The past 12 months have been a period of transformation for Microsoft and its partners. The next 12 months will be about acceleration. Inspire 2018 has opened the doors for partner innovation, growth and differentiation!
Microsoft Inspire, the conference held annually by Microsoft Corporation for its partner community, opened the doors this week at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center and T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Here are the four announcements that any entrepreneurs, partners, and business alike should know about to take their business to the next level with Microsoft’s technology and services.
1. More partner opportunities than ever before
Whether you build apps or services, Microsoft offers new programs and resources that can help you optimize your solution and take it to market so that it reaches the right customers—commercial, consumer, gamer, or education.
- ISV resource hub—Whether yours is a small shop or a large business, theISV resource hub provides tools that help you develop and scale apps and get them to customers.
- Benefits packages—To help you go to market, we’re providing greater flexibility and more opportunities to unlock new benefits.
- Go-to-market services—Partners thatpublish their solutions (apps and services) in AppSource or Azure Marketplace are eligible for go-to-market services that help you optimize your listing to attract and engage customers.
- Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions/ Windows and Devices competencies—For partners interested in the Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions and Windows and Devices competencies, we’re addingnew ways to attain them in response to customer needs and partner input.
2. Delivering innovation through apps and services
We’ve announced innovations in Microsoft 365, including a free version of Teams, new intelligent events capabilities, the Workplace Analytics teamwork solution and more. We have also announced new cloud, apps and data technologies including Azure Data Box Disk, Azure Virtual WAN, Azure Firewall and more.
3. Selling your solutions with Microsoft
In early 2019, for the first time in Microsoft’s history, we’ll put partner solutions in our product catalog alongside first party products and services. That means our direct salesforce and reseller partners will be able to sell 1st and 3rd party solutions individually or combined. This is one of several enhancements we’re making to evolve AppSource into a one-stop opportunity for 75 million buyers to find the solution they’re looking for 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
4. Focus on differentiation to attract customers
We’ve also announced new ways for partners to demonstrate their proven expertise to customers with the introduction of new advanced specializations and the new Microsoft Azure Expert MSP initiative. Partners can now demonstrate that they have the right capabilities to help with specific customer business challenges.