Partner Blog | What's new for Microsoft partners: October 2026 edition
Your voice continues to shape how the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program evolves. This update brings together the announcements, investments, and resources that matter most to partners right now, so you can prioritize where to focus, what to skill, and which motions to scale as AI becomes central to key workloads. What follows highlights areas of partner opportunity, grounded in feedback from across the ecosystem and aligned to how customers are evolving their cloud and AI strategies. Spotlight Microsoft Ignite 2026 From November 17 to 20, 2026, Microsoft Ignite brings partners, customers, Microsoft leaders, and industry experts together at the Moscone Center in San Francisco and online. The event delivers keynotes, technical sessions, hands-on labs, certifications, and expert insights across Copilot, agentic business applications, cloud and AI platforms, Frontier Transformation, security, and more. Registration is open for both in-person and online attendance, and a schedule builder is now online to help attendees find sessions that align with their business priorities. The new Copilot is here: The opportunity for Microsoft partners The new Microsoft Copilot app opens opportunities across AI advisory, security and governance, agent development, adoption, and managed services for software companies, systems integrators, and channel partners. See more AI Business Solutions partner news. Build. Monetize. Scale. Frontier Accelerate for Marketplace launches to power software companies on Microsoft Marketplace Frontier Accelerate for Marketplace guides software development companies through three stages, Build and Publish, Grow, and Differentiate, connecting Microsoft trusted expertise, savings and investments, and skilled teams to each stage. Eligible partners can move from solution readiness to Marketplace transactions and co-sell momentum. See more Microsoft Marketplace partner news. CSP growth margins are now generally available Growth margins now give eligible Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) distributors and direct bill partners incremental margin on qualifying Microsoft 365 growth opportunities. Partners can validate customer eligibility through the eligibility API and download eligible SKUs in the Pricing workspace in Partner Center. Program and benefits updates Frontier Partner specialization open for enrollment in Partner Center This specialization validates partners who design, build, deploy, govern, and secure AI agents across Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Foundry, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. Partners who earn it gain badging, priority search, and skill-aligned benefits. Agentic support: Why AI-powered operations are becoming a competitive core for CSP partners Explore how CSP partners can use agentic AI, stronger support processes, and Microsoft resources to build more efficient customer support operations. New CSP activation incentive for Microsoft Copilot Cowork The Copilot Cowork CSP Activation Incentive rewards eligible CSP indirect resellers and direct bill partners for driving customer adoption and usage of Copilot Cowork, on top of existing CSP incentives. CSP software pricing update effective October 1, 2026 A 5% cost of capital uplift applies to annual-term CSP software subscriptions billed monthly, such as Microsoft SQL Server and Windows Server, taking effect for existing subscriptions at renewal. Annual billing and month-to-month subscriptions stay the same. Earn the new Clinical Applications specialization Now available to eligible partners, this specialization recognizes proven expertise deploying Dragon Copilot for healthcare customers. It can unlock co-sell and referral eligibility, funding opportunities, Azure bulk credits, deployment support, and go-to-market assets. Back at your desk? Start FY27 with the resources that matter most MCAPS Start for Partners keynotes and sessions, plus Microsoft Partner FY27 GTM Kickoff videos and presentations, are now available on demand. New resources span skilling, benefits, Copilot, marketing, Marketplace, and partner operations to help partners prepare for Microsoft Ignite. Partner Center Technical Corner: August 2026 edition The August edition covers AI-powered sales recommendations for CSP partners, preparation for growth margins, webhooks for subscription status, the new Check Inventory by Resource Type API, and audit-based validation for Security specializations. Plan today, grow tomorrow: Turn partner investments into sustained demand Omdia research maps 28 critical presales touchpoints, and the linked blog recommends three reinforcing FY27 investments: build expertise, run sustained demand generation, and apply both to Copilot and Frontier Transformation. New in Partner Marketing Center Pro, the Microsoft 365 Copilot Business campaign in a box provides ready-to-use assets to promote Copilot Business trials. Continue reading here
Dell PowerScale for Azure is now Generally Available
We're excited to announce that Dell PowerScale for Azure – Dell managed is now Generally Available (GA). Following a successful Public Preview announced at Ignite, PowerScale for Azure is now production-ready for enterprise workloads. Co-developed with Dell as an Azure Native Integration, this fully managed service brings Dell's proven scale-out NAS technology and the PowerScale OneFS operating system directly into Azure — delivering the performance and scale enterprises expect with the simplicity of Azure-native provisioning, management, and billing. The solution is purpose-built for modern, data-intensive workloads such as AI/ML pipelines, media & entertainment, electronic design automation (EDA), high-performance computing, backup & recovery, and enterprise content management. Product highlights Dell-Managed Service: A streamlined experience where Dell handles deployment, monitoring, maintenance, and upgrades — freeing IT teams to focus on higher-value initiatives. Azure-Native Experience: Provision, manage, and monitor PowerScale directly from the Azure portal, with full Azure Resource Manager (ARM) integration and unified billing on your monthly Azure invoice. Enterprise-Grade Durability: Data is distributed across multiple nodes within the cluster for high durability and fault tolerance. Advanced Protection: Space-efficient erasure coding plus SyncIQ asynchronous replication across sites keep data available even during outages. Secure Private Access: Integrates into your Azure Virtual Network (VNet) via VNet Injection, with data encrypted at rest using Microsoft-managed keys. Massive scale & multi-protocol: Up to 8.4PB in a single namespace with simultaneous NFS, SMB, and S3 support, powered by custom PMEM-enabled compute SKUs engineered for Dell Consider a large health system running PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) imaging archives, Electronic Health Record (EHR) data pipelines, and AI/ML diagnostic workloads on an on-premises Dell PowerScale cluster. As PACS volumes grow alongside demand for AI-driven diagnostics, the team wants to scale into Azure for GPU-accelerated model training without re-architecting their environment. With Dell PowerScale for Azure, they can provision the fully managed service directly from the Azure portal, giving clinicians, researchers, and applications low-latency multi-protocol access to the same global namespace across NFS, SMB, and S3. Since Dell handles deployment, monitoring, and upgrades, IT teams stay focused on patient outcomes rather than infrastructure, while enterprise-grade durability and encryption at rest help protect sensitive patient data. Availability Dell PowerScale for Azure is generally available through the Azure Marketplace and Azure portal (search for Dell PowerScale for Azure – Dell managed). GA is rolling out in waves, starting with US East, with additional regions coming online shortly. Get started Azure Marketplace: Dell PowerScale for Azure – Dell managed Microsoft Learn: Dell PowerScale – Azure Native Integrations Solution Brief: Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure
Purchase a membership
Hi everyone, I am trying to purchase a membership, but I am completely stuck and hoping someone in the community can help. Every time I try to complete the checkout process, I get the following error: Error ID: 2100037 We regret to inform you that your order cannot be processed at this moment. Please retry purchasing the membership from the membership offers page by clicking the 'Back to Membership' button after some time. If this issue persists, please contact the Support team. (CorrelationId: ce8bd334-01e6-4b58-8b7e-8d02287fddf4) 23 Sep 2026 10:21:07 GMT I have done everything on my end to troubleshoot this, including: Switching accounts: I tried purchasing the membership from completely different user accounts. Waiting it out: I have tried multiple times at different moments of the day to see if it was just a temporary server overload. Changing payment methods: I used two entirely different cards to rule out a bank decline. I already reached out to the official support team, but it has been incredibly frustrating. They are very slow to reply, and we just keep going in circles with automated-sounding responses that don't actually solve the problem. Has anyone else run into this specific error code? If you managed to get past it, how did you do it? Any advice or workarounds would be hugely appreciated because right now, nothing is working!
