ISV Partnership Programs: Microsoft Partner Network

According to Statista, Microsoft is the only global cloud platform company that has had steady growth since 2012. Hence, technology and software startups looking to enter a thriving successful ecosystem (that predates the cloud) should look at Microsoft's Partner Program, which offers firms a wide variety of perks and possibilities.

Microsoft’s new Cloud Partner program launching in October of 2022, will distinguish between Solutions Partners and specialization partners, with a more inclusive approach than before.  

Product Improvement Benefits

Free Internal Use Rights (IUR) for Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365 are only a few from the array of platforms and services that Microsoft’s offering for free to partners to make sure developers can use the best tools and infrastructure available to build new products efficiently. In some cases this represents a worth in the tens of thousands of dollars for their partners in terms of saved product development costs. In addition, Microsoft operates in more than 60 regions, and has more security and privacy certifications than any other cloud provider, removing the burden of managing security from its partners

Lastly, it is expected that legacy app modernization this year will have progressed to the point where 35 percent of production apps will not only be cloud native, but is expected to employ microservices, containers, and dynamic orchestration; all of this is a native part of Azure. By 2023, consumption-based IT operations will account for more than half of all enterprise IT operations spending.

Revenue Growth Benefits

An IDC study explains that for every dollar in revenue that Microsoft made in 2020, its partners made 9.58$ by delivering, creating or selling services and software solutions.

A Forrester study also showed that ISVs building on Azure advanced workloads:
 
                -    increased ARR for licenses by 10% on average,
                -    saw a 50 to 100 percent increase in deal flow pipeline,
                -    revenue from follow-up services per dollar spent on planning was found to be 8.75 dollars, 
                -    increased IP-margins by 5%

Cost Reduction Benefits

A Microsoft- Forrester study showed businesses can save an average of $1.9 million over three years by reducing expenses linked to either legacy on-premises infrastructure and/or by eliminating expenditures associated with previous cloud-based solutions. More specifically, another Forrester study on Azure Active Directory showed that customers who secure apps with Azure AD may expect a 123 percent ROI in three years, with a six-month period payoff plan.

Risk Mitigation Benefits

Based on the same study and as shown before with AWS, Azure AD lowers the risk of a data breach, saving partners costs of up to $2.2 million in some cases. Azure AD includes several capabilities and features that increase corporate security and the capacity to recognize, analyze, and mitigate threats. Interviewees in the study highlighted Azure AD security features such as granular conditional access control, multi factor authentication and integrated security logs.

Read more about ISV partnerships in our next blog posts from this series, and hop on the ISVWorld Platform to find the right ISVs to partner with.

In case you missed our latest post on tech partnerships:

Amazon Partner Network (APN) from ISV Partnerships by clicking on the link or head to the ISVWorld Blog for more.

What’s next: 

#4 Google Cloud Services 
#5 Salesforce Commerce Cloud
#6 Oracle Partners
#7 SAP PartnerEdge
#8 Sage Partners
#9 RedHat Partners
#10 Acumatica the Cloud ERP
#11 Twinfield Partners