AI Agents are redefining how businesses operate—automating, optimizing, and scaling innovation like never before on the Microsoft AI platform. This marks the next major paradigm shift in technology, unlocking new value for customers and partners.
Over the past few decades, the internet, smartphones, and the cloud have connected us, expanded our capacity, and transformed our workflows. However, these advancements have also maxed us out, pushing human capacity to its limits. Generative AI (GenAI) unlocks impressive possibilities. Agents can empower humans to achieve more, supporting us as personal assistants, grounded in our work content. Whether pre-built or custom, agents help automate and execute business processes, working alongside or on behalf of a person, team, or organization. And this seems consistent with IDC’s 2024 AI opportunity study1, which states that "within 24 months, most organizations plan to expand beyond pre-built AI solutions to advanced AI workloads that are customized or custom-built."
For partners, these new use cases create an opportunity to broaden the IP and services offered to customers. According to a partner profitability study from IDC1, "Partners generating one-quarter or more of their Microsoft-related revenue from AI are growing overall revenue at double the rate [of] partners that derive less than 25% of their Microsoft revenue from AI."
Your customers range in AI maturity—from organizations who are just beginning to explore AI, to those who are building agents—unimodal to multimodal, for the most advanced capabilities. This market maturity is an opportunity to establish new and deeper customer relationships, centered on AI transformation and agentic AI-based innovations. And it is the goal of Microsoft to ensure you’re successful. This blog highlights key resources to help you.
Microsoft supports partners in two key ways
First, we provide the technology needed for innovation. This starts with Microsoft 365 Copilot, the user interface for AI. Partners use Copilot to improve productivity in their organizations and help customers with Copilot adoption. To help our partners build AI-powered apps and agents for their customers, we provide them the same secure, global platform that Microsoft uses for its own AI innovation—globally distributed infrastructure, data, app, and AI services; esteemed developer tools; and privacy, safety, and security services.
Today, there is increasing demand for more mature AI implementations. According to a survey by Lightspeed Venture Partners, over 60% of respondents' organizations have implemented three or more use cases leveraging Generative AI. Additionally, research from the RAND Corporation states that 80% of early AI projects fail to meet expectations due to complexity. Our goal is to simplify development for you so you and your customers can be successful.
This is where Microsoft Azure AI Foundry comes in. Azure AI Foundry provides the tools developers need through a simple portal, unified software development kit, and application programming interfaces to accelerate the path to production. The latest video in the “AI on the go for Microsoft partners” series highlights many of the recent AI announcements, including Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Agent Service, industry-specific models, and Azure differentiators, plus how these enhancements can help you grow your practice!
![Screen capture of AI On the Go-Winter Edition [Dec 2024 - Jan 2025] Post-Ignite video.](-/media/c1caa3f86f8d469d976ff868fc3bd593.ashx)
For more details on the latest in Azure AI Foundry, check out the February blog in the "What’s new in Azure AI Foundry" series, authored by Asha Sharma, CVP, AI Platform, and the latest "The AI Show" video, featuring Yina Arenas, VP of Product, Core AI.
In addition to the technology stack, we provide our partners with the resources needed for business growth. The pace of the AI market has been unprecedented. To ensure that your business can grow with the demand, we recommend that our partners ensure they’re using the resources offered in each of the four pillars below to build and grow their AI practice.
1. Elevate your skills: According to Microsoft internal estimates, over 60,000 customers use Azure AI Foundry today. To meet this increasing demand, it's critical to build a strong and diverse skillset across your team. In fact, 3,786 partner organizations have earned the Data & AI Solutions Partner Designation and 9035 individuals have become certified Azure AI Engineer Associates, (AI-102)—demonstrating the growing emphasis on AI expertise in the industry.
Join the upcoming skilling series where experts from Microsoft share the latest tech updates in Azure AI Foundry, agentic AI, popular use cases, and best practices for success with customers. We realize that our partners expect skilling initiatives that are convenient for their schedule and level of advancement, which is why we provide skilling across various partner roles ranging from sales and technical pre-sales skills to hands-on implementation training for technical specialists, available in-person or virtually. Enroll for your next workshop at aka.ms/PartnerSkilling.
2. Differentiate with Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program designations and specializations: Along with the increase in customer demand for AI-powered projects, there has been a 200% increase in partners with specializations in Azure AI since January 2024. This is expected. Certified software designations and Azure specializations can provide higher visibility through Microsoft commercial marketplace portals, reaching more global market segments.
3. Go-to-market at scale: Once you have the skills and credentials, it's time to scale your go-to-market strategy and build demand. Start by driving top-of-funnel leads through co-branded, ready-to-launch marketing campaigns, available in 11 languages. Next, engage your customers using the latest pitch decks and marketing content available at partner.microsoft.com. Finally, prove your value by conducting business envisioning sessions with decision makers, followed by hands-on hack-a-thons to pave the way for proofs-of-concept.
4. Accelerate AI adoption with Azure Innovate and Azure Essentials: Implement efficiently with comprehensive resources, increase agility across scenarios and customer segments, and innovate confidently with tailored incentives. Azure Innovate & Azure Migrate and Modernize provide partners with the solutions needed to assist customers in migrating, modernizing, or innovating using AI. Azure Essentials is the one-stop-shop to elevate the security, reliability, and performance for AI workloads.
As we stand on the brink of a new era in AI, the latest Microsoft innovations in AI can help us unlock unprecedented potential and drive meaningful change. Help your customers lead their markets with differentiated GenAI experiences that are private, safe, and secure. Leading with Azure AI Foundry, you and your customers can innovate with open and cutting-edge models to design, customize, and manage multimodal, agentic, information-rich customized solutions at scale. Get started today!
1IDC, sponsored by Microsoft, "Microsoft Partners: Driving Economic Value and AI Maturity," IDC #US52483124, September 2024.
