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Microsoft Touts Cost-Saving Benefits of All-in-One Security Solutions

• By Chris Paoli
• July 19, 2022

Microsoft broke down current enterprise security needs and pointed to collaboration being the key to meeting them during the opening day of its Inspire virtual partner event on Tuesday.

Among the needs enterprise customers are looking to fulfill, Microsoft said the reduction in tool sprawl -- the state of having numerous security solutions in place over a single network -- is high on that list. Not only does it reduce complexity and redundancy, but it also drastically decreases average enterprise security costs.

"Microsoft integrates more than 50 different categories across security, compliance, identity, device management and privacy -- and customers save 60 percent on average by leveraging Microsoft's comprehensive security solutions compared to a multi-vendor strategy," said Vasu Jakkal, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Security, Compliance, Identity and Management, in a blog post.

Microsoft's solution: collaboration with partners to help promote Microsoft's full-service security offerings. The company said that by leveraging the expertise of its security partners, enterprises can benefit from expanding the use of their current security software and services to meet the demands of today's security threats.

The company pointed to the recent announcements of its Microsoft Entra and Microsoft Purview offerings as partner opportunities to help bolster enterprise security, while reducing complexity. Entra rolls up the capabilities of Microsoft Azure AD, Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) and Decentralized Identity into one package, while Purview centralizes on-prem and device data protection under one umbrella.

According to Microsoft, these two recent additions, in collaboration with the company's other offerings including Microsoft Endpoint Manager, Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Priva, help to round out Microsoft's comprehensive security strategy by integrating more than 50 security solutions under one roof. Partners can avoid the costs and complexities of multi-vendor solutions by strengthening an enterprise with the tools most already have available to them.

To that end, Microsoft has announced a new partner incentive. Starting Oct 1, those that help enterprises deploy unused security features and services in Microsoft 365 E5 and Azure can be eligible for up to $25,000 per account.

Further, to support the growing need of trusted managed detection and response (MDR) partners, Microsoft announced that a new incentive program for its extended detection and response (XDR) partners is coming soon. Those who work with Microsoft to verify XDR solution compatibility with Microsoft's offerings will be eligible for enhanced APIs and co-marketing opportunities.

Microsoft finished up its Inspire 2022 partner-related security announcements with the recognition of Ernst and Young as its 2022 Security Partner of the Year and Edgile as the 2022 Compliance Partner of the Year.