AI innovation takes center stage at Microsoft Ignite
Artificial intelligence is transforming how software companies build, scale, and deliver solutions. At Microsoft Ignite, we announced new tools and programs to help developers accelerate innovation responsibly, from AI-powered workflows and unified tools in Microsoft Foundry to Cohere’s language models on Azure. Plus, the global launch of Microsoft Marketplace brings the industry’s largest catalog of AI apps and agents, enabling partners to reach new customers and unlock growth. Explore the latest announcements and learn how to ship faster, scale confidently, and turn AI innovation into business impact. Read the full articleMarketplace roadmap sneak peek - now available to partners!
We've got some exciting news to share about our marketplace roadmap: Partner-Exclusive Roadmap Preview: We've just released a detailed presentation outlining our vision for the future and recent updates. This is available exclusively to Microsoft partners (it requires partner sign in to access). New Blog Post: I've published a blog post here in the community highlighting key points from our roadmap. It's a great way to get a quick overview of what's coming. Your Action Items: Check out the above updates, and share your thoughts! We'd love to hear your feedback on these updates, especially on how some of the recent releases have impacted your business.ISV Success participants: Your opportunity to connect 1:1 with our team
We want to hear from you! Microsoft is interested in getting your feedback going through the app building and publishing process with ISV Success and would like to discuss your experience. We're looking for a handful of partners that are willing to jump on a call for 30 minutes to discuss. If interested please send me a direct message here on the community site no later than Tuesday, April 23.Marketplace roadmap event: September 27th at 8 am PDT
Join us for our marketplace community event on September 27th at 8 am PDT: Maximize marketplace: Roadmap updates and preview. For Microsoft partners and ISV Success members under NDA, get insight into the marketplace roadmap. Our marketplace product marketing team members will present the latest and upcoming platform features to help you expand customer reach, streamline sales, and drive growth. Through this deep dive with a live Q&A, you will learn how to maximize your marketplace potential. This event is open to Microsoft Partners only. Your email address will be validated prior to registration approval. Moving forward, all of our community events will be announced on our community boards here, and you can find all of the upcoming events + registration info on this blog article. I encourage you all to attend this event - and you can also submit your questions to me ahead of the session.Advice for Starting a MarketPlace Transactable Offer
Hi All, After having 4 different transactable offers in the marketplace I wanted to share some points on the design and things that we have learned at https://www.keytos.io/ to save you the pain while integrating. 1. If you are planning on creating multiple offers in marketplace or have an offer that will be hosted in the customer's tenant create a microservice that is in change of talking to the Azure Marketplace and have all your offerings talking to that Microservice. It will save you a lot of time in credential management and setup for each offering (and also look into automatically rotating the Application credential you use to talk to the marketplace don't want to miss on some revenue for an expired credential). 2. When creating your signup pages and management pages, make sure you think of different plans that you are going to have such as private offerings, you do not want to show all your customers your private offerings and pricing. 3. Keep track of the success of your meetered posts to Azure marketplace and set some retry logic (and fail-safes to ensure you are not double charging customers). 4. Add a trial and have clear documentation, users love self-service in Azure, they are used to that from all the Azure services. Those are all the things I can think of at the moment but if you have any questions I am always happy to help.Do you want to publish a transactable offer but are finding it difficult to do?
Many SaaS companies want to sell through Microsoft Marketplace. But surprisingly few actually launch transactable offers. Why? Over the last few years, Microsoft has heavily invested in its commercial marketplace. For ISVs and SaaS companies, the opportunity is clear: Access Microsoft's enterprise customers Co-sell with Microsoft sellers Shorten procurement cycles Unlock Azure consumption commitments But despite the upside, many companies still struggle to publish transactable offers. Not because they lack great products. Because marketplace readiness requires new operational muscle. From working with companies exploring the marketplace path, three challenges show up repeatedly. 1. Offer Architecture & Packaging Most companies start with a product but the marketplace requires a sellable offer structure. That means translating your product into: SaaS offers Managed apps Private plans Metered billing models Azure-backed services Questions teams often wrestle with: Should this be SaaS, VM, or a managed app? What pricing model works in marketplace billing? How should enterprise customers purchase it? Without clear packaging, the publishing process stalls quickly. 2. Technical & Operational Readiness Publishing an offer is not just a marketing step. It touches multiple teams: Engineering Product Finance Legal Marketplace operations Some of the most common blockers include: Marketplace APIs and SaaS fulfillment integration Metering implementation Identity and tenant provisioning Azure resource deployment templates Testing and certification For companies new to marketplace infrastructure, the learning curve can be steep. 3. Internal Alignment & Ownership One of the biggest challenges isn’t technical. It’s organizational. Marketplace initiatives often sit between multiple teams: Partnerships Product Revenue operations Cloud alliances Sales leadership Without a clear owner, progress slows. Successful marketplace companies usually have a dedicated marketplace strategy owner or partner GTM lead driving execution. Why This Matters Now Enterprise buyers increasingly prefer purchasing through marketplaces. Reasons include: Faster procurement Existing vendor relationships Budget alignment with cloud commitments Simpler contract management Which means companies that enable marketplace transactions often see: Faster deal cycles Larger enterprise deals More co-sell opportunities with Microsoft But getting there requires navigating the early friction. The Question for the Ecosystem If your company is exploring Microsoft Marketplace — or already trying to publish an offer: What has been your biggest challenge? 1️⃣ Offer packaging 2️⃣ Technical integration 3️⃣ Internal ownership / alignment 4️⃣ Something else? Drop your experience in the comments. The more companies share what’s blocking progress, the easier it becomes for the ecosystem to improve the process. Comment with your biggest blocker or lesson learned from publishing a marketplace offer.How we increased trials 200% with Marketplace Rewards
Hi All, Kitameraki Limited's TeamsWork brand provides intuitive and collaborative apps for Microsoft Teams that cater to the needs of small and medium-sized businesses and has successfully launched https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/office/WA200003945?tab=Overview and https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/office/WA200004511?tab=Overview apps, and just recently https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/office/WA200007702?tab=OverviewApp on the Microsoft Marketplaces. As a Microsoft partner for nearly four years, TeamsWork recognized the importance of maximizing visibility and reach within the Microsoft ecosystem. Our team has been able to leverage many of the benefits available through Marketplace Rewards to help drive significant growth and quantifiable results, thanks to expert guidance and the broad range of resources available to better market apps on Microsoft marketplaces. Just a few of these benefits included: The listing optimization allowed us to receive expert recommendations from Microsoft about how to optimize our marketplace offer pages. Azure sponsorship credits cut down on our costs of marketplace solutions. Press release support featuring a quote from a Microsoft executive helped amplify the announcement of our marketplace availability Our customer success story demonstrated how one of our customers increased administrative efficiency by 20 percent using our marketplace solution. featured category placement on the Azure Marketplace, which spotlighted TeamsWork and drove more users to view offer pages. Marketplace Rewards has helped drive a 200% increase in new trials for our marketplace offerings! Read the full story here: https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/case-studies/kitameraki-rewards What success has your organization seen with Marketplace Rewards?Join us for our Generative AI Hackathon! Now through May 6
Calling all devs! Join us for our Generative AI Hackathon and get hands-on with GitHub Copilot, Azure AI Studio, and $1000 in Azure credits (T&Cs apply). It's your chance to shine! Learn more at aka.ms/genaihack Participation is open through May 6th. Comment below if you plan on joining!This year at Build: Launch AI applications and get to market faster with marketplace
This year's Microsoft Build session catalog is live! Don't miss our session on how to launch AI applications and get to market faster with the commercial marketplace, Register to attend in Seattle or online today: https://lnkd.in/gdrpGeBR Comment below if you plan on attending and let us know what sessions you are looking forward to!
