Partner news articles

Partner Blog | Copilot monetization for SMBs: Convert renewal momentum into wins

JillArmourMicrosoft — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:48:21 GMT

Partners serving small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) continue to tell us that customers are excited about AI, but they want clear guidance on what to buy, how to buy it, and how to justify the investment. For partners, this creates a critical opportunity to simplify the path to decision and translate that momentum into measurable wins.

This is the third installment in our Copilot series focused on SMB monetization. Earlier posts covered how Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat introduces AI in an approachable way and how Microsoft 365 Copilot Business embeds AI into everyday work, and how agents extend AI into core processes. This month, we are focusing on the moment that matters most: converting interest into action.

Stage 3: Empower & Achieve is the inflection point

Stage 3 of the Microsoft Customer Engagement Methodology (MCEM), Empower & Achieve, is built for customers approaching a decision point. This is where partners can accelerate deals and create a more predictable path to conversion.

As customers evaluate their options, partners can help move them forward by:

Bundling Microsoft 365 Copilot Business with Microsoft 365 at renewal or upgrade moments
Reducing friction with promotion kits, in-market offers, and CSP incentives
Reinforcing value with ROI tools, business case builders, and customer success stories

These actions help simplify decision-making while addressing the two things SMB buyers care most about: clarity and confidence. This is also where Customer Zero partners stand out. By sharing first-hand experience with Copilot, partners can bring practical insights into conversations and build the trust customers need to move forward.

With the recent announcements on transitioning Microsoft 365 Business with Copilot promotion bundles into two durable SKUs, partners are well positioned to help organizations scale from intent to action, while giving organizations the controls to scale AI responsibly.

Stage 3 is also where you can align go-to-market efforts to a repeatable framework. When you consistently apply the Empower & Achieve motion, you can improve conversion at renewal and upgrade moments, strengthen your value story, and create a clear on ramp to ongoing adoption and expansion.

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Partner Blog | Building AI-ready applications on open, enterprise-grade Azure platforms

JillArmourMicrosoft — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 17:15:00 GMT

Microsoft Build 2026 reinforced a practical reality for organizations moving from AI experimentation to production: AI is only as strong as the foundation it runs on. Customers need modern databases, governed data, secure infrastructure, and developer experiences that can carry performing AI-enabled applications at scale into production with confidence.

The public preview announcements of Azure HorizonDB and Azure Linux, along with the general availability of Azure Container Linux, show how Microsoft is investing in open platforms, developer ecosystems, and enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure for AI-ready applications. These announcements also point to a broader shift: open source has become a strategic foundation for enterprise modernization, innovation, and strategic growth.

These announcements give partners a straightforward way to connect customer AI goals to the open, secure, enterprise-ready platforms needed for production. They also create timely opportunities to engage customers on data modernization, AI-ready application development, secure infrastructure, and cloud-native operations.

What was announced at Build 2026

Azure HorizonDB: A new standard for AI-native, enterprise PostgreSQL

Azure HorizonDB enters public preview as a new PostgreSQL cloud database service engineered for performance, scale, and modern AI-powered application needs.

For business leaders thinking about data strategy, this is significant. Organizations are under pressure to modernize legacy databases and support intelligent applications without sacrificing resilience, governance, or developer productivity.

Azure HorizonDB is designed to address those priorities with a platform that can scale storage automatically for large enterprise workloads, scale compute across primary and replica nodes, and bring AI-native capabilities directly into the database layer.

What stands out is that Azure HorizonDB gives enterprises a way to simplify architecture while also accelerating innovation. Features such as advanced filtered vector search, in-database AI model management, Microsoft Entra ID integration, and GitHub Copilot integration through the PostgreSQL extension for Visual Studio Code position it as more than a database modernization story.

Developers can use Microsoft 365 Copilot with live database context to generate schema-aware SQL, explore database structures, analyze and rewrite queries, and build against HorizonDB-specific capabilities without leaving Visual Studio Code. It is designed to bring together open-source PostgreSQL, enterprise security, AI readiness, and a more integrated developer experience in a single managed service.

For business leaders, that can create a faster path from data estate modernization to measurable business outcomes. In Microsoft internal testing environments, Azure HorizonDB performed three times faster than self-managed PostgreSQL. For partners, the announcement creates an opportunity to engage customers in PostgreSQL modernization, intelligent application architecture, migration planning, performance optimization, and AI-enabled development.

Azure Linux: Open-source infrastructure at enterprise scale

The Azure Linux public preview announcement is meaningful for leaders focused on cloud efficiency, security, and platform consistency. Linux is already foundational to modern digital infrastructure, and two-thirds of customer cores in Azure run Linux. Now Azure Linux provides a first-party Linux distribution, purpose-built for Azure, and is available for Azure virtual machines (VMs), VM scale sets, and container images.

We also announced Azure Container Linux (ACL), a secure, immutable container host designed to help platform teams run Kubernetes workloads at scale on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). By bringing Azure Linux forward as a more visible first-party platform choice, Microsoft is giving organizations a cloud-native operating system designed for modern workloads, including virtual machines (VMs), containers, and AI infrastructure.

This matters because infrastructure choices increasingly shape agility, security posture, and operating cost. Azure Linux reflects the Microsoft focus on secure-by-default design, consistent servicing, and tighter alignment between the operating system and the Azure platform. For enterprises, that can translate into simpler operations and a more predictable foundation for cloud-native applications.

These announcements reinforce what the Microsoft partner ecosystem and customer usage have shown for years: open-source infrastructure is foundational to Microsoft cloud strategy, as more than 65% of customer cores in Azure run Linux.

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Introducing Windows Ready Print and Modernized Driver Selection

elliesekine — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 21:10:05 GMT

Windows Ready Print: A clearer path to modern printing on Windows

Printing on Windows is evolving.

As printing environments modernize, customers and partners are asking for solutions that are reliable, secure, and easy to manage across today’s devices. To reflect this shift and make the value of our platform clearer, we are evolving the Modern Print Platform under a new name: Windows Ready Print.

Windows Ready Print highlights what matters most: a streamlined, dependable printing experience built for modern Windows environments. It represents our commitment to simplifying printing, aligning modern standards, and delivering consistent, forward-looking experiences for users, IT admins, and partners.

Driving the transition to Windows Ready Print with driver selection controls

At the core of Windows Ready Print is a transition away from legacy, third party drive-based workflows toward modern, standards-based printing with IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) using the Windows inbox IPP printer driver.

Starting in July 2026, new printer installations will default to Windows Ready Print where supported, enabling a simpler and more reliable setup experience. This change reduces the need for traditional driver management and lays the foundation for a more scalable and predictable print experience.

However, we recognize that not all environments can move to Windows Ready Print immediately. To ensure a smooth and flexible transition, we are introducing the ability for users to configure Windows to install their printers using Windows Ready Print (if supported) or the OEM printer driver during installation.

You can find this setting under Settings > Bluetooth & Devices > Printers & Scanners > Default install printer using Windows Ready Print.

Driver selection configuration in Settings

This feature enables users and IT admins to control how Windows selects drivers when installing printers:

When “Default install printers using Windows Ready Print” is enabled, Windows Ready Print installation is preferred

When “Default install printers using Windows Ready Print” is disabled, default driver selection is used

The configuration applies to new printer installations only, without affecting existing devices.

To enable/disable this feature via group policy, go to:

Launch Group Policy Editor
Navigate to Local Computer Policy -> Administrative Templates -> Printers
Find and select 'Configure Windows Ready Print driver ranking' -> double click to open it
Select 'Enabled' (if you wish to enable Windows Ready Print driver selection) or 'Disabled' (if you wish to explicitly disable Windows Ready Print driver selection).
Select Apply
Select OK

How driver selection configuration works with Windows protected print mode

When you enable "Default install printers using Windows Ready Print”, new printer installations will default to Windows inbox IPP printer driver when supported.

When you enable Windows protected print mode, printers are exclusively installed with Windows Ready Print. Devices that do not support Windows Ready Print cannot be installed.

Note: When you’ve enabled Windows protected print mode, you cannot disable "Default install printers using Windows Ready Print".

Patner Case Study | Pax8

JillArmourMicrosoft — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:00:00 GMT

From their early days of selling Microsoft licenses to becoming a leading cloud commerce marketplace, Pax8 has always centered their business on the Microsoft partner experience. And their future-focused, partner first approach is redefining what it means to be a modern Cloud Solution Provider (CSP). For Pax8, the next evolution of that role is the Managed Intelligence Provider (MIP)—a partner that moves beyond managing systems to orchestrating intelligence and delivering measurable business outcomes with AI.

While Pax8 delivers critical value through the streamlined billing and provisioning of Microsoft licenses, they also know that real business transformation doesn’t happen just because you’ve purchased software—it happens because of everything that comes after the sale. That’s why they invested heavily in enablement, education, and professional services. And that’s why today, they’re successfully cultivating an ecosystem that drives meaningful, scalable growth for partners and customers alike.

Grounded in their experience as a member of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, Pax8’s approach has changed the trajectories of organizations like Sourcepass, a US-based managed services provider (MSP).

Together, Sourcepass and Pax8 are making enterprise-grade AI accessible to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs)—but they’re going beyond traditional deployments. They’re delivering functional, agentic solutions designed to help customers realize value and support recurring service opportunities.

Navigating AI adoption in the SMB reality

SMBs are under constant pressure to do more with less, and the business outcomes they need the most—efficiency, strong security, scalable growth—are the exact outcomes AI can deliver. But with limited budgets, it’s hard for SMBs to justify the spend without clear proof of value—no matter how interested they might be.

“SMBs hear about AI and want to be part of the wave,” said Elliott Eliason, Productivity Solution Consultant at Pax8, “but they don’t want to spend thousands without getting results back.”

And once they’ve made an investment in AI, they likely lack the internal resources to operationalize it. That includes preparing data governance, validating security controls, and teaching teams new workflows. For a partner like Sourcepass, who primarily serves SMBs, this means their customers need trusted, strategic advisors who can guide them in turning AI’s potential into tangible outcomes.

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ICYMI | Explore curated Microsoft Partner Digital Skilling Journeys

JillArmourMicrosoft — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 15:03:46 GMT

Skilling is foundational for success in an AI-first market. Keeping up with evolving technologies and capabilities better positions you with the skills you need to succeed in an ever-changing market, making it a base-level requirement for sustained growth.

As part of our effort to support partners with skilling, we offer Microsoft Partner Digital Skilling Journeys (PDJs), curated presales, sales, and tech skilling experiences designed to enhance your knowledge aligned with partner strategic wins. First-time users may need to register—use your work email credentials to sign up. Curated journeys include:

Continue reading this article on our new Partner Skilling discussion board

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Build AI skills at Microsoft AI Skills Fest

JillArmourMicrosoft — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 20:02:21 GMT

Register now for Microsoft AI Skills Fest, a no-cost digital skilling event taking place June 8–12. Designed so partners can stay ahead in the rapidly evolving AI landscape, attendees can build in-demand AI skills, gain practical insights, and discover ways to deliver innovative solutions, deepen customer relationships, and stay competitive in a fast-changing market. 
 
Get ready to lead Frontier Transformation 

If you’re a solution engineer or architect building AI agents across the Frontier stack—including Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Foundry, Copilot Studio, GitHub Copilot, Fabric, and Agent 365—you can validate your expertise with the Frontier Transformation Engineer badge.  

Continue reading this blog on our newSkilling discussion board

Partner Blog | Streamline your campaign execution with Partner Marketing Center Pro

JillArmourMicrosoft — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:00:00 GMT

Your customers are moving quickly, and their expectations for relevance, speed, and clear business value are rising. For partners, that means marketing execution needs to move faster too, from campaign discovery, to planning, and localization, lead generation, performance tracking, and optimization.

Since we introduced Partner Marketing Center Pro, the focus has stayed the same: reduce friction so you can find the right campaign, tailor it to your business, launch with confidence, and understand what to improve next.

Partner Marketing Center Pro brings the campaign lifecycle into one AI-powered marketing hub so you can save time, reduce manual effort, lower localization costs, and get to market faster without stitching together multiple tools.

If you are already running campaigns, PMC Pro is built to shorten the path from idea to execution and give marketing leaders better visibility into what is working. If you are building your marketing muscle, it gives you a clear starting point with proven campaign structures, Microsoft-aligned messaging, and the tools to customize, launch, measure, and improve over time.

Partner Marketing Center Pro simplifies campaign execution

Partner Marketing Center Pro Is the unified, AI-powered marketing hub designed to streamline end-to-end planning, activation, execution, and performance tracking. It enables partners to reduce manual production work, scale demand generation more consistently, and move from campaign idea to customer engagement faster.

In this video walkthrough, Maddie Cupchak from Pax8 shows how PMC Pro brings campaign discovery, AI-assisted customization, translation, publishing workflows, lead engagement visibility, and reporting into one unified experience.

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From insight to action: how Adobe and Microsoft are helping marketers move faster with AI

kakennedy — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:53:42 GMT

Today’s marketing leaders are under pressure to do more than ever—deliver meaningful personalization, accelerate execution, and prove measurable business impact. At the same time, teams are navigating increasing complexity: fragmented data, disconnected tools, and insights that arrive too late to act on.

AI can change this—but only when it’s embedded directly into how people already work.

That’s why Microsoft and Adobe are deepening our partnership: bringing customer experience intelligence, AI-powered workflows, and enterprise-grade AI directly into Microsoft 365 Copilot—so teams can move from insight to alignment to execution in one continuous workflow. The result is faster decisions, more coordinated execution, and clearer business outcomes—without breaking flow or context.

Bringing customer experience intelligence into the flow of work

Marketing teams don’t struggle because they lack data. They struggle because insights live in one place, collaboration in another, and execution somewhere else entirely. That disconnect slows teams down and creates unnecessary friction between analysis and action.

Together, Adobe and Microsoft are changing that dynamic by connecting Adobe’s customer experience capabilities with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Cowork—so insight, collaboration, and next-best action can happen where work already happens: in Copilot Chat and in everyday apps like Teams, Word, and PowerPoint. Marketers can ask questions, explore insights, align with teammates, and take action without jumping between tools—turning intelligence into impact at the moment it matters.

Adobe Marketing Agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot: now generally available

A major milestone in this journey is the general availability of the Adobe Marketing Agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot, now available via Microsoft Commercial Marketplace.

The Adobe Marketing Agent brings Adobe customer experience intelligence directly into Copilot, enabling marketing teams to:

Accelerate time from insight to decision
Move seamlessly from analysis to execution
Keep humans firmly in control, with AI supporting—not replacing—decision‑making

Importantly, the agent is enterprise-ready by design. IT administrators can deploy and manage the experience through the Microsoft 365 admin center, ensuring security, governance, and compliance at scale.

Expanding executive experiences with Copilot Cowork

Looking ahead, Adobe skills designed for customer experience orchestration will be accessible in Copilot Cowork—in a future release. This upcoming experience will enable customer experience leaders to engage with customer experience insights in a more direct, conversational way, bringing strategic visibility into the same Copilot environments where decisions are made and actions are coordinated.

Built on Azure to scale securely and responsibly

The technology foundation of this innovation is Azure. Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator, and Adobe AI Agents are built on Azure and leverage Azure AI models, providing the scalability, security, and reliability enterprises require. By running on Azure, these agentic experiences benefit from Microsoft’s global infrastructure, enterprise‑grade security, and responsible AI commitments—supporting customer trust as organizations scale AI across their business.

Designed for interoperability across agent ecosystems

Modern enterprises don’t operate in a single ecosystem—and their agents shouldn’t either.

Adobe agents are built to interoperate with agents created using Microsoft Azure AI Foundry or Copilot Studio, enabling customers to orchestrate richer, cross‑functional workflows across marketing, sales, service, and operations.

This architecture is designed to enable organizations to compose agentic solutions that reflect how work actually happens—across systems, teams, and business processes.

Moving from experimentation to execution

This partnership reflects a broader shift in how organizations adopt AI—moving from experimentation to embedded, enterprise‑ready execution.

By bringing the full power of Adobe Experience Platform together with Microsoft’s AI platform, cloud infrastructure, and Copilot experiences, we’re helping teams move faster with clarity, confidence, and control. This is how AI becomes not just powerful—but practical.

Learn more

Adobe + Microsoft partnership page
Adobe Marketing Agent for Microsoft Copilot page

Partner Blog | Microsoft Build 2026: Turning innovation into partner growth

JillArmourMicrosoft — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 20:20:43 GMT

Microsoft Build 2026 brought together developers at a pivotal moment. AI is reshaping how applications are built, scaled, secured, and operated, and developers are moving from creating simple assistants to long-running agentic systems that can execute real workflows.

For Microsoft partners, the opportunity is clear. Customers are asking for more than experimentation. They want to move from pilots to production and to govern agentic systems, connect AI to trusted business context, and scale securely across their organization.

Now more than ever, partners play a critical role in turning platform innovation into customer impact. You modernize the cloud and data foundation. You build and secure applications. You connect solutions to business outcomes. You make customer transformation real.

At Build, Microsoft anchored the developer opportunity around three connected themes: intelligence grounded in your organization’s context, a full stack that gives developers choice with enterprise control, and new frontiers where agentic systems expand what builders can create. For partners, these themes translate directly into growth opportunities across AI advisory, app modernization, data, security, infrastructure, Microsoft Marketplace, and managed services.

Build business-ready agents on the Microsoft agent platform

As customers move from pilots to production, context has replaced model capability as a primary barrier to adoption: how agents understand the business, access trusted knowledge, apply the right controls, and coordinate action across workflows. Microsoft Build 2026 introduced new capabilities that give developers and partners more ways to build agentic systems on a governed, enterprise-ready AI platform.

Microsoft IQ is the enterprise intelligence layer of the Microsoft stack, giving Copilot and agents a shared, continuously updated understanding of how an organization works. Microsoft IQ brings together signals already present across a customer’s Microsoft estate: how people work in Microsoft 365 through Work IQ, how the business is modeled in Microsoft Fabric through Fabric IQ, and how knowledge is distributed across data, applications, and the web through Foundry IQ. Web IQ adds real-time grounding from the web, giving agents access to both enterprise knowledge and world knowledge.

For partners, Microsoft IQ addresses a key barrier in agent development: lack of business context. By giving agents a shared understanding of people, data, processes, organizational knowledge, and real-time business signals, you can deliver more scalable and reusable agents grounded in real business operations. This creates services opportunities around agent strategy, process design, data readiness, semantic model readiness, governance, implementation, and ongoing optimization.

Work IQ brings workplace intelligence to agents by building a semantic understanding across email, calendar, meetings, chats, files, people, collaboration patterns, and line-of-business systems. The Work IQ APIs will be generally available on June 16, 2026, giving developers a production-ready way for agents to interact with Microsoft 365 data and apps. The APIs include four domains: Chat, Context, Tools, and Workspaces.

Work IQ also gives partners a practical way to build agents that are both useful and governable. Agent operations stay within the Microsoft 365 tenant trust boundary, and actions are auditable and discoverable. The APIs use consumption-based pricing denominated in Copilot credits, creating partner conversations around cost management, governance design, agent adoption planning, and workload prioritization.

Foundry IQ extends this context layer by grounding agents in enterprise knowledge from documents, emails, meetings, operational data, and the live web. Foundry IQ knowledge bases are generally available with service-level agreement (SLA) coverage, stable APIs, compliance certifications, and a Foundry IQ Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for MCP-compatible hosts.

For partners, Foundry IQ creates a repeatable way to build retrieval and grounding into agent solutions without rebuilding knowledge infrastructure for every customer scenario. You can package services around enterprise knowledge mapping, source integration, retrieval design, security configuration, and agent evaluation.

Microsoft Scout also showed how this intelligence layer can come together in a new class of proactive agents. Scout is Microsoft’s enterprise-grade, always-on autopilot personal agent, built on open-source OpenClaw, with identity, policy, and security controls built in. It works on a user’s behalf with persistent context and memory across Microsoft 365.

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Partner Case Study | United Technologies

JillArmourMicrosoft — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 19:45:12 GMT

Founded in 1994, United Technologies (Int’l) Ltd. is a leading IT service and accounting solutions provider based in Hong Kong. United Technologies joined the Microsoft Marketplace Rewards program to utilize the global advantage of co-marketing with Microsoft as a critical step toward expanding its business beyond its existing market in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. At the end of 2025, the company executed a listing optimization and press release support to promote SmartBusiness, an ABSS (formerly MYOB) accounting solution built on Microsoft Azure. During the following quarter, United Technologies realized a 20 percent month-over-month increase in page visits and an increase to 65 percent of conversion rates for calls to action from qualified leads.

Utilizing Microsoft Marketplace to navigate changing business conditions

United Technologies provides ABSS subject-matter experts with efficient, cost-effective, one-stop IT business management consultancy services and solutions, including its SmartBusiness for retail and wholesale business integration with ABSS accounting systems.

Before joining Marketplace Rewards, United Technologies relied on traditional marketing channels and word of mouth to deliver sales and certified technical support for ABSS accounting software to over 10,000 clients in Hong Kong across retail, wholesale, and professional services. The company’s mission is to be a long-term strategic partner for businesses by helping clients steadily move toward digital transformation and a sustainable future.

United Technologies realized it needed a more powerful platform to accelerate business growth, stay ahead of intensifying market competition, and adapt to changing client purchasing habits. Joining the Marketplace Rewards program built on United Technologies’ long-standing partnership with Microsoft and deep integration with Microsoft technology.

"The Microsoft Marketplace Rewards program has been the catalyst for our international expansion. By handling the complex deployment and payment workflows seamlessly, Microsoft allowed us to focus on what we do best—delivering smart business solutions to our clients," said Sunny Yaury, Business Director, United Technologies (Int'l) Ltd.

Expert advice expands marketing reach globally

United Technologies benefited from Marketplace Rewards via expert guidance and breadth of resources available to better market apps on Microsoft Marketplace. The activities available through Marketplace Rewards delivered significant, quantifiable results, helping the company close its first deal in new markets.

From the beginning, United Technologies received expert recommendations from Microsoft about how to optimize its marketplace offer page. Using press release support including a quote from a Microsoft executive, United Technologies enhanced the announcement of the availability of SmartBusiness in the Microsoft Marketplace.

In the first calendar quarter after executing Marketplace Rewards, United Technologies saw a 20 percent month-over-month increase in page visits that has remained constant, a sign of sustained Marketplace traction. The conversion rate from calls to action to qualified leads jumped to 65 percent.

Marketplace presence leads to new customers and international expansion

"Microsoft Marketplace has enabled us to reach new customers across territories with complete confidence. The worry-free deployment and trusted payment workflows endorsed by Microsoft removed the barriers we once faced when expanding beyond Hong Kong," Yaury said.

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Partner Blog | How partners are using AI as a strategic accelerator to drive business goals

JillArmourMicrosoft — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 18:37:34 GMT

Partners from across the Americas have been sharing their innovative AI concepts with us this year. We’re seeing several trends, but one has been particularly prominent: using AI to support business acceleration. From brainstorming to evaluating ideas, partners are using tools like Microsoft Copilot to turn concepts into action faster. In this blog, we’ll explore how Microsoft partners like BNY, Cisco, and GFT Technologies are integrating AI into their planning and strategy efforts.

Reclaiming time for innovation at BNY

Before AI, analyzing data for insights was a time-consuming and resource-intensive pursuit. Although there were tools available, it was still a highly manual process. AI supports partners in potentially cutting time to insight from days to minutes. Partners still need the right data and prompts, but the potential for faster and better responses is there. However, speed alone doesn’t create a competitive advantage.

Faster insights may lead to greater output, but that doesn’t ensure better outcomes. The shift happens when that reclaimed time is deliberately redirected toward higher-value work such as revisiting business priorities, identifying new growth opportunities, and aligning teams around what matters most. In practice, this means using AI not just to answer questions but to inform which questions should be asked next.

“AI has changed leadership in a way that we can move forward in our strategic initiatives,” says Deanna Lanier, Head of Data & Analytics Strategy and New Product Innovation at BNY. “Now, we can place more innovation into our processes, and we can certainly start thinking about the organization and how we change it from a digital perspective.”

Enabling insights is just the first step in BNY’s journey. The financial institution is reviewing both internal and external operations through an AI lens. Some opportunities to enhance existing practices have already been identified. With faster time to insight, BNY now has time to convert those opportunities into action.

Using AI as a brainstorming partner at Cisco

There are many ways to use AI, but research seems to be the most well-known. Many newer users see AI as an advanced search engine. Experienced users don’t simply ask it to generate content; however, they use it as a strategic accelerator.

Continue reading blog here

Get ready to lead Frontier Transformation: Earn your badge and attend the summit

JillArmourMicrosoft — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 18:23:14 GMT

If you’re a solution engineer or architect building AI agents across the Frontier stack—including Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft Copilot Studio, Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Fabric, and Agent 365—now’s the perfect time to validate your expertise with the Frontier Transformation Engineer badge.

Through certifications, project-ready execution, and advanced training, this applied skilling journey hones your capabilities in designing, building, and operating production-ready agentic AI solutions—so you can lead customers from AI experimentation to secure implementation. Learn more about how to engineer a Frontier partner practice in our latest blog post.

Want to fast-track your badge completion? Join us at the Frontier Transformation Engineer Summit on June 9 for a live, expert-led skilling experience where you’ll explore how to use Microsoft Agent Factory at scale, build your expertise, showcase organizational readiness, and lead Frontier Transformation for your customers.

Don’t miss out: Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards nominations are now open!

JillArmourMicrosoft — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 17:00:00 GMT

It's time: the Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards nomination window is now officially open until Tuesday, July 7, at 6:00 PM Pacific Time. Nominate your organization today for awards highlighting exceptional work across solution areas, industries, and regions.

The 2026 Partner of the Year Awards celebrate the many ways our partners are driving Frontier Transformation––turning AI ambition into high-impact business outcomes for customers.

Winning an award is a meaningful achievement that highlights the transformative influence partners like you have on customers around the world—and positions your organization for greater market recognition and new business opportunities. Winners receive benefits such as a customized logo and other go-to-market assets that signify award-winning status, as well as impactful press coverage.

To prepare your submissions, we recommend reviewing the following resources before completing your application:

Check out the awards website and the FAQ.

Read the awards overview and the blog.

Review the submission guidelines and the rules and regulations.

Get advice from the judges.

Winners and finalists will be announced on November 11—just in time to celebrate together at Microsoft Ignite 2026. We look forward to reviewing another amazing set of nominations, so get started today.

Don’t miss this opportunity to celebrate your organization’s accomplishments on a global stage!

Nominate your organization today

Secure a high-impact sponsorship for Microsoft Ignite

JillArmourMicrosoft — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Become a sponsor at Microsoft Ignite in San Francisco, November 17–20, and showcase your organization to a global audience.

Connect with tech leaders, Microsoft experts, partners, and customers. Becoming a sponsor offers you the opportunity to build your brand, generate leads, and announce new innovations through sessions, demos, and experiences. Engage with 25,000 in-person attendees and over 270,000 online. Review the sponsorship preview to learn more.

Partner Blog | Build Frontier Transformation capability with new engineer skilling and June events

JillArmourMicrosoft — Fri, 29 May 2026 18:00:53 GMT

Customers are moving quickly to Frontier Transformation, where AI and agents are embedded as a repeatable, governed operating capability. As Nicole Dezen outlines in her recent post, Accelerating Frontier Transformation with Microsoft partners, Frontier Transformation is the moment when AI becomes a repeatable, governed capability embedded into the flow of work, business processes, and customer engagement. Customers are moving from targeted pilots to operating AI at scale, grounded in identity, data protection, compliance, monitoring, and change management.

This shift changes what customers look for in a partner. Customers increasingly want teams that can translate ideas into deployable solutions, then scale adoption and measurement so that AI runs reliably in production. That is why skilling matters. Skilling is how you build technical readiness and delivery confidence across sales, presales, engineering, and delivery roles. It is how you turn emerging demand into repeatable execution. It is also how you validate capability as the bar rises for governed, secure AI at scale.

This post shares the latest Frontier skilling opportunities across Microsoft Partner Skilling, designed to take partners from learning to customer impact faster. For deeper context on the Frontier engineering approach, read our recent post, Engineering the Frontier partner practice.

Frontier skilling starts here

Partners have told us they want skilling tied to real delivery motion, not just content. These Frontier-focused updates are designed to deliver role-based learning that builds practical readiness, plus clear ways to validate skills and align your team around how Frontier Transformation is delivered at scale.

New Partner Skilling discussion board

A dedicated Partner Skilling discussion board is now available for partners to discover skilling resources, connect with subject matter experts, and get questions answered across solution areas.

Continue reading blog here

Azure Native Integrations: Public Preview of Napster Companion API on Azure

Shijo_Joy — Thu, 28 May 2026 21:42:50 GMT

What is Napster Companion API?

Napster Companion API is Napster's platform for building Omniagents: persistent, multi-channel AI agents with one identity, one memory, and one set of tools that show up across every channel an end user touches.

The same Omniagent meets the customer on the website, in the mobile app, on video, and on the phone line with the same face, the same voice, and the same memory of the last conversation.

The Omniagent as a digital worker

The clearest way to think about an Omniagent is as a digital worker:

It has a role (customer support specialist, sales advisor, internal IT assistant).
It carries the memory of past shifts and prior conversations.
It has the tools it needs to do the job which include APIs, knowledge bases, ticketing systems, CRMs.
It shows up across every surface the end user touches, like a human worker who answers the door, the phone, and the inbox.
When something is outside its scope, it hands off to a human colleague with the context already attached and picks the thread back up when the human is done.

Use cases for the Companion API

Teams are already exploring the Companion API across a wide range of scenarios:

Agentic commerce. Agents that guide end users through discovery, recommendations, purchase, and post-sales support all in one continuous conversation across channels.
Customer service. Agents that resolve issues end to end, escalate to humans with full context attached, and pick the thread back up across sessions.
Internal operations and digital coworkers. Agents that orchestrate workflows, retrieve knowledge, and automate repetitive tasks for the workforce.

Capabilities introduced by Napster Companion API

The Companion API public preview brings the following capabilities to Azure customers:

Persistent multi-channel agents that maintain identity, memory, and context across web, mobile, voice, video, and telephony.
Real-time multimodal interactions across voice, video, and text for natural back-and-forth conversation.
Tool and API orchestration that lets agents take real actions like opening tickets, updating records, retrieving documents, and triggering workflows.
Persona-driven agents with configurable behavior, conversational style, and avatar-based interaction.
Knowledge bases and deterministic question-and-answer pairs for grounded, accurate responses on topics where exactness matters.
Developer SDKs and a no-code Dashboard for building, testing, deploying, and iterating on agents.

Better together: Napster and Microsoft

This integration is the result of a long-term Azure-native partnership between Napster and Microsoft. It is not an external service layered onto Azure infrastructure but it is a co-engineered offering designed to help enterprises operationalize persistent AI agents at scale.

In practice, the Azure Native integration delivers:

Benefit	What it means for you
Seamless development experience	Provision and manage Companion API resources directly from the Azure portal, alongside your other Azure services. Build and operate Omniagents in the Napster Dashboard, reached through single sign-on.
Bring your own model or use Napster Hosted	Connect your Azure OpenAI realtime deployment on Microsoft Foundry so inference runs in your tenant. Or use the Napster Hosted tier where Napster manages the model for you.
Simplified billing	Manage Companion API spend through Azure Marketplace, on the same invoice as the rest of your Azure consumption which means no separate procurement, no separate billing relationship.
Single sign-on with Microsoft Entra	Switch between Azure resources and the Companion API Dashboard without re-entering credentials.
Enterprise-ready foundation	Built on Azure's compliance, security, and global infrastructure footprint.

How it works?

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Get started in minutes

Provisioning Napster Companion API on Azure takes just a few clicks:

Open the Azure portal and search for *Napster Companion API*.
Create a new resource and choose your subscription, resource group, region, and pricing tier.
Link your Napster organization (or create one as part of resource provisioning).
Launch the Companion API Dashboard from the resource overview page using single sign-on, and start building your first Omniagent in the Napster portal.

Full step-by-step guidance is available in the Napster Companion API documentation on Microsoft Learn

Resources

Product documentation: Napster Companion API on Microsoft Learn
Quickstart: Create a Napster Companion API resource
Azure Marketplace listing: Napster Companion API
Napster for partners: napster.com/partners
Azure Native Integrations overview: Azure partner solutions

What's next

This public preview is the first milestone on a broader roadmap. We are eager to hear from early adopters. Try the public preview, build your first Omniagent, and let us know what you think as your feedback will shape what ships next.

Get started today by searching for Napster Companion API in the Azure portal.

Partner Blog | Partner-led momentum, broader availability for SMB: Microsoft 365 Business with Copilot

JillArmourMicrosoft — Thu, 28 May 2026 19:30:00 GMT

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are entering a new phase of AI adoption. It is no longer defined by experimentation. It is about moving from individual use cases to everyday, scalable impact as organizations move toward Frontier Transformation. Recent findings from the 2026 Work Trend Index Annual Report reinforce what many partners are already seeing with customers. 58% of AI users say they are already producing work they couldn’t a year ago, and 66% report spending more time on higher-value work as AI takes on execution.

For partners serving SMB customers, this marks a clear inflection point. The opportunity is to move beyond access to AI and focus on empowering SMBs to scale and operationalize it by simplifying buying conversations, driving more predictable renewals, and building on existing services around AI-powered productivity and secure operations.

These trends are already starting to be reflected across our partner ecosystem. In December, we introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot Business to streamline AI adoption for SMBs and support a clearer partner-led motion. Partners who were early adopters validated strong and growing demand.

This momentum signals a broader shift in how work is evolving. AI delivers the most value when it is embedded in the everyday flow of work and surrounded with the right security, governance, and business context built in from day one. SMB customers want a straightforward buying experience, predictable renewals, and a consistent way to deploy across users and locations without adding complexity.

Building on that momentum, we are evolving our approach to unlock more partner-led opportunities with new SKUs built for the way SMB customers buy and renew. They give partners an always-on offer that can be standardized across accounts and carried confidently into renewal conversations.

What is launching on July 1

Starting July 1, 2026, we are transitioning the promotional bundles into two durable SKUs, available at the current promotional price point, giving partners a more consistent and scalable way to drive adoption and renewal opportunities with customers.

Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot: $23.50/user/month¹
(1–300 seats, annual subscription with annual billing)
Microsoft 365 Business Premium with Copilot: $32/user/month
(1–300 seats, annual subscription with annual billing)

We are also launching a new 25% promotional offer on Microsoft 365 Business Basic plus Microsoft 365 Copilot Business ($21/user/month, 1–300 seats, for annual subscription with annual billing), available through December 31, 2026. This provides a clear entry point for Business Basic customers who would like to get started with Copilot.

In addition, the current 15% promotional offer on Microsoft 365 Copilot Business ($18/user/month, 1–300 seats, for annual subscription with annual billing) has also been extended through December 31, 2026, providing partners with more opportunities to scale AI adoption and build pipeline.

We encourage partners to lead with Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot or Business Premium with Copilot as integrated offerings for productivity, AI, and security, designed to support partner-led SMB conversations. Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard, and Premium also remain available as standalone plans for customers who prefer to purchase Copilot separately. This gives you flexibility to meet customers where they are.

Continue reading here

Partner Blog | Leading the moment: How Azure partners are driving the Frontier shift

JillArmourMicrosoft — Wed, 27 May 2026 17:30:00 GMT

Something fundamental is shifting in how partners create value, and it is moving faster than many expected. That shift is creating new opportunities for those ready to lead. Across recent partner events and one-on-one conversations, we have heard a consistent message: customers are actively adopting AI and shifting toward becoming Frontier firms. They are moving AI from isolated experimentation to a core capability that drives execution, differentiation, and growth. Now customers are asking a more consequential question: how do we rewire our businesses to operate as a Frontier firm? That question can reshape how you deliver value.

In this blog, we share how Microsoft is investing in the platform and programs that enable the partner-led path to becoming Frontier, so you can turn AI ambition into durable transformation.

The Frontier shift partners are witnessing now

Frameworks set the direction, but markets move when partners lead. In conversations with partners around the world, one point is clear: AI has moved from exploration to execution. Customers are no longer asking whether to adopt AI. They are asking how fast they can put it to work safely, at scale, and with measurable outcomes.

Take TD SYNNEX, for example. TD SYNNEX is turning “AI-ready” into a repeatable channel motion by connecting devices, cloud, and security into its “Better Together” approach. Instead of letting customers buy pieces of the stack in silos, the motion guides partners to modernize endpoints, secure the foundation, and then adopt Microsoft AI with confidence, at the scale distributors can bring.

Across these conversations, a clear pattern is emerging: partners are thinking beyond any single workload or product to drive end-to-end business transformation built on Azure. This is the Frontier narrative coming to life in the market.

Continue reading here

Partner Case Study | Quorum Cyber

JillArmourMicrosoft — Tue, 26 May 2026 17:39:00 GMT

Robust data protection is a challenge for most industries. When the data is both extremely sensitive and a prime target for cyberattacks—such as electoral and voter data—that challenge is compounded. Organizations handling this kind of data need strong security that is also steady, visible, and designed to respond at any hour.

That’s the kind of protection Quorum Cyber has built its business around. A Microsoft-focused managed security service provider (MSSP) and Microsoft Solutions Partner for Security, Quorum Cyber holds all four Microsoft Security specializations, and their Microsoft partnership credentials include membership in the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association. Leveraging this partnership, including benefits from the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, the company is well-positioned to make sure customers can optimize their Microsoft security solutions.

“We're there as an MSSP to help customers drive every cent of value that they've made with their Microsoft investment, and to bring as much of that functionality and protection to life within those environments whilst wrapping around our expertise,” said Ricky Simpson, Head of Solutions Architecture at Quorum Cyber. Offerings include threat intelligence, security operations center expertise, and incident response capabilities.

Quorum Cyber can also tailor these solutions depending on an organization’s size and threat profile. That makes them a strong partner for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) like Data Trust, a company that specializes in collecting, analyzing, and maintaining high-quality US voter data.

When data protection has no margin for error

Founded in 2011, Data Trust operates in a uniquely sensitive environment. The company manages voter data and related information for organizations that rely on its datasets and modeling to inform targeting strategies. With more than 300 million individuals represented across its datasets and more than 2,500 unique data points per person, protecting confidentiality and integrity is central to its business operations.

Continue reading here

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Build the skills to strengthen customer conversations with Microskilling

JillArmourMicrosoft — Tue, 26 May 2026 17:05:11 GMT

Build the skills needed to stay current with product changes, strengthen customer conversations, and take action faster through curated videos and podcasts. Microskilling is purpose-built to accelerate understanding of the most impactful Microsoft skilling content related to leadership narratives, product pitches and updates, industry insights, and competitive differentiators.

Why use the Microskilling modality

Through curated topics, rapid updates, and intentional design, Microskilling is built to speed the time-to-value of Microsoft skilling. Partners can accelerate the learning that drives customer conversations and more deals.

Microskilling offers:

Low time commitment: Available through two to nine-minute videos and podcasts, there's no need to take time from your workday.

On-demand learning: Microskilling content is always available, meaning it works with your schedule.

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Access the Microskilling platform today through Partner Center or the Microsoft Partner Skilling Hub.

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Azure Native Integrations: Public Preview of Napster Companion API on Azure

What is Napster Companion API?

The Omniagent as a digital worker

Use cases for the Companion API

Capabilities introduced by Napster Companion API

Better together: Napster and Microsoft

How it works?

Get started in minutes

Resources

What's next

Partner Blog | Partner-led momentum, broader availability for SMB: Microsoft 365 Business with Copilot

Partner Blog | Leading the moment: How Azure partners are driving the Frontier shift

Partner Case Study | Quorum Cyber

When data protection has no margin for error

Build the skills to strengthen customer conversations with Microskilling

Build AI skills at Microsoft AI Skills Fest