Nicole Dezen (Microsoft)
Microsoft is trialling a new program for independent software vendors (ISVs) in Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ) which aims to accelerate application development and commercial go-to-market.
Partners in the A/NZ region will join a number of others, including those in the US, in gaining a private preview of the new ISV Success program before it fully launches in autumn.
ISVs can also gain designations later this year in healthcare, financial services and retail, among others, which Microsoft will assess based on customer success, performance and technical maturity.
Announced overnight during Microsoft’s Inspire conference, the ISV program is said to help these partners “meet customer needs, innovate faster and cost efficiently, go-to-marker and grow a thriving business”.
Microsoft said the new program boasts a benefit package of up to US$128,000 and would include access to cloud sandboxes, developer tooling, technical and business resources and a “dedicated community”.
The global vendor giant claimed these tools would enable ISVs to build “well-architected” applications and sell them on its commercial marketplace.
The new program will be overseen by the recently announced new Microsoft channel chief Nicole Dezen, who joined the tech giant last week and replaces the recently departed Rodney Clarke.
As part of the ISV program release, Marketplace Rewards, benefits gleaned from selling on the commercial marketplace, will be integrated into the ISV program.
These include sales enablement for partners that have between US$1 million and $5 million in sales or between 10,000 and 50,000 seats sold; lead development for those that sell over US$500,000 and 5,000 seats sold and co-sell benefits for partners that hit US$100,000 in sales or 1,000 seats sold.
Microsoft said it would keep its marketplace transaction fee at 3 per cent, which it lowered from 20 per cent last year.
The launch of the ISV program comes at a time of major upheaval for Microsoft partners around the world as the Microsoft Partner Network is set to be replaced by the Cloud Partner Program in October.
The Cloud Partner Program will overhaul the traditional metal tiers in favour of the new qualifying level 'solutions partner'. Channel players will also receive a capability score and must reach a point score of 70 in order to gain the solutions partner ranking.
Additionally, the vendor announced earlier this month the switchover to its New Commerce Experience (NCE) will be postponed indefinitely.
Initially, the software giant set out 11 July as the end date of auto-renewals for legacy cloud service provider subscriptions.
However, the company has now placed an indefinite extension on the terms of when CSPs are required migrate legacy subscription to NCE and will continue to support legacy auto-renewal functionality.
