Microsoft sets aside more than US$240M in Copilot, security, Azure channel initiatives

Microsoft is increasing its investment for partners across Copilot, security, Azure and CSP initiatives, pouring in more than US$240 million.

According to Microsoft chief partner officer Nicole Dezen, it has increased its “Copilot investment by 10x over last year”, marking partners as essential to the Copilot customer journey.

“That is why we’ve developed a comprehensive set of pre- and post-sale engagements to guide partner execution in alignment with our existing go-to-market motions,” she said.

According to Dezen, Microsoft has experienced tremendous growth, with more than 12,000 projects delivered through Azure Migrate, Modernise and Innovate.

“These are built to work together and enable simpler adoption of Azure to drive customer transformation,” she said. “In FY25, we are adding new scenarios and increasing our investments for Azure Migrate and Modernise by 50 per cent in FY25.

 For Azure Innovate, Microsoft increased pre-sales and post-sales investments to more than $150 million.    

“Azure Essentials is a new hub that provides guidance, resources, and tooling to help customers deploy and optimize their cloud and AI investments,” wrote Dezen. “It supports Azure Migrate and Modernise and Azure Innovate with best practices, reference architectures, and skilling resources.”

Partners can use Azure Essentials to access content and enablement to deliver differentiated solutions on core scenarios across the Microsoft Azure solution plays and other topics like resilience and security.

Microsoft also plans to expand its customer purchasing flexibility of Azure OpenAI to include a Provisioned Throughput Unit (PTU) offering available through customer self-service & CSP partner-supported models.

PTUs provide throughput with consistent latency for uniform workloads, making them ideal for scaling AI solutions, also adding a shorter 30-day reservation commitment option for added flexibility.

Security is a key priority for Microsoft and to back that up, it is putting US$90 million in incremental investments in FY25.

“We will continue the threat protection assessment and bring back the data security assessment,” wrote Dezen. “We are continuing Azure Migrate and Modernise with Defender for Cloud Attach, which rewards you 15 percent for delivering secure migration projects and Microsoft Sentinel Migrate and Modernise.

“Finally, we’ve increased investments within CSP for ME5 and are boosting our strategic cybersecurity investments.”

Aligned with its priority of Microsoft 365 core execution in FY25, Dezen said it was increasing CSP incentives across strategic solutions, including Microsoft 365 E3/E5 and business premium, claiming partners can earn up to $120K in incentives for Microsoft 365 E3 workloads per customer.       

These announcements were made at Microsoft’s recent digital event, MCAPS Start for Partners. In the coming months, the vendor will also update about 20 new product licenses for many benefit packages, including Microsoft Copilot, Defender for Endpoint and GitHub.

Dezen reaffirmed it was committed to providing the resources and support partners need.

Earlier this year, Microsoft introduced three benefit packages, Partner Launch, Partner Success Core and Partner Success Expanded. These benefits are purpose-built to meet the varied needs of our partners at different stages of growth and help you take your business to the next level.

“We are committed to enabling partner skilling. Through our AI workshops and boot camps, we have trained over 818,000 AI learners on Microsoft Azure, Copilot, and Fabric since we launched them last year,” she said. “Project Ready Workshops accelerate deployment and implementation, while our Sales Boot Camps boost mindshare and pipeline.

Microsoft has also introduced the AI Partner Training Roadshow to help service partners develop AI expertise. Due to high partner demand, the vendor will have 12 more in-person AI Partner Training Days next year, including alignment to the Microsoft AI tour customer events. 

“One of our important benefits to enable us to grow together is a comprehensive incentives portfolio that empowers you to accelerate your growth, drive solution-focused wins, and maximise customer value,” she wrote. “In FY25, we will continue to align with business priorities and offer differentiating incentives by partner type, solution area, customer segment and MCEM stage.”