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Build future ready on Azure

Join the new Azure Partner Builder’s Program for a guided experience via curated content, resources, and exclusive opportunities.
Join today

Modernize your applications and grow your business

Find the tools you need to build innovative applications on Azure, migrate existing apps, and bring your solutions to market with Microsoft.

Step 1: Make the most of your Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program membership

Make the most of your Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program membership

Joining the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program opens the gateway to exclusive membership benefits. All partners get access to a complete package of business guidance, training, and marketing tools at no cost. Depending on your business needs and goals, consider a Microsoft Action Pack, silver or gold competency, advanced specialization, or Expert Managed Services Provider (MSP) program.

Compare benefits Join today

What is Microsoft Action Pack?

A for-purchase annual subscription that builds on your membership, Action Pack includes certain license use rights for Azure, Visual Studio Professional, and other Microsoft products that you can use to develop, test, and demo products in your own Azure environment. Also included: five advisory hours with a Microsoft technical consultant for personalized guidance with onboarding, presales, or deep technical scenarios.

Learn more
Step 2: Choose how you want to do business with Microsoft

Purchasing guidance for technology partners

The first question many technology partners have is, “How should I transact with Microsoft?"

Q: Is Cloud Solution Provider program the right transaction model for me?

A: If you build and sell software applications and do want to provide Azure customers with managed services, support, and billing services, then join the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program, our primary partner sales motion for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and for smaller corporate customers within the new commerce experience. CSP is designed for companies that want to offer end-to-end managed services, provide technical support, and own the billing relationship for their Azure customers.

Indirect model: Enroll as an indirect reseller and then find an indirect provider to work with. The indirect provider takes care of billing, support, and more.

Direct bill model: Learn about eligibility requirements and apply here.

Learn more about these options: Review which CSP model is best for your company.

Q: When should I consider other transaction models?

A: The CSP program is not recommended for technology partners with business models focused on selling software applications only. If you build and sell software applications to customers and do not want to provide managed services, support, and billing services, review these options instead:

Transact through a CSP partner who specializes in helping ISVs manage their cloud footprint. Receive support, billing assistance, and dedicated help with your Microsoft relationship. We recommend working with one of our Azure Specialists for Technology Partners who can provide migration assistance, infrastructure best practices, and general support for your Azure solution.

Pay as you go. Technology partners that have the technical capabilities to manage their Azure infrastructure and want to buy online can purchase directly from Microsoft.

Read the Cloud Solution Provider guide

Get our step-by-step guide to learn more about the opportunities and how to get started.

Get the guide
Step 3: Get on-demand training to help you build your solution on Azure

Find resources to help you build on Azure

Whether you’re getting started on Azure or looking for specific guidance to add the latest features to your solution, check out our on-demand training and learn at your own pace. Popular training courses for partners developing applications include:

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) deep dive
Application Innovation for developers
Machine Learning service
Featured Training for AZ-204
Featured Training for AZ-304

Find role-based training for partners

Building .NET applications? Visit .NET for the latest resources, articles, and sample code.

Step 4: Start an engagement for personalized guidance

Start an engagement for personalized guidance

Your dedicated Microsoft cloud enablement specialist can help you connect to customers through marketplaces, take advantage of Microsoft partner resources, build your business through competencies, activate your benefits, use technical training, and more. Your specialist can also help you enroll in the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program and get started working with an indirect provider. Eligible partners receive six months of assistance at no cost. All you need is a Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program membership with an active ID and commitment to meet regularly with your dedicated specialist.

Sign up

Access a technical consultant for one-on-one technical guidance.

Partners with an active Microsoft Action Pack subscription or silver or gold competency can access technical advisory hours with a Microsoft technical consultant for guidance on building, migrating, or optimizing their application in Azure.

Learn more Create a request
Step 5: Design your solution using the Microsoft Well-Architected review

Design your solution using the Microsoft Well-Architected review

Before you take your solution to market, use the Microsoft Well-Architected review to ensure it’s secure, cost-effective, and well-governed. The Microsoft Well-Architected framework consists of five pillars of architecture excellence: Cost Optimization, Operational Excellence, Performance Efficiency, Reliability, and Security. Incorporating these pillars helps produce a high-quality, stable, and efficient cloud architecture.

Learn more about the Azure Well-Architected framework

Watch the on-demand webinar

Start your review

Take your solution to market

Reach millions of customers and over 90K CSP partners by publishing your solution in the Microsoft commercial marketplace, where they can try, buy, and deploy your app or service.

Step 6: Publish your solution in the Microsoft commercial marketplace

Publish your solution in the Microsoft commercial marketplace

Reach millions of cloud customers. List your solutions in the Microsoft commercial marketplace, where companies can find, try, buy, and deploy your app or service. The Microsoft commercial marketplace contains two storefronts: Microsoft AppSource, designed for software as a service (SaaS) business solutions, and Azure Marketplace, intended for solutions that are built on or for Azure.

More than a storefront. Publishing your offer in the commercial marketplace is the path to co-selling with Microsoft, whether directly through the storefronts or our channel of over 90K resellers.

And now, we’ve reduced the marketplace transaction fee to 3 percent, allowing you to keep more of your margin to invest in your growth.


Enroll in the commercial marketplace program in Partner Center.

Create your Azure application offer or software as a service offer.

Review and submit your offer for publishing in the commercial marketplace.

Step 7: Extend your reach by selling with Cloud Solution Provider partners

Extend your reach by selling with Cloud Solution Provider partners

By configuring your solution to sell through the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program you can scale to reach a network of over 90K partners worldwide and license them to re-sell your solution. New margin flexibility, coming soon, will allow you to set different prices for customers and partners, and thereby more incentive for partners to sell your offer.

Read the blog Opt in

Accelerate your growth through co-selling

Learn about advancements in our partner-to-partner offering that can help you create new recurring revenue streams.

Watch the video
Step 8: Tap into the benefits of Marketplace Rewards

Tap into the benefits of Marketplace Rewards

Once you’ve published your solution in the commercial marketplace, you can activate Marketplace Rewards. As your engagement in the commercial marketplace grows, you unlock new benefits designed to help convert customers and close deals.

Review your benefits Enroll now

Differentiate your business

Differentiate your offering, attain a competency and unlock incentives, and become eligible for co-branded assets and a marketing plan personalized for your company.

Step 9: Access marketing power through Go-To-Market resources

Access marketing power through Go-To-Market resources

Before introducing your solution or services, discover powerful marketing resources to help you reach the right customers. Your Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program membership includes access to Go-To-Market tools designed to accelerate your time to market, generate leads, and grow your cloud business.

Read the Go-To-Market overview

Automate your marketing with Digital Marketing Content OnDemand

Join the Go-To-Market community

Partners with a silver or gold competency or technology partners with co-sell-ready or incentive-eligible solutions can find their Go-To-Market offers in Solution Workspace.

See your benefits

Step 10: Create your business profile to help customers find you

Create your business profile to help customers find you

Creating a business profile to showcase your business is the first step toward getting referrals from Microsoft. Your profile will be listed in Find a Solution Provider, a self-search tool for customers. You may also receive referrals from Microsoft sales and service employees directly when they seek to match a customer request with a partner who can best meet the customer’s needs.

Create a profile Find a solution provider
Step 11: Attain a cloud competency and unlock valuable incentives

Attain a cloud competency and unlock valuable incentives

By attaining a silver or gold cloud competency you differentiate your business and become eligible to earn incentives. Partners with certain silver and gold competencies may be eligible for the Microsoft commerce incentive, allowing them to earn incentives on every dollar of Azure they bill.*

Cloud Platform competency

Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions competency

Application Development competency

All competencies


*Find out more about eligibility and limitations

Step 12: Get a customized marketing plan and co-branded assets

Get a customized marketing plan and co-branded assets

The Partner Go-To-Market Toolbox provides partners with a gold competency and/or technology partners with a co-sell incentive-eligible offer customized resources to bring solutions to market and generate leads. Access co-branded asset templates, editorial review, and a marketing plan tailored to you.

Learn how

Schedule a How to Market with Microsoft consultation

Learn how to co-market with Microsoft through a personalized and actionable marketing plan from a marketing specialist.

Get started

Why Azure for technology partners?

With Azure, you can build applications quickly, scale for peak demands, migrate with built-in tools, and be confident your application uses the latest technology.
Get quick start guide

Be agile
Add new services quickly, scale up and down seamlessly, and shorten your time from idea to code to cloud with cloud-native technology in Azure.
Optimize costs
With serverless computing, you only pay for workload execution, not for the supporting infrastructure. Reduce your physical footprint and gain near-limitless scalability in Azure.
Stay secure
Incorporate fully managed Azure databases and services into your architecture to ensure your solutions will always be up to date.

Modernize on your schedule, to meet your needs

Whether you’re migrating your application from an on-premises environment or modernizing an existing app, Azure provides you with the capabilities you need.

Illustration of an arrow representing migration
Rehost or refactor
Migrate your app as-is (rehost) or with moderate infrastructure changes (refactor) to connect to Azure platform as a service (PaaS) and use cloud offerings.
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Rearchitect
Redesign your app, retaining core elements, to optimize for cloud technology and scalability. Integrate cognitive services or machine learning to tap intelligent cloud capabilities.
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Build or rebuild
Begin from scratch to take advantage of cloud-native capabilities, so your entire app is designed with scalability and DevOps at its core.

Learn how Azure helps you build for the future

Read our blog series to learn more about how building with Azure can help differentiate your business so you can reach more customers.
Read part 1
Read part 2

Explore cloud-native technologies

Containers

Develop and manage containerized apps

Containerize your applications and let Azure managed services handle container orchestration, provisioning, upgrading, and scaling of cluster resources based on demand. Easily migrate existing applications to containers or rearchitect a microservices application.

Read how Maersk used Kubernetes to streamline IT operations.

Try it yourself in this cloud-native application workshop

Try it yourself
Serverless

Serverless web apps

When you build cloud-native apps on Azure, scaling, availability, and performance are managed for you. Learn about the architecture of a serverless web app.

Read how the NBA increased personalization of its billions of daily customer interactions and how Inlitix optimized scalability at an affordable price in their SaaS solutions.

Try it yourself in this serverless architecture workshop

Try it yourself
AI-powered UI and application logic

AI-powered UI and application logic

Azure Cognitive Services brings artificial intelligence (AI) within reach of every developer with APIs that let you embed vision, speech, search, and decision into your apps. For example, learn how images can be classified using Cognitive Services.

Read how Azure Cognitive Services helps Uber verify drivers and Text Request respond more accurately to customers.

Watch the Azure Essentials video series to learn more

Watch the videos
DevOps

Azure DevOps, modern dev services

Plan smarter, collaborate better, and ship faster with Azure DevOps, a set of modern dev services. Learn how DevOps provides the CI/CD pipeline for Azure Virtual Machines, and the benefit of secure DevOps and Kubernetes together.

See how using DevOps decreased time to market by up to 90% for Axionize and streamlined drug validation for PharmID.

Watch the Remote Engineering DevOps Summit.

Try it yourself with the Continuous Delivery in Azure DevOps workshop

Try it yourself

Ready to start building on Azure?

Sign up for your Azure free account, including a $200 credit, or purchase an Action Pack subscription that includes valuable product licenses.
Start for free
Get Action Pack

Join the Azure Partner Builder’s Program

For invitations to exclusive technical workshops led by Microsoft cloud experts, and more.
Join now

Example architecture code banks

See cloud-native technology in action

Dive into Azure reference architecture with the examples below to see how cloud-native technology is used in a full application framework. You’ll find application design guides, code repositories, and demo scripts to try for yourself.

Tailwind Traders screen shots
Tailwind Traders code base

Want to see how cloud-native technology can be used in a complete solution? Explore the Tailwind Traders case study for use cases, reference architecture, and deployment scripts.

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Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock code base
Learn how Azure lets you build with the tools and in the language of your choice with the Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock code base. It uses cloud-native technology to optimize for continuous delivery and provides architecture, repositories, and deployment scripts.

Azure Specialists

Work with an Azure Specialist and accelerate your time to cloud

Work with one of our Azure Specialists to get best practices and support for your migration, then extend your reach through the Azure Marketplace.

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2bcloud | Master your Cloud

Work with a team of cloud experts, driven by the passion to help companies utilize the cloud to create great products. Get help with your modernization needs from 2bcloud.

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SYNNEX | ISV Experience

SYNNEX provides enablement and support for building, developing, and marketing your solution.

Reach millions of customers worldwide through the Microsoft commercial marketplace

Sell your solutions in the Microsoft commercial marketplace, where millions of customers come to find, try, buy, and deploy apps and services.
Watch the video
Get the guide

Publishing offers leads to growth for ISVs

According to a study by Forrester, ISVs who transacted through the Azure Marketplace saw significant business growth in several key areas.*

100

%

increase in deal flow pipeline for technology-led partners

50

%

larger deal sizes

12

%

increase in gross margin for technology-led partners

Azure Marketplace: the storefront for your IT SaaS offers

One of two storefronts in the commercial marketplace, Azure Marketplace features IT solutions built on Azure. Publish your software as a service (SaaS) offer in Azure Marketplace.
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Azure Marketplace

For cloud developers and IT pros, featuring IT solutions built on Azure.
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AppSource

For business users, featuring solutions built on Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power BI, and Azure.

Learn more with this overview and training course

Learn the basics about the Microsoft commercial marketplace and its two storefronts, Azure Marketplace and AppSource, and the types of solutions sold in each.
Read the overview
Take the training

Enroll now and create your offer

With transaction fees reduced to three percent, CSP private offers, and Teams publishing incentives, there’s no better time to get started. Take these steps now to publish your offer.
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Enroll

Create your commercial marketplace account in Partner Center and enroll.
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Plan your SaaS offer for Azure Marketplace

Find out the requirements and options for publishing a software as a service (SaaS) offer.
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Review and submit your offer

Submit your offer for publishing, preview your offer, then publish it live to the commercial marketplace.

Need assistance? Our Cloud Enablement Desk can help

A dedicated Microsoft cloud enablement specialist will guide you through the steps to plan, create, and publish your offer in the commercial marketplace, and much more.
Get help

You’ve published your solution, now activate Marketplace Rewards

As your engagement in the commercial marketplace grows, unlock benefits designed to help convert customers and close deals. Read how Marketplace Rewards pays off for partner Grazitti.
Read the case study
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Learn about Marketplace Rewards benefits

Learn the benefits and how to get started.
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Enroll in Marketplace Rewards

Visit the Marketplace Rewards program in Partner Center to enroll.

Get even more from the Microsoft commercial marketplace

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How two partners grew using the commercial marketplace

ShookIOT lands a Fortune 50 client through Azure Marketplace. UnlimitedViz scales their tyGraph solution to six countries using AppSource.
Watch ShookIOT video
Watch tyGraph video

Optimize your offer listing

Optimize your offer listing in Azure Marketplace

Learn benefits and strategies for optimizing your business profile and offer listing.

Read the guide
Reduce time to market with SaaS offers

Reduce time to market and accelerate your business with SaaS offers

Listing your transactable SaaS offer in the Microsoft commercial marketplace lets you deliver greater value, sell to a broader range of customers, and streamline your internal operations.

More software buyers are using cloud marketplaces

According to Tackle, in 2021, 61% of buyers said they had purchased software through a cloud marketplace, a 39% increase over 2020, and 83% of buyers said they are likely or extremely likely to purchase through a marketplace in the future, up 12% from 2020.**

Experience the benefits of a SaaS business model

Integrate new cloud services. Create new opportunities and revenue streams to acquire new customers.  

Develop consistent recurring revenue streams. Scale quickly and support changes efficiently.

Implement product innovation more quickly. Keep your solution up to date and ship updates to customers quickly.

Reduce buyer friction and time to market. Upfront infrastructure costs are lowered for customers, and you can provide an option for them to try before they buy. When you sell your solution through the Azure Marketplace, you reduce customer onboarding time because Microsoft is an authorized seller to businesses across the globe.
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Plan your SaaS offer

Find out the requirements and options for publishing a SaaS offer.
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Create your SaaS offer

Follow these steps for creating your SaaS offer in Partner Center.
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Attend SaaS Academy on demand

Learn best practices from Microsoft employees, partners, and customers.
Extend your reach by selling with CSP partners

Extend your market power

Configuring your offer in the commercial marketplace to sell through Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) lets you reach over 90K partners worldwide and license them to resell your solution.

Create private offers and go-to-market jointly with other CSP resellers

Margin sharing, now in public preview, lets you create private offers and extend margin to CSP resellers, incentivizing them to sell your offer and, in turn, helping you drive revenue and scale. Take these steps to get started:

Create a new private offer in Partner Center.
Enter private offer details, including selecting CSP partners you would like to sell through, and margin you will pass to the CSP partner.
Submit and save your private offer.
Receive payment from Microsoft for sales of your offer through the CSP, less three percent agency fee.
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Set up a private offer

Review the process for creating your private offer.
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Learn more about partner-to-partner selling

Hear Microsoft experts discuss partner-to-partner opportunities in this video.
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Read how Microsoft is driving growth

Margin sharing helps partners scale, create value, and keep more margin.

Join the Azure Partner Builder’s Program

For member-only invitations to exclusive technical events, curated content, personalized guidance, and more.
Join today

*Source: “The Revenue And Growth Opportunities For Microsoft Azure Partners,” a commissioned Total Economic ImpactTM study conducted by Forrester Consulting, July 2020.

**Source: State of Cloud Marketplaces 2021 | Tackle