More training and certification resources for solution providers. Empowering partners for the artificial intelligence era. And working with partners to chase a $661-billion total addressable market (TAM) in fiscal year 2025 for small and medium enterprise customers.
These are just some of the big items on the plate of Nicole Dezen, Microsoft’s chief partner officer and corporate vice president of the Global Partner Solutions (GPS) organization as the tech giant navigates the latter months of its fiscal year. The 2026 fiscal year starts July 1 and with it, usually, are new incentives and promotions for solution providers.
“Our partners really touch every stage of the customer journey,” she said. “They build their solutions on our stack. They add services. They add capability. They add differentiation. They add value on our platform. I always think about it as one plus one equals three.”
[RELATED: Microsoft Debuts Security Copilot Agents: Five Big Things To Know]
Microsoft Partner Chief Dezen
Dezen (pictured) spoke with CRN in time for what Microsoft calls the “State of the Partner Ecosystem,” a progress report of sorts on how the tech giant works with its 500,000-plus partners worldwide.
“Our partners have impacted every single thing we’ve rolled out for customers–and they play such an instrumental role in everything we do in the company,” she said. “They’re just deeply, deeply connected to all of our success and certainly our history and most definitely our future.”
She said partners can look forward to new capabilities coming soon to Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program and the availability of a small and midsize business (SMB) path for partners who want the “solutions partner for security” designation, which comes with resources for business development, customer reach, obtaining technical skills and more, according to the vendor.
A blog post Dezen published for this year’s State of the Partner Ecosystem acknowledges Microsoft’s 50th anniversary, the current multiplier of $8.45 services partners earn for every $1 of Microsoft revenue and the $10.93 multiplier for software partners.
One of Microsoft’s ongoing efforts this year is streamlining and simplifying its partner portals for developing new skills. Ahead of Dezen’s post, Microsoft launched a private preview for Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners of its Sales Titan skills portal, which has a learning path for Microsoft 365 E5 security and compliance licenses training and a path for assessments, certifications and sales strategy development. Sales Titan will become available for all partners this summer, according to Microsoft.