microsoft partner blog
162 TopicsNow 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.206Views0likes0CommentsPartner 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.42Views1like0CommentsPartner Blog | From migration to modernization: Building the foundation for AI-powered growth
Last month, we introduced the Cloud & AI Platforms blog series with a blog outlining how partners can lead customers into the AI era with a secure, agile foundation. This installment builds on that discussion, focusing on the pivotal role of migration and application modernization in helping organizations reduce costs, increase agility, and prepare their environments for AI-powered innovation. Building the foundation for AI-powered growth Today, partners are uniquely positioned at the forefront of one of the most significant opportunities in technology. As customers accelerate their shift from AI pilots to embedding intelligence across every layer of their operations, they’re also navigating rising costs, contract renewals, and security demands. In this landscape, customers need trusted advisors who can reduce complexity, deliver savings, and help build a secure foundation for sustained AI innovation. As a Microsoft partner, you play a pivotal role in driving this cloud transformation. By moving core workloads to Azure, organizations gain a scalable, secure cloud foundation that reduces cost and complexity while unlocking new opportunities for growth. IDC research shows that, for every dollar invested in generative AI, companies are realizing a 3.7x return on investment 1 —an increase from 3.5x the year before. When partners guide customers through migration and modernization with Azure, their customers unlock measurable business outcomes across three key pillars: Maximize business agility: Execute business changes up to 78% faster. Unlock AI with unified data: Reduce admin time by up to 60% with fully managed Azure databases and establish a secure, open foundation for enterprise AI. Realize best-in-class cost and performance: Achieve up to 76% savings running Windows Server and SQL Server on Azure compared to leading competitors. One study found a 298% ROI over three years with Azure VMware Solution (AVS). Continue reading here61Views0likes0CommentsAzure Kubernetes Service Automatic: Fast and frictionless Kubernetes for all
AKS Automatic simplifies Kubernetes by offering a fully managed, opinionated experience that abstracts away from infrastructure complexity, while keeping the full power of Kubernetes at your fingertips. Learn how production-ready clusters and automated infrastructure operations can accelerate your time to delivery and simplify operations for you! Check out the announcement blog here!69Views0likes0CommentsPartner Blog | Accelerating AI growth and innovation: Your guide to Microsoft Ignite
Microsoft Ignite is where possibility meets action. Each year, IT professionals, including tech practitioners, coders, engineers, business leaders, and partners, come together at one event to discover what’s next, learn from industry leaders, and shape the future of technology. This year, Ignite is designed to sharpen your expertise, expand your opportunities, and accelerate growth in the AI era. This year’s event will take place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from November 18 to 21, 2025, with an optional pre-day on November 17. Online sessions will also be available worldwide from November 18 to 20. Register now to secure your pass for San Francisco or online participation. I am excited to join Microsoft leaders including Satya Nadella, Judson Althoff, Scott Guthrie, Jay Parikh, Charlie Bell, and Mark Russinovich in San Francisco to showcase the latest innovations, highlight partner impact, and share our vision for the future! Continue reading here79Views1like0CommentsPartner Blog | Evolving our productivity offerings to resolve European competition concerns about Teams
At Microsoft, we believe that collaboration tools are essential to modern productivity. Microsoft Teams has become a cornerstone of how organizations connect, communicate, and get work done. At the same time, we recognize the importance of customer choice and interoperability in a dynamic and competitive digital landscape, as well as our responsibility to work productively with regulators on issues of global or regional concern. In keeping with these values and responsibilities, Microsoft recently finalized an agreement with the European Commission (Microsoft’s “Commitments”) in which we will expand interoperability and data portability resources and make additional changes to licensing and pricing for Microsoft 365, Office 365, and Microsoft Teams. These changes are designed to enhance flexibility, support open ecosystems, and give customers more options to meet their unique needs. Commitments to interoperability and data portability Partners are the trusted advisors who deliver business outcomes for customers and are key to creating business value across the customer journey with their services and solutions, driving real impact. We continue to enable third-party solutions to integrate with our productivity apps. Microsoft’s Commitments formalize and advance our dedication to Microsoft 365 interoperability. Microsoft will maintain our add-in model, allowing communication and collaboration solution providers to access Microsoft 365 and Teams in the same ways as other software development companies that provide add-ins to Microsoft 365 and Teams. Microsoft will maintain the AppSource marketplace as a distribution channel for these add-ins. In addition, to better serve our shared customers, Microsoft will continue to enable other solution providers to embed Microsoft’s Office Web Applications directly within their own solutions through the Microsoft Document Collaboration Partner Program (MDCPP). Continue reading here138Views0likes0CommentsBuild expertise, earn recognition, and drive transformation with Microsoft skilling
At Microsoft, we know that every innovation journey starts with the right skills. Our goal is to make your skilling experience streamlined and effective, so you spend less time searching for resources and more time innovating. We have designed the Partner Skilling Hub as a central portal where you can build new capabilities, accelerate organizational growth, and learn how to set your solutions apart and create meaningful customer outcomes. With advanced search and filters by category, solution area, and skill level, you can quickly find live events, self-paced courses, and training opportunities tailored to your needs. Below are just some of the skilling resources available to you through this new portal so you can spend less time searching and more time innovating. Continue reading here64Views1like0CommentsPartner Blog | Security, growth, and trust: Introducing the FY26 Security solution plays
With cybersecurity threats becoming more frequent and complex, one question underpins every conversation we have with our Microsoft partners and customers: how do we keep our data and systems safe while driving innovation? That’s the challenge we’ve committed to tackling with the Secure Future Initiative (SFI), and it’s why we recently introduced SFI patterns and practices to support partners and customers as they turn their security learnings into action. As part of our commitment, we’ve been consistently reinforcing our AI-first security platform—which spans identity, threat protection, data security, and compliance—so our customers can safely and confidently innovate with AI. And our partners play a critical role in customer success. With over a million customers already using Microsoft Security solutions, there’s a significant opportunity for Microsoft partners like you to further differentiate your business and grow. Our extensive threat intelligence gives us visibility into more than 84 trillion security signals daily, as well as a deeper understanding of the evolving threat landscape and how our solutions can better protect customers. Add in your proven capabilities, plus those of our 15,000 partners with specialized security expertise, 3 and we’re more prepared than ever to secure our future together. Continue reading here168Views1like0CommentsPartner Blog | Cloud & AI Platforms series part 1: Capturing the market opportunity
Across industries, organizations are racing to modernize, unify data, and embrace AI. At the center of this transformation are Microsoft partners, guiding customers through disruption and redefining what’s possible. With more than 150 million developers building on GitHub, 13 million apps running on Azure, and over 70,000 organizations innovating with Azure AI Foundry, the ecosystem is creating new ways to reimagine business processes and deliver AI-powered outcomes. This momentum is reshaping entire markets. AI adoption is expanding margins, sparking new waves of customer investment, and opening opportunities of unprecedented scale: a projected $777 billion SME market by FY26 (Microsoft, based on IDC research), a $592 billion enterprise market driving large-scale cloud and AI adoption, and a $311 billion SMB opportunity representing nearly all global businesses. Businesses that seize this opportunity are becoming Frontier Firms: organizations embedding AI into every layer of their operations. They aren’t just streamlining—they are reinventing customer engagement, enriching employee experiences, securing their infrastructure, and accelerating innovation. Continue reading here84Views1like0CommentsPartner Blog | How systems integrators are scaling innovation with Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents
Imagine a workplace where AI agents don’t just support your team, they transform how tasks get done, unlocking new levels of creativity, speed, and impact. That future isn’t on the horizon, it’s here. According to Microsoft’s latest Work Trend Index Annual Report, nearly half of leaders say their companies are already using agents to fully automate workflows or processes across departments and functions. This shift is not just about efficiency, it’s about reimagining how work gets done using the latest AI innovations, and our systems integrator (SI) partners are leading the charge. Across industries, SIs are introducing intelligent agents that streamline operations, boost productivity, and create entirely new customer experiences. These aren’t experiments; they’re high-impact solutions delivering measurable results. And behind many of them are Microsoft 365 Copilot, agentic AI, and a deep partnership with Microsoft. Continue reading here81Views2likes0Comments