News
Microsoft Phasing Out Action Packs, Gold and Silver Benefits by 2025
- By Gladys Rama
- August 13, 2024
Microsoft has set an end date for several legacy partner benefits: Jan. 22, 2025.
On that date, new subscription sales of the Microsoft Action Pack and the Microsoft Learning Action Pack will stop. Action Packs have long been a key benefit of Microsoft's channel program, offering partners affordable or free access to Microsoft software, Azure cloud credits, product support and more.
Access to Gold and Silver competency benefits will also end on that date. For years, these competency designations have helped Microsoft partners distinguish themselves in a sprawling market, promote their technical proficiencies, access higher levels of Microsoft support and participate in co-sell opportunities.
Partners that decide to renew or purchase these legacy benefits by Jan. 21 will be able to access them for another 12 months, starting on their purchase/renewal date.
Microsoft announced the January benefits deadline in a blog post last week, though it began phasing out the Silver and Gold badges nearly two years ago, when it officially replaced the old Microsoft Partner Network with the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program (which was in turn replaced by the current Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program).
"Those with an eligible active legacy silver/gold purchase status as of January 21, 2025, will be eligible for the remainder of the FY25 CSP incentive term (January 22, 2025, to September 30, 2025)," said Microsoft in the blog, attributed to Julie Sanford, vice president of Partner GTM, Programs & Experiences.
With the deprecations, Microsoft is making way for more modern benefits packages, Sanford indicated. To that end, on Jan. 22, Microsoft will add "over 20 in-demand product licenses to our benefits packages," she said, including licenses for GitHub, Defender for Endpoint and various Copilot products.
These new licenses will be applied to the three benefits packages that Microsoft launched earlier this year: Partner Launch Benefits, Partner Success Core Benefits and Partner Success Expanded Benefits. However, they will not be added to the legacy benefits that are being phased out. This means partners that decide to renew or purchase Action Pack subscriptions or Gold/Silver competency benefits before the deprecation deadline will not be able to access the new licenses unless they also sign up for one of the new benefits packages.
"Therefore, we encourage every partner to purchase a partner benefits package today to access the new benefits as soon as they are released on January 22, 2025," wrote Sanford. "There are no requirements to purchase, and your partner admin can perform the transaction in Partner Center."
To clarify the update path for partners, Sanford recommended either the Partner Success Core Benefits or Partner Success Expanded Benefits packages for current Action Pack subscribers, and Partner Success Expanded Benefits for legacy gold/silver partners.
More information on each of the benefits packages is available here.