Microsoft Cloud Partner Program: Changes for 2022

Monday 21st March 2022

Microsoft have announced a series of updates and changes to their Partner Program, kicking in from October 2022. There’s a LOT of into to go through but below contains a lot of the key changes and an overview of how some of the new elements will work.

New name

It is now known as the “Microsoft Cloud Partner Program” and, according to Microsoft, this “ better reflects the enormous and ongoing transition of business operations to the cloud, and how Microsoft intends to support partners in the future” and “aligns…partners’ go-to-market motions with the way customers buy today“.

From competencies to designations

The various (19) competencies that Microsoft partners have long worked to attain are now “legacy” and have been replaced by 6 “Solutions partner designations”:

Solutions partner for Infrastructure (Azure)
Solutions partner for Data & AI (Azure)
Solutions partner for Digital & App Innovation (Azure)
Solutions partner for Modern Work
Solutions partner for Security
Solutions partner for Business Applications

They map across from legacy to new as follows:

How do they work?

Partners will need to earn at least 70 points, from a potential total of 100.

Performance: Measured by net customer adds.
Skilling: Verifies and demonstrates your dedication to skilling and training. Points are awarded for each person on your team with specified certifications.
Customer success: Measured by usage growth and number of successful deployments.

A Modern Work example

The Solutions partner for Modern Work is split into SMB & Enterprise tracks.

Customer adds

Enterprise

A customer add of 300+ seats = 4 points and partners can accrue 20 points in this manner – so a total of 5 customers.

SMB

Customers must be between 10 & 300 seats and each one = 2 points. Again there is a cap of 20 points, this time equating to 10 customers.

Partner skilling

This section is divided into Intermediate & Advanced certifications, the applicable certifications are:

Intermediate:

Advanced:

Microsoft 365 Certified: Enterprise Administrator expert

Customer Success

This area is also divided into 2 categories – Usage Growth & Deployments. The calculations for points are slightly less than straightforward as this example from Microsoft demonstrates:

If you have 2000 MAU growth from DPOR associations over the past 12 months and 1500 MAU growth from CPOR associations, then this is the way the scoring is decided for the Usage growth metric.

DPOR based growth = 2000 MAU DPOR based points = (actual growth / Threshold growth level) * max points = 2000/4000 * 30 = 15

CPOR based growth = 1500 MAU CPOR based points = (actual growth / Threshold growth level) * max points = 1500/1000 * 30 = 45

Usage growth net score = 30 ~ higher of 15 and 45 from above, for up to a maximum of 30

A similar calculation is used for the deployment metric:

Each new qualifying CPOR deployment gets 5 points OR each new qualifying DPOR deployment gets 2.5 points, whichever aggregates to higher points, for up to a maximum of 25 points.

For example, if you have four net new deployments from DPOR associations over the past 12 months and 3 from CPOR associations, the scoring is decided for Deployments metric as follows:

DPOR based growth = 4 DPOR based points = (actual growth / Threshold growth level) * max points = 4/10 * 25 = 10 points

CPOR based growth = 2 MAU CPOR based points = (actual growth / Threshold growth level) * max points = 3/5 * 25 = 15 points

**Deployments net score = 15** ~ higher of 15 and 10 from above, for up to a maximum of 30

See the full Modern Work details here – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/pci-modern-work

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