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ICYMI | New eligible workloads for the Solutions Partner designation for Business Applications

JillArmourMicrosoft — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 16:22:16 GMT

Check out the new blog on partner news, be sure to click "follow" in the top right corner so you don't miss out on future announcements!

New eligible workloads for the Solutions Partner designation for Business Applications | Microsoft Community Hub

Unlocking hard data estates: How Cloudera on Microsoft Marketplace brings AI to regulated industries

AlexW1490 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:00:00 GMT

In this guest blog post, Alex Wagman, Global Cloud Alliance Manager at Cloudera, considers the data challenges of regulated industries and how Cloudera enables governed hybrid data and AI.

There’s a frustrating paradox facing chief information officers and data leaders in regulated industries today: The data with the most business value — customer records, transactions, operational intelligence — is often the data that’s least accessible for AI initiatives.

The data isn’t old or poorly managed. It’s difficult to access because it’s important. Compliance mandates, data sovereignty requirements, and regulatory constraints mean that your highest-value data estates can’t simply migrate to the cloud. Meanwhile, your cloud-native AI and analytics tools can’t easily reach back into these on-premises environments to access that data.

The result? AI initiatives stall. Modernization programs slow. Teams wait months for data access while competitors move faster. And the promise of AI-driven transformation remains frustratingly out of reach despite having all of the right cloud services in place because those services can’t work with all of your data.

The regulated enterprise reality

If you lead data and AI strategy for financial institutions, healthcare providers, or government agencies, this challenge is deeply familiar. Your environment looks nothing like the clean, cloud-first architectures described in most AI vendor presentations.

Instead, you’re managing:

Large-scale data estates that can’t move to the cloud because of regulatory requirements, data gravity, or the sheer cost and risk of migration.
Fragmented governance in which security, access control, and compliance policies are inconsistent across on-premises and cloud environments.
Compliance mandates that require you to demonstrate complete data lineage, maintain data sovereignty, and enforce fine-grained access controls.
Legacy modernization pressure to move away from expensive, inflexible systems while maintaining business continuity.

You may also have invested in the powerful AI and analytics services of Microsoft Azure: Azure Machine Learning, Azure OpenAI Service, Power BI, Fabric. These tools work brilliantly for data that lives in Azure. But they don’t solve a fundamental challenge: Some of your most valuable data doesn’t live there, and it can’t.

Many organizations initially believe their Azure-native tools will be sufficient. But hybrid isn’t just “cloud plus on-premises.” True hybrid means delivering the same modern experience, with the same governance, across every environment where data lives. Hybrid complexity and inconsistent governance — not lack of cloud services — commonly block AI operationalization in regulated enterprises.

The Cloudera + Microsoft solution

Cloudera on Microsoft Marketplace addresses numerous challenges, combining its hybrid data and AI platform with the trusted cloud infrastructure of Microsoft Azure to make high-value data, wherever it is (on-premises, on public cloud, on private cloud), available for enterprise AI wherever companies want to run it. This is Cloudera’s unique “data anywhere, cloud anywhere, AI anywhere” approach. Customers gain a unified, governed data foundation that enables modern AI and analytics access to all data, wherever it lives.

A consistent platform everywhere: Cloudera’s cloud-anywhere platform runs consistently across datacenters, Azure, and multi-cloud environments. Teams use the same tools and workflows wherever data lives, so engineering, streaming analytics, machine learning, and lakehouse workloads work the same way on-premises and in Azure. This consistency eliminates the operational burden of managing different tools and different skill sets for different environments. Your teams work the same way, regardless of where data resides.

Unified governance across hybrid environments: Cloudera’s Shared Data Experience (SDX) provides a unified security and governance layer with consistent access control, security policies, metadata management, and compliance auditing across every private and public cloud environment, including Microsoft Azure. For regulated enterprises, you’re no longer managing fragmented security models or trying to reconcile different governance frameworks across on-premises and cloud. This unified governance extends to Cloudera Data Lineage, which provides end-to-end visibility across your entire hybrid data estate. When auditors ask where data comes from, how it’s been transformed, and who has accessed it, you have complete, automated answers rather than relying on manual documentation or institutional knowledge.

Secure, private AI on Azure: Cloudera also enables private AI — the ability to run AI and machine learning workloads on your most sensitive data without exposing it to public APIs or third-party models. This approach allows teams to take advantage of Azure’s infrastructure, including optimized compute resources, while maintaining full control of their data. Sensitive information remains within a governed environment, supporting data sovereignty requirements, regulatory compliance, and confident operational use of AI.

A practical path forward

For regulated enterprises, the path to enterprise AI doesn’t require wholesale cloud migration or accepting compromised governance. It requires a platform designed for the reality of regulated organizations: valuable data stored across hybrid environments, strict compliance requirements, and the need for modern AI capabilities everywhere.

Organizations managing petabyte-scale data in industries like financial services, healthcare, and government are already running mission-critical AI workloads on this architecture, accessing data estates that cloud-native tools alone couldn’t reach.

To learn more about how Cloudera is enabling governed hybrid data and AI for regulated industries, read The Evolution of AI report. To explore Cloudera’s solution on hybrid data modernization, go to the Microsoft Marketplace listing.

Title Plan Update - April 24, 2026

AshleeLyman — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 23:54:02 GMT

📁April 24, 2026 - Title Plan Now Available

Access the latest Instructor-Led Training (ILT) updates anytime at http://aka.ms/Courseware_Title_Plan to ensure you're always working from the most current version.

📌 Reminder: To help you stay informed more quickly and consistently, we’ve moved to a weekly publishing cadence for the title plan. This means each update may include fewer changes but ensures you’re always up to date.

Employment Verification Rejected — No Resolve Button Available

azizhamza02 — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 15:25:02 GMT

Company: DealTriage Inc.
Tenant: demodealtriagedoutlook.onmicrosoft.com
Partner Center account: email address removed for privacy reasons
Primary contact: email address removed for privacy reasons

My Employment Verification was rejected. Our domain (dealtriage.ai) is registered through Cloudflare Registrar, which enforces WHOIS privacy with no opt-out — this is why the automated domain check failed.

I have documentation ready to upload: an Assignment Letter confirming domain ownership, a Cloudflare domain registration invoice for dealtriage.ai, and our federal Certificate of Incorporation. However, the Resolve/Fix Now button is not visible on my Verification Summary page, and I am unable to create a support ticket through the portal.

Requesting the Employment Verification be reopened so I can submit these documents.

Legal Business Profile Verification

Allgaeuer1 — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 07:51:01 GMT

Dear Microsoft Support Team,

our company assembles large amounts of various industrial computer product lines, which we equip with our self-developed PCIe cards. We are currently in the process of upgrading those product lines from Windows 7 embedded standard to Windows 11. This means we fall under the more strict driver signature enforcement rules, introduced with Windows 10 version 1607.

We currently try to get our Windows Kernel Drivers signed via the Windows Hardware Developer Center Dashboard. We enrolled our company as a Hardware Developer in the Microsoft Partner Center and, since I am responsible for our Windows Kernel Drivers, I finished the Identity Verification.

What we are now waiting for is the Employment Verification and the Business Verification. Then we can hopefully get my account ready for the Attestation Signing process, which, in turn, optimistically might not take too long(?).

It says that for the Employment Verification, a Microsoft Action is pending and it originally stated that this might take up to one week. This week is now over, but nothing changed expect the estimated date by when it shall be finished. This date seems to be automatically increased every day. At the 20th it stated that it is estimated to be finished at the 25th. Today it is estimated to be finished at the 29th.

We bought the Windows 11 volume licenses. We bought the EV code signing certificate. The kernel driver is well-tested. I have everything up and running in the TESTSIGNING mode. The only thing we lack is this attestation signing.

We are in dire need of shipping these products asap. Is there any possibility to pay for a priority handling or any other way to speed up the whole process?

Thank you.

with best regards,

Michael

How to choose the right Marketplace offer type for your AI app or agent

j_weller_nv — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 19:40:59 GMT

Selecting the right Microsoft Marketplace offer type is one of the most important—and often most complex—decisions when bringing AI apps and agents to market. In this latest Marketplace blog article, you’ll learn how different offer types align to AI delivery models and why this choice directly impacts architecture, security boundaries, customer experience, and monetization strategy.

The article breaks down key considerations across SaaS, Azure Managed Applications, containers, and virtual machines, helping software development companies understand how to balance control, scalability, and operational ownership. It also highlights how offer type decisions influence where AI workloads run, how data is managed, and how customers deploy and interact with your solution.

If you’re building or publishing AI solutions in Microsoft Marketplace, this guidance will help you make informed decisions early—before development, security, and go-to-market plans are locked in.

Read the full article: Marketplace Offer Types for AI Apps and agents: SaaS vs Managed App vs Containers

Improve your Microsoft Marketplace listing performance with AI-powered, personalized recommendations

j_weller_nv — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 19:25:57 GMT

Discover how to strengthen your Microsoft Marketplace listing and increase discoverability with new AI-powered optimization capabilities available in App Advisor. This article explores how software development companies can receive fast, personalized recommendations that help improve clarity, strengthen value propositions, and align listings with Microsoft Marketplace best practices.

In today’s competitive Marketplace environment, listing quality plays a critical role in whether customers discover, engage with, and ultimately choose your solution. The new listing optimization experience provides immediate, actionable feedback across key areas such as value proposition, solution description, and overall presentation—helping teams identify gaps and make improvements with confidence.

Learn how this capability works, what it evaluates, and how your organization can use it to continuously refine your listing and drive better outcomes. Read the full article to explore how you can move from guesswork to data-driven optimization in Microsoft Marketplace.

Microsoft Marketplace at Channel Partners Conference

ElizabethBeals — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:20:15 GMT

Microsoft Marketplace was a first-time sponsor of the 2026 Channel Partners Conference & Expo—the world’s largest channel event—held in Las Vegas, April 13-16. With 59% of cloud marketplace revenue expected to flow through channel, this event provided a clear opportunity to reinforce Marketplace as a core platform for channel‑led growth. The channel is central for customer Frontier transformation, and Marketplace helps power the commercial foundation, connecting partners, software companies, and customers through flexible, channel-led sales models that scale. Our team really enjoyed the conversations we had after our sessions, on the expo floor, and in private meetings!

Did you attend Channel Partners Conference this year? We'd love to hear your takeaways!

And if you missed the event, check out this article on the keynote delivered by Microsoft's Kevin LeBlanc, GM of Partner and Marketplace Marketing. Resources for software companies and channel partners are always available on our partner site.

Integrate Marketplace commerce signals to enforce entitlements in AI apps

Julio_Colon — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 15:37:31 GMT

How fulfillment and entitlement models differ by Microsoft Marketplace offer type

AI apps and agents increasingly operate with runtime autonomy, dynamic capability exposure, and on‑demand access to tools and resources. That flexibility creates a new challenge for software companies: enforcing commercial entitlements (what a customer is allowed to access or use at runtime) correctly after a customer purchase through Microsoft Marketplace. Marketplace is the system of record for commercial truth, but enforcement always lives in your application, agent, or deployed resources.

This post explains how Marketplace fulfillment and entitlement models differ by offer type—and what that means when you’re designing AI apps and agents that must respond correctly to subscription state, plan changes, and cancellations.

You can always get a curated step-by-step guidance through building, publishing and selling apps for Marketplace through App Advisor.

This post is part of a series on building and publishing well-architected AI apps and agents in Microsoft Marketplace. The series focuses on AI apps and agents that are architected, hosted, and operated on Azure, with guidance aligned to building and selling solutions through Microsoft Marketplace.

Why AI apps and agents must integrate with Marketplace commerce signals

Microsoft Marketplace is the commercial system of record for:

Tracking purchase and subscription state
Managing plan selection and plan changes
Signaling cancellation and suspension

AI apps and agents, by contrast, operate in environments where decisions are made continuously at runtime. They expose capabilities dynamically, invoke tools conditionally, and often operate without a human in the loop.

That mismatch makes static enforcement insufficient, including:

UI‑only checks
Configuration‑time gating
Prompt‑based constraints

Marketplace communicates commercial truth, but it does not enforce value. That responsibility always belongs to the publisher’s application, agent, or deployed resources. Correct integration starts with understanding what Marketplace provides—and what your software must implement.

What Marketplace provides—and what publishers must implement

Before diving into APIs or offer types, it’s important to separate responsibilities clearly.

Marketplace provides authoritative commercial signals, including:

Subscription existence and current state
Plan and entitlement context
Licensing or usage boundaries associated with the offer

Marketplace does not:

Enforce your business logic
Control runtime behavior
Automatically limit feature or resource access

Publishers are responsible for translating Marketplace signals into:

Application behavior
Agent capabilities
Resource access boundaries

That enforcement must be deterministic, auditable, and aligned with what the customer actually purchased. How those signals surface—through APIs, deployment constructs, licensing context, or metering—depends entirely on the fulfillment and entitlement model of the offer.

How fulfillment and entitlement models differ by offer type

Microsoft Marketplace supports multiple offer and fulfillment models, including:

SaaS subscriptions
Azure Managed Applications
Container offers
Virtual machine offers
Other specialized Marketplace offer types

Each model determines:

How a customer receives value
Where commercial signals appear
Which integration mechanisms apply
Where entitlement enforcement must occur

Some offers rely on Marketplace APIs. Others rely on deployment‑time enforcement, resource scoping, or usage constraints. There is no single integration pattern that applies to every offer. Understanding this distinction is essential before designing entitlement enforcement for AI apps and agents.

Marketplace integration responsibilities by offer type

This section is the technical anchor of the post. Marketplace APIs are not universal; they apply differently depending on the offer model.

SaaS offers

SaaS offers integrate directly with Microsoft Marketplace through the SaaS Fulfillment APIs.

These APIs are used to:

Activate subscriptions
Track plan changes
Enforce suspension and cancellation

In this model, Marketplace communicates subscription lifecycle events, but it does not enforce access. The publisher must:

Map Marketplace subscriptions to internal tenants
Maintain a durable subscription record
Enforce entitlements at runtime

For AI apps and agents, that enforcement typically happens in orchestration logic or tool‑invocation boundaries—not in the UI or prompts. SaaS Fulfillment APIs are the primary mechanism for receiving commercial truth, but the application remains responsible for acting on it.

Container offers

Container offers deliver value as container images and associated artifacts, such as Helm charts. In this model, the publisher is shipping a deployable artifact—not an application endpoint or API managed by Marketplace.

Marketplace provides:

Entitlement to deploy the container image
Optional usage‑based billing and metering
Ability to deploy to an existing AKS cluster or to a publisher configure one

Enforcement occurs at:

Deployment time, by controlling access to images
Runtime usage, through configuration and limits
Metered dimensions, when usage‑based billing applies

For AI workloads packaged as containers, entitlement enforcement is typically embedded in the runtime configuration, resource limits, or metering logic—not in Marketplace APIs.

Virtual machine offers

Virtual machine offers are fulfilled through VM image deployment.

In this model:

Fulfillment is based on VM deployment
Licensing and usage are enforced through the VM lifecycle
Subscription state is less event‑driven but still contractually binding

While there is no SaaS‑style fulfillment callback, publishers must still ensure that deployed workloads align with the purchased offer. For AI solutions delivered via VM images, enforcement is tied to licensing, configuration, and operational controls inside the VM.

Azure Managed Applications

For Azure Managed Applications, fulfillment is enforced through the Azure Resource Manager (ARM) deployment lifecycle.

In this model:

A Marketplace purchase establishes deployment rights
Resources are deployed into a managed resource group
Operational boundaries are defined by ARM and Azure role assignments

Publishers enforce value through:

Deployment behavior
Resource configuration
Lifecycle management and updates

For AI solutions delivered as managed applications, entitlement enforcement is tied to what is deployed and how it is operated—not to an external subscription API. Marketplace establishes the contract, and Azure enforces access through infrastructure boundaries.

Other offer types

Other Marketplace offer types follow similar patterns, with varying degrees of API involvement and deployment‑time enforcement. The key principle holds: Marketplace establishes commercial rights, but enforcement is always implemented by the publisher, using the mechanisms appropriate to the offer model.

Designing entitlement enforcement into AI apps and agents

Entitlements must be enforced outside the model. Large language models should never be responsible for deciding what a customer is allowed to do.

Effective enforcement belongs in:

The interaction layer
The orchestration layer
Tool invocation boundaries

Avoid:

UI‑only enforcement
Prompt‑based entitlement logic
Soft limits without auditability

AI agents should request capabilities from deterministic services that already understand subscription state and plan entitlements. This ensures enforcement is consistent, testable, and resilient.

Handling plan changes, upgrades, and feature tiers

Plan changes are common in Microsoft Marketplace. AI capability must align continuously with:

The active subscription tier
Purchased dimensions or limits

Common examples include:

Agent autonomy limits
Tool or connector access
Rate limits
Data scope

Feature gating must be deterministic and testable. When a plan changes, your application or agent should respond predictably—without manual intervention or redeployment.

Failure, retry, and reconciliation patterns

Marketplace events are not guaranteed to be:

Ordered
Delivered once
Immediately available

AI apps must handle:

Duplicate events
Missed callbacks
Temporary Marketplace or network failures

Reconciliation processes protect customers, publishers, and Marketplace trust. Periodic verification of subscription state ensures that runtime enforcement remains aligned with commercial reality.

How Marketplace API integration affects readiness and review

Marketplace reviewers look for:

Clear enforcement of subscription state
Clean suspension and revocation paths

Strong integration leads to:

Faster certification
Fewer conditional approvals
Lower support burden after launch

Correct enforcement is not just a technical requirement—it’s a Marketplace readiness signal.

What’s next in the journey

Once entitlement enforcement is solid, the next layer of operational maturity includes:

Usage‑based billing and metering architecture
Performance, caching, and cost optimization
Observability and operational health for AI apps and agents

Key resources

See curated, step-by-step guidance to help you build, publish, or sell your app or agent (no matter where you start) in App Advisor

Quick-Start Development Toolkit can connect you with code templates for AI solution patterns

Microsoft AI Envisioning Day Events

How to build and publish AI apps and agents for Microsoft Marketplace

Get over $126K USD in benefits and technical consultations to help you replicate and publish your app with ISV Success

Tech Talks presents: Building Secure, Intelligent Power Pages sites with Agents

Hassan_Zahid — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 01:02:16 GMT

Join us on Thursday, April 23rd at 8am PT as Nagesh Bhatt, Senior Product Manager, Power Pages and Bipul Deora, Principal Product Manager, Power Platform present 'Building Secure, Intelligent Power Pages sites with Agents'.

We hope to see you there!

Call to Action: 

Click on the link to save the calendar invite: https://aka.ms/TechTalksInvite 
View past recordings (sign in required): https://aka.ms/TechTalksRecording

Turning co-sell readiness into real Microsoft Marketplace revenue

Heather_Poulsen — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:07:09 GMT

Achieving co-sell readiness in Microsoft Marketplace is only the beginning. Many software development companies reach this milestone but struggle to translate it into meaningful pipeline and consistent seller engagement. Join Microsoft partner and special guest Clazar as they break down what separates companies that are simply “co-sell ready” from those that successfully build active, revenue-generating partnerships with Microsoft sellers. Drawing on real-world insights from hundreds of marketplace partners, we’ll explore the operational habits, processes, and strategies that drive faster deal velocity, larger deal sizes, and stronger collaboration with the Microsoft field.

You'll learn:

How to create seller-focused collateral that drives Microsoft field engagement
Best practices for working effectively with your Partner Development Manager (PDM)
How to improve referral response times to increase co-sell opportunities

You'll walk away with:

A practical checklist to improve Microsoft seller engagement immediately
Proven strategies to generate more co-sell opportunities
A clearer understanding of how to operationalize your marketplace motion for consistent growth

How do I participate?

Select Add to calendar to save the date, then click the Attend button to save your spot, receive event reminders, and participate in the Q&A.* If you can’t make the live event, don’t worry. You can post questions in advance and catch up on the answers and insights later in the week.

This session will be recorded and available on demand immediately after airing. It will feature AI-generated captions during the live broadcast. Human-generated captions and a recap of the Q&A will be available by the end of the week.

* Don’t see the Attend button? Sign in to your Marketplace Tech Community account or register for the Tech Community and join the conversation!

Microsoft Marketplace 101: Insights from high performing software development company sellers

Lee_Corbett — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 22:01:48 GMT

Microsoft Marketplace is probably the one topic that can give 'AI' a run for its money in terms of the number of mentions on LinkedIn, on cloud hyperscaler blogs, and in Partner Ecosystem presentations. But ask the average SaaS seller what a marketplace is, and you’ll probably get a different answer every time. That’s because marketplaces have become more than just a listing catalog, it’s now a pervasive commerce platform across the entire B2B Software purchase process. Jay McBain @ Omdia described Cloud Marketplaces as the "epicenter of partnerships, co-selling and co-innovation” and we see that play out at Microsoft.

The combination of Microsoft's co-sell model and Microsoft Marketplace has created the platform for modern procurement and modern partnerships. Today, Microsoft Marketplace:

Impacts all personas and incentives – from customers commercial incentives, to software company program sale incentives, channel partner benefits, and hyperscaler seller compensation models
Enhances B2B purchase processes for customers – Streamlining supplier onboarding, to internal FinOps, to governance and guardrails on purchasing
Brings agility to the sales process for software companies and channel partners – from pricing and quoting, budget allocation, billing & payments, right through to co-selling and go-to-market.

With this level of impact, it’s not surprising that Microsoft Marketplace represents a significant growth opportunity for software companies. Customers are increasingly transacting through Marketplace as they align Azure commitments with third-party software purchases and adopt a more “marketplace-first” procurement approach. Research shows 69% of partners report larger deals and 75% close deals faster (Omdia), reinforcing the role of Marketplace as a strategic channel for enterprise software procurement.

So, if you are a seller at a Microsoft SaaS software company and you want to take advantage of this opportunity, here are my five top learnings for high performance software sellers!

This article assumes you are running your SaaS software platform on Microsoft Azure and you are already transactable in Marketplace. If you aren't, there are plenty of great resources for software companies to help get you there, and I have summarized them here: New Software Company Partner Guide.

LEARNING 1 - Understand the customer benefits of Microsoft Marketplace and weave it into your customer proposal:

This is about understanding the bigger picture of Marketplace for Microsoft customers, as the benefits go way beyond an individual transaction. The average enterprise is managing over 600 applications (Source - Zylo) and >60% of these applications being purchased outside of IT. Marketplace is a great way for customers to scale and bring efficiency across their B2B Software estate, giving them:

Rapid access (find, try, buy) to software and AI innovation they need to run their business,
Governance and guardrails for each purchase – so you are never compromising control and compliance.
Streamlined procurement – onboarding suppliers in minutes using their Microsoft Agreement, invoicing and payment terms,
Improved cloud economics – aligning the cloud consumption with your software company spend can unlock additional P&L impacting benefits,

If you need to get up to speed on these aspects, check out: Microsoft Marketplace 101 - Top Customer Questions.

LEARNING 2 - Understand how Microsoft partners can help you scale and close customer opportunities:

Microsoft has always been a partner led organization. Today we have 500,000 partners globally ranging from a small start-up in a garage, to the largest Global Systems Integrator. These partners play different roles in our customers helping them transform and compete in the AI era through Microsoft Cloud & AI technologies.

The great news for you is that we have empowered Microsoft channel partners and sales partners to sell Marketplace solutions. So, think about how you can use channel partners to (i). expand your reach, (ii). drive new opportunities or (iii). accelerate deal closure. We have a range of different models to support your channel led motions in our customers, including:

Multi-party private offers (MPO) - Partner led sales agents for individual transactions.
Resale enabled offers (REO) - Nominated and enabled partner representative by geo.
Cloud solution provider (CSP) resellers - to scale into SMB/Corporate Accounts via a managed service provider

For each opportunity, understand who the incumbent Microsoft partner is, and how you can use these mechanisms to accelerate your deal. Or better still, if you are looking to explore a more proactive partnership, check out the 1000s of Partners that are building Marketplace practices to support customers and software companies. Examples include Bytes, Softcat, CDW, Trustmarque, Crayon, Computacenter etc.

LEARNING 3 - Accelerate your deal closure by including Microsoft programs and incentives into your customer proposal:

Here are the most commonly used accelerators used by software company sellers to close deals:

If you are marketplace transactable:

Marketplace Rewards - Azure Sponsorship Credits - A performance related benefit that provides up to $400k in Azure Sponsorship Credits. These credits can be used as a deal sweetener with your Marketplace transaction and passed on to the customer for consumption. Up to 40% of transactions involve these credits today.

If you are IP co-sell ready:

Azure Benefit Eligible - This enables customers to decrement their Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitments (MACC) with eligible Marketplace purchases. By aligning their cloud consumption with their software company spend, it can unlock additional P&L impacting benefits. More than 85% of MACC customers buy via Marketplace.
Microsoft IP co-sell incentive - This enables Microsoft sellers to get paid on the license value sold via Microsoft Marketplace. It also allows eligible Marketplace transactions to contribute to retiring Microsoft seller quota, helping accelerate deal alignment between partners and Microsoft field teams.

If you have a Certified Software Designation (CSD):

Marketplace Rewards - Azure Sponsorship Credits - If you come CSD Certified, Microsoft extends this benefit to $1M. These credits can be used as a deal sweetener with your Marketplace transaction and passed on to the customer for consumption.
Customer Migrate & Modernize Incentive - This partner incentive is used to drive migrations to Microsoft Azure. Cash incentives vary based project size, but Microsoft will pay up to $200k per opportunity for NEW customer migrations to Microsoft Azure.

High-performing software companies and sellers will combine these incentives into their proposals to help drive customer acquisition success.

LEARNING 4 - Know your Microsoft customer

Three things I urge every software company Seller to do as part of their Marketplace and co-sell conversations:

Know your customer 1 - Understand the customer's Marketplace Propensity Score to help prioritize your opportunities

Marketplace Propensity Scoring (combined with your co-Sell conversations) has proven a powerful tool for prioritizing pipeline and accelerating sales cycles.
Offered as a Marketplace Rewards benefit, propensity scoring provides you with a score that ranks your pipeline prospects by their likelihood (0 to 100) to transact through Marketplace. The score is based on a number of factors including their commercials, existing spend and transaction volumes, relationship metrics etc.
Access the benefit at: Microsoft Marketplace Rewards

Know your customer 2 - Enable more tailored offers for customers by updating your MEDDIC, MEDDPICC or BANT qualification questions with these Marketplace qualifiers:

Are they a Microsoft customer? This means they have agreed Microsoft terms and conditions to enable Marketplace transactions.
Are they a Managed Microsoft Customer? This opens up the possibility of selling with Microsoft.
What Microsoft segment/industry are they in? This opens up sales play alignment, industry go-to-market etc.
How do they buy Microsoft Azure today? This helps navigate potential commercials, incentives and programs, purchase routes and the role of channel partners.
Does the customer have a Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC)? This could unlock the MACC benefit of Azure Benefit Eligible which allows customers to decrement marketplace purchases.
What is the status of their Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC)? Are they ahead or behind of their consumption commitment? Is it coming up for renewal? This is all about getting access to planned Azure budgets at the right time.
Is there an incumbent Microsoft partner in the customer and what role do they play? It is forecasted that 60% of ALL marketplace sales will involve a channel partner, so get them involved early in the process.

Know Your Customer 3 - Use the Partner Center referral process to engage incentivized Microsoft sellers and gain customer intelligence:

Submitting your referrals via Partner Center will enable you to engage incentivized Microsoft sellers directly. For most Microsoft sellers, Microsoft Marketplace and co-sell deals are critical for how they will make their Azure quota. Help could include:

Navigate and increase your visibility with the customer's buyers
Gain insights on the customer's Azure commitments,
Understand the partner landscape in the customer
Potentially find ways to combine sales motions to drive bigger/better outcomes for all.

Build this discipline with every opportunity is a key characteristic of a high-performance software company seller.

LEARNING 5 - Celebrate and amplify Microsoft co-sell/Marketplace success

The best Microsoft Marketplace and co-sell partners treat Microsoft as a customer. They market to the Microsoft sales and go-to-market teams the success they are driving, which in turn is driving further engagement and activity.

Work with your aligned Microsoft Partner Development Manager to create a regular drumbeat of communication or use your Marketplace Rewards GTM benefits to amplify your success with the Microsoft sales teams.

Need more help?

Speak to your Partner Development Manager or aligned engagement manager
Check out App Advisor for a guided experience on the journey for software development companies.

Let me know your feedback or if you have any additional recommendations. Thanks

Lee Corbett - EMEA ISV Recruit & Grow Lead

Securing and governing AI agents before deployment

j_weller_nv — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:13:14 GMT

April 30 | 2:00-3:00 PM (GTM +10) Join this live webinar to learn how to secure and govern AI agents before they go live. Explore how to provision agents with Entra Agent ID, manage identities and credentials, enforce least-privilege access, and prevent risks like Shadow AI and agent sprawl. Join to gain practical guidance on governing AI agents across their full lifecycle—so you can deploy with confidence.

To view the session live, register here: Securing and Governing AI Agents Before They Go Live

You can view previous Security for Software Development Company series sessions on demand here: Security for Software Development Company Series: Securing the Agentic Era

Securing and governing AI agents before deployment

jolweller — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:01:49 GMT

As AI agents become more embedded in business workflows, ensuring they are secure, governed, and compliant before deployment is critical.

Join and learn how to provision, secure, and manage AI agents at scale using modern identity and governance practices. This session will explore how to establish strong guardrails across the entire AI agent lifecycle—helping prevent risks such as unauthorized access, Shadow AI, and agent sprawl.

You’ll gain practical insight into how organizations are using Entra Agent ID to provision AI agents, manage credentials and service principals for agentic workflows, and enforce least-privilege access policies. The session will also highlight approaches to detecting unmanaged AI usage and implementing governance strategies that ensure every AI agent is accounted for before going live.

During this session, you will:

• Understand how to provision AI agents securely using Entra Agent ID
• Learn best practices for managing identities, credentials, and service principals for agent workflows
• Explore how to enforce least-privilege access across AI-driven systems
• Discover strategies to detect Shadow AI and prevent uncontrolled agent sprawl
• Learn how to govern AI agents throughout their lifecycle before deployment

To view the session live, register here: Securing and Governing AI Agents Before They Go Live

You can view previous Security for SDC series sessions on demand here: Security for SDC Series: Securing the Agentic Era

ASfP policy for non-decrementing tickets

jonwbstr24 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 14:34:12 GMT

Hello Community!

We recently found our ASfP support access disabled. According to the ASfP PSAM team, it's because we have exceeded the case creation allotment.

It also appears that there is a discrepancy between the number of non-decremented tickets the PSAM team sees, vs the number of tickets the system says we have associated with the contract adding some additional challenges.

We requested a report of the tickets that are counting against the agreement from the PSAM team several months ago, shortly after the ASfP agreement renewed, and are still in the process of locating someone from the PSAM team that can help us with this information. Last year we also identified an issue with the case report provided by our PSAM where the "company name" was things like "AppRiver" which is another partner, not the name of one of our clients, and we ended up generating a report ourselves.

My question is this,
Is there a way for us to identify the non-technical (Ibiza cases) that are counting against our allotment via APIs or another channel that doesn't involve going through the ASfP PSAM team?

Thanks!
-jon

When cloud apps become a weak link: How FortiAppSec Cloud in Microsoft Marketplace bridges the gap

srijarallam — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 13:00:00 GMT

In this guest blog post, Srija Reddy Allam, Cloud Security/DevOps Architect, Fortinet, discusses the increase of attacks targeted at web applications and APIs and how FortiAppSec Cloud in Microsoft Marketplace provides a layer of adaptive security to address the challenge.

Picture this: A global e-commerce company is gearing up for its biggest holiday sale of the year. Their storefront and application programming interfaces (APIs) are hosted on Microsoft Azure, taking advantage of the platform’s ability to scale across regions and keep the lights on when traffic skyrockets. Azure does its part by providing a secure, resilient foundation, but, as with any cloud service, it’s the responsibility of the customer to protect their apps and data that sit on top.

When the sale kicks off, traffic pours in. Alongside real shoppers come automated bots trying stolen usernames and passwords on the login page. It’s not an Azure issue; it’s simply the reality of today’s internet, where attackers go after applications directly.

That’s where FortiAppSec Cloud integrated with Azure steps in. FortiAppSec Cloud filters out the noise by blocking credential-stuffing bots, securing APIs, and making sure legitimate customers get through without friction. The company doesn’t have to panic about spinning up extra servers or manually blocking traffic; the defenses scale automatically, right alongside Azure.

The result is shoppers stay online, carts don’t get abandoned, and the brand’s reputation is protected. With Azure as the foundation and FortiAppSec Cloud adding that extra layer of defense, the company can focus on what matters most: giving customers a smooth holiday shopping experience.

Why cloud applications are under siege

Over 70 percent of breaches today involve attacks against web applications or APIs. Azure makes it easier than ever to host, scale, and distribute applications globally, giving organizations the agility they need to innovate. With this expanded reach, however, comes greater visibility to attackers, making it essential to pair the scalability of Azure with robust, adaptive application security.

Attack methods keep evolving:

SQL injection (SQLi) and cross-site scripting (XSS): Exploiting insecure inputs to inject malicious SQL commands or scripts that steal data or hijack sessions
Credential stuffing: Automated bots hammering login pages with stolen credentials
API abuse: Exploiting unsecured API management endpoints
Advanced bots: Scraping, hoarding inventory, or flooding checkout pages
Zero-days: Exploiting flaws before patches are released or app updates are applied

Traditional web application firewalls (WAFs) and security appliances can’t keep up in a multi-region and agile-based cloud deployments. A single misconfiguration can create a blind spot big enough for attackers to slip through.

8 ways FortiAppSec Cloud stands out

Fortinet created FortiAppSec Cloud to eliminate complex attacks that target applications and APIs. Delivered as a cloud-native WAF as a service, it integrates seamlessly with Azure environments while protecting applications and APIs globally.

Here are eight ways it stands out for Azure customers:

Cloud-native WAF: No appliances to deploy, patch, or manage. FortiAppSec Cloud delivers WAF as a service, instantly protecting Azure-hosted web apps and APIs without added infrastructure complexity.
AI-powered threat detection: Leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), FortiAppSec Cloud identifies anomalous traffic patterns in real time, helping stop zero-day attacks before they cause downtime in cloud-hosted environments.
AI-powered security assistant: FortiAI-Assist, built into FortiAppSec Cloud, adds context to every alert by showing which service is affected, indicating how critical it is, and ranking it by real risk. The assistant reduces noise in daily operations by handling alert triage and investigation. It finds anomalies, summarizes logs, and explains findings in plain language. This helps administrators respond faster, make better decisions, and stay focused on the issues that matter most.
Advanced bot protection: Azure enables businesses to deliver high-performing, customer-facing applications at scale. To strengthen these experiences, FortiAppSec Cloud adds advanced bot mitigation that goes beyond IP blocking, using behavioral analysis and challenge-response techniques to separate human users from malicious automation like credential stuffing, scalper bots, and scrapers.
API protection: Organizations rely on Azure API Management to securely publish and manage APIs. FortiAppSec Cloud complements this by adding API discovery, schema validation, and OWASP API-based attack prevention, ensuring business-critical APIs remain secure and resilient against evolving threats.
Global server load balancing (GSLB): The global infrastructure of Azure provides unmatched reach and reliability. FortiAppSec Cloud complements this by offering GSLB capabilities that intelligently route legitimate traffic to the healthiest Azure region, optimizing performance and availability while reinforcing resilience against attacks.
Threat analytics: Enterprises often deploy workloads across multiple Azure regions for scale and redundancy. FortiAppSec Cloud provides centralized, single-pane-of-glass visibility into attempted attacks, blocked traffic, and compliance reporting, helping teams streamline security operations.
Easy Microsoft Marketplace deployment: FortiAppSec Cloud is natively available in Microsoft Marketplace and eligible to help companies burn down their committed cloud spending, making it easy for organizations to subscribe, deploy, and integrate. With seamless Azure billing and rapid deployment into existing environments, security and agility go hand in hand.

Get started with a free 30-day trial

Azure enables organizations to move faster, scale globally, and serve customers at digital speed. But cloud adoption also expands the attack surface, putting web applications and APIs at risk.

FortiAppSec Cloud, available through Microsoft Marketplace with a free 30-day trial, addresses this challenge head-on. With AI-powered detection, advanced bot defense, GSLB for Azure global resilience, and unified visibility, it allows organizations to secure Azure-hosted applications without slowing down innovation.

Cloud adoption shouldn’t mean compromising security. With FortiAppSec Cloud on Azure, enterprises can defend their apps against today’s most advanced threats while delivering fast, reliable digital experiences everywhere.

Where is my accreditation Certificate?

dannypwebb — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 06:09:44 GMT

I passed my Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect exam and received the congratulations email from Microsoft nearly 48 hours ago. My certificate is still not showing in my Learn profile page.

Can you please advise when this certificate will be ready for sharing?

I am not impressed I even have to chase Microsoft for this. Very disappointing!

Trouble receiving OTP emails from Microsoft Partner Center

jonwbstr24 — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 15:05:40 GMT

Hello!

When clicking the Verify Email button in the location below, the primary contact email is not receiving the OTP verification email. I'm on my 6th Partner Center support ticket attempting to determine out why I am not receiving these emails.

Partner center support is quick to help me verify the account manually, but I would really like to see the automated system working as intended to help future partners avoid running into this same issue.

Could someone help me track down the email address these messages are coming from?

Thanks!
-jon

For reference, the first few tickets I opened under the following workspace/topic, but the assigned engineers say "you picked the wrong topic try again."

Workspace: Account Settings
Topic: Account verification > E-mail ownership

I ask what set of options I should pick to get my ticket routed to the right team, but I haven't located someone that can answer that question either. I've started choosing a random workspace and topic in the hopes that I get lucky. I don't think this strategy is going to work very well, but the partner center support team haven't suggested a better approach and I'm out of ideas. Maybe if I open enough tickets, someone on the partner center support team will notice and help me out.

Design tenant linking to scale selling on Microsoft Marketplace

Julio_Colon — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:36:37 GMT

Designing tenant linking and Open Authorization (OAuth) directly shapes how customers onboard, grant trust, and operate your AI app or agent through Microsoft Marketplace. In this context, consent refers to the explicit authorization a customer tenant grants—via OAuth—for a publisher’s application or agent to access specific resources and perform defined actions within that tenant. This post explains how to design scalable, review‑ready identity patterns that support secure activation, clear authorization boundaries, and enterprise trust from day one.

Guidance for multi‑tenant AI apps

Identity decisions are rarely visible in architecture diagrams, but they are immediately visible to customers. In Microsoft Marketplace, tenant linking and OAuth consent are not background implementation details. They shape activation, onboarding, certification, and long‑term trust with enterprise buyers.

When identity decisions are made late, the impact is predictable. Onboarding breaks. Permissions feel misaligned. Reviews stall. Customers hesitate. When identity is designed intentionally from the start, Marketplace experiences feel coherent, secure, and enterprise‑ready.

This article focuses on how to design tenant linking and consent patterns that scale across customers, offer types, and Marketplace review—without rework later.

You can always get a curated step-by-step guidance through building, publishing and selling apps for Marketplace through App Advisor.

This post is part of a series on building and publishing well-architected AI apps and agents in Microsoft Marketplace. The series focuses on AI apps and agents that are architected, hosted, and operated on Azure, with guidance aligned to building and selling solutions through Microsoft Marketplace.

Why identity across tenants is a first‑class design decision

Designing identity is not just about authentication. It is about how trust is established between your solution and a customer tenant, and how that trust evolves over time.

When identity decisions are deferred, failure modes surface quickly:

Activation flows that cannot complete cleanly
Consent requests that do not match declared functionality
Over‑privileged apps that fail security review
Customers who cannot confidently revoke access

These are not edge cases. They are some of the most common reasons Marketplace onboarding slows or certifications are delayed.

A good identity and access management design ensures that trust, consent, provisioning, and operation follow a predictable and reviewable path—one that customers understand and administrators can approve.

Marketplace tenant linking requirements

A key mental model simplifies everything that follows, separate trust establishment from authorization.

Tenant linking and OAuth consent solve different problems.

Tenant linking establishes trust between tenants
OAuth consent grants permission within that trust

Tenant linking answers:

Which customer tenant does this solution trust?

OAuth consent answers:

What is this solution allowed to do once trusted?

AI solutions published in Microsoft Marketplace should enforce this separation intentionally. Trust must be established before meaningful permissions are granted, and permission scope must align to declared functionality. Making this explicit distinction early prevents architectural shortcuts that later block certification.

Throughout the rest of this post, tenant linking refers to trust establishment, not permission scope.

Microsoft Entra ID as the identity foundation

Microsoft Entra ID provides the primitives for identity-based access control, but the concepts only become useful when translated into publisher decisions.

Each core concept maps to a choice you make early:

Home tenant vs resource tenant
Determines where operational control lives and how cross‑tenant trust is anchored.

App registrations
Define the maximum permission boundary your solution can ever request.

Service principals
Determine how your app appears, is governed, and is managed inside customer tenants.

Managed identities
Reduce long‑term credential risk and operational overhead.

Understanding these decisions early prevents redesigning consent flows, re‑certifying offers, or re‑provisioning customers later. Marketplace policies reinforce this by allowing only limited consent during activation, with broader permissions granted incrementally after onboarding.

Importantly, activation consent is not operational consent. Activation establishes the commercial and identity relationship. Operational permissions come later, when customers understand what your solution will actually do.

OAuth consent patterns for multi‑tenant AI apps

OAuth consent is not an implementation detail in Marketplace. It directly determines whether your AI app can be certified, deployed smoothly, and governed by enterprise customers.

Common consent patterns map closely to AI behavior:

User consent
Supports read‑only or user‑initiated interactions with no autonomous actions.

Admin consent
Enables agents, background jobs, cross‑user access, and cross‑resource operations.

Pre‑authorized consent
Enables predictable, enterprise‑grade onboarding with known and approved scopes.

While some AI experiences begin with user‑driven interactions, most AI solutions in Marketplace ultimately require admin consent. They operate asynchronously, act across resources, or persist beyond a single user session. Aligning expectations early avoids friction during review and deployment.

Designing consent flows customers can trust

Consent dialogs are part of your product experience. They are not just Microsoft‑provided UI.

Marketplace reviewers evaluate whether requested permissions are proportional to declared functionality. Over‑scoped consent remains one of the most common causes of delayed or failed certification.

Strong consent design:

Requests only what is necessary for declared behavior
Explains why permissions are needed in plain language
Aligns timing with customer understanding

Poor explanations increase admin rejection rates, even when permissions are technically valid. Clear consent copy builds trust and accelerates approvals.

Tenant linking across offer types

Identity design must align with offer type; a helpful framing is ownership:

SaaS offers
The publisher owns identity orchestration and tenant linking. Microsoft Marketplace reviewers expect this alignment, and mismatches surface quickly during certification.

Containers and virtual machines
The customer owns runtime identity; the publisher integrates with it.

Managed applications
Responsibility is shared, but the publisher defines the trust boundary.

Each model carries different expectations for control, consent, and revocation. Designing tenant linking that matches the offer type reduces customer confusion.

When consent happens in Marketplace lifecycle

Many identity issues stem from unclear timing. A simple lifecycle helps anchor expectations:

Buy – The customer purchases the offer
Activate – Tenant trust is established
Consent – Limited activation consent is granted
Provision – Resources and configurations are created
Operate – Incremental operational consent may be requested
Revoke – Access and trust can be cleanly removed

Making this sequence explicit in your design—and in your documentation—dramatically reduces confusion for customers and reviewers alike.

How tenant linking shapes Marketplace readiness

Identity tends to leave a lasting impression as it is one of the first architectural design choices encountered by customers.

Strong tenant linking and consent design lead to:

Faster certification (applies to SaaS offer only)
Fewer conditional approvals
Lower onboarding drop‑off
Easier enterprise security reviews

These outcomes are not accidental. They reflect intentional design choices made early.

What’s next in the journey

Tenant identity sets the foundation, but it is only one part of Marketplace readiness. In upcoming guidance, we’ll connect identity decisions to commerce, SaaS Fulfillment APIs, and operational lifecycle management—so buy, activate, provision, operate, and revoke will work together as a single, coherent system.

Key Resources

See curated, step-by-step guidance to help you build, publish, or sell your app or agent (no matter where you start) in App Advisor

Quick-Start Development Toolkit can connect you with code templates for AI solution patterns

Microsoft AI Envisioning Day Events 

How to build and publish AI apps and agents for Microsoft Marketplace

Get over $126K USD in benefits and technical consultations to help you replicate and publish your app with ISV Success 

Customer review: TestMu AI HyperExecute is a game changer

Nikhil_Viswanathan — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 21:16:27 GMT

TestMu AI HyperExecute, a solution published to Microsoft Marketplace, is an end-to-end smart test orchestration tool built on Microsoft Azure Functions and Azure App Services and integrated with Microsoft Teams, Azure Pipelines, GitHub, and other Azure services. Featuring auto-grouping, auto-retry, and fail-fast mechanisms, HyperExecute provides an integrated testing environment with 360 degrees of visibility into test execution to simplify debugging.

Microsoft Marketplace interviewed Abhijeet Teware, Head of QA at Bajaj Finserv Limited in India, to learn what he had to say about HyperExecute.

What do you like best about HyperExecute?

What stands out most is the depth of real device coverage combined with the speed at which we can run tests. With 5,000+ real devices available on the platform, including devices widely used across our key regions like Mumbai, we were finally able to catch device-specific crashes and ANR issues before they reached our users. That alone was a game changer for us, given that 90 percent of our user base is on mobile. On top of that, HyperExecute cut our test execution time dramatically, and SmartUI gave us confidence that our UI wasn’t regressing visually between releases.

We also appreciated how well the platform integrates with our CI/CD pipeline on Azure, which kept our weekly release cadence running smoothly without adding overhead to the QA team. It’s not just a testing tool; it’s become a core part of how we ship reliably.

How has the product helped your organization?

TestMu AI has fundamentally changed how our QA team operates. The most immediate impact was a 5-hour reduction in test execution time per cycle, which directly translated into faster, more frequent deployments. We went from ad-hoc releases to reliable weekly code pushes. We scaled our automation coverage by 40X between 2022 and 2024, moving the bulk of our regression suite away from manual execution. That shift alone reduced human error and freed our engineers to focus on new feature quality rather than repetitive regression checks.

The Private Real Device Cloud also eliminated our dependency on maintaining physical device labs in-house, which was a significant operational cost saving. For a platform where app stability directly affects user access to critical services, the improvement in reliability has had a significant impact on our customer experience.

How are customer service and support?

The support has been one of the best parts of working with TestMu AI. Any time we hit a technical issue, whether it was an integration problem with our Azure-based pipeline or a flaky test environment, the response was fast and genuinely helpful, not just a link to documentation. What I particularly appreciated was how the team stayed engaged beyond just resolving tickets. They proactively flagged new capabilities relevant to our use case, helped us tune our HyperExecute configuration, and were available when we were scaling up our Private Real Device Cloud capacity by 5X. For a QA team running on tight release schedules, that kind of partnership matters a lot.

Any recommendations to other users considering the product?

My biggest piece of advice: don’t start small and scale later. Start at scale. We initially rolled out incrementally and had to retroactively migrate more of our suite onto TestMu AI. If you’re on Azure, take advantage of the fact that the platform integrates cleanly into your existing pipeline, setup is straightforward, and the parallel execution gains are immediate.

Enable HyperExecute early; the speed difference is significant, and it changes how your team thinks about test frequency. Use SmartUI from the start too, visual regressions are easy to miss in code review but very obvious to end users. And if you’re a mobile-first product like us, get onto the Private Real Device Cloud as quickly as possible. The breadth of device coverage is genuinely hard to replicate in-house. Finally, lean on their support team; they’re knowledgeable and proactive, not just reactive.

What is your overall rating for the product?

TestMu AI gets a 5 out of 5 from us. Across every dimension that matters to our team — device coverage, execution speed, automation scalability, CI/CD integration, and support quality — the platform has delivered. We came in with a manual-heavy QA process and a mobile app that was difficult to test consistently at scale. We now run automated regression at 40X the volume we did in 2022, ship weekly with confidence, and have meaningfully reduced the number of issues reaching production. For a mission-critical platform where quality failures have serious implications for our users, that reliability is not just a KPI — it matters. We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.

Cloud marketplaces are transforming the way businesses find, try, and deploy applications to help their digital transformation. Learn more about Microsoft Marketplace and find ways to discover the right application for your business needs.