Partner Blog | What's new for Microsoft partners: January 2026 edition
Your voice continues to shape how the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program evolves. In this update, we’re bringing together the announcements, investments, and resources that matter most to partners right now. From the innovations unveiled at Microsoft Ignite to updates across benefits, Azure, AI business solutions, Marketplace, security, and skilling, this edition is designed to build capability, accelerate execution, and drive meaningful customer impact as AI becomes central to every workload. What follows highlights our focus and 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 Microsoft Ignite marked an important evolution for the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, introducing new investments for partners to lead as Frontier Firms, translating their own AI experience into customer impact. Read Nicole Dezen’s blog for a partner-focused recap of Microsoft Ignite 2025, bringing together the announcements that matter most across AI, cloud platforms, security, and developer tools. Continue reading herePartner Blog | Azure updates for partners: December 2025
At Microsoft Ignite 2025, we explored what it means for organizations to move into the era of Frontier transformation. This shift is focused on embedding AI across every part of the business to improve decision-making, increase speed, and create new value. Organizations leading in AI make it foundational. They rethink processes and integrate new technologies from the start to improve efficiency. For partners, this move toward Frontier represents a significant opportunity to lead customers into this new era. By building AI-powered solutions, connecting data for intelligent insights, and deploying Microsoft Azure’s cloud-ready platforms, partners can deliver value faster and scale confidently through the Microsoft ecosystem. Microsoft Ignite came with a significant number of announcements, so I’ve gathered the Azure updates that matter most for partners. These are the capabilities that can strengthen your ability to deliver intelligent solutions, drive operational efficiency, and differentiate your product or service in the market. You can also explore how partners are turning momentum into action, access highlights, and grab practical guidance from my Microsoft Ignite session. Continue reading hereDo your deep customer support capabilities set you apart?
Announced at Microsoft Ignite, the Solutions Partner designation for Support Services publicly recognizes and rewards partners with the capabilities required to deliver a quality support experience to customers. The designation highlights your proven support capabilities and differentiates you in the market. It also unlocks valuable incentives including performance-based cost savings and enhanced support, both of which will be available through the upcoming Microsoft Unified for Partners offer coming later in 2026. Don't miss this opportunity to stand out and further develop your support capabilities. Start the eligibility assessment process today for a chance to earn a 5% discount on your next Microsoft Premier Support for Partners (PSfP) contract renewal. Learn more about the designation nowView Microsoft Ignite sessions on demand
Microsoft Ignite sessions are now available on demand. Whether you were unable to attend this year's event or just want a refresher, you can catch up on what you missed, relive your favorite moments, and continue to gain transformative insights. Check out the post-event blog for more information, and visit the Microsoft Ignite page to view recorded sessions. Revisit Microsoft Ignite sessionsPartner Blog | Partners leading the AI transformation: Microsoft Ignite 2025 recap
This week at Microsoft Ignite, we are defining what it means to be a Frontier Firm—organizations that embed AI across every layer of their business. A Frontier Firm is a next-generation organization built for the AI era. These companies blend human judgment with AI agents to scale faster, make smarter decisions, and deliver more value. The foundation for success for Microsoft partners begins with becoming Customer Zero. These partners go beyond selling AI. They internalize and operationalize it and bring meaningful credibility to every customer engagement. This approach builds real-world experience, insights, and transforms the partner’s go-to-market with capability and expertise that differentiates them with customers. By leading as Frontier Firms, these Customer Zero partners enrich employee experiences, reinvent customer engagement, reshape business processes, and bend the curve on innovation with AI, Copilots, and agents across their own organizations. Continue reading hereHow AI-first companies are shaping the next era with Microsoft AI | 5 startups to watch
tartups are turning emerging AI technologies into real-world solutions—and scaling faster than ever. At Microsoft, we’re helping founders harness cloud and AI to tackle global challenges and unlock new opportunities. Imagine a world where every organization, from early-stage startups to global enterprises, harnesses AI to unlock new business models and empower human ambition. That future isn’t years away; it’s here now. This transformation is fueled by platforms that combine scale, security, and advanced AI capabilities. Microsoft Cloud and AI platform is powering a new generation of AI-first companies that are redefining industries and setting new standards for responsible innovation. From seed-stage disruptors to scaling unicorns, these companies are driving many of the most meaningful advances in AI today, compressing innovation cycles from years to months. Explore Microsoft Ignite 2025 The technologies driving the AI revolution Breakthroughs in algorithms, the rise of large language models, and integration with technologies like the Internet of Things and blockchain are redefining what’s possible. Multimodal AI—the integration of text, images, and data—is creating richer, more intuitive experiences by bringing together text, images, and data. These advances are converging to unlock new levels of autonomy and creativity—empowering people and organizations to achieve more than ever before. At the forefront is agentic AI—systems that can reason, plan, and act with human guidance—a capability poised to shape the next era of intelligent organizations. IDC predicts that the number of companies adopting agentic AI will triple in just two years. These breakthroughs aren’t just theoretical; they’re shaping real-world solutions. As multimodal AI, agentic systems, and advanced models converge, Microsoft provides the scale, security, and trust businesses need to innovate boldly. Our platform combines powerful infrastructure, cutting-edge models, and tools like Microsoft Copilot and agents to turn ideas into impact. Startups leading the way With these advances accelerating, startups are seizing the moment—building solutions that redefine industries and inspire what’s next. The five companies featured below exemplify this next wave of innovation—delivering smarter automation, seamless integration, and transformative experiences across industries. These companies aren’t just success stories—they’re blueprints for what’s possible when vision meets technology. Continue reading herePartner Blog | Know before you go: Microsoft Ignite
Microsoft Ignite is almost here. If you have not yet made plans to attend in person or connect digitally, don’t wait. Reserve your spot today! Whether you are joining us in San Francisco or tuning in virtually, this is your moment to stay close to the latest innovation across Microsoft Cloud and AI platforms and hear directly from our product leaders. Ignite is designed to give you actionable insights and resources so you can continue to innovate, grow your business, and support customers as they move into the era of intelligent cloud and AI. You will see real product advancements, hear about customer and partner impact, and learn how to turn new capabilities into measurable outcomes. What to expect You will hear from Microsoft engineering and business leaders, explore new AI product capabilities, and see how partners are scaling intelligent solutions in the market. The experience brings together deep technical content, hands-on learning, networking opportunities, and direct engagement with experts who are shaping the future of cloud and AI platforms. Partner-focused programming will highlight resources designed to strengthen your AI practice, accelerate co-sell opportunities, and unlock advantages offered through the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. You can expect sessions that emphasize building differentiated solutions, expanding go-to-market impact, and growing data, AI, and security solution areas. You’ll also find: Continue reading here
Introducing Dell PowerScale for Azure: Now in Public Preview
We’re excited to announce the public preview of Dell PowerScale for Microsoft Azure – a fully managed, enterprise-grade file storage solution natively integrated into Azure. This offering brings Dell’s proven scale-out Network-attached storage (NAS) technology directly into Azure, delivering the performance and scalability enterprises expect with the simplicity of Azure-native management. Supporting up to 8.4PB in a single namespace, Dell PowerScale offers the scalability needed for demanding modern workloads. With multi-protocol support (NFS, SMB, S3), it ensures seamless access across diverse applications while maintaining the trusted Dell PowerScale user experience. This Dell-managed solution handles monitoring, maintenance, and updates, enabling organizations to streamline operations, optimize storage, and focus on business priorities with confidence in their data’s security and accessibility. This natively integrated solution uses purpose-built virtual machine infrastructure provisioned by Microsoft in the standard Azure hyper scaler environment. This special VM leverages cache to flash persistent memory technology using NVDIMM-N specifications suitable for the fast linked journaling transactions. These purpose-built VMs enable higher performance throughput and max capacity scale. Capabilities of Dell PowerScale for Azure Multi-protocol access – Global permission structure shared across users and protocols. Seamless scalability – Easily adjust to changing workloads with scale-out capacity. Operational consistency – Same experience as PowerScale on-premises. Smooth data mobility – Transfer data across environments without disruption. Advanced data protection – Safeguard critical information with comprehensive backup and recovery solutions. Snapshots – Fast data backup and recovery. Native replication – Asynchronous replication for data migration or disaster recovery. Why Dell PowerScale for Azure? Dell PowerScale is purpose-built for modern data-intensive workloads that require high performance and scalability — such as AI/ML pipelines, media & entertainment, EDA (electronic design automation), backup & recovery, and enterprise content management. Key Benefits of the Integration: Dell-Managed Service: Enjoy a streamlined storage experience, with Dell handling deployment, monitoring, maintenance, and upgrades — freeing your IT teams to focus on higher-value initiatives. Scalable & Elastic: As business requirements grow, PowerScale dynamically scales capacity and performance by adding nodes on demand, without any downtime. Enterprise-Grade Durability: Data is distributed across multiple nodes within the cluster, ensuring high durability and fault tolerance. Advanced Protection: Uses erasure coding for space-efficient protection and features like SyncIQ for asynchronous replication across sites — keeping your data available even during outages. Secure Private Access: PowerScale integrates into your Azure Virtual Network (VNet) through Vnet Injection, ensuring secure, high-performance data access. Azure-Native Experience: Provision, manage, and monitor PowerScale from within the Azure portal. It supports full integration with Azure Resource Manager (ARM), upcoming support for CLI/Powershell/Terraform, and supports native billing. How to Use the Integration: Mount shared volumes to Azure VMs or Kubernetes running in the same VNet. Run analytics or AI workloads that need parallel access to high-throughput file storage. Support backup, disaster recovery, and archival workflows across sites. Store and manage media assets or research data in regulated industries. Getting Started with Dell PowerScale for Azure Getting started with Dell PowerScale is simple: Navigate to Azure Portal Go to https://portal.azure.com and search for Dell PowerScale in the Marketplace. The offer is named Dell PowerScale for Azure - Dell managed (Public Preview). Contact Dell for a private offer and request a Dell Reference Number. Deploy the Storage Resource Follow guided steps here to configure your resource or cluster Connect Your Workloads Use standard NFS or SMB to mount volumes from Azure VMs or AKS. More Resources You can subscribe to the service through the Azure Marketplace online store or through the Azure portal. Search for it by name: Dell PowerScale for Azure - Dell managed (Public Preview) To learn more about the service, check out Microsoft docs as well as Dell docsNewsletter - Microsoft Global Community Initiative - November 2025
Microsoft Global Community Initiative Newsletter November 2025 👋Hello MGCI Members around the world, Welcome to this month’s newsletter sharing insights on what’s happening in communities around you. Microsoft Ignite, Nov 17-21 in San Francisco It’s November! Which means, Microsoft Ignite is right around the corner and behind the scenes we are preparing theater sessions and connections pods for our community. Check out the schedule for all community-focused sessions and make sure you don’t miss out on session such as: Tue, Nov 18: Community Connection Pod: Microsoft Global Community Initiative: Connecting People, Powering Impact Speakers: Heather Cook (Microsoft) & Isidora Katanic (Experts Inside) This session introduces the Microsoft Global Community Initiative and how it empowers individuals to share knowledge, collaborate, and drive change worldwide. Join us to learn how you can participate, lead, and amplify your voice in this global movement. Wed, Nov 19: Community Theater: Women in Tech & Allies: Turning Allyship into Action Speakers: Heather Cook (Microsoft), Karuana Gatimu (Microsoft), Danielle Moon (Microsoft), Isidora Katanic (Experts Inside), Femke Cornelissen (Wortell) Allyship isn’t a buzzword—it’s a commitment to creating workplaces where everyone can thrive. Join this interactive Community Forum to explore what authentic allyship looks like and why it matters. We’ll share real-world scenarios, practical strategies, and personal stories that highlight how allies can advocate, amplify, and act. Whether you identify as an ally or want to engage allies in your journey, you’ll leave with actionable steps to foster inclusion, challenge bias, and build a culture of equity in tech. Thu, Nov 20: Community Connection Pod: Engage, Connect, Grow: Your Path in the Microsoft Community Speakers: Heather Cook (Microsoft), Jonathan Jones (Microsoft), Shari L. Oswald (PowerUP!Learning), Eric Overfield The Microsoft community is a powerful network of professionals, advocates, and innovators—but where do you start? This interactive session will show you how to get involved, share your expertise, and build your personal brand. Learn best practices from experienced community leaders and discover opportunities to contribute meaningfully. Whether you’re a newcomer or a seasoned participant, you’ll leave inspired and equipped to take your next step. Next General Session – November 18 th Don’t miss out on the next General Session taking place on November 18th. Mark your calendars and join us LIVE for the AM or PM session broadcasted on the Microsoft Tech Community. With updates directly from Ignite and other cool community topics, we are looking forward to welcoming you in this month’s general session with: Topic: Running Events & Building Community in Tough Environments Host: Heather Cook, Principal PM, Microsoft Customer Advocacy Group, Microsoft Guest Speakers: Augustine Correa, Biz Talk Lead at CompuCom and Oluwaseyi Oluwawumiju, Management Executive at Convenant Technologies In this session, we explore strategies for executing impactful events in challenging or resource-constrained environments. Speakers will share insights on fostering community resilience and engagement when external conditions are less than ideal. Attendees will leave with practical tools and inspiration to build meaningful connections through events, regardless of circumstance. 📅 November 18 ⏰ 8:10 AM PT - https://aka.ms/MGCIMtgAM 📅 November 18 ⏰ 5:10 PM PT - https://aka.ms/MGCIMtgPM Community Spotlight: #CommunityLuv Celebrating 3 years of communitydays.org we would like to shine a light on one of our Board Members Tom Daly’s LinkedIn post. What started as a small idea, turned out to be THE one-stop-shop featuring hundreds of Microsoft tech community events around the world. You can like, share or comment on the post here on LinkedIn. Congratulations, November MVPs! On November 1 st , Microsoft welcomed a selected group of newly awarded Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) into the MVP Program. We love to see this community growing, which is a proof of the commitment out there to communities worldwide. A big congratulations to the newly awarded MVPs! ESPC, Dec 1-4, Dublin here we come! Our MGCI (Board) Members and Microsoft leaders are heading over to Dublin to attend, speak, or staff their sponsor booths at ESPC in Dublin. The conference covers topics around Microsoft 365 & AI technologies and you can still register to attend. More than 3000+ IT enthusiasts will gather together to learn and achieve more with Microsoft 365 & AI. Come join us! MGCI in December ❄️ Join in with a cup of hot chocolate, as our monthly general session will take place on December 16th, right before the winter break starts. Stay tuned as more details will follow in next month's newsletter. Upcoming Events Upcoming Community Led Events Community Days | Fabric Data Days | Nov 4-11 | Hybrid Community Days | Vancouver Microsoft 365 Summit | November 6 | Vancouver, BC, Canada Community Days | MN M365 15TH BI-ANNUAL FALL WORKSHOP DAY | November 7 | Edina, Minnesota Community Days | AI COMMUNITY DAYS - TUNIS | November 8 | Tunis, Tunisia Community Days | COLLABDAYS GREECE 2025 | November 8 | Virtual Community Days | Experts Live Emirates 2025 | November 10-11 | Dubai, UAE Community Days | Viva Engage Festival - APAC | November 12 | APAC Virtual Community Days | Viva Engage Festival - EMEA | November 12 | EMEA Virtual Community Days | Update Conference Prague 2025 | November 13-14 | Prague, Czechia Community Days | Microsoft Ignite 2025 NYC Community Summit | November 17-18 | New York City, NY Community Days | M365 Community Days DC - Microsoft Ignite 2025 Watch Party + Unconference | November 18 | Washington DC Community Days | SmartCloud 365 - 2025 | November 25 | Germany Virtual Community Days | Shift Enter Summit 2025 | November 26 | Mixát, Budapest Microsoft Global Community Initiative Resources We’ve made it easy for you to find all the MGCI resources you need at your fingertips. This space features the PowerPoint decks from our Monthly General Sessions and Event Training Sessions & Office Hours as well all MGCI Event Producer playbooks, checklists and templates. Check it out! Missed last month's events? In case you missed our October events, you can check out the recordings of the General Sessions here: AM General Session PM General Session And the recording of the Event Organizer training here: MGCI Event Organizer Training Sincerely, Your Board Officers Microsoft Global Community Initiative
