Partnership in innovation
Previous Signal:Noise posts touched on innovation and partnership separately. This post brings both topics together.
TL;DR
- There are opportunities for joint partnership and innovation across a gradient of approaches ranging from programmatic partnerships, to innovation partnerships, to business partnerships, to strategic partnerships.
- Mainstream partners will engage through programmatic partnership through the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program (Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program) and keep abreast of the latest platform developments through public previews.
- Insiders will uncover ways to define innovation, business, or strategic partnerships by identifying customer-zero, gives-and-gets, co-innovate, and drive for outcomes
Partnership Gradient
Across the ecosystem partners are innovating to deepen their focus, increase technical intensity, or expand into new technical areas or markets. This can take the form of pivoting their existing offerings to SaaS, building on the Microsoft Cloud platform, or forming alliances, to name a few. Table 1 is a non-exhaustive list of partnership approaches taking place across the ecosystem.
Table 1: Microsoft partnership gradient
| Type | Description | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Cloud Partner Program | Focussed on expanding partner capabilities to create value in the market, to connect with customers, and to win new business.Adoption, standardisation and acceleration | Microsoft Partner Examples |
| New capabilities | Innovation within, or around, existing Microsoft solution area to define new capabilities. | Azure Marketplace, AppSource |
| New solution area | Innovate into, and help shape, new solution areas (i.e Industry Clouds, Azure Space) | Zafin, SpaceX |
| Continuous innovation | Innovate on new products, services and market models with emerging tech | Finastra, Embracing continuous innovation: How Microsoft is helping customers overcome challenges to transform business and industries |
| Consortium Model | Joining forces with multiple partners to increase the market impact and address industry-wide needs | Microsoft Supply Chain Consortium |
| Open Ecosystem Models | Working in co-opetition with relevant market players to build an open ecosystem based on a joint technology platform. | ONNX |
| Alliance | Providing unique business differentiation by creating new value for joint targeted markets across industries. | EY, Rogers |
| Joint Venture | The Partner establishes a new entity to cut legacy and leverage a green-field approach | avanade |
Way forward - Mainstream partnership and innovation
Mainstream partners will engage through programmatic partnership through the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program and keep abreast of the latest platform developments through public previews.
| Platform | References |
|---|---|
| Azure | Public previews |
| O365 | Public previews |
| Dynamics 365 Power Platform |
Release planner |
Mainstream partner will bring this innovation to market through Go-to-Market resources and scale through Azure Marketplace orAppSource.
Way forward - Insiders partnership and innovation
In addition to mainstream approaches, Insiders will uncover ways to define innovation, business, or strategic partnerships. * A partnership model to consider would be customer-zero, gives-and-gets, technical executions, and drive for outcomes
| Stage | Description | References |
|---|---|---|
| Identify Customer-Zero | Innovation needs to be aligned to, and grounded by, tangible value to a customer. Identifying the first driven customer is the first step. | How Microsoft cloud technology and co-innovation approach are driving business value for customers across industry |
| Define Gives-and-Gets | At this stage, the gives-and-gets aren’t financial in nature. Consider joint press releases, co-marketing investments, Azure credits, trial licenses, access to Microsoft experts, and partner and customer feedback and telemetry. These elements often constitute these agreements Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) | Confidential |
| Co-innovate | A few existing structured engagement paths are described in the references and be helpful in opening doors —> Leverage the gives-and-gets to get after it. |
- Private previews are normally extended to customers and to their trusted partner. - Microsoft for Startups: Open to anyone with an idea - Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub brings together the technology, guidance, and support you need to hit your next milestone. - The Garage: The Garage is a program that drives a culture of innovation - Microsoft AI & IoT Insider Labs: The Microsoft AI & IoT Insider Labs works with companies’ technical teams to remove technical roadblocks they face on AI or IoT projects. - Mixed Reality Partner Program: The Mixed Reality Partner Program (MRPP) is a Microsoft-sponsored, community-driven program for partners that design, build, deploy, and operate mixed reality solutions. - MISA: The Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA) is an ecosystem of independent software vendors (ISV) and managed security service providers (MSSP) that have integrated their solutions with Microsoft’s security technology to better defend against a world of increasing threats. |
| Drive Outcomes | Build on the success of customer-zero by scaling through co-sell in addition to marketplace economics | - Co-sell: Co-selling is any collaborative engagement between Microsoft and its partner ecosystem. - Leverage the Ecosystem (Partner to Partner - P2P): Partners who adopt an ecosystem business model will grow 50% faster over the next two years than partners who do not. |
Get after it
The PartnerCrucible hosts a collection of links to key resources for partners. This project aims to serve as an entry point into the wealth of information and services available to Canadian Microsoft partners.