Comparing the Customer Payment Experience: Microsoft AppSource vs. Azure Marketplace
Microsoft AppSource: Audience: Primarily business users, decision-makers, and managers seeking SaaS solutions for productivity and business operations. Payment Process: Portal: Payments are made directly through the AppSource portal, integrated with the user’s Microsoft 365 or Dynamics 365 account. Payment Plans: Limited to simple monthly or annual subscription plans. Users can easily select a plan, enter billing information, and manage payments through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Billing: Users receive invoices via their Microsoft account, with transparent pricing shown before purchase. The straightforward subscription models make it easy for business users to manage recurring payments. Customization: There’s minimal need for customization, with AppSource focusing on ease and simplicity. Only monthly or annual options are available, and users can manage subscription renewals or cancellations through their Microsoft 365 portal. Azure Marketplace: Audience: IT professionals, developers, and large enterprises looking for technical solutions with greater control over payments and infrastructure. Payment Process: Portal: Payments are made through the Azure Portal, where users manage all subscriptions and billing under the Azure Cost Management + Billing section. Payment Plans: More flexible options, including pay-as-you-go, usage-based, and multi-year contracts (e.g., 2-year, 3-year pricing plans). Azure supports complex billing scenarios for long-term cloud solutions. Billing: Detailed billing and cost tracking through the Azure Portal. Customers can configure and monitor spending, allocate budgets, and review detailed invoices for SaaS, infrastructure, and other services. Customization: Azure Marketplace allows for more tailored payment solutions, enabling customers to mix and match SaaS and other cloud services into their payment plans. Enterprises can set up custom budgets, payment alerts, and detailed cost analysis. This tailored payment system makes AppSource ideal for business users wanting ease of use, while Azure Marketplace is suited for enterprises needing flexible, long-term payment options and detailed cost management.MSIgnite 2024 in Chicago
#MSIgnite 2024 in Chicago was an amazing event. Major investments by Microsoft are being made on AI, CoPilot and Data Center Infrastructure. If you were able to attend Microsoft Ignite 2024, I'm sure that you left inspired and ready to innovate. Satya Nadella highlighted several key advancements: AI Integration and CoPilot Enhancements Windows 365 Link Data Center Infrastructure Chips Security Initiatives Quantum Computing Milestone Looking forward to #MSIgnite 2025 in San Francisco. Save the date for the week of November 17, 2025 and sign up to get notified when more event details come out. https://ignite.microsoft.com/en-US/home?wt.mc_ID=ignite2024_esc_corp_soc_oo_li_MSE_SavethedateExecsGo to market faster with no-cost, user-friendly marketing resources
Go to market faster with no-cost, user-friendly marketing resources Take your marketing campaigns further withcampaigns in a box(CiaB), collections of ready-made, high-quality marketing assets designed to deepen customer engagement, simplify your marketing efforts,and win customers. Microsoft offers both new and refreshed co-branded campaigns for the following solution areas: Data & AI (Azure), Modern Work, Business Applications, Digital & App Innovation (Azure), Infrastructure (Azure), and Security. Get started today by visiting thePartner Marketing Center,where you'll find resources such as execution guides, customizable nurture tactics, and more. Create interest in AI adoption among audiences. As AI technology grabs headlines and captures imaginations, use this campaign to illustrate your audiences' unique opportunity to harness the power of AI to deliver value faster. Learn more about the campaign: Era of AI:Show audiences how to take advantage of the potential of AI to drive business value and showcase the value in Microsoft AI solutions delivered and tailored by your organization Data & AI (Azure) Use one of the Data & AI campaigns to demonstrate how your customers can win customers with AI-enabled differentiation. Show how they can transform their businesses with generative AI, a unified data estate, and solutions like Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft Power BI, and Azure Databricks. Campaigns include: Innovate with the Azure AI Platform:Help your customers understand the potential of generative AI solutions to differentiate themselves in the market, and inspire them to build GenAI solutions with Azure AI Platform. Unify Your Intelligent Data and Analytics Platform (ENT):Show enterprise audiences how unifying data and analytics on an open foundation can help streamline data transformation and business intelligence. Unify Your Intelligent Data and Analytics Platform (SMB):Create awareness and urgency for SMBs to adopt Microsoft Fabric as the AI-powered, unified data platform that will suit their analytics needs. Modern Work Access the Modern Work campaign to help SMBs understand how they can effectively transform their businesses with AI capabilities. Learn more about the campaign: Microsoft 365 Copilot SMB:Increase your audience's understanding of the larger potential of Microsoft 365 Copilot and how AI capabilities can help accelerate growth and transform operations. Business Applications Nurture interest with customers ready to modernize and transform their business operations with these BizApps go-to-market resources. Campaigns include: Migrate and Modernize Your ERP with Microsoft Dynamics 365:Position yourself as the right partner to modernize or replace your customers' legacy on-premises ERP systems with a Copilot-powered ERP. Business Central for SMB:Offer customers Microsoft Dynamics 365, a comprehensive business management solution that connects finance, sales, service, and operations teams with a single application to boost productivity and improve decision-making. Digital & App Innovation (Azure) Position yourself as the strategic AI partner of choice and empower your customers to grow their businesses by helping them build new AI applications faster and gain agility with intelligent experiences. Campaigns include: Build and Modernize AI Apps:Help customers building new AI-infused applications and modernizing their application estate take advantage of the Azure AI application platform. Accelerate Developer Productivity:Engage decision-makers responsible for productive development and position your organization as uniquely suited to help customers take advantage of the power of AI-assisted development tools like GitHub Copilot and the Microsoft developer platform to innovate and deliver faster. Infrastructure (Azure) Work with your customers to transform their digital operations and help them tap into the cloud to expand capabilities and boost their return on investment. Campaigns include: Migrate VMware Workloads to Azure:Help partners capitalize on the partnership between VMware and Microsoft so they can migrate VMware workloads to Azure in an efficient and cost-effective manner. Migrate and Secure Windows Server and SQL Server to Azure (ENT):Showcase the high return on investment (ROI) of using an adaptive cloud purpose-built for AI workloads, and help customers understand the value of migrating to Azure at their own pace. Security Demonstrate the power of unified security solutions offered by Microsoft and help customers understand the importance of robust cybersecurity in today's tech landscape. Campaigns include: Defend Against Cybersecurity Threats:Increase your audience's understanding of the powerful, AI-driven Microsoft unified security platform, which integrates Microsoft Sentinel, Defender XDR, Security Exposure Management, Security Copilot, and Microsoft Threat Intelligence. Data Security: Show customers how Microsoft Purview can help fortify data security in a world facing increasing cybersecurity threats
Microsoft expands Azure scalability for Healthcare Organizations
Microsoft has expanded Azure's scalability for running Epic's Chronicles Operational Database (ODB) to 65 million global references per second (GRefs/s). This enhancement, utilizing the new Mbv3 VM series with Azure Boost and Ultra Disk, covers 94% of the Epic market and significantly boosts performance for large health care providers using Epic on Azure.Solving cloud challenges with Canonical and Microsoft Azure through Linux and open-source solutions
In this guest blog post, Jehudi Castro-Sierra, Public Cloud Alliances Director at Canonical, examines the technical and strategic benefits of deploying Ubuntu Pro 24.04 LTS and explains how Canonical and Microsoft Azure are working together to provide scalable and flexible infrastructure for enterprises and developers and drive increased automation and security, cost optimization, and sustainable IT practices.
Strengthen your responsible AI stance with Microsoft Learn Plans
As AI's transformative power pervades industries, the call for responsible and trustworthy AI frameworks has never been more urgent. Businesses worldwide are recognizing the importance of these frameworks in maintaining regulatory compliance, enhancing brand reputation, and building public trust. Microsoft has been putting our Responsible AI principles into action since 2017 with evolving tools and best practices to ensure this technology is used in a way that is driven by ethical principles that put people first. In this blog, we explore the concepts of Trustworthy and Responsible AI and how companies can leverage these frameworks to drive value and reduce risk. We’ll also introduce a pair of official Plans on Microsoft Learn to help your team start building your own Responsible AI practices, as well as a new episode of our Azure Enablement Show that provides further insights into Microsoft's commitment to Responsible AI and a practical demo of new AI content safety features. Ethical AI: A growing market opportunity Analysts project substantial growth in Responsible and Trustworthy AI markets, driven by companies’ need to integrate ethical and reliable AI to stay competitive. The increasing AI regulation and compliance requirements globally, such as the EU AI Act, are pushing companies to adopt Responsible and Trustworthy AI frameworks to ensure compliance and avoid penalties. Additionally, rising consumer and public expectations for ethical AI applications impact brand reputation and consumer trust. Companies that prioritize ethical AI practices are more likely to gain consumer trust and loyalty. Avoiding Responsible AI roadblocks Adopting Responsible and Trustworthy AI frameworks isn’t without obstacles, especially when addressing the six foundational pillars laid out by Microsoft: Fairness: Mitigating biases in data and algorithms to ensure AI systems treat all individuals equitably and make unbiased, non-discriminatory decisions across diverse populations. Reliability and Safety: Ensuring AI performs consistently under diverse scenarios through rigorous testing, minimizing errors, and avoiding unintended consequences in critical applications. Privacy and Security: Protecting sensitive data by complying with regulations like GDPR and mitigating potential cybersecurity threats targeting AI systems and processes. Inclusiveness: Designing AI systems that are accessible and equitable, engaging diverse user needs, including underserved or marginalized communities. Transparency: Making AI decision-making processes understandable by explaining how outputs are generated, overcoming the “black box” nature of many models. Accountability: Establishing clear responsibility for AI decisions and actions across developers, operators, and stakeholders to ensure ethical use. Overcoming these challenges ensures compliance, builds public trust, and safeguards brand reputation in an AI-driven future. Companies that prioritize ethical and secure AI have a competitive edge in attracting customers who value responsible innovation. Trustworthy AI vs. Responsible AI: Understanding the difference To navigate the landscape of ethical AI, it’s essential to distinguish between Trustworthy AI and Responsible AI. Though interconnected, each necessary framework has unique characteristics: Trustworthy AI emphasizes the reliability, robustness, and security of AI systems. Its core focus is on creating AI applications that users, businesses, and regulators can trust due to their predictability and protection against unauthorized access. In our official Plan on Microsoft Learn,Evolve with gen AI: Operationalize your Azure gen AI solutions with fine-tuning and prompt flow, we learn the fundamentals of AI security to help users understand the types of controls that apply to AI systems and the testing procedures that increase the security postures of AI environments. Responsible AI focuses on aligning AI systems with ethical standards and societal values, ensuring these technologies positively impact individuals and communities. The Plan on Microsoft Learn, Evolve with gen AI: Operationalize your Azure gen AI solutions with fine-tuning and prompt flow, also includes an overview of Responsible AI principles and practices designed to help you adopt responsible AI practices. It offers an overview of the principles, governance system, and procedures followed at Microsoft, but we encourage you to develop your own AI strategy. Responsible and Trustworthy AI from a platform perspective Together, the Trustworthy AI and Responsible AI frameworks ensure AI technology is safe, ethical, and beneficial for society. These frameworks incorporate measures like automated content moderation and prompt shields to protect users from harmful outputs while promoting accurate and contextually relevant responses. For instance, content safety features help detect toxic language or misinformation, while groundedness detection ensures AI-generated outputs are factual and reliable, addressing risks like hallucinations or contextual inaccuracies. High-quality data is essential for building accurate, reliable AI models. Data integration combines and cleans data from diverse sources, providing a robust foundation for training. Grounded AI models, built on this foundation, enhance performance through: Factual Accuracy: Keep your AI system grounded in reality by anchoring responses to factual information. This reduces the risk of generating hallucinations or misleading information. Contextual Relevance: Enable AI systems to consider the specific context of a query or request, leading to more relevant and accurate outputs. Ethical Considerations: Help mitigate biases and ensure that AI systems are aligned with ethical principles. By combining these elements, we can harness the power of AI while mitigating risks and ensuring that AI benefits society as a whole. Our Plan on Microsoft Learn titled “Implementing data integration and model grounding with Azure AI Foundry and Microsoft Fabric” includes foundational instruction for building for building accurate and responsible AI systems as your team begins the process of creating advanced AI solutions. Get expert AI guidance at our Microsoft Learn Challenge Looking to deepen your understanding of Responsible and Trustworthy AI with help from our industry experts? Running now through Jan. 10, 2025, the Microsoft Learn Challenge: Ignite Edition is a free, eight-week program offering interactive events, expert guidance, and exclusive training materials on cutting-edge technologies like Microsoft Azure AI, Microsoft Fabric, and Data Security. Participants master skills like data integration, AI model grounding, and responsible AI practices, earning a digital badge upon completion to showcase their expertise. Don’t miss this chance to advance your AI knowledge and lead the way in ethical AI innovation. Register today to begin your journey! Watch Microsoft experts put ethical AI principles into practice The ultimate impact of building advanced AI solutions hinges on trust, which ultimately yields higher growth potential and stronger customer loyalty. Our brand-new episode of the Azure Enablement Show, titled Trustworthy AI: From Principles to Practice, explores our own dedication to Responsible and Trustworthy AI principles and demonstrates our new AI content safety features. The video also gives a detailed overview of the two Plans on Microsoft Learn, introduced in this blog, that are designed to help developers gain the skills needed to implement these principles in their own AI projects. Embracing Responsible AI to stay ahead in the digital age As the demand for ethical AI solutions rises, Responsible and Trustworthy AI frameworks are essential for businesses that aim to lead in today’s AI market. Trustworthy AI focuses on creating secure, reliable systems, while Responsible AI considers societal impact and ethical alignment. Together, these frameworks provide a comprehensive approach to building AI systems that users, regulators, and stakeholders can trust. By exploring resources like our official Plans on Microsoft Learn, Implementing data integration and model grounding with Azure AI Foundry and Microsoft Fabric andEvolve with gen AI: Operationalize your Azure gen AI solutions with fine-tuning and prompt flow, plus ourTrustworthy AI: From Principles to Practice Azure Enablement Show video, you can stay ahead in an ever-expanding field, building AI solutions that meet modern standards for reliability and ethics.
Enable MFA method
Dear, Currently in our company, the authentication methods policy > Microsoft Authenticator defaults to “any”. Either “passwordless” or “Push”. It is possible to enable the following authentication method through a conditional access policy, currently it is enabled for some users. Desired authentication method: The current method is as follows: Can it be enabled for professional accounts or is it only focused on personal accounts? Thanks in advance.
