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As customers accelerate toward AI‑powered transformation, partners are being asked not only to deliver technology, but to guide outcomes.
This month’s Cloud & AI newsletter brings together Azure platform innovations, incentives, skilling, events, and go‑to‑market resources designed to meet that moment—supporting efforts to migrate and modernize with confidence, build intelligent apps and agents, and turn data into a competitive advantage.
- Migrate to Enterprise-Grade Performance & Security: Azure Database for PostgreSQL now empowers organizations to confidently migrate from legacy databases (like Oracle) to a fully managed open-source platform with enterprise-grade performance and reliability. By combining new AI-powered migration tools, integrated migration planning, and next-generation performance upgrades, these launches help customers achieve the speed, scale, and resilience needed for mission-critical workloads – while lowering cost and complexity. Move your data to Azure PostgreSQL and get better performance, stronger security, and easier migration than ever before. You can modernize your databases faster, run them on high-performance storage and VMs, and protect them with Azure’s advanced security—all on one unified platform.
|
Feature |
What It Does (Benefit) |
Value for Technical Users (DBAs/Developers) |
Value for IT Decision-Makers |
|
AI-Assisted Oracle-to-PostgreSQL Migration Tool |
Automates and simplifies the conversion of Oracle databases (schema, code, even app syntax) to PostgreSQL using AI. Benefit: Greatly reduces manual work and errors in migrations. |
Faster, easier migrations: Uses AI (LLMs via VS Code + GitHub Copilot) to convert Oracle schemas & PL/SQL code to Postgres automatically. This means DB engineers spend far less time hand-coding conversions and debugging – the tool even tests and fixes issues iteratively, ensuring the migrated database runs correctly. For the DBA, it’s a huge relief: much of the tedious conversion work is handled by AI, with clear flags only where human review is needed, speeding up the overall migration process. |
Accelerated cloud adoption & cost savings: Enables the business to move off expensive Oracle systems faster and with lower risk. Fewer manual hours and fewer errors mean migrations complete sooner, so you start saving on Oracle licensing/support costs and realize Azure benefits quickly. It reduces migration risk (thanks to AI validation on a live target database), giving decision-makers confidence that critical data and apps will transition smoothly without prolonged downtime or big surprises. |
|
Azure Migrate – PostgreSQL Discovery & Assessment |
Identifies on-premises database servers (Oracle/PostgreSQL) and evaluates them for migration. Benefit: Provides a migration readiness report and recommendations. |
Informed planning: Automatically discovers existing database instances in your environment and assesses their readiness for Azure. Technical teams get a detailed inventory and compatibility analysis (e.g. which Oracle features need changes for Postgres, or sizing recommendations for Azure). This helps DB admins plan migrations with data-driven insights (like SKU recommendations and expected performance on Azure), removing guesswork. |
Reduced migration risk & effort: For leadership, Azure Migrate’s assessments highlight potential blockers and costs upfront, helping avoid surprises. It delivers an executive-ready plan for migration (including estimated Azure cost for each workload), so decision-makers can confidently allocate budget and timeline. In short, it de-risks the migration project by ensuring you have full visibility into what’s needed before making the move. |
|
Premium SSD v2
|
New high-performance disk storage option with sub-millisecond latency and extremely high IOPS/throughput, at a lower cost per performance. Benefit: Improves database read/write performance dramatically. |
High I/O performance for databases: Enables PostgreSQL servers to use next-gen storage with up to 80,000 IOPS and 1,200 MB/s throughput per disk, far surpassing previous limits. DB architects and admins can handle I/O-intensive workloads with minimal latency (e.g. heavy OLTP, large batch operations) without complex sharding or caching. It’s also flexible – you can provision exactly the disk performance needed and even adjust IOPS/throughput on the fly, so tuning performance is easier. |
Enterprise-grade speed without huge cost: Premium SSD v2 gives a big performance boost (up to 4× more IOPS) for your databases at a lower cost per transaction. For decision-makers, that means you can support more users and transactions on the same database (improving application responsiveness and user satisfaction) without overspending on hardware. It provides headroom for growth and peak loads, delaying or avoiding major infrastructure upgrades. Essentially, you get *better performance *for your investment, which supports business growth and SLAs. |
|
**Intel & AMD V6-Series Compute SKUs (New Gen VMs, including confidential compute) |
New V6-generation compute options (General Purpose & Memory Optimized tiers) for Azure Database for PostgreSQL, powered by latest Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC processors with local NVMe storage. Benefit: Greatly increases scalability and processing power; an AMD Confidential Compute option adds in-memory data encryption for security. |
Massive scale & throughput: Developers/DBAs can now scale a single Postgres server up to 192 vCores and ~1.8 TB RAM on ultra-fast CPUs, with direct-attached NVMe storage for blazing I/O. This means even very large or complex workloads (heavy concurrent transactions, complex analytical queries) can run on Azure Postgres without hitting resource limits. Tech teams can consolidate databases or handle spikes more easily, and even opt for AMD Confidential VMs if they need hardware-level encryption of data in-use, all with minimal changes. |
Performance and security at scale: The new V6 SKUs ensure your PostgreSQL can handle enterprise workloads – from a performance perspective (very high CPU, memory, and I/O capacity) and a security perspective (Confidential Computing keeps data encrypted in memory for sensitive applications). For IT leaders, this means Azure can support your most demanding database applications (e.g. core business systems or large analytics) with headroom to grow, while also meeting stringent security/compliance requirements. You get mainframe/Oracle-like horsepower on an open platform, paying only for what you use and easily scaling up or down as needed. |
To learn more check out our Tech Community post.
- Optimize your Microsoft Marketplace listing: In today’s competitive Microsoft Marketplace, the quality of your listing plays a critical role in helping customers discover and engage with your offer. To optimize your Marketplace listing, Microsoft now provides AI‑powered, on‑demand recommendations to enhance partner Marketplace listings—at no cost. Through App Advisor, partners can receive personalized, actionable guidance in seconds, without waiting for manual review cycles or guessing what best practices look like. The recommendations are generated by an AI model trained on Marketplace best practices and aligned with Microsoft expert review processes, so partners can edit their listings with confidence. The experience is designed to be flexible and iterative. Partners can update a listing, rescan it, and receive refreshed recommendations as often as needed—supporting continuous enhancement to boost discoverability and engagement over time. Any organization with a publicly available Marketplace listing is eligible, and partners with multiple listings can run recommendations for each one.
Getting started is simple:
1. Visit App Advisor, sign in, and select your Marketplace offer.
2. Receive actionable recommendations in seconds.
3. Optimize your listing and rescan as needed.
To begin enhancing your listing today, visit App Advisor now.
- Check out the Omdia Microsoft Marketplace study: Learn more about the Microsoft Marketplace partner revenue opportunity: According to a commissioned study by Omdia, Microsoft Marketplace is projected to be a $300B partner revenue opportunity by 2030. Partners already selling through Marketplace are seeing real results: 88% report revenue growth, 75% close sales faster, and 69% get larger deals. Download the report.
- 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 helping customers unlock AI value through an AI‑ready data foundation. Partners play a critical role in delivering this at scale through repeatable, integrated solutions. Partners can help customers prioritize and transform with AI—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 are expected to be published by the end of March here.
- Tap into new Microsoft Azure go-to-market assets: Partners are the catalyst for turning adoption and cloud investments into tangible impact for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). And with a robust collection of new go-to-market 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. These resources are built to deepen your engagement with customers—whether you're scaling outreach across a reseller ecosystem, equipping your sellers with actionable insights, delivering ongoing managed services, or developing repeatable, high-volume cloud solutions. By activating these assets, you can strengthen your cloud practice, expand Azure consumption, and deliver smarter, AI-powered outcomes that deepen customer relationships. Explore the Azure SMB content collection
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Marketplace Rewards update: Azure sponsorship now supported on more MCA billing profiles: We're pleased to share that we've simplified how partners participating in Microsoft Marketplace Rewards can use Azure sponsorship credits if either they or their customers use Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA) billing. For Global Cloud, partners can now redeem their Azure sponsorship credits on an MCA billing profile that had any Azure Credit Offer (ACO) credits applied. Previously, the presence of current or past ACO on the billing profile prevented sponsorship credit redemption. This blocker is removed, reducing friction for partners and customers using MCA billing profiles. While this update expands eligibility, the following rules still apply:
-This change only applies to partners and customers receiving Azure sponsorship through Marketplace Rewards.
-A billing profile can't have more than one active sponsorship redeemed at the same time.
-This change doesn't alter other Azure sponsorship eligibility requirements or limitations.
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Connect and learn at FabCon US 2026 in Atlanta: FABCON and SQLCON are taking place March 16–20, 2026, in Atlanta, Georgia. Register before tickets sell out. This is a critical opportunity to check out the latest innovations and connect with customers, Microsoft experts, and your peers. Be sure to join us for Partner Day on March 17 for exclusive insights.
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Upskill with the Azure VMware Solution (AVS) bootcamp: AVS is a Microsoft service verified by VMware that runs on Azure infrastructure. AVS bootcamp 2026 provides partners with guidance and coaching to accelerate customer migrations to Azure using familiar VMware tools. Attendees will learn how AVS empowers them to move VMware-based workloads to the cloud and manage existing environments with the same VMware tools they already know. View the bootcamp on-demand and pick and choose which sales and technical sessions are most of interest.
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Learn more about AI-powered migration and modernization at the Microsoft Azure Summit: Migrate & Modernize with Agentic AI: Back by popular demand, this event will take place on April 23 (Americas). Encourage your customers to attend to discover how new, AI-assisted migration and modernization tools, features, and capabilities can equip them to modernize quickly and efficiently. Registration information is coming soon.
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Acquire the skills to earn new Microsoft business certifications by attending Skills2Win: Join a free, three‑day virtual Sales Certification Week designed to help partner sellers build practical AI fluency, activate real‑world use cases, and validate AI readiness by earning Microsoft credentials – all without taking extended time away from selling. This no-cost event runs March 23 - 25 in a half-day virtual format, with two session options: 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM Pacific Time or 2:00 PM – 6:00 PM Pacific Time. Space is limited, so register today.
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