Highlights –

  • Significant changes are coming around to certify and provide the scoring to resellers.
  • The new program will focus on how proficiently partners can provide various solutions aligned with the Microsoft Cloud.

Microsoft has been pushing and encouraging its reseller partners to focus on cloud offerings for about a decade now. However, on March 16, 2022, it announced an upcoming partner program change to bring the focus front and center.

Microsoft officials said the current Partner Network comprises over 4,00,000 global organizations worldwide. The partners act as Microsoft’s primary salesforce even though Microsoft continues to compete with them in some areas, especially when anything involves large customers.

The tech giant also announced that it would be changing the name of its program from “Microsoft Partner Network” to “Microsoft Cloud Partner Program” this October. The officials will also be changing the areas where the partners will be certified, qualified, and scored as part of what officials are saying to be the “first material change to Microsoft Partner Network in 15 years.”

There is part of the partner program where Microsoft did not announce changes – to the chagrin of many upset partners – around its ongoing transition to its New Commerce Experience (NCE).  Already, there have been complaints from partners in public and private about many of the changes rolling out via NCE.

Today’s changes in the Microsoft Partner Program were focused on delivering a unified cloud front. The current program wheels around a competency-based model. The new program will focus on how proficiently partners can provide various solutions aligned with the Microsoft Cloud. The Microsoft Cloud is what officials call the commercial cloud. It includes various cloud-based offerings such as Microsoft 365, Office 365, and Azure. Some of the areas of expertise that partners can focus on include Data and amp; AI (Azure), Security, Infrastructure (Azure), Digital and amp; App Innovation (Azure), and Modern Work.

Microsoft’s new Partner Program will no longer include a baseline “member” status, advanced specializations, and Silver and Gold competencies.  The new program will also phase out the existing Competencies and replace them with two new qualifying levels: Solutions and Specialist/Expert.

Much to the displeasure of many of its current partners, Microsoft still has not provided further information about its NCE initiative, which it is in the midst of being implemented.

The NCE model, which streamlines the way partners sell and license Microsoft’s products, is being implemented across various platforms such as Windows 365, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft 365. Under the NCE, partners, distributed, and end-users will be required to pay annual subscription fees instead of monthly contracts. If a customer goes out of business, the partners will be left with the remaining licenses they agreed to purchase.

Experts’ view

“My larger customers don’t know what their counts will be 12 months from now – I would like Microsoft to tell us how many of their customers actually know what their counts will be – or what their IT environment will look like – in 2 years,” said Christopher Regan, Managing Partner with Partner B and amp;R Business Solutions. “I am yet to meet one customer that appreciates this. As many have said ‘things were working, why did they have to go and change things and mess it all up?!’”

Another Microsoft partner, Nick Whittome, a former Microsoft MVP, MD, and owner of NTES Limited, recently tweeted about his dissatisfaction with NCE.

“Tying Partners, Distributors and end users into annual contracts that can go up, but not down, with no protection for liquidation etc. I’ve never had so many requests for going back to Google. What a mess!

“Currently, as a MSP (Managed Service Provider), I have my own legal people reviewing the whole liquidation thing. How can a distributor and gt; Microsoft tie a MSP into a contract in the event of an end user going out of business. Liquidation / insolvency / bankruptcy (sp) laws are pretty clear.”