Partner Blog | Introducing Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite
Frontier Firms—those who adopt an AI-first approach as a core part of their business strategy—are shaping the future of work, which is increasingly fueled by agentic AI. As customers move toward Frontier Transformation, you can help them seize the agentic moment with the premium Microsoft 365 E7 plan, generally available on May 1, 2026. Microsoft 365 E7 is the Frontier Suite, designed for a human-led, agent-operated enterprise, turning human intent into AI action that functions securely and at scale. To accomplish this, Microsoft 365 E7 includes access to Microsoft Agent 365—the control plane to govern and scale agents. Microsoft 365 E7 bundles Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Entra Suite, and Agent 365 to serve customers who are ready to scale AI with governance and security. This means your customers will have AI-powered productivity apps with advanced security and AI capabilities, grounded in intelligence and trust. You can help your customers make the most of the agentic AI opportunity and unlock new monetization streams with the premium Microsoft 365 E7 plan. Starting on April 1, 2026, to accelerate Microsoft 365 E5 to Microsoft 365 E7 upsell and Agent 365 adoption, Copilot + Power Accelerate will include Agent 365 across Immersion Briefings, Envisioning and proof of concept (PoC) engagements, and Deployment Accelerators. Microsoft 365 E7 and Agent 365 will also be included as eligible workloads for core tier one strategic product accelerators and growth levers in Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) incentives. The AI future is here. Encourage your customers to upgrade to Microsoft 365 E7 so they can move faster and deploy AI with confidence. Read more in our blog postLand Your Offer - Anatomy of Revenue Generating Partner Offer - Part 1 - Copilot in 30
Copilot in 30: A Ready-Made Marketplace Offer to Grow Your SMB Practice Thirty days. Twenty-five users. One repeatable offer that turns AI curiosity into a long-term customer relationship. Small and medium businesses know AI matters. What they lack is a trusted guide and a low-risk way to start. Copilot in 30 gives you both: a $0, 25-user, 30-day Microsoft 365 Copilot Business trial from Microsoft, wrapped in a structured journey that only a partner can deliver. Package it as a Microsoft Marketplace offer and you have a scalable on-ramp to every SMB customer in your base — and to the managed services that follow. Start Here: Why Publishing on Microsoft Marketplace Matters Microsoft Marketplace is Microsoft's partner-focused business platform, designed to help you reach more customers and simplify how you sell. A published offer gives your practice a permanent, discoverable storefront in the place customers already look for Copilot help. More importantly, an offer turns your expertise into something repeatable. Instead of scoping every engagement from scratch, you define the journey once — activities, timeline, deliverables — and run it across dozens of customers. Professional service and managed service offer types are available in Partner Center, so the same offer can carry both the 30-day journey and what comes after it. The SMB Opportunity Hiding in Plain Sight SMB customer segment is still early in their AI journey. These are organisations with 300 or fewer users on Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard or Premium — typically without an in-house AI team. That combination is exactly where partners win: high demand, limited internal capacity, and a customer base large enough that a well-designed, repeatable offer scales far beyond what bespoke projects can. Why Copilot Is the Right First AI Step for SMBs Microsoft 365 Copilot Business is the cost-effective Copilot add-on built for SMB customers, delivering the same capabilities as Microsoft 365 Copilot inside the apps their people already use — Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. No platform overhaul, minimal training, immediate relevance. Copilot is also the on-ramp. Once a team works confidently with Copilot, the natural next steps are agents, automated workflows and Copilot Cowork — each one deepening the customer's dependence on the partner who guided them there. Meet Copilot in 30: 25 Users, 30 Days, $0 Copilot in 30 is a limited-time, CSP partner-led Microsoft 365 Copilot Business trial for SMB customers with fewer than 300 employees. The essentials: What the customer gets: 25 Microsoft 365 Copilot Business seats for 30 days at $0, transacted through CSP New Commerce (Product ID CFQ7TTC0MM8R · SKU 006Z) Who qualifies: Customers on Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard or Premium with no paid Microsoft 365 Copilot today — one trial per customer How long it runs: Available to transact until 31 December 2026 What happens at Day 30: The trial auto-converts to a paid subscription unless renewal settings are changed, with a 7-day cancellation window What Microsoft provides: A launch kit, campaign materials, setup guidance, the Copilot Success Planner and conversion guidance Microsoft supplies the licences and the assets. The offer — and the customer relationship — is yours. Your Role: The Guide Who Turns a Trial Into a Habit A trial alone rarely changes behaviour. A guided trial does. Your job across the 30 days is to make sure 25 people experience real value in real work, and that the sponsor can see it. Before Day 0 — pick the right customers, become "Customer Zero" by using Copilot in your own business, secure a named sponsor and Copilot admin, and build a 30-day success plan with agreed measures. Day 0 — transact the trial, set the paid renewal quantity and term, complete admin setup, assign all 25 licences and run the kick-off with starter prompts. Days 1–28 — lead a weekly scenario (Outlook, Teams, Apps, Agents), review Copilot Analytics, re-engage low-activity users and capture proof points in the customer's own words. Days 29–30 — run the outcome and ROI review, confirm the paid offer and open the expansion and consumption conversation. Every touchpoint is partner expertise the customer cannot get from a licence alone — and every one moves the decision at Day 30 from "should we?" to "how much more?" Inside the Offer: Activities, Timeline and Deliverables Below is the full activity plan behind the offer, ready to drop into your own offer description or statement of work. ID Stage Activity Trial day (of 30) Key deliverables — Pre-req Customer eligibility (Copilot Business trial) Before Day 0 Active M365 Business base licence; no paid M365 Copilot; one $0 trial per customer; CSP New Commerce transactable; offer open to 31 Dec 2026 I1 Identify Build the prioritised target list Pre-trial Tier A/B target list from ASPX and Cloud Ascent; 50–300 eligible seats I2 Identify Confirm eligibility and trial fit Pre-trial Eligibility check: M365 Business base licence, no paid Copilot, one trial I3 Identify Launch the acquisition campaign Pre-trial Campaign email sent; briefing delivered; responses triaged into pipeline I4 Identify Be Customer Zero: complete microskilling Pre-trial Microskilling complete; internal Copilot experience; team briefed P1 Plan Confirm sponsor and success measures Pre-trial Named sponsor and admin; 25 trial users; agreed success measures P2 Plan Build the 30-day success plan Pre-trial Personalised Success Planner output; weekly scenarios; admin and user views P3 Plan Confirm technical and compliance readiness Pre-trial Minimum requirements verified; data and compliance review; blocker log A1 Activate Transact the trial in CSP New Commerce Day 0 25-seat, 30-day, $0 trial ordered (CFQ7TTC0MM8R · SKU 006Z) A2 Activate Configure the paid renewal settings Day 0 Renewal quantity, term and billing set; Cowork usage-based billing if in scope A3 Activate Complete admin setup and assign licences Day 0 Recommended settings on; 25 licences assigned (starts the clock) A4 Activate Run the kick-off and share starter prompts Day 0 Kick-off email; starter prompts; four-week prompt series scheduled X1 Experience Week 1 · Outlook — catch up and communicate Days 1–7 Week 1 prompts landed; first-week activation rate reviewed X2 Experience Week 2 · Teams — meetings that run themselves Days 8–14 Copilot Analytics checkpoint; recaps adopted; low-activity users re-engaged X3 Experience Week 3 · Apps — create in minutes Days 15–21 App scenarios and proof points; week 3 training gate before day 30 X4 Experience Week 4 · Agents — unlock the next level Days 22–28 Role-built agents trialled; 30-day usage trends from the admin centre C1 Convert Outcome review, paid offer and expansion plan Days 29–30 ROI review; 50-seat offer confirmed in 7 days; wave 2 plan; consumption conversation opened Land Your Offer: What One Customer Is Worth The table below is the revenue anatomy of one Copilot in 30 engagement — and it shows that the money is not in the trial, but in what the trial sets up. Item Value Detail Offer duration 30 days Trial clock runs Days 1–30; identify, plan and Day 0 setup precede it Trial offer 25 seats M365 Copilot Business · 30 days · $0 · one per customer · to 31 Dec 2026 CSP incentive — 25 seats (K) $0.32K 5.0% direct bill (2.5% M365 CSP Core + 2.5% Strategic Product Accelerator Tier 1) on 25 M365 Copilot Business seats x $21/mo† ≈ $6.3K/yr; indirect reseller 2.5% ≈ $0.16K Conversion target 50 seats Lead with 50 paid seats at conversion; sets up the wave 2 expansion plan CSP incentive — 50 seats (K) $0.63K 5.0% direct bill (Core + SPA Tier 1) on 50 M365 Copilot Business seats x $21/mo† ≈ $12.6K/yr; indirect reseller 2.5% ≈ $0.32K Frontier Accelerate deployment funding (K) $2.5K Microsoft Commercial Incentives funding for the Copilot deployment engagement when the conversion lands with 50 paid seats†; funds the deployment and adoption work that leads into managed services † Illustrative estimates from the offer plan. Confirm current incentive rates, funding and eligibility in Partner Center. Three streams stack on top of each other: CSP incentive — earned on every paid Copilot Business seat from the moment the trial converts, and growing again when the customer expands from 25 to 50 seats. Frontier Accelerate deployment funding — $2,500 available when you lead the conversion with 50 paid seats, paying for the deployment work that makes the expansion stick. Managed services — the recurring engagement described in Day 31 and Beyond, which is where the largest and most durable share of revenue lives. Now multiply. Everything above is the anatomy of a single customer. Landing the offer means running it across every eligible customer in your base — and you don't need to guess who they are. Partner Center's growth insights reporting, available through the AI Business Solutions & Security Insights (ASPX) dashboard, gives you account-level Copilot eligibility, seat whitespace, free Copilot Chat usage and adoption signals for the customers you already manage. To turn that export into a ranked target list, my colleague Brian O'Shea has built a Copilot for 30 Power BI dashboard that sits over your ASPX data and scores each customer on a 0–100 priority scale from eligible seats, whitespace, free-to-paid potential and opportunity signals — so your first cohort is the ten customers most likely to convert, not the first ten who reply. How the Offer Fits Together: From Trial Inputs to Proof of Value The offer runs left to right in three layers: Trial inputs — 25 users, 30 days, $0 CSP trial SKU; an SMB with 50–300 eligible Microsoft 365 seats; no paid Copilot today; a Business Basic, Standard or Premium base; one trial per customer to 31 Dec 2026; a named sponsor and Copilot admin; auto-conversion to paid unless changed. Five stages — Identify (I1–I4), Plan (P1–P3), Activate (A1–A4), Experience (X1–X4) and Convert (C1, T1, T2, W2). Each stage produces a concrete output the sponsor can see. Proof of value — a prioritised list and campaign responses; agreed use cases and success measures; a provisioned trial with 25 licences assigned; weekly usage from the Microsoft 365 admin centre; adoption proof points in the customer's words; paid conversion confirmed in Partner Center — and a named wave 2 expansion beyond the first 25. The highlighted activities — admin setup (A3), Week 4 agents (X4), 25→50 paid seats (T1), Frontier Accelerate funding (T2) and the wave 2 expansion plan (W2) — are where the engagement stops being a project and starts becoming an ongoing relationship: managed services, agent build-out, Copilot Studio and Copilot Cowork follow-on once the trial converts. Day 31 and Beyond: Managed Services That Keep Delivering The end of the trial is the start of the real engagement. Package these as standing services in your offer: Copilot adoption management — monthly Copilot Analytics business reviews, prompt and scenario refreshes, champion programme and onboarding for each new wave of users Licence and expansion management — take the customer from 25 to 50 paid seats and on to wave 2, aligning renewals, terms and billing as the footprint grows Agent build-out — design, build and maintain role-based agents with Copilot Studio for sales, service, finance and operations scenarios surfaced in Week 4 Copilot Cowork enablement and governance — introduce consumption-based Cowork scenarios, set budgets and cost controls, and report on usage each month Security, compliance and readiness — keep data protection, permissions and governance in step with expanding AI use, including a path to Microsoft 365 Business Premium Quarterly value reviews — refresh success measures, capture new proof points and agree the next expansion plan with the sponsor Each of these is a recurring, outcome-based service rather than a one-off project — and each keeps you positioned as the customer's AI partner as their needs grow. Ready to Build Your Copilot in 30 Offer? Download the Copilot in 30 launch kit and Microsoft 365 Copilot Partner FAQ from the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. Be Customer Zero — run Copilot and the microskilling series inside your own business first. Publish your offer in Partner Center as a professional service (the 30-day journey) with a managed service follow-on (Day 31 and beyond). Pick your first cohort — customers with 50–300 seats on a Microsoft 365 Business plan and no paid Copilot today. Transact your first trial through CSP New Commerce (Product ID CFQ7TTC0MM8R · SKU 006Z) and set the paid renewal on Day 0. Book the Day 30 review before Day 1 — so the conversion and expansion conversation is already on the calendar. The window closes on 31 December 2026. The customers are already in your base. Publish the offer and start the clock. Resources From AI curiosity to Copilot adoption in 30 days — Microsoft Partner Blog Copilot in 30 Launch Kit — partner GTM playbook, customer trial guide, invitation and weekly prompt emails, admin setup guidance Build Your 30-Day Copilot Success Plan Copilot Success Planner Walkthrough video Partner Skilling Hub | Microskilling for Copilot in 30 Power BI Dashboard that integrates with your ASPXi Partner Data · By Brian O'Shea Create compelling customer business casesPartner Blog | Expanded partner benefits are now available: What’s new in February 2026
Expanded partner benefits are now available across the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. These updates reflect continued investment in the tools, resources, and support partners rely on to build, differentiate, and grow, and they incorporate feedback we hear consistently across the ecosystem. If you read our January post about planning ahead for the February refresh, this is the follow-up: the new benefits are now rolling out, and partners with eligible offers will find them in Partner Center as they become available. What’s new You’ll find a range of meaningful additions designed to empower you to move faster with AI, support security needs, and improve go-to-market execution. Highlights include: Copilot additions in select offers: The FY26 refresh introduces new Copilot-related benefits across parts of the program, including Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, and Microsoft Dragon Copilot (per user) in select partner offers where available. Security benefits expansion: Security-focused benefits have been broadened, including additions such as Microsoft Defender Suite, Microsoft Entra Suite, and Microsoft Intune Suite in select offerings. Azure credit updates: Azure benefits are being updated across multiple offers, including new additions and increases in value for certain cloud benefits. These credits are designed to support solution development, testing, and expansion of your practice. Go-to-market resources: As partners continue to access marketing benefits and resources through the program, Microsoft is simplifying discovery and execution—so you can bring campaigns to market with less friction. Continue reading herePartner Blog | Transforming customer engagement into growth with Copilot and agentic AI
For Frontier Firms, every customer engagement is an opportunity to drive transformation. Each interaction creates space to unlock innovation, accelerate outcomes, and deliver lasting value. We’re entering an era where intelligence is becoming an on-demand utility. Just as the cloud transformed access to computing power, AI is now embedded into the flow of work. Customers expect insight and action in real time. They want faster results, stronger security, and continuous innovation. Meeting those expectations requires more than people alone; it requires an ecosystem that can scale intelligence and deliver outcomes with speed and precision. Microsoft partners are at the center of that transformation. You are the architect of change, realizing customer ambition with a full stack of technology. Through the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, you have access to the technology, skilling, and go-to-market resources that make this transformation achievable. Together, we’re enabling every organization to operate with greater intelligence and agility than ever before. The journey to Frontier transformation AI transformation doesn’t happen in a single project. It’s a sustained journey that moves customers from pilots to full-scale adoption and long-term value. This is what we call always-on selling, where every engagement builds trust, adoption, and expansion. We’ve seen the impact of this approach firsthand at Microsoft. By embedding Copilot into daily workflows, our own Customer Zero experience increased revenue per seller by 9.4 percent and boosted deal closures by 20 percent. Continue reading herePartner 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 hereAnnouncing the Public Preview of Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud for Azure VMware Solution
We are excited to announce the public preview of Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud for Azure VMware Solution. This Azure service offers native-like integration of Pure Storage's innovative enterprise-grade fully managed block Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) with Azure VMWare Solution (AVS) aiding seamless VMware migrations to the cloud along with scalability, simplicity and data resiliency. Azure Native Integrations enable you to easily provision, manage, and tightly integrate independent software vendor (ISV) software and services on Azure. By leveraging the power of Azure, Pure Storage Cloud Service offers you many benefits, including scaling flexibility, native Azure experience, unified billing, and cost-effectiveness. You can easily discover and sign up for this via the Azure Marketplace. "We’re pleased to see Pure Storage’s integration with Microsoft Azure Native service. Through this collaboration, Pure and Microsoft can better serve customer needs by enabling them to provision, use and manage Pure Storage on Azure just like other Azure services. With this integrated offering, Pure and Microsoft are helping customers to quickly leverage Pure's enterprise-grade storage with Azure cloud services securely to open up a whole new set of possibilities for customers bringing enterprise-scale environments to the cloud. Together, Pure and Microsoft are helping customers save time and operational overhead while driving innovation." - Scott Hunter, Vice President Product Management, Microsoft Developer Division. Gartner report from Sept 2024 states that by 2028, consumption-based storage as a service (STaaS) will replace over 33% of enterprise storage capital expenditure (capex), up from less than 15% in 2024. 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. They are a 11x consequent leaders in Gartner® Magic Quadrant report for Primary Storage Platforms, with highest rating in Execution & Vision. Thus proving why, they are undoubtedly the Enterprise favorites! Some key customers for Pure Storage include Meta, ServiceNow, AC Milan, Comcast and many more! Fig 1: Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage, Sep 2024, Gartner Inc. How will Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud for AVS help me? Fully managed block-storage-as-a-service solution, providing decoupled scalability and flexibility across Compute and Storage solutions. Optimized Total Cost of Operations (TCO) up to 40% with data reduction and compression tools. Seamless data mobility and migrations of VMware workloads across on-premises, hybrid and multi-cloud solutions to the Azure cloud. Enterprise-grade Data protection and Data resilience, with solutions such as Hybrid Disaster Recovery support in the roadmap. Get started with Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud for Azure VMware Solution Setup and subscribe to your Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud, available easily in the Azure Marketplace. You can start your journey free of cost and pay as you use the service. Look for “Pure Storage Cloud" in the Azure Marketplace and sign up via Contact Me button to show your interest for the preview. Fig 2: Contact Me offering on Azure Marketplace Once you have been allowlisted for the preview, you can also look for it using the search bar on Azure Portal or visit the marketplace on Azure portal to see the offer in your list of private plans. Fig 3: Searching for Azure Native Pure Storage via Azure portal Pure Storage in Marketplace private plans via Azure portal Provisioning a Storage Pool via Azure: Follow the instructions in the QuickStart to easily spin up your Pure Storage resource. Once you have created the Pure Storage resource on Azure, follow the simple steps in the Microsoft Learn docs, or navigate directly via the Overview blade to create Storage pools. 2. Quick-and-easy Connect to AVS: You can now easily connect your Pure Storage with your Azure VMWare Solution (AVS) using the “Connect” button in Storage pool. Resources Subscribe to the “Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud for Azure VMware Solution” available as Pay as You Go via Contact me in the Azure Marketplace. Create an Azure Native Pure Resource and storage pools via the service, see QuickStart: Get started with Azure Native Pure Storage Cloud Service in Microsoft Docs. To learn more, check out the Pure blog and Pure’s Press release. Learn more about the Pure Cloud Block Store and how to use it with AVS here.Keep pace with the latest in AI!
Check out our fresh new video series, where leaders from Microsoft show their creative side as they share the latest updates in AI, in a manner that's both educative and fun! Watch the videos, share them with your teams, and bookmark aka.ms/AIOnTheGo to stay updated!Partner Blog | Partner Center Technical Corner: December 2024 edition
Welcome to the December edition of Partner Center Technical Corner. This month’s highlights include a closer look at the new Partner Center AI assistant, important security updates, and a recap of recently released capabilities. As always, you can find the most up-to-date technical roadmap and essential Partner Center resources at the end of the blog. Spotlight: Partner Center AI assistant (preview) Partner Center AI assistant (preview) enhances your Partner Center experience with the power of generative AI, offering tailored insights and intelligent suggestions to transform your everyday tasks in Partner Center into opportunities for growth and innovation. This feature is currently available in preview to partners using the English version of Partner Center. AI assistant (preview) is continually being enhanced to dive deeper into workspaces and provide an individualized experience. It is seamlessly integrated into your experience, continuing your conversations as you navigate through Partner Center. You can ask the AI assistant for help with details on a customer’s Microsoft Azure usage estimate, earnings insights over a given period, or assistance with the various memberships we offer, among many other capabilities. Responses are pulled from a rich array of sources, including Microsoft product documentation, partner program guides, and partner-specific information in Partner Center. For example, on membership queries, the AI assistant answers specific questions around the Solutions Partner designation by reviewing program rules, analyzing underlying metrics, and providing a detailed, data-driven response. The assistant can also troubleshoot missing attribution of employees in skilling scores or provide contextual recommendations to help you qualify for a Solutions Partner designation. Partner feedback: One of our preview users shared, “This is really helpful! And I am very glad to see that our AI friend will know the payment status of claims IDs now.” As needed, partners can initiate the support ticket creation process through the AI assistant panel. Continue reading here
