As the world continues to evolve rapidly, new opportunities for Microsoft partners are consistently emerging.
For 2026, here are my thoughts on where Microsoft partners should be focused. The core here is less about technology (that’s better handled by technology experts) and more about how to successfully run your business.
- Find ways to add extra value for your customers. Your perceived value must be clear to the customer. If you only resell licenses or hardware, it will be challenging to defend your margins, so make sure you build your business by adding value with fair margins.
- AI is leading the way for both your customers and your operations. Make sure to embrace AI internally and welcome new AI-driven tools for software development, support services and marketing. Become "customer zero" and gain additional trustworthiness in conversations with your customers.
- Curate a vertical market and make sure that you have staff knowledgeable in that vertical who can engage in meaningful discussions with customers. People who can understand what’s relevant and what’s needed will be a stepping stone toward elevating you to a strategic partner. This is great for your profitability and your long-term success.
- Don’t be a "jack of all trades, master of none." You should specialize in something rather than trying to be a general supply store. Whatever your specialization, make sure it’s in high demand among your customers so there’s a viable market for your services.
- If you specialize, build partnerships with other specialists to deliver more and better value to your customers. True and long-lasting partnerships deliver strong outcomes for everyone involved. Create coalitions of great partners that enjoy working together. It will be something that both your customers and your CFO will love.
- Watch the bets that Microsoft is making and make sure that you’re aligned with their go-to-markets. It’s far easier to surf on top of these and differentiate your company's offerings rather than to go in the opposite direction. Don’t swim against the tide!
- Invest in marketing and integrate it with sales. Great marketing is a very cost-effective way to feed your sales reps with qualified leads. Don’t be afraid to be a bit heavy on marketing and use AI to help do it better and smarter.
- Go for recurring revenue. Develop meaningful subscription or consumption-based offerings and invest in measuring and improving customer success so that your customers stay forever. Recurring revenue is crucial if you’re selling your company. It also helps if you’re buying others and you’re paying with shares. When the bulk of your revenue comes from recurring revenue, you’ll see a very positive change in how your company performs.
- Consistently update the Microsoft Partner Center portal with your activities and successes. Microsoft pays attention to this and so should you. This should, of course, be an ongoing activity and not a once-a-year endeavor.
- Create your first Microsoft Marketplace listing and ensure it stands out. Don’t forget to regluarly fine-tune it so it becomes a great channel for your business. Create a roadmap to make your offers transactable and ready for multiparty deals. Many partners fail with their listings, but those who have figured it all out are highly successful.
- Don’t forget about your own Web site! Make sure that it’s not outdated with old information, old certifications, old technology names and old press releases or blog posts. Ensure that it truly reflects your current capabilities and feels forward-looking. A common mistake is making your Web site too general and talking about services that are not core to your business. Assign staff to ensure it remains a great store window for your business.
More
Posted by Per Werngren on January 13, 20260 comments
Corporate accounts (CAS), sometimes referred to as larger mid-market companies, are typically defined as those with between 300 and 1,000 employees. It is a segment that lies above SMB and below the enterprise level. There are more than 50,000 companies in the United States that fit the definition of a CAS.
Many partners, including myself, love to have prominent household brands on the customer list because it opens doors to new business. However, it is often challenging for smaller or medium-sized partners to start transacting with these large accounts. You often need to have a bit of luck, and luck should never be confused with having a strategy. Don't say no to enterprise customers, but don't bet the farm on winning them.
More
Posted by Per Werngren on September 16, 20250 comments
It seems that every partner today wants to be an MSP. There are lots of opportunities in this space and the growth is predicted to continue. However, there seems to be confusion around what an MSP actually is. MSPs comes in different sizes, with different focus areas and specializations, and serving different industries. And many partners that are not really MSPs want to label themselves as such, when in reality they're closer to classic professional services companies (i.e., they sell hours in various forms) and often they're solo-entrepreneurs.
More
Posted by Per Werngren on July 02, 20250 comments
Everyone has been talking about AI since ChatGPT was released, but even for years before that, AI has caused plenty of buzz in our industry. But where exactly is the money in AI?
On the cost side, it's quite obvious. Many billions of dollars are being invested in AI by the cloud hyperscalers, different platform companies and everyone else. On the income side, however, it's a little less obvious.
More
Posted by Per Werngren on March 25, 20250 comments
Thank for all the fantastic responses to my post in January where I talked about recurring revenue. This is clearly a topic that everyone loves; everyone is seeking the magic formula for recurring revenue growth. Part of the secret sauce of recurring revenue is that you need to build scale -- and that means volume.
More
Posted by Per Werngren on February 24, 20250 comments
"Don't pay over the odds" was a line I used in the mid-1990s in reference to advertising. Paying over the odds is the most common problem for customers in IT today and many of them are unaware of it. They pay a lot and get far less than they should -- or deserve.
The easiest thing for a cloud customer to do (most of the time) is to look at their Microsoft Azure, AWS or Google Cloud spend and implement a few changes to reduce their monthly bill significantly. If a customer is unoptimized, doing this can often slash costs by as much as a third, and sometimes as much as two-thirds. I will never understand why some customers just let it slide and choose to pay the highest price available by being passive.
More
Posted by Per Werngren on January 22, 20250 comments
I have been exploring and driving business models based on recurring revenue all my career. It started with a business in the early 1990s, when we offered a server-as-a-service. That meant we placed a physical server with Novell NetWare (this was before Microsoft was a major player in this area), printing services and e-mail system at the customer's office. We connected to the server remotely for maintenance and support. Occasionally, we had to send for a technician to fix something that couldn't be fixed remotely, like a hard drive that needed replacing or a power supply issue. Essentially, however, we became that customer's IT department and ran the system for them. Everything was included in the fixed monthly cost.
More
Posted by Per Werngren on January 14, 20250 comments
Many partners that have been around for some time are classified as value-added resellers (VARs). The VAR business model entails working to get the most, biggest and most profitable transactions as possible. Some VARs have a small services arm, where they install, repair and maintain customers' equipment; if they play it right, they can make the bulk of their profits this way. However, a VAR's business is often based on reselling hardware and software, plus the margin that customers will accept. VARs try to add value to their transactions in multiple ways, but ultimately, it is mostly a reselling game.
More
Posted by Per Werngren on September 30, 20240 comments
The AI wave can be seen as hype, something that needs to mature before money can be made from it. At the moment, everyone is thinking about what they can do with AI -- though many have already started to experiment.
Earnings from the big hyperscalers (Microsoft, Google and AWS) weren't driven by AI services as much as the stock market expected, which hurt valuations short-term. Investors expected the AI hype to have translated into higher revenue by now. But this is the time for us all to make investments, to plant the seeds that will give great harvests.
More
Posted by Per Werngren on September 03, 20240 comments
I'm not a software developer; I'm just a guy helping Microsoft partners find their path to success. Nitty-gritty technical conversations have never been my arena.
But even a non-techie like myself sees that AI-driven software development is a revolution. Software development will never be the same again, to the benefit of both customers and partners. And this is where I'm an expert. I love to talk about business transformation and driving better business outcomes.
More
Posted by Per Werngren on February 23, 20240 comments
Probably nobody in our ecosystem has missed the wave of news around AI. Besides the great products we've seen from Microsoft and others, AI has also been widely democratized via ChatGPT, which has really accelerated innovation. In just the year since it hit the scene, ChatGPT has become the engine for multiple solutions that build services on top of it.
At this month's Microsoft Ignite event in Seattle, there was a very strong focus on AI and the marching orders from Microsoft are crystal clear: AI is the chosen path and partners should get on board. But what exactly does a partner play for AI look like?
More
Posted by Per Werngren on November 27, 20230 comments