Build AI skills at Microsoft AI Skills Fest
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 boardPartner Blog | Microsoft Build 2026: Turning innovation into partner growth
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. Continue reading hereSecure a high-impact sponsorship for Microsoft Ignite
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.Make this your year for Frontier Transformation: Earn your badge and join us at the summit
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 Microsoft Agent 365—now’s the perfect time to validate your expertise with the Frontier Transformation Engineer badgehttps://aka.ms/FrontierPartnerSkilling. 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 individual expertise, showcase organizational readiness, and lead Frontier Transformation for your customers. Plus, make sure you’re registered for MCAPS Start for Partners on July 22 to get the insights and playbooks to sharpen your focus and position your practice where the momentum is strongest. Register nowBoost Marketplace discoverability with AI-assisted feedback
Enhance your Marketplace listings with personalized guidance delivered through App Advisor. Powered by agentic capabilities trained on Microsoft best practices, App Advisor is a no-cost, self-service growth tool that scans and reviews your listings to provide clear, actionable recommendations. These insights are designed to improve discoverability and strengthen customer engagement—which can drive more clicks, leads, and deals. Try App Advisor today and learn more in our blog. Don't forget to follow the Marketplace blog, Marketplace discussion board and the events calendar to stay in the know!EVENT | Drive Frontier Transformation: Attend the engineer summit and work toward your badge
Accelerate your capabilities delivering Frontier Transformation with two exciting opportunities: the Frontier Transformation Engineer badge and the Frontier Transformation Engineer Summit. The Frontier Transformation Engineer badge validates your expertise in building AI agents across the Frontier stack, which includes Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft Copilot Studio, Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Fabric, and Agent 365. This applied skilling journey equips solution engineers and architects to design, build, and operate production-ready agentic AI solutions—so you can lead customers from AI experimentation to secure, real-world agentic implementation. Earn the badge through certifications, project-ready execution, and advanced training. As you work toward the badge, join us for the Frontier Transformation Engineer Summit on June 9, a live, expert-led skilling experience designed to fast-track badge completion. Gain insights on how to use Microsoft Agent Factory at scale, building individual expertise, showcasing organizational readiness, and leading Frontier Transformation for your customers. These are exciting opportunities to drive Frontier Transformation—both for your organization and for customers who are looking to adopt agentic AI at scale. And as we get ready to enter FY27, the year of Frontier Transformation, we strongly encourage you to join us at MCAPS Start for Partners on July 22. You'll get insights from Microsoft leaders on where we’re investing, our shared priorities, and how to activate AI-led opportunities to drive growth this year.Make your mark on the Microsoft AI Tour—learn more about sponsorship
A preview of sponsorship opportunities for the 2026–2027 Microsoft AI Tour is now available. This one‑day event series is traveling to 30+ cities in priority markets around the globe. Sponsors can accelerate pipeline through high-impact, in-person experiences that help customers make confident, informed technology solution decisions. Sponsorship packages start at USD5,000. MCAPS Start for Partners, an event taking place on July 22, presents another exciting opportunity for your business. You'll get insights from Microsoft leaders on where we’re investing, our shared priorities, and how to activate AI-led opportunities to drive growth this year. Registration details coming soon. Preview Microsoft AI Tour sponsorship opportunitiesSAVE THE DATE! MCAPS Start for Partners is July 22, 2026!
MCAPS Start for Partners is around the corner. Join us on July 22 for this year’s MCAPS Start for Partners, where you’ll access actionable support for key initiatives from Frontier Transformation to co-sell execution. Keynotes and breakout sessions will focus on where demand is headed and reveal insights into Microsoft priority and investment areas—so that attendees can prepare to align their organizations accordingly. Stay tuned for registration details and prepare to start FY27 aligned and ready to execute.Partner Blog | Driving channel velocity in an AI-first world: Microsoft Marketplace at Channel Partners Conference
The recent Channel Partners Conference & Expo brought together thousands of channel leaders, technology providers, and ecosystem partners to explore what’s next for the channel—and how partners can accelerate growth in a market being rapidly reshaped by AI. With an audience deeply focused on differentiation, scale, and customer value, the conference highlighted how cloud, AI, and modern commerce models are redefining the partner opportunity. Microsoft Marketplace participated as a Platinum sponsor, reflecting the central role the channel plays as customers move AI from experimentation into production. As partners guide strategy, deployment, and outcomes, Marketplace provides the commercial foundation—connecting partners, software companies, and customers through flexible, channel-led sales models that scale. “Microsoft Marketplace gives enterprise and SMC customers a direct path to procure Devicie against their Microsoft commitments, while our channel-led sales motion extends our reach through the trusted partner relationships that help customers achieve better device management outcomes.” Connor O’Reilly, Channel Sales Manager, Devicie Continue reading herePartner Blog | Frontier Transformation starts here: Save the date for MCAPS Start for Partners
Customers are moving toward Frontier Transformation, and they are looking to Microsoft partners to turn AI from isolated experimentation into a repeatable operating capability embedded into how work gets done. Value does not scale automatically, but complexity does. Partners who win in FY27 will be the ones who can operationalize AI with intelligence grounded in real work and trust built in from day one, including security, governance, and responsible AI. MCAPS Start for Partners is built to give you early clarity on what Microsoft will prioritize in FY27 so you can translate strategy into execution. It is the annual moment to align with Microsoft priorities at the start of the fiscal year so that you begin on the same page around investments and go-to-market motions that will shape customer conversations throughout the year. Save the date to join us virtually on Wednesday, July 22, 2026, to align on what is changing, what is net-new, and where Microsoft will focus. You will hear directly from Microsoft leaders and leave with practical next steps you can activate with your teams in the first weeks of FY27 across co-sell engagement, Microsoft Marketplace motions, incentives, and skilling. Registration opens in May. Download the calendar invite now to save the date for the event. The shift partners are observing: Frontier Transformation moves from pilots to operating capability Across industries, customers are pushing for outcomes, not pilots. They want solutions that can be operationalized, governed, and scaled across business units. Expectations are also rising around security, compliance, and responsible AI as AI moves closer to core business processes. For partners, this is a clear signal. Differentiation increasingly comes from repeatable delivery models, strong governance, and responsible AI practices built into your approach from day one. Customers want confidence that AI is not just deployed but is also managed, secured, and monitored in ways that stand up to real-world use. Starting FY27 aligned to Microsoft priorities can sharpen your focus, guide where you invest, and accelerate your ability to engage customers with a clear execution model. Continue reading here
