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NEW: Microsoft 365 SMB Security Managed Services Partner Kit
To help our Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners accelerate their businesses with Microsoft 365 Business Premium, we launched the new SMB Security Managed Services Partner Kit providing you with step-by-step guidance for building and expanding managed services with Business Premium. Download it here
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Copilot now available in preview
Copilot provides real-time AI assistance that helps agents automate time consuming tasks to handle cases efficiently and resolve issues faster so that they can deliver value to customers. Enable the Copilot features for agents to use Copilot to: Respond to questions. Compose an email. Draft a chat response. Summarize a case. Read more: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customer-service/configure-copilot-features Although the copilot features are available in the US only it is easy to test out on a Europe based tenant: Create a new environment from https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/environments and set Region to United States – Type: Trial (subscription-based) On next screen choose Enable Dynamics 365 apps and install Customer Service Trial When environment available go to the Customer Service admin center app and enable copilot in Agent Experience > Productivity > Copilot help pane and SummariesMicrosoft Inspire 2022 Hero Announcements
Inspire is Microsoft’s annual event for you, our partners, to come together from across the world to discover the latest in Microsoft Cloud innovation and partner programs, hear customer success stories, develop and deepen business relationships, and find opportunities for growth. This year’s themes reflect the opportunities—and imperatives—of digital transformation, innovation, partnership, and security. Below you’ll learn about key announcements, as well as more ways to connect with us and other partners. Drive growth and profitability with a partner-focused business platform This year’s focus at Microsoft Inspire is to support every partner in knowing their opportunities for differentiation and profitability with the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program. Learn more below and in Nicole Dezen’s blog post . Supporting our partners at scale: As more customers shift to the cloud, the demand for cloud solutions and services is at an all-time high. The opportunity is great and to support every Microsoft partner in growing their business with Microsoft, Inspire will showcase the next evolution of the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program and the new solution area designations to help partners differentiate. Additionally, we’re proud to announce new investments to support our ISVs with the ISV Success Program —the path to support ISVs within the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program. The ISV Success Program will support ISVs across the entire journey as they build on the Microsoft Cloud, publish to the commercial marketplace, and grow their business with Microsoft, the program is in private preview today and will be made broadly available soon. Empowering partners to work together: With a massive ecosystem of over 400,000 partners—there is a tremendous opportunity for our partners to work together and drive growth . Through the commercial marketplace, we now have margin sharing generally available to support partners to go to market together. With margin sharing, partners can create private offers for a CSP and motivate the CSP to resell or package their solution by offering a margin to the CSP. Marketplace: an accelerator for growth: Marketplace is the center of gravity to connect partners to Microsoft customers at scale. Inspire marks the year anniversary of Microsoft being market leading in dropping agency fees to 3%, and to continue our support we are announcing a strategic partnership with Tackle to help partners accelerate their cloud go-to-market strategy and grow their business through the commercial marketplace. This is in addition to the ISV Success Program that is dedicated to supporting ISVs to build, publish, and grow through the commercial marketplace. Power innovation through modernization and migration across the digital estate At Microsoft Inspire, we are announcing new Microsoft Azure investments and product updates to help partners increase return on investments, grow leads, and shorten sales cycles. Partners are uniquely positioned to create opportunities with the most trusted cloud through innovative cloud-native experiences, modernization of application and data estates, and migrating infrastructure and mission-critical workloads. Learn more below and in Kathleen Mitford’s blog post . We’re making substantive investments and updates to the Azure Migration and Modernization Program to help drive scale and velocity of migrations with richer incentives, including for must-win Windows Server and SQL Server migrations, a new partner nomination experience with more agile and simplified approvals and payouts and updated best practice guidance through our Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure and the Azure Well Architected Framework. To help unlock opportunities for software providers we are excited to announce new benefits with the ISV Success Program to help ISVs innovate rapidly, build well architected applications, publish them to our commercial marketplace, and grow their sales. Currently in preview, and broadly available in Fall 2022, the program is intended to be the pathway to ISV success in the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program. Software providers can take advantage of this new program to build across the Microsoft Cloud and get access to cloud sandboxes, developer tooling, technical and business resources, and a dedicated community. Additional Azure capabilities and product updates include: New Azure Confidential Computing capabilities, now generally available, allow partners to transition to Azure workloads that handle sensitive data with additional levels of protection. Azure Center for SAP solutions , now in preview, is an end-to-end solution to deploy and manage SAP workloads on Azure, enabling customers and partners to create and run an SAP system as a unified workload, and providing a more seamless foundation for innovation on the Microsoft Cloud. Azure Stack HCI in public preview delivers more customer value and partner opportunity with new features by delivering increased value on investment, shortened time to value and improved support experience for Azure Stack HCI. A new Azure Arc Boost Program , in partnership with Intel, will drive the deployment of Azure Arc and Azure Stack HCI in customer hybrid environments through our Systems Integrator partner ecosystem. Announcing the Azure Space Partner Community – an ecosystem of space partners with exclusive access to technical support and scaling solutions. Learn more here . The digital imperative in hybrid work In this new world of work, the digital imperative for every organization is to deliver integrated technology solutions powered by data and AI to help employees work better and smarter, doing more with less. This represents a tremendous opportunity for partners to grow their business by capitalizing on three new patterns of work customers will rely on in this changing landscape. Learn more below and in Emily He and Colette Stallbaumer’s blog post . Enabling hybrid work with Teams: Over the past year, we’ve introduced more than 450 new capabilities in Teams to enable people to work synchronously and asynchronously, in-person and remote. This month we are announcing exciting new features to enhance the hybrid work experience including: Excel Live Video Clip Teams Connect Shared Channels Collaborative Annotations Windows 11 | Windows 365: Hybrid work runs on Windows. Windows 11 is the operating system designed for hybrid work – productive, secure and easy to manage – and Windows 365 allows people to work from anywhere. Launched last year at Inspire, we are continually improving the Windows experience with these recently announced features: Citrix HDX Plus for Windows 365 Windows 365 Government Point-in-Time Restore for Windows 365 Business Microsoft Dev Box Bringing collaborative experiences into the flow of work: We’re helping organizations drive the next level of productivity with collaborative applications that bring business processes directly into the flow of work. Today, we are introducing a new customer service solution that demonstrates how we’re bringing this vision to life across every line of business. The Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform is an open, extensible, and collaborative contact center solution that addresses the needs of a modern contact center. It equips service teams with the modern digital tools to engage customers through a variety of voice, video, and other digital engagement channels—powered by Dynamics 365, Teams, Microsoft Power Platform, Azure, and the newest member of the Microsoft family, Nuance. Creating the digital employee experience for every role and function: When work is increasingly happening anywhere, anytime, the employee experience needs to be digital first. Last year we introduced Microsoft Viva, which brings together communication, communities, knowledge, learning, goals, and insights right in the flow of Teams. Microsoft Viva: Viva Goals, which will be generally available on August 1st, is a goal setting and management solution that aligns teams to your organization’s strategic priorities to drive results. This month, we’re excited to announce a new feature in Microsoft Viva: Viva Engage. Personal expression is such an important part of life outside of work; Viva Engage brings it into the workplace with social capabilities that build community and spark engagement, right in the flow of work. Viva Sales also launched last month and introduced the first of a new dimension of Viva tailored to meet role-specific needs. Help customers streamline their security across clouds and platforms The Microsoft Security partner opportunity grew 21% year-over-year, particularly in Microsoft 365 security, cloud security, compliance, and identity. Microsoft Security partners are expanding their existing offerings and creating new offerings in all these areas, packaging their unique experience, expertise, and IP for effective and efficient service delivery. Learn more below and in Vasu Jakkal’s blog post . New Forrester Consulting study: We commissioned a study with Forrester Consulting to better understand the high-level trends driving our partners’ security, compliance, and identity opportunities. New partner investment: This week, Microsoft is announcing an entirely new partner investment which will help partners drive customer success and product usage. Starting October 1st, partners who help customers deploy their untapped security capabilities within Microsoft 365 E5 and Azure will be eligible for up to $25,000 per account. Microsoft Defender for IoT enhancements (general availability announced July 11): With new native integration with Microsoft 365 Defender and complete coverage across IoT, Enterprise IoT, and OT devices, Defender for IoT can now secure all endpoint types, correlate incidents across the entire kill chain, and provide faster detection and response for attacks that previously may have been left undiscovered. Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty ( pre-announcement ) is a solution to create a customized environment in Azure designed to meet compliance needs, processes that provide assurances of operational transparency, and investments in technical architectures that leverage Microsoft Cloud services for security, encryption, confidential computing, and hybrid cloud deployment. Microsoft Inspire 2022: Empowering partners to drive transformation in every industry The Microsoft partner ecosystem plays a central role in our customers’ success and scalability. To enable our partners to benefit from the tremendous growth that we are seeing across industries, we have developed four primary value propositions. Learn more below and in Toby Bowers’ blog post . Build . Our Partners can build on the Microsoft Cloud for Industry (Manufacturing, Retail, Financial Services, Healthcare) using their capabilities to enrich solutions already in the market—either for a specific customer or at scale. The Microsoft Cloud helps industries transform with speed and agility, with solutions that address customer business needs. Enrich . Partners make more of the Microsoft Cloud for Industry by building or updating software as a service (SaaS) or platform as a service (PaaS) solutions that take advantage of unmet customer needs, extend core cloud capabilities, and deliver complete business processes. Partners can also access Go-to-Market (GTM) benefits, such as ways we showcase their expertise for customers. Unlock . Partners can unlock new revenue and high-value service opportunities, including adapting the Microsoft Cloud for Industry to each customer’s environment and business processes. Partners also can earn benefits from attracting new customers. And along with Microsoft, they can scale their Go-to-Market efforts by aligning their sales and marketing motions, left to right. Scale . Partners can work with other Microsoft Cloud for Industry buyers to develop new products for industry. They also can work with Microsoft to provide the best solutions for customers, and co-sell with Microsoft to understand customer needs and leverage the Microsoft Sales team to advance customer opportunities. ACTIONS Become a partner . Discover a community designed to help you grow: https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/membership Watch the Inspire keynotes and sessions on July 19-20 or watch on-demand post-event (keynotes will also be livestreamed on Twitter and LinkedIn ) Join the partner community . Connect with partners, find out about upcoming events, and crowdsource solutions. Join the community: https://www.microsoftpartnercommunity.com/ Build your technical skills . Access role-specific learning paths and build your skills on Microsoft products and solutions. Discover your path: https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/training/training-center Achieve more with Marketplace . Increase leads and grow revenue by publishing and selling your solutions in the commercial marketplace online catalog. Find out how: https://partner.microsoft.com/en-US/solutions/the-commercial-marketplace Co-sell with Microsoft . Grow your sales and accelerate your business growth with a wide range of co-selling options from the Microsoft Partner Center. Learn how: https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/membership/co-sell-with-microsoft Introducing the ISV Success Program, now in private preview . Join the new ISV Success Program private preview and get access to free benefits designed to help you build and publish your apps faster, accelerate innovation, and reach more customers. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/isv We respect your privacy. To learn more, please read our Privacy Statement . Microsoft Corporation. One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052 USA
