weeks for partners: With our catalog of learning and training opportunities, we work alongside partners to prepare for successful sales conversations. Registration is now open for May’s two Cloud Week events. Exclusive to partners, these are virtual skilling events designed to help build solution area-specific skills through instructor-led courses, on-demand labs, and more:

• Azure Cloud Week for Partners: May 9-13, 2022
• Security Cloud Week for Partners: May 16-20, 2022

Sales Bootcamps by solution area: We’ve also put together three-hour sessions led by Microsoft experts to help partners understand and sell the Microsoft Cloud for a specific solution area. Upcoming bootcamps include:

• Microsoft Azure: April 27 
• Microsoft Security: May 11
• Modern Work: May 25

Promoting Cybersecurity

Enterprise-grade endpoint security for SMBs: Ransomware and other malware are often the biggest concerns for small and medium-sized businesses. Microsoft Defender for Business value in Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Microsoft 365 Lighthouse, now both generally available, are two products that partners can leverage to secure this key customer segment at scale.

Review your admin privileges: As we work globally toward a Zero Trust security posture, we have implemented new capabilities in Partner Center for you to review and adjust delegated admin privileges (DAP) and granular delegated admin privileges (GDAP).

New Modernize Endpoint Advanced Specialization: Microsoft’s endpoint story spans multiple solution areas, including Modern Work, Security, Surface, and Azure. To simplify the marketplace experience for customers, we’ve launched a new Advanced Specialization that identifies our top partners who can deliver Endpoint Modernization solutions.

Learn how you can protect and secure your environment and customers better with our three-part video series for Cloud Solution Providers (CSPs) here.

Building Out the Cloud Solution Provider Program

Seat-based offers in CSP new commerce: On January 10, the general availability of commercial seat-based offers for Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Windows 365 went live in the new commerce experience in the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program. The following months saw the addition of capabilities to align term end dates in new commerce, promotional discounts on annual and monthly term new commerce offers, and the end of new subscription orders on the existing (legacy) commerce platform. Looking ahead, all existing CSP seat-based subscriptions must be renewed on new commerce starting in July, and monthly term offers will return to being priced at a premium. Later in calendar year 2022, partners can expect the launch of popular enterprise-grade offer types in the breadth (SMB) motion as well as seat-count limits to partner benefits in the CSP program.

More information for CSP partners can be found here. The CSP monthly update newsletter is now available, along with additional CSP community resources that provide essential program updates.

Reaching the Right Customers

Optimizing business profile and marketplace: The business profile is a tool for improving your discoverability in the commercial marketplace. Learn how to set up and leverage your business profile to stand out and accrue referrals on the partner blog.

Updates to co-sell roles and publishing: We have improved the co-sell solution publishing experience by creating a new “co-sell solution admin” role and launching a new experience in the “Referrals” workspace under “Co-sell Solutions.” These changes impact global admins who manage role permissions within their organization, and co-sell solution admins who configure and manage co-sell solutions. View the full announcement here.

We will regularly release resources and guidance to ensure you are connecting with as many customers as possible. For all relevant partner center announcements, visit the library here.

Introducing the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program

Evolving the partner network: We are excited to have announced upcoming changes to the Microsoft Partner Network, including a new identity as the “Microsoft Cloud Partner Program” and realigned partner designations. We kicked off a series exploring these changes on the Microsoft Partner Blog, and you can see further details here.

Opportunities For Independent Software Vendors (ISVs)

Scaling ISV cloud solutions: The new and improved private offer capability became generally available in February, enabling ISVs to directly incentivize CSPs in the commercial marketplace to sell their solutions. ISVs can now offer margin to 400 eligible partners at once and create unique private offers in less than 15 minutes. Additional improvements include unlimited private offers, the ability to time-bound a private offer, custom terms and conditions, and bundles of multiple products in the same private offer.

Resources are now available to support partners in joining the ISV Success Program (private preview), selling through commercial marketplace, and creating a channel strategy to activate partners.

This quarter’s updates are part of the larger evolution of the Microsoft Partner Network that is taking place this year. We are pleased to continue to innovate within the partner experience and leverage the latest tech developments. Stay connected with partner news and blogs for the latest announcements, and we’ll be back with another roundup in a few months—thank you for partnering with Microsoft!