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Microsoft To Pour Millions into Partner Incentives, Azure and Security in FY2025

Microsoft's inaugural MCAPS Start for Partners event took place this week, marking the beginning of its fiscal 2025.

Besides honoring this year's Partner of the Year winners, the virtual event gave Microsoft a stage to announce its various product sales initiatives for the coming year, serving as a useful bellwether for its legions of partners. Included in those initiatives are significant funding increases in the areas of security, cloud and AI.

Microsoft is "boosting our strategic cybersecurity investments," wrote Microsoft's chief partner office Nicole Dezen in a blog post Thursday recapping MCAPS. "Security is a key priority and we're investing $90M in incremental investments in FY25."

The company is also giving more money to its Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners to sell its E5 license, which provides organizations a higher level of security protection than other licenses.

However, CSP incentives in general are getting a boost, including for sales of the lower-level E3 license. "[W]ith our incentives, you can earn up to$120K for Microsoft 365 E3 workloads per customer," said Dezen.

Microsoft's Azure partner-focused programs also stand to benefit. The Azure Migrate and Modernize program will see a funding increase of 50 percent in the coming fiscal year, per Dezen. Meanwhile, the Azure Innovate program will receive an additional $150 million for pre- and post-sales partner activities.

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft intends to shower the centerpiece of its AI efforts -- the Copilot family of products -- with more money in fiscal 2025, amounting to a tenfold increase over 2024. There are programmatic improvements, too.

"Partners are essential to the Copilot customer journey," Dezen said. "That is why we've developed a comprehensive set of pre-and post-sale engagements to guide partner execution in alignment with our existing go-to-market motions."

Microsoft is fielding questions from partners on July 18 in a live "Ask Me Anything" event. Interested partners can register for the event here.

About the Author

Gladys Rama (@GladysRama3) is the editorial director of Converge360.

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