Amber Hickman |
Microsoft is focusing on artificial intelligence, diversity, and streamlining the marketplace for businesses in the Cloud Partner Program, according to the annual State of the Partner Ecosystem 2023 briefing.
The brief focuses on the investments Microsoft is making to support its partners and pursue innovation.
The first is artificial intelligence, which has been rapidly evolving with recent integrations such as CoPilot and the new Bing search engine.
Beginning in April, partners will be able to apply for preview access to GPT-4 in Azure OpenAI Service, the newest iteration of the ChatGPT model.
“We believe AI will fundamentally change every software category, unlocking a new wave of productivity growth,” said Nicole Dezen, chief partner officer and corporate vice president of global partner solutions at Microsoft, in the briefing, which was posted to the official Microsoft blog. “We are committed to empowering partners to harness the power of this innovation on behalf of customers around the world, while helping them navigate this new era of technology.”
Diversity is another focus for Microsoft, and partners can now submit diversity and social good business classifications in the Microsoft Partner Center, which will appear in their marketplace profiles.
Microsoft is also hosting a virtual Commercial Marketplace Impact Event for diverse and minority-owned partner businesses, on 19 April, which will focus on teaching them how they can accelerate their growth through the Microsoft marketplace.
To make the marketplace more effective for partners, Microsoft is expanding its Solutions Partner designations to include options that further assist its independent software vendor (ISV) partners. Designations for ISV solutions will distinguish an application’s specific capabilities and help customers find the solutions that match their businesses’ needs by considering industry, use cases and marketing and sales imperatives.
Soon, Microsoft will also providing multiparty private offers that will allow partners to collaborate and create personalised offers with custom pay-outs and sell directly to Microsoft customers. Private previews for the service will be available in spring.
Later this year, Microsoft will launch Solutions Partner designations for training and support services, which will enable customers to quickly identify partners that have met necessary requirements in performance, support and quality of training.
“Microsoft partners are fundamental to our success,” said Dezen. “We’re committed to investing in our ecosystem to enable partners to further differentiate their expertise, collaborate on deals through the commercial marketplace, and position themselves to meet an expanding range of customer and industry needs.”