In February, Microsoft shared an ambitious vision to continue innovating as a technology provider and to improve the experience for solution developers and service providers when engaging with Microsoft. Our partners are delivering more innovation in AI, expanding their business through more co-selling opportunities, and leveraging distribution options through our commercial marketplaces such as Azure Marketplace and AppSource.
Today, we’re very excited to begin rolling out an initial set of platform changes which open new opportunities for our partners to go to market with Microsoft. This work sets the stage for more enhancements coming this winter and spring that continue to drive partner business acceleration. Get a sneak peek on our public marketplace roadmap.
Microsoft makes Azure Marketplace offers available to CSP channel partners
Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partner program is the largest channel program in the industry with more than 60,000 channel partners serving millions of Microsoft customers worldwide. Starting today, ISVs can choose to make their transactable Azure Marketplace offer available for distribution through the CSP channel. Partners in the CSP program will be able to sell, deploy, and bundle Azure services with Azure-optimized ISV software from the marketplace to better serve customers and grow their managed services business.
Within Partner Center’s new marketplace page, CSP partners can discover, evaluate, and learn about all the Azure Marketplace solutions available through the channel. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscriptions can be established through the standard purchase workflow in Partner Center, and Azure resources such as VM or container images may be deployed and procured through the Azure management portal. All of the transactions will now be available on a consolidated invoice making legal, billing, and account support much simpler.
Publisher partners can learn how to create or update offerings for CSP channel availability.
CSP partners can also explore the marketplace page in Partner Center.
Screenshot of new marketplace discovery experience in Partner Center under the “Sell” navigation pane
Expanding the market opportunity for partners with new geographies and business models
As customer adoption for marketplaces continues to grow around the world, we expanded our global marketplace reach. We are pleased to share that Azure Marketplace has expanded coverage to 53 new countries, allowing partners now to sell into a total of 141 countries with 17 currencies.
Last year, we launched SaaS in Azure Marketplace with the ability to pay per month. As enterprise adoption of SaaS continues to grow, customers are looking for a variety of billing options. Today, we are pleased to highlight a new annual billing option for SaaS offers. We are also releasing a new set of tools to reduce procurement complexity for customers and ISV partners. For example, the new standard contract allows ISVs to leverage a unified and common set of terms and conditions for end customers.
Have questions or feedback? See the new or updated resources below. We also invite you to join us in the Microsoft Partner Community for discussion!
Publisher resources
- Become a publisher
- Publisher Guide for Partners
- New: Publish Offerings for Resellers
- New: Marketplace Roadmap
- Azure Marketplace FAQs
- Marketplace Support for Publishers