April update: What’s New in Azure for Partners

News and Announcements

• Explore new innovations from FabCon and SQLCon Atlanta. Building on the market position of Microsoft Fabric, the latest event unveiled a bevy of new product capabilities, including simplified migration pathways, new features in Fabric IQ, data and operations agents, and the just-announced Database Hub. Check out the keynote to catch up on the latest and share our blog to start customer conversations. 

• Drive database cost savings for customers with savings plans for databases. These plans can deliver up to 35% savings across customers’ database estates, with flexibility that follows the database estate as it grows, scales, and modernizes. Learn how to leverage these plans for your customers and utilize our refreshed database narrative to support your conversations. 

• Azure SRE Agent is now generally available, offering AI‑powered incident detection and remediation with extensible automation via custom Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations. Read the Apps on Azure blog to learn how Azure SRE Agent can improve uptime and reduce operational toil. 

• Standardized pricing for Extended Security Updates is now available. The new pricing model impacts SQL Server and Windows products including Windows 10 Enterprise 2016 LTSB and Windows Server, offering customers consistent pricing across clouds and purchasing channels. Read the blog for more details, and connect with SQL Server and Azure SQL experts in the SQL Partner Community. 

• Confidently migrate from legacy databases with Azure Database for PostgreSQL, a managed, open-source platform with enterprise‑grade performance and reliability. New innovations—including the Oracle‑to‑PostgreSQL AI migration tool—empower customers to achieve the speed, scale, and resilience required for mission‑critical workloads, while lowering cost and complexity. Learn more.   

• The new, digital Microsoft Commercial Partner Incentives Guide delivers clear navigation, direct paths to engagement, and fast access to the most up-to-date guidance—all in one place. Now you can search incentives by category, quickly confirm eligibility, and act swiftly on opportunities with live links that connect you to the next action. Explore the digital incentives guide experience and share your feedback as we continue to evolve it. 

• Azure Migrate now consolidates the migration planning process into a single workflow. With Azure Migrate Collector, you can scan your estate offline, then enrich the inventory with tags, organize workloads into applications, and generate an executive-ready report that summarizes modernization and lift-and-shift recommendations, security posture, and cost insights for your next stakeholder meeting. Read the blog to learn more about using Azure Migrate. 

• Microsoft launched new Cloud Adoption Framework guidance for data. Help your customers prepare for an AI-first future by getting their data estates organized for success and ensuring you are providing services that align with Microsoft best practices. Dive into the guidance here. 

Incentives and Offers

• Build, validate, and publish AI solutions on Azure with our Build & Publish offer, featuring updated criteria and increased flexibility. Infuse AI into solutions, advance analytics capabilities, and accelerate readiness for Microsoft Marketplace publication. For more information, review the SDC Partner Incentive Deck. 

• Tap into secure migration partner investments for Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Access helpful resources on the new Cloud Security Envisioning Workshop. Act now—after June 30, 2026, you will need the Cloud Security specialization to access this workshop. For more information on Defender for Cloud incentives for partners, join the Azure Migrate and Modernize Partner Forum to access the recent Secure Migrations webinar and additional content (accessible in the Forum Teams site). 

• Drive growth and eliminate legacy virtualization cost constraints. Third-party virtualization licensing changes are reshaping the hosting landscape—and partners who act now can transform faster and reduce long‑term risk. Microsoft Datacenter Optimization (DCO) provides a clear, strategic path forward, empowering partners to transition from a Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) licensing model to a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) operation and deliver modernization across Azure Native, Azure Local, and Azure Arc. Tune in to the Microsoft Hybrid Cloud partners podcast to learn more and explore additional tools and support on the Microsoft Datacenter Optimization page. 

• Deploy tools and access rewards to accelerate customer migrations and modernizations. Microsoft is committed to partner growth, and we offer numerous tools and rewards to support your migration and modernization efforts. Nominate your project for Azure Accelerate, a unified offering within the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program that supports faster deal closure and predictable payouts for your implementations. Plan cloud migrations with AI assistance from Dr Migrate, available within Azure Accelerate. Plus, access no-cost deployment assistance for more than 30 Azure services with Cloud Accelerate Factory. In addition to these offerings, Solutions Partners* with certified software designations** can earn up to $175,000 for qualifying Customer Migrate & Modernize engagements. Check out the streamlined incentives guide for more information. 

Skilling and Events

• Dive deep on real code, systems, and workflows at Microsoft Build. Register today for the June 2–3, 2026, event. Join live in San Francisco or tune in remotely to learn from the teams building and scaling AI, connect with the developer community, and gain strategies to ship smarter AI. 

• Develop expertise in Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Design secure, scalable architectures, perform seamless migrations from multiple platforms, and build AI-powered applications using vector search and GraphRAG. Labs provide practical experience for modernization, high availability, and intelligent innovation. Register for our June 16-18 Project Ready workshop. 

• Explore AI-powered migration and modernization at the Microsoft Azure Summit: Migrate and Modernize with Agentic AI event. Back by popular demand, this event will take place on April 23, 2026. Encourage your customers in the Americas region to attend to discover how new, AI-assisted migration and modernization tools, features, and capabilities can equip them to modernize quickly and efficiently. Register today. You can also catch up on the Partner Preview held ahead of the Migrate and Modernize Summit, featuring early insights, key announcements, and guidance to prepare you for customer conversations. 

• Ready to start building your team’s Fabric capabilities after FabCon + SQLCon? Take advantage of these technical trainings to equip your team with hands-on learning opportunities across key Fabric offerings: Fabric Databases and Data Factory (May 12-14) and Fabric Data Agents and Fabric IQ (June 9-11). Microsoft will also be hosting a Microsoft Fabric Sales Accelerate skilling event on May 27 (Americas) and May 28 (Asia and EMEA) to empower you to win data platform conversations. 

• Access the Fabric Center of Excellence Accelerator. Join a high-impact, four-day, virtual training designed to speed your DP-600 and DP-700 certifications, deepen your practical knowledge, and create immediate, customer-ready capability. This training will be offered across multiple time zones with cohorts in April, May, and June. To get more information and participate, email fabricpartnersteam@microsoft.com with your organization name, selected certification track (DP-600 or DP-700), estimated number of participants, and target timeframe. 

• Build your team’s capabilities at Fabric workshops. At Fabric FAST, you can learn from Microsoft experts how to build, price, and launch revenue-ready Microsoft Fabric offers for customers. This virtual experience runs throughout April and is available in English and Spanish. In addition, we are offering a Spanish-language Microsoft Fabric skilling series, hosted virtually May 5–6. Japanese speakers can join us in-person in Tokyo for a workshop, hosted jointly with AMD, on both technical and sales readiness, May 15 and May 19. 

Go-To-Market

• Accelerate growth with Microsoft Azure GTM assets. Turn adoption and cloud investments into tangible impact for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). With a robust collection of go-to-market (GTM) assets on the SMB market opportunity for Microsoft Azure, you can quickly build pipeline, grow your SMB customer base, and expand existing workloads—while leading secure cloud transformations at scale. By activating these assets, you can strengthen your cloud practice, expand Azure consumption, and deliver smarter, AI-powered outcomes that deepen customer relationships. Explore available campaigns in Partner Marketing Center Pro (for eligible partners) or in Partner Marketing Center. 

• Bring the connected Azure story to life with AI + Data. AI + Data Go Big is Microsoft’s unified, end‑to‑end GTM motion to win the AI and Data Platform by empowering customers to unlock AI value through an AI‑ready data foundation. Support customers with AI transformation—especially where data readiness is a blocker—while benefiting from Microsoft’s most comprehensive offers to accelerate wins. Available partner assets include the to-partner value proposition, multiple through‑partner pitch collections (Foundry, Fabric, and Database), and the Azure Frontier Offer for eligible opportunities. Additional One Azure and Data pitch decks will be published here. 

• Become a Fabric Featured Partner. If you are a partner with the Analytics on Azure specialization, take the opportunity to learn more and become a Fabric Featured Partner to stand out as customers modernize their data estates. 

• Access the latest product pitch decks for data platform conversations with customers. Whether you’re looking for the latest content from FabCon + SQLCon or refreshed assets on data governance capabilities in Microsoft Purview, you can find what you need on our Cloud & AI Platform page. 

Partner success stories

• System performance at Apollo Hospitals improves significantly after migrating to Azure. Apollo Hospitals needed a more scalable, flexible way to manage digital care delivery across its network of more than 74 hospitals. It shifted from a fragmented on-premises setup to Microsoft Azure, replaced its backend with Azure Database for PostgreSQL, and streamlined delivery via Azure DevOps. This modernized hospital systems and improved scalability, visibility, and security, improving system uptime to 99.95%. Deployment timelines dropped by 40%, and teams now work with greater speed, resilience, and readiness to support future innovation. 

• Microsoft Fabric helps customers improve data accuracy by bringing data into a single source of truth. Learn how partners are helping Microsoft customers unify data for real-time insights, improve data accuracy, accelerate innovation, and drive intelligent transformation all through the power of Microsoft Fabric.