The Microsoft Marketplace opportunity for channel ecosystem
Microsoft estimates, based on IDC data, that the total addressable market (TAM) for small and medium enterprises will reach $777 billion by FY26—and is on track to surpass $1 trillion by 2030. This represents more than 400 million organizations worldwide with fewer than 3,000 employees. As organizations look to become AI-first, Microsoft partners play a critical role as trusted advisors in navigating this transformation. Microsoft Marketplace is the platform that scales AI-first transformation, connecting your solutions and offerings to millions of commercial customers. Building on the momentum from Microsoft Ignite and the recent announcement of the reimagined Microsoft Marketplace, we’re excited to introduce the general availability of resale enabled offers. Continue reading hereNow 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.
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 docsPartner Case Study | Encodian
Empowering automation for Microsoft 365 From its headquarters in the United Kingdom, Encodian serves more than 40,000 customers around the world, encompassing government, education, legal services, the financial sector, and beyond. Its growing team of nearly 50 staff members embody a culture rooted in innovation and practical enablement, building tools that slot seamlessly into Microsoft 365 so users don't need to leave the platforms they trust. Encodian became a Microsoft partner in 2016 and a Microsoft Co-Sell partner in 2020. The company's flagship product, Encodian Flowr, is a collection of specialized connectors for Microsoft Power Automate that can be utilized across Microsoft Power Platform. Flowr enables organizations to streamline document generation, conversion, and processing directly within Power Automate and Power Apps. From creating dynamic PDFs and building Microsoft Word files to manipulating images and more, Flowr delivers powerful automation that integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365. Expanding visibility for Flowr in the marketplace Encodian joined the Marketplace Rewards program to strengthen the visibility and adoption of Flowr in the Microsoft commercial marketplace. As demand for Power Platform-based automation continues to grow, Encodian wanted to ensure Flowr was discoverable, trusted, and promoted within the Microsoft ecosystem, especially to customers looking to streamline file generation and manipulation automation. “Microsoft’s marketplace enables us to amplify our presence in the Power Platform ecosystem, aligning our growth directly with the tools our customers already trust and use every day,” said Eva Luna-Rose, Marketing Manager for Encodian. Marketplace Rewards supplied Encodian with marketing, sales, and technical benefits along with expert guidance from an engagement manager, and Encodian capitalized on the opportunity. Within six months of optimizing its Flowr listing, Encodian realized a sevenfold increase in subscriptions via the marketplace. Continue reading here Explore all case studies or submit your own Subscribe to case studies tag to follow all new case study posts. Join the conversation on our Marketplace Discussion Board, click follow to get notifications of new announcements!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.Partner Case Study | BrightWork
Intuitive and structured approach to project management For over three decades, Microsoft independent software vendor (ISV) BrightWork has partnered with more than 40,000 organizations worldwide to streamline project processes and increase collaboration. Driven by a vision to improve and optimize project management, BrightWork launched its first solution for Microsoft SharePoint in 2001 and has delivered an updated version every year since. In 2021, BrightWork introduced BrightWork 365, its project and portfolio management solution built on Microsoft Power Platform for Microsoft 365. Available in Microsoft AppSource, BrightWork 365 is a flexible, comprehensive project portfolio management solution that brings the best of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem together in a single collaboration hub for project teams while providing immediate visibility and insights to senior executives. “We deliver, deploy, and support a complete project portfolio management solution on Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Power Platform,” said Éamonn McGuinness, CEO and Founder at BrightWork. “We work closely with our customers using our unique ‘Start-Evolve’ approach to provide expertise, guidance, and training at every step of their project management journey.” Continue reading here Explore all case studies or submit your own Subscribe to case studies tag to follow all new case study posts. Join the conversation in our Marketplace community discussion board, Marketplace Blog and see upcoming events in the Marketplace events calendar! Don't forget to follow this blog to receive email notifications for all announcements!Partner Case Study | Stibo Systems
Stibo Systems aims to deliver better data, better business, and a better world. Headquartered in Aarhus, Denmark, with offices around the globe, Stibo Systems is passionate about designing and delivering data management products that empower better decisions for spectacular customer results and sustainable growth. Its mission is to help customers optimize business, environmental, and social performance by offering versatile master data management solutions. Stibo operates in the retail, distribution, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods, and financial services industries, serving customers including Schneider Electric, adidas, Sony, Fujitsu, Mitchells & Butlers, and Rituals. The company proudly joined the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program in May 2003 and achieved the prestigious Independent Software Vendor Partner Award from Microsoft Denmark in May 2024, highlighting its outstanding contributions across the Microsoft ecosystem. Continue reading here Explore all case studies or submit your own Subscribe to case studies tag to follow all new case study posts. Be sure to follow our Marketplace community and the Marketplace blog for new announcements. Follow the Marketplace calendar for all upcoming events!Capturing the marketplace opportunity, part four: Co-sell with Microsoft to accelerate your growth
Welcome to the final blog in our four-part series on maximizing the marketplace partner opportunity. If you haven't yet, check out parts one, two, and three. This blog focuses on strategic co-selling with Microsoft field sellers to accelerate enterprise-grade deals through the Microsoft marketplace. As the worlds of Software as a Service (SaaS), cloud go-to-market (GTM), and AI converge, software companies have a unique opportunity to capture billions in projected cloud and SaaS spending through B2B marketplaces. 1 The marketplace has become a clear center of gravity for how enterprises manage their cloud portfolios, with many organizations having cloud budget set aside for B2B transactions as they look to adopt new technologies while reducing sprawl and reassessing their SaaS spending. For software companies, the Microsoft marketplace is how we democratize IT and cloud GTM. It’s also how you go to market and co-sell alongside our global sales force of 35,000 sellers, enabling you to accelerate growth by accessing our broad customer base, including over one billion global customers and 95% of the Fortune 500 that use the Microsoft Cloud. Co-selling with Microsoft through the marketplace can remove the guesswork of identifying customers with pre-committed Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitments (MACCs), turning customers’ committed budgets into larger deals that close faster. Continue reading herePartner Case Study | Biztech grows revenue by 150% with Microsoft Marketplace Rewards
Biztech IT Consultancy Pvt. Ltd. builds solutions on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Azure to bring positive transformation to healthcare, not-for-profit, manufacturing, education, and retail companies of all sizes across 21 countries. Biztech transforms companies with CRM and ERP A Microsoft partner for over eight years, Biztech develops customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions on Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365, and Dynamics 365 Business Central to ensure scalability and efficiency. Biztech continuously strives to innovate and strengthen its offerings within the Microsoft ecosystem. Seeking enhanced visibility and marketing opportunities, Biztech reviewed the benefits of Microsoft Marketplace Rewards to connect with companies seeking to effectively use Microsoft technology. Utilizing Microsoft Marketplace Rewards to reach more customers was a logical step. Continue reading here Join the conversation in our Marketplace community discussion board, Marketplace Blog and see upcoming events in the Marketplace events calendar!Partner Blog | What's new for Microsoft partners: April 2025 edition
We value partner feedback and celebrate the range of perspectives within our community as we continue to enhance the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. Our second blog of 2025 provides expert insights, updated learning resources, and recent benefits from the last four months to support your development. Announcements Microsoft at 50: the journey and future of the partner ecosystem As we celebrate Microsoft’s 50th anniversary in April, our annual State of the Partner Ecosystem blog was a great opportunity to reflect on the incredible journey we’ve shared with our partners, employees, and customers. Celebrate with us! Watch this video from Judson Althoff, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, Microsoft. Join the Microsoft AI Skills Fest for 50 days of learning and discovery starting April 8! Gain skills that will empower you and your team to build innovative AI solutions with Microsoft’s apps and services. Download the Microsoft 50th Anniversary Social Toolkit. See the full list of partner quotes on the Microsoft 50th Anniversary celebration site. Upcoming API changes for Microsoft partners: what you need to know Security and compliance are vital to maintaining trust and enhancing business efficiency. Our recent blog outlines several significant updates to application programming interfaces (APIs) that Microsoft partners will need to implement over the coming months to ensure compliance and avoid disruptions in business operations. These changes include updates to billing frequency scheduling, Partner of Record (POR) assignment, CSP billing reconciliation APIs, Partner Center pricelist upgrades, and the deprecation of Azure AD graph tokens. Additionally, the blog emphasizes the importance of multi-factor authentication (MFA) and upcoming changes to Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA) attestation methods. Continue reading here
