AI innovation is fuelling growth amongst Microsoft partners, report finds

Microsoft partners are experiencing explosive growth driven by the opportunities in AI, the vendor’s State of Partner Ecosystem report found. Over the past year, the tech giant has rapidly advanced its AI capabilities across cloud services, applications, and developer tools, to enable partners to innovate and deliver AI solutions to customers worldwide. “AI is unlocking profound possibilities across industries, and our partners are at the forefront of this generational shift,” said Toni Townes-Whitley, corporate VP of industry at Microsoft. “We’ve seen a nearly 250 per cent increase in the number of partners transacting with generative AI capabilities in just the last eight months.” To support the AI ecosystem, Microsoft revealed significant enhancements to its AI cloud partner programme, including expanded skilling resources, new product benefits, and innovative designations that help partners differentiate their AI expertise. One key announcement was new “solutions partner with certified software” designations across solution areas like Azure, Security, and specific industries such as healthcare AI and manufacturing AI. Over 75 partners spanning multiple countries participated in the public preview. Microsoft bets big on AI training for partners Microsoft bets big on AI training for partners
Microsoft also unveiled AI skilling initiatives like the global Microsoft AI Partner Training Roadshow, along with new workshops focused on Azure OpenAI, Microsoft Fabric, Copilot for Microsoft 365, and security. Over 350,000 partners have received AI training, Microsft claimed. The company further detailed AI product availability, including the 1 April general release of Copilot for Security through the Cloud Solution Provider channel, building on an active partner preview. The list of Microsoft partners already delivering AI solutions across sectors: Accenture and Avanade, for example, are creating an interactive AI travel assistant for Amadeus using Azure OpenAI Anthology provides an AI-powered student success solution for higher education built on Dynamics 365 Blue Yonder uses Azure AI/ML to enable real-time supply chain decision-making Other partners like Atlassian, Datadog, EY, Icertis, LTI Mindtree, and Sight Machine are driving transformation with Microsoft’s AI services. “Our mission is to empower every organisation through AI, and our partners make that possible,” said Nick Parker, Corporate VP for global partner solutions at Microsoft. “We’ve been amazed by our partners’ innovation so far, and this is just the beginning of unlocking AI’s full potential.”