Partner Blog | What's new for Microsoft partners: October 2025 edition
Your voice is instrumental in shaping the future of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. In our latest quarterly update, we share key enhancements driven by partner feedback, along with expert insights, new skilling resources, and the latest benefits to help you grow, innovate, and lead in the AI era. Continue reading here!Microsoft Blog | Microsoft Ignite: Shaping what’s next with our partner ecosystem
In just a few weeks, we’ll gather at Microsoft Ignite 2025 to focus on four pillars that define successful AI transformation: improving employee experiences, reinventing business processes, deepening customer connections, and bending the curve of industry innovation. Across every sector, organizations are asking how to realize these outcomes with speed and confidence, and Microsoft partners are the ones who can make it possible. Join us in San Francisco or online November 18–21 to see the latest innovations, connect with Microsoft leaders and peers, and learn how to deliver even greater impact for your customers. Registration is open, and there is still time to reserve your spot today. What to expect at Microsoft Ignite Learn how to unlock the most value from your Microsoft partnership through the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. Continue reading herePartner Blog | Strengthening security and customer trust with technical and API changes
Staying ahead of evolving security standards and compliance requirements is about more than just protecting your organization. It also positions you to deepen customer trust, generate new business opportunities, and accelerate your ability to deliver high-value solutions, including AI transformation. To support that, we are introducing updates to Partner Center and across APIs your teams use every day. These changes are designed to keep you ahead of regulatory and technical requirements, reduce risk, and avoid disruption to your operations and customer transactions. We are also extending some effective dates for these updates to ensure you have the time to prepare. With these enhanced security standards in place, you can lead with confidence on the AI frontier and give your teams the tools they need to be prepared, protected, and positioned to stand out. Recent improvements to keep your business secure, compliant—and growing Over the last few months, we’ve released updates to strengthen security and streamline processes: Continue reading herePartner Blog | Becoming Frontier: Insights, resources, and partner opportunities
Across industries and job functions, Microsoft partners aren’t just transforming the way organizations work today, they're shaping what’s next. Together, we are powering the rise of the Frontier Firm. Structured around on-demand intelligence and powered by hybrid teams of humans and agents, Frontier Firms understand the value of pairing irreplaceable human insight with the power of AI. They embed agents into their workflows, not just as assistants but as essential teammates able to execute tasks under human direction. That’s how they move faster, operate with greater agility, and generate value in ways that traditional methods can’t match. Our 2025 Work Trend Index Annual Report surveyed 31,000 people across 31 countries and analyzed trillions of productivity signals. The data shows that this shift—moving from experimenting with AI to building entire businesses around it—is already underway. 82% of leaders say it’s a pivotal moment to rethink strategy and operations. And in the next two to five years, we expect every organization will begin its journey to becoming a Frontier Firm. Microsoft partners are central to this opportunity, enabling customers to transform, modernize how they work, and activate the potential of AI. Continue reading herePartner Blog | Partner Center Technical Corner: September 2025 edition
Welcome to the September edition of Partner Center Technical Corner. This month, we’re highlighting new investments in partner enablement, essential security enhancements, and a recap of recent releases. As always, you’ll find the latest roadmap and key Partner Center resources at the end of this post. Advancing partner success: SMB growth and AI transformation Empowering SMB growth through Azure and Security designations: The introduction of dedicated small and medium-sized business (SMB) paths for Solutions Partner designations in Azure and Security marks a pivotal shift for smaller partners. Instead of being measured against enterprise-scale benchmarks, partners now have access to thresholds and scoring models that reflect the realities of SMB operations. Progress is visible in the Insights Workspace, and expanded incentives, like Azure Migrate & Modernize and Azure Innovate, are now directly tied to designation attainment. For partners, this means that innovation and customer impact are recognized at every scale, and the path to growth is clearer than ever. For more information, visit: Solutions Partner for Security Solutions Partner for Azure SMB paths to Solutions Partner designations Continue reading article 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.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 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 hereAzure 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!Partner 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 here
