In today's dynamic digital landscape, staying relevant means continuously adapting and meeting customers where they are. For partners focused on growing their migration practices, Microsoft offers a unique opportunity to capture new business opportunities with a robust suite of resources and offers designed to streamline migration processes, enhance operational efficiency, and support growth. In this blog post, we discuss how you can best use these assets to enhance your services and drive customer success.
Generate customer interest and demand
Start by accessing
Microsoft CloudAscent customer propensity lists
in Partner Center to identify migration and security opportunities within the small and medium-sized business (SMB) sector. These lists help you target the right customers for your services. For managed partners, your PDM can download additional Enterprise and SMC-C migration propensity lists, providing key information about each account where you are the incumbent. These lists include Windows Server end-of-support (EOS) opportunity flags, SQL Server EOS flags, Microsoft Defender for Cloud consumption flags, and whether an assessment has been done on the account.
Next, use the campaign in a box assets and scripted campaigns to drive demand for migrations to Azure, including Windows Server and SQL Server, Linux and PostgreSQL and Azure VMware Services (AVS) migrations. These resources are crafted to help you effectively market your services and attract new clients with updated content and messaging from our marketing experts; while also helping you position your company value front and center.
Whether you need ready-to-share Digital Marketing Content OnDemand (DMC) or customizable campaigns from the Partner Marketing Center (PMC), we have assets to support your marketing initiatives.
Co-branded asset templates, branded sales content, and asset engagement insights:
Digital Marketing Content OnDemand (DMC) campaigns:
Partner Marketing Center (PMC) downloadable campaign content:
Develop your opportunities and take them to the next stage
The
Azure Migrate and Modernize
offerings provide numerous benefits for partners with the Infra and Database Migration to Microsoft Azure specialization and for Azure Expert Managed Services Providers (MSPs)—including funding for assessments, access to Azure Migrate tools, technical guidance, and best practices for assessing infrastructure and databases. Partners also receive go-to-market support, training, advanced tools, and potential incentives to help them deliver high-quality assessments and facilitate efficient customer migration and modernization projects on Azure.
Incentives for deployment and forums for partners with specializations
For partners with specializations, Microsoft offers a range of targeted incentives and forums designed to enhance your business capabilities and drive growth.
Azure Migrate and Modernize
is tailored to provide additional support and opportunities for partners who are focused on secure infrastructure migrations, innovative solutions, and deepening their technical expertise. Learn more about how to
earn a specialization
.
In Azure Migrate and Modernize, the new Defender for Cloud incentive offers a 15% incremental uplift in payment to partners who drive secure infrastructure database migrations. Alongside this, Microsoft offers comprehensive sales enablement and skilling resources to equip partners with the tools necessary to effectively sell security solutions as part of their migration services.
Take advantage of the Migration Factory, which offers no-cost, hands-on-keyboard service delivery. This resource provides extra support to accelerate your migration work so you can meet client demands efficiently—with cost savings for your organization. You can also tap into any additional incentives or investments from Microsoft.
Submit your request
.
Partners can also take a unified approach to cloud migration and modernization. Start the migration by discovering and assessing on-premises resources using the free
Azure Migrate
tool. Then, plan the migration with technical and business insights into infrastructure, databases, and applications. Migrate to Azure in phases and modernize for faster innovation and a higher return on investment. Track and manage your cloud migration progress using a central dashboard for ease of management.
If you have the Infra and Database Migration to Azure specialization, Azure VMware Solution specialization, or if you are an Azure Expert MSP, you can join the
Azure Migrate and Modernize: Infra Partner Forum
to connect with other specialized partners, Microsoft subject matter experts, and members of the engineering teams. This forum provides valuable insights and resources to help you stay ahead in the migration space.
If you’re working toward a Solutions Partner designation, you can accelerate your path to certification and master the intricacies of Azure AI, data science, infrastructure, and virtual desktop solutions by attending an
Azure Certification Week event
.
VMware migrations: Lock in pricing with Reserved Instances
Customers are turning to Microsoft partners for guidance on how to best migrate their VMware workloads. Microsoft offers a range of solutions designed to simplify and accelerate VMware migrations and provides opportunities to lock in pricing with a fast and familiar path to the cloud: Azure VMware Solution (AVS).
AVS delivers a fully managed VMware environment in Azure that is operated and supported by Microsoft. You can move your customers’ VMware workloads to Azure “as is” so your applications require little or no refactoring. This streamlines migration and lets customers continue using familiar skills while learning new Azure skills.
Partners can enhance their AVS migration proposals with support from the Microsoft account team or Cloud Solution Architect (CSA). The
AVS Express TCO Analysis
generates detailed proposal information to share with customers, streamlining the process and strengthening your pitch.
The
Azure VMware Solution (AVS) Go Big initiative
offers a variety of valuable assets, including a
partner opportunity deck
detailing the offers available to both partners and customers. This resource can be tailored to different customer needs so you can present the most relevant and compelling information for each AVS migration scenario.
To further support your VMWare migrations,
we're excited to offer a
20% discount on AVS
when you purchase a new one-year Reserved Instance before June 30, 2025. The five-year Reserved Instance for Azure VMware Solution is only available for a limited time and ends on June 30, 2025.
Microsoft also provides additional key offerings and promotions that help you optimize costs and deliver high-performing solutions for your customers. You can:
-
Save with existing Windows Server and SQL Server licenses as well as portable VCF subscriptions.
With a purchase of Software Assurance, you can run cloud versions of Windows Server and SQL Server in Azure VMware Solution without any additional licensing costs.
-
Choose between two ways to purchase Azure VMware Solution.
-
Purchase Azure VMware Solution from Microsoft with VCF included.
-
Purchase Azure VMware Solution from Microsoft and leverage portable VCF subscriptions purchased from VMware.
-
Get migration assistance.
Use
Azure Migrate and Modernize
to get resources, expert help, and funding for a streamlined migration.
-
Get Azure credits to modernize.
When you buy a new Reserved Instance for Azure VMware Solution, you can get an additional Azure credit of up to $240,000*.
Customers can save up to 56% with Linux VMs in Azure
As a major contributor to various open-source technologies like Linux Kernel, Kubernetes, and PostgreSQL, open source is at the core of Microsoft. And Microsoft Azure is a proven platform for Linux, with more than
60% of customer cores in Azure running on Linux
.
Microsoft supports all major Linux distributions, including Red Hat—whose commercial enterprise Linux platform is certified for use on Azure. With Red Hat and Microsoft, organizations can quickly deploy a more secure, reliable, and flexible hybrid cloud environment.
Microsoft customers can also choose from a range of popular open source databases with fully managed solutions—including Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure Database for MySQL—or run SQL Server on Linux VMs.
To help customers optimize Azure costs and drive more value for their Linux estate, Microsoft is excited to offer up to
15% in savings
in addition to the current one-year discount on Azure Reserved Virtual Machine (VM) Instances for select Linux VMs. This promotional offer is live from October 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025, and could help customers save up to 56% compared to running an Azure VM on a pay-as-you-go basis. To access the offer, purchase a one-year Azure Reserved VM Instance in qualifying regions for the qualified VM Series. Learn more about
the offer details
.
Support and migration learning paths
Stay updated with the latest
skilling and enablement paths
to support your infra migration business. Microsoft offers bootcamps, security skilling, and more to equip you and your team to handle any migration challenge.
Build proficiency with Microsoft partner skilling
. Whether you are an engineer developing AI and cloud solutions or you are working directly with customers to sell these solutions, we have a course designed to improve your proficiency and overall knowledge, while also meeting Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program skilling requirements.
With these resources, Microsoft partners can significantly enhance their migration practices, drive customer satisfaction, and achieve accelerated growth. Stay competitive and unlock your potential by making the most of what Microsoft has to offer. The future of your migration practice is bright—take the next action today.
Related links
-
Check out the great content from
MCAPS Start for Partners
, where you can discover our strategic investments, new priorities, and key program changes for the new fiscal year.
-
Learn about
skilling opportunities
including Partner Project Ready Workshops, Certification Weeks, sales and pre-sales skilling, and Microsoft AI Partner Training Days.
-
Access the latest Microsoft Cloud and AI innovation with
evolved partner benefits.
*Azure Credit eligibility requirements: For a limited time net new customer migrations to AZURE VMWARE SOLUTION on a One-year, Three-year and Five-year Reserved Instances may be eligible to receive a one-time Azure Credit Offer incentive of up to USD $240,000 based on the size of the deployments. Azure credits awarded are applicable to any Azure service. Consult with your Microsoft account executive for specific offer details.