Certified Software Designations: FY26 Benefits Updates
If you are a software development company selling through the Microsoft commercial marketplace, don’t miss this office hours session. Learn how to stand out to Microsoft customers and sellers -- and unlock the top-tier of benefits available to software development company partners. Walk away with a better understanding of: Certified software designation: What it is and why it matters FY26 updates: New benefits and incentives for designated partners Getting started: Steps to begin your designation journey Where can I access the deck? Click here to download the slides presented in this session of Office Hours. When is the next Office Hours session? Bookmark the Marketplace Community for announcements about upcoming Office Hours events.Office hours for partners: Marketplace rewards for FY26
If you are a software company or channel partner selling through the Microsoft commercial marketplace, don’t miss our first Office Hours session of the new fiscal year! We start with an update on Marketplace Rewards for channel partners, which is now generally available for FY26. We then dive into the following topics and answer your questions live: Marketplace Rewards benefit tiers and changes from the pilot program Essential tips for utilizing Microsoft Azure Sponsorship to win multiparty private offer deals Lessons learned from successful partners Where can I access the deck? Click here to download the slides presented in this session of Office Hours. When is the next Office Hours session? Bookmark the Marketplace Community for announcements about upcoming Office Hours events.How to structure your Microsoft Partner Center account for long term success
A well-defined Microsoft Partner Center account is critical for smooth operations, marketplace success, and an overall better experience in the portal. But with multiple configuration options, identifiers, and account relationships to understand, it’s easy to get lost in the details. In this discussion, we’ll walk through how to set up and organize your Microsoft Partner Center account for operational efficiency and marketplace success. What we will cover Understand account structures and publisher configurations Working with important identifiers used in account management and support scenarios Scenarios and best practices for long-term successful management of your accounts By the end, you’ll know exactly how to structure your Microsoft Partner Center account so that it supports your organization’s needs today and scales with you as you grow in the Microsoft ecosystem. Ready to optimize your Partner Center account? Join us November 4th at 9:00 AM PST to learn more and ask questions. How do I participate? Select “Add to calendar” to save the date, then click the “Attend” button to save your spot, receive event reminders, and participate in the Q&A. If you can’t make the live event, don’t worry. You can post your questions in advance and catch up on the answers and insights later in the week. This session will be recorded and available on demand immediately after airing. Where do I post my questions? Scroll to the bottom of this page and select “Comment.” This event will feature AI-generated captions during the live broadcast. Human-generated captions and a recap of the Q&A will be available by the end of the week.Now Generally Available: Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud for Azure VMware Solution
Co authored by: vjirovsky Azure Native Integrations enable you to easily provision, manage, and tightly integrate Independent Software Vendors (ISV) SaaS with a unified billing on Azure. By leveraging the power of Azure, Pure Storage Cloud Service offers you the same trusted Pure Storage capabilities in the cloud, without the complexity of refactoring or rearchitecting your VMware environments. You can easily discover and sign up for this via the Azure Marketplace. Azure Native Integrations enable you to easily provision, manage, and tightly integrate Independent Software Vendors (ISV) SaaS with a unified billing on Azure. By leveraging the power of Azure, Pure Storage Cloud Service offers you the same trusted Pure Storage capabilities in the cloud, without the complexity of refactoring or rearchitecting your VMware environments. You can easily discover and sign up for this via the Azure Marketplace. “We’re excited to announce Microsoft’s strengthened partnership with Pure Storage through the Azure Native Integrations program. With the service now generally available, customers can seamlessly deploy enterprise-grade block storage on Pure directly from the Azure portal. This seamless integration with Azure VMware Solution enables elastic capacity, flexible performance, and instant resizing – all while unlocking the full power of Azure’s cloud and AI capabilities.” - Scott Hunter, Vice President Product Management, Microsoft Developer Division Key Benefits of Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud on AVS Enterprise customers migrating VMware workloads to the cloud have long faced challenges with storage scalability, cost inefficiencies, and operational overhead. With this GA release, Pure Storage removes those barriers and delivers: Decoupled Scalability & Flexibility: across Compute and Storage solutions, so you pay only for what you need. Seamless Native Azure Experience: Provision Pure Storage Cloud resources via the client of your choice - Azure portal, CLI, PowerShell or SDK. Multi-Region support: Enjoy the support for your Pure Storage resource across East US, East US 2, West US 2, Central US and Australia East regions, with many more coming in shortly! Cost Efficiency: Achieve up to 40% Total Cost of Operations (TCO) savings through best-in-class data reduction and compression solutions. Streamlined VMware Migration: Simplify the transition of VMware workloads from on-premises or hybrid and multi-cloud environments onto Azure with consistent storage performance, nearly zero downtime, and minimal business disruption. Easy management: Perform all daily operations on AVS from a single VMware vSphere client directly via built-in plugin for Pure Storage Cloud Robust performance and reliability for mission-critical workloads with enterprise-grade Data protection and Data resilience support, with solutions such as Pure Snapshots and Hybrid Disaster Recovery in the pipeline. Fig 1: Pure Storage benefits of decoupled storage scalability. Why Pure Storage? Gartner report from Sept 2025 states that by 2029, consumption-based storage as a service (STaaS) will replace 50% of on-premises enterprise storage and data services infrastructure capital expenditure (capex), an increase from 15% in early 2025. Pure Storage® is a pivotal storage player among the Enterprise customers in revolutionizing the storage, management and resiliency while ensuring flexibility. From AI to archive, Pure Storage delivers a seamless cloud migration experience with one unified Storage as-a-Service (STaaS) platform across on-premises, private and public cloud, and hybrid environments. Pure has been named a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Enterprise Storage Platforms, with highest rating in Execution & Vision. An enterprise-favorite, some key customers for Pure Storage include ServiceNow, NASA, Comcast and many more! Fig 2: Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Storage Platforms, Sep 2025, Gartner Inc. Get Started with Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud Getting started is simple and fully integrated into the Azure experience. You can now start your journey quick and easy, and you pay only for the storage you use. For a detailed step-by-step visual guide, check out this YouTube playlist. Search and Provisioning the Pure Storage Cloud Resource Look for “Pure Storage Cloud” in the Azure portal or Azure Marketplace and sign up to subscribe. Select the service and create a new Pure Storage resource. Follow the instructions in the QuickStart to easily spin up your Pure Storage resource. Fig 3: Searching for Azure Native Pure Storage via Azure portal Create Storage Pools Using your Vnet and a delegated subnet to PureStorage.Block/storagePools, use the Overview blade navigation or the Action tile in the bottom to create and configure your storage pools. Fig 4: Newly created Pure Storage resource Overview in Azure portal Fig 5: Create Storage pool blade in Azure portal Connect to an Azure VMware Solution (AVS) resource Once created, you can use the Connect button up top to link your storage pool to AVS. In a few minutes, your storage pool is coupled with your VMware resource and ready to use! Fig 6: Connect AVS button establishes connection between storage pool and AVS resource Also, it automatically installs the Pure Storage Cloud plugin into your VMware resource, so you can manage everything, including the storage, from a single place, vSphere Client. Fig 7: Creation of a Datastore within the vSphere Client – this maps to a Storage container on your Pure Storage Cloud resource We’re excited for you to try out our solution! If you have suggestions or questions, contact us at azurenative@purestorage.com Resources Sign up for the service via Azure marketplace here. For a detailed visual guide on the step-by-step process to create a Pure Storage resource on Azure, check out this YouTube playlist. To learn more about the service, FAQ, and how to create your resource, check out the Microsoft docs as well as the Pure docs. Learn about how to create datastores and volumes and manage your Pure Storage here. Check out Azure Storage's blog and Pure’s press release for more excitement around the Pure-Microsoft partnership.Partner Blog | A reimagined Microsoft Marketplace: New investments to power growth
Frontier Firms, organizations at the leading edge of digital transformation, are redefining how innovation is scaled and how value is created. To empower emerging and established Frontier Firms, we are excited to launch the reimagined Microsoft Marketplace, your trusted source for cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents. The new Marketplace brings together AppSource and Azure Marketplace to accelerate business transformation for customers and unlock new growth opportunities for partners. It is a seamless extension of the Microsoft Cloud, making partner solutions discoverable directly within the Microsoft products where customers work every day. Solutions, apps, and agents are provisioned with the same governance and security controls that customers rely upon in the Microsoft Cloud. Every month, more than six million people visit Microsoft Marketplace. With solutions, AI apps, and agents for every use case, a comprehensive catalog across industries, and an integrated experience from discovery to deployment, Marketplace connects customers to partner innovation at scale. To see the broader set of announcements, read the blog from Alysa Taylor, Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer, Commercial Cloud & AI. What’s new for partners This launch expands the ways our partner ecosystem can reach customers and grow your business, while also giving you new opportunities to develop AI-enabled apps and agents that customers can use alongside their own AI investments. Continue reading here Engage in the ongoing dialogue within the Marketplace discussion board and click follow to receive timely notifications of new announcements.Security essentials for Microsoft Marketplace publishing
October 23, 2025 | 2:00 PM GTM+11 Publishing your solution on the Azure Marketplace unlocks opportunities to reach a global audience, but it also requires a strong focus on security. This session equips software development companies with the knowledge to meet Microsoft Marketplace security requirements, safeguard customer data, and ensure compliance with platform standards. Discover best practices for securing your applications, managing identities, and mitigating vulnerabilities, all tailored to Marketplace. Whether you're preparing to launch or improving an existing listing, this session will help you build trust and deliver secure solutions to your customers. Register hereMicrosoft ISV AI Envisioning Day: Identify and prioritize use cases for AI solutions
**Event Date & Time: September 9, 2025, 10:00 - 11:00 AM PST ** Join us at Microsoft ISV AI Envisioning Day: Identify and Prioritize Use Cases for AI Solutions to explore exciting AI business opportunities and learn how to craft a comprehensive development plan for your AI solutions. This session empowers businesses to drive growth by introducing an envisioning framework to help you identify and prioritize the most impactful AI use cases for solution development. What to Expect During the Business Envisioning webinar, we will walk you through a comprehensive framework that will enable you to create a development plan for building AI applications. The session will cover: Business Envisioning: Understand how to identify and prioritize business use cases for AI solutions. Learn the importance of aligning AI initiatives with your business goals to maximize value. The Business, User Experience, and Technology Prioritization Framework: The business, experience, technology (BXT) framework enables ISVs to evaluate the potential of their use cases. See how this exercise helps ISVs structure the details of each use case to better evaluate their viability. Use Case Prioritization: Employ the BXT rankings as an agile method to evaluate and differentiate the value and learning opportunities of each use case being considered, and then implement prioritization accordingly. Why Attend? By attending the Business Envisioning webinar, you will: Gain Valuable Insights: Learn from Microsoft experts about the latest trends and best practices in AI application development. Network with Peers: Connect with other ISVs and share experiences, challenges, and solutions. Accelerate Your AI Journey: Get practical advice and actionable steps to kickstart your AI projects and bring them to market faster. How to Register Register now for the Microsoft ISV AI Envisioning Day: Identify and Prioritize Use Cases for AI Solutions session. The session will be delivered in English. We look forward to seeing you at the Microsoft ISV AI Envisioning Day: Identify and Prioritize Use Cases for AI Solutions webinar and helping you unlock the full potential of AI for your business!Microsoft ISV AI envisioning Day: Identify and Prioritize Use Cases for AI Solutions
**Event Date & Time: September 9, 2025, 12:00 - 1:00 PM UTC+8 Singapore** Join us at Microsoft ISV AI Envisioning Day: Identify and Prioritize Use Cases for AI Solutions to explore exciting AI business opportunities and learn how to craft a comprehensive development plan for your AI solutions. This session empowers businesses to drive growth by introducing an envisioning framework to help you identify and prioritize the most impactful AI use cases for solution development. What to Expect During the Business Envisioning webinar, we will walk you through a comprehensive framework that will enable you to create a development plan for building AI applications. The session will cover: Business Envisioning: Understand how to identify and prioritize business use cases for AI solutions. Learn the importance of aligning AI initiatives with your business goals to maximize value. The Business, User Experience, and Technology Prioritization Framework: The business, experience, technology (BXT) framework enables ISVs to evaluate the potential of their use cases. See how this exercise helps ISVs structure the details of each use case to better evaluate their viability. Use Case Prioritization: Employ the BXT rankings as an agile method to evaluate and differentiate the value and learning opportunities of each use case being considered and then implement prioritization accordingly. Why Attend? By attending the Business Envisioning webinar, you will: Gain Valuable Insights: Learn from Microsoft experts about the latest trends and best practices in AI application development. Network with Peers: Connect with other ISVs and share experiences, challenges, and solutions. Accelerate Your AI Journey: Get practical advice and actionable steps to kickstart your AI projects and bring them to market faster. How to Register Register now for the Microsoft ISV AI Envisioning Day: Identify and Prioritize Use Cases for AI Solutions session. The session will be delivered in English. We look forward to seeing you at the Microsoft ISV AI Envisioning Day: Identify and Prioritize Use Cases for AI Solutions webinar and helping you unlock the full potential of AI for your business!Microsoft ISV AI Envisioning Day: Get the Framework to Develop AI Solutions
**Event Date & Time: September 24, 2025, 10:00 - 11:00 AM PST ** Learn how to effectively plan, build, and deploy generative AI solutions. Join us at Microsoft ISV AI Envisioning Day: Get the Framework to Develop AI Solutions webinar. The course is designed to empower ISVs with the tools and frameworks needed to create a development plan for your preidentified AI use cases. What's in store: Framework Deep Dive: Understand the Capability Envisioning framework—a strategic approach to accelerate AI solution development. Considerations for development plan: Explore the technical and business considerations for creating AI solutions and discover tools designed to help you build transformative generative AI applications. Expert Insights: Learn from leading AI professionals at Microsoft who will share their experiences and best practices. Interactive Q&A: Engage with our experts and get your AI queries answered in real-time. Exclusive Resources: Access a wealth of materials to help you design and develop top-notch AI solutions. After attending, you’ll have practical knowledge on how to apply the framework to create your development plan and build your AI solution. How to Register Register now for the Microsoft ISV AI Envisioning Day: Get the Framework to Develop AI Solutions session. The session will be delivered in English. We look forward to seeing you at the Microsoft ISV AI Envisioning Day: Get the Framework to Develop AI Solutions webinar and helping you unlock the full potential of AI for your business!Microsoft ISV AI Envisioning Day: Get the Framework to Develop AI Solutions
**Event Date & Time: September 24, 2025, 1:00 - 2:00 PM GTM+1 UK ** Learn how to effectively plan, build, and deploy generative AI solutions. Join us at Microsoft ISV AI Envisioning Day: Get the Framework to Develop AI Solutions webinar. The course is designed to empower ISVs with the tools and frameworks needed to create a development plan for your preidentified AI use cases. What's in store: Framework Deep Dive: Understand the Capability Envisioning framework—a strategic approach to accelerate AI solution development. Considerations for development plan: Explore the technical and business considerations for creating AI solutions and discover tools designed to help you build transformative generative AI applications. Expert Insights: Learn from leading AI professionals at Microsoft who will share their experiences and best practices. Interactive Q&A: Engage with our experts and get your AI queries answered in real-time. Exclusive Resources: Access a wealth of materials to help you design and develop top-notch AI solutions. After attending, you’ll have practical knowledge on how to apply the framework to create your development plan and build your AI solution. How to Register Register now for the Microsoft ISV AI Envisioning Day: Get the Framework to Develop AI Solutions session. The session will be delivered in English. We look forward to seeing you at the Microsoft ISV AI Envisioning Day: Get the Framework to Develop AI Solutions webinar and helping you unlock the full potential of AI for your business!
