The DCO initiative is designed for any Microsoft partner migrating customers to Azure, while Azure Accelerate is built for eligible partners and is specific to each customer workload migration opportunity. Eligible partners can use Azure Accelerate in conjunction with DCO.

For more details, go to the Azure Accelerate homepage.

DCO is an optimization initiative designed to meet your customers where they are on their cloud journey. DCO is available for services including:

• Azure Arc
• Azure Arc-enabled Defender for Cloud (on-premises)
• Disaster Recovery to Azure using Azure Backup and/or Azure Site Recovery
• Azure Local
• Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and Windows 365
• Azure IaaS or a complete refactor to Azure PaaS

The DCO initiative has incentive options for qualified partner opportunities.

DCO is available to both direct and indirect partners where qualified.

The DCO initiative is available directly to partners specializing in modernizing Microsoft Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) licensing and infrastructure to the cloud via CSP.

Start with Azure Fundamentals, an online training series exploring basic cloud concepts. Get a streamlined overview of Azure services and practical exercises to deploy your first service.

The Azure Well-Architected Framework offers proven best practices, guidance, and resources so you can make informed decisions about cloud workload design, technology, and implementation.

The DCO initiative gives qualified partners the information needed to understand and make the most of CSP Hoster as well as other modern license alternatives to SPLA, where applicable.

The DCO initiative maintains a group of systems integrator partners that understand and specialize in Managed Service Provider (MSP) scale—as well as the CSP offering—and can empower customers to deploy and migrate at scale to the cloud.

Azure offers a variety of flexible pricing options, including reserved instances, savings plans, and hybrid benefits that can lead to cost savings. It also offers a price match promise on comparable services to AWS and Google Cloud. Azure’s cost management tools are robust and can assist in optimizing costs.

Azure offers extensive backing for hybrid and multi-cloud environments with Azure Arc, and Azure Stack, allowing seamless management of resources across on-premises, multi-cloud, and at the edge. This is an advantage for partners seeking flexibility and integration with existing infrastructure.

Azure has a vast global presence with significant regions, which can potentially offer lower latency and better local compliance options. This can be an advantage for partners with globally dispersed clients.

Azure offers a comprehensive set of security features and compliance certifications. It invests more than $1 billion USD annually in security and has a significant number of compliance certifications, making it suitable for organizations with stringent security and compliance requirements.

Azure offers a suite of migration tools and services, including Azure Migrate, which is designed to simplify the migration process and supports various types of workloads. Additionally, Microsoft offers extensive documentation and assistance for migration.