Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program continues to provide managed service providers (MSPs) a way to grow their businesses by providing streamlined end-to-end services to their clients. Pax8 is proud to partner with Microsoft to offer MSPs support at every step of their Microsoft journey, and in 2023, Pax8 launched a monthly webcast dedicated to keeping its thousands of MSP partners in the know about all the latest happenings with Microsoft.
In the following blog, we’ll review some highlights from a year of Microsoft updates. To keep up with future updates, register for our monthly webcast series, which returns in February of 2024.
Microsoft program updates
On September 1, 2023, Microsoft released a new CSP Indirect Reseller Incentives & Rebates Guide for fiscal year 2024 (October 1, 2023–September 30, 2024). It showed partners enrolled in the Microsoft Commerce Incentive (MCI) program would be paid out 60% in rebates, 40% in co-op funds for each half of the year. Meanwhile, co-op funds earned from legacy CSP incentives during the January-June 2023 period with a balance of more than $10,000 would be migrated to MCI and available for use from July to December 2023.
Eligibility for the incentives are as follows:
- Partners must be enrolled in the MCI program.
- They must meet a $25,000 trailing-12-months (TTM) revenue threshold.
- They must earn one of six solution partner designations or earn one of nine legacy competencies. In either case, each workload has its own requirement.
- They must have earned and purchased a solution partner designation or legacy silver/gold competency.
Learn more by checking out our Pax8 and Microsoft Incentives and Rebates Playbook.
New Commerce Experience (NCE) migration
The transition to NCE is a pivotal moment in Microsoft’s CSP journey as it began the push to get MSP clients to transition to NCE. By January 2024, Microsoft will begin migrating legacy CSP commercial subscriptions to NCE. For the public sector (consisting of Nonprofits, Education, and Government agencies), those accounts will become eligible for migration to NCE in January 2024. On July 1, 2024, Microsoft will begin migrating public sector accounts to NCE. With both public and commercial accounts, it’s best for MSPs to migrate beforehand so migration is done with the most customization possible.
Partners have seven days following the migration to make changes or cancel the subscription if needed. It’s recommended that partners proactively initiate migration of subscriptions ahead of their end of term. Subscriptions on a monthly commitment will see a 20% premium from Microsoft on their monthly bill.
Tips and best practices
To help partners transition clients to NCE, we’ve identified several tips and best practices over the past year. Here are a few to keep in mind as we head into 2024:
- Neither partial nor full upgrades to NCE open a seven-day cancellation window as they are not seen as a new order; they are permanent.
- When upgrading a subscription to a new product, it will create its own subscription ID and not co-term with an existing subscription of that same product on the customer tenant.
- Trials automatically provision 25 seats, no matter the desired quantity.
- Trials, if not canceled, automatically convert to a paid subscription for all 25 seats. This will open a seven-day cancellation window if modifications are needed after conversion.
- NCE renewals happen at 12am UTC. In most regions, this is the day before the renewal date.
- Pax8 bills partners for seat-based offers in a bill-ahead model, from the first to the end of the month. This can differ from the Microsoft renewal date.
- For monthly billing options, Pax8 will always charge you for the full month, even if your renewal is mid-month.
- If you choose not to renew your subscription, Pax8 will issue you a refund for any overpayment that month.
- For annual upfront, Pax8 will charge you for the full 12 months, plus any additional days in that first month if ordered mid-month. If you cancel your renewal, Pax8 will issue a refund for any additional days that have been pre-paid.
- To learn more, read our blog detailing everything you need to know about NCE.
- This year, we also launched Pax8 inbox notifications to keep you up to date on important deadlines and information. To enable notifications, click the mailbox icon on the top right-hand corner of the Marketplace homepage. From here, opt into receiving notifications, you’ll receive a welcome email with the next steps.
Updates on the nonprofit sector
This year, the opportunity presented by the nonprofit sector became even more apparent. There are more than 10 million nonprofits and non-governmental organizations worldwide. And in 2021, nonprofits spent $237 million on IT.
In 2022, Microsoft, together with 14,000 partners, served over 300,000 nonprofit organizations – barely making a dent in the total addressable market of 10 million. That reveals a huge opportunity for MSPs. In fact, 85% of nonprofits said technology is the key to success for their organization, while digitally mature nonprofits are two to four times more likely to achieve their mission and program goals.
This opportunity is especially apparent in the cybersecurity space, where MSPs can encourage their clients to take advantage of Modern Workplace solutions, such as Microsoft 365. Indeed, 68% of nonprofits do not have a process in place to manage information security risks, while one in three nonprofits worry a fault in their organization’s security could contribute to fraud.
Microsoft business apps can also solve several nonprofits’ pain points, as 60% of nonprofits identified eliminating paper-based or duplicate processes as valuable. And 73% said updated or upgraded tools or systems would be valuable.
By offering infrastructure solutions such as Azure, MSPs can also take advantage of nonprofits’ increased willingness to go cloud. Recently, 75% of nonprofit professionals have said they’re more likely to adopt a cloud-based solution than before the pandemic.
To promote CSPs digging into the nonprofit sector, Microsoft offers 10 free Microsoft 365 Business Premium licenses for nonprofits, with discounted pricing for up to 300 users. It also offers 10 free Power Platform licenses for nonprofits and an annual grant of $2,000 in Azure credits for nonprofits. Learn more about how you can empower nonprofits while growing your business with Pax8 and Microsoft.
The opportunity of Microsoft One Cloud
The fact is that even though fewer than 8% of partners transact all Microsoft solutions, these partners account for more than 60% of annual revenue through the channel, according to internal Pax8 and Microsoft research. That means partners who aren’t transacting all things Microsoft are leaving money on the table.
That’s why Pax8 partnered with Microsoft to power faster growth with Microsoft One Cloud.
It’s a program that enables all Pax8 partners to transact the entire Microsoft stack across Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and the Power Platform to maximize earning potential with each customer add and attract more net-new customers.
Because Microsoft solutions areas are not sequential but rather complement one another, it allows partners to provide a complete solution of products that solves myriad customer pain points. This approach provides unmatched ROI for Pax8 partners by decreasing churn, and increasing customer adds and deal size. It will also provide unmatched ROI for Pax8 partners’ customers by solving multiple issues with one interconnected suite of solutions.
To further fuel this program, Pax8 offers partner-to-partner programs, Professional Services, training, and enablement to ensure partners can achieve growth faster and more efficiently.
Modern Work: power the future with A.I.
A.I.: Bing Chat Enterprise and Copilot
With this year’s launch of Bing Chat Enterprise and Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft and Pax8 are giving partners the chance to dramatically increase efficiency with A.I.
These tools offer generative A.I. capabilities, which give organizations new ways to get answers and create quickly. Bing Chat Enterprise provides access to the GPT large language model (LLM), A.I.-powered web search, and content generation with commercial data protection directly in Microsoft Edge (available with Microsoft 365 Business Premium E3 and E5). Microsoft 365 Copilot is a standalone product that provides access to everything Bing Chat Enterprise offers and is available directly in all Microsoft 365 apps, with enterprise-grade security.
Bing Chat Enterprise is available today at no extra cost with Microsoft 365 Business Premium E3 and E5 (a $5 per user, per month standalone product will become available at a later date).
Though now available in early access, Copilot will soon be available at $30 per user per month for E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium customers.
Secure productivity with Defender for Business and Microsoft 365 Business Premium upsell
Offering your clients Defender for Business enables them to enact a Zero Trust strategy. This means that every request for access to information must be assumed to be a security breach and thus requires explicit verification and least privileged access.
Defender for Business offers access to the five pillars of enterprise-grade security:
- Threat and vulnerability management – This helps you prioritize and focus on the weaknesses that pose the most urgent and the highest risk to your business. By discovering, prioritizing, and remediating software vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, you can proactively build a secure foundation for your environment.
- Attack surface reduction – This reduces your attack surface (places where your company is vulnerable to cyber attacks) across your devices and applications using capabilities such as ransomware mitigation, application control, web protection, network protection, network firewall, and attack surface reduction rules.
- Next-generation protection – This helps to prevent and protect against threats at your front door with antimalware and antivirus protection—on your devices and in the cloud.
- Endpoint detection and response (EDR) – This gives you behavioral-based detection and response alerts that allow you to identify persistent threats and remove them from your environment. Manual response actions within Defender for Business will allow you to act on processes and files, while live response will put you in direct control of a device to help ensure it’s remediated, secured, and ready to go.
- Automated investigation and remediation – This helps scale your security operations by examining alerts and taking immediate action to resolve some attacks for you. By reducing alert volume and remediating threats, Defender for Business allows you to prioritize tasks and focus on more sophisticated threats.
Defender for Business is included in Microsoft 365 Business Premium, which offers additional organizational security and productivity tools. It’s A.I.-ready, with access to Bing Chat Enterprise and compatibility with Copilot.
As A.I. will continue to be the hot topic in 2024, it’s natural that your clients will want to be ready to take advantage of everything it offers. To prepare your customers effectively, help them activate A.I.-ready Microsoft solutions such as Microsoft 365 Business Premium E3 and E5.
All about Azure
With Windows Server 2012 and 2012R having reached end of life October 10, 2023, Pax8 wants to ensure that our partners are being proactive in securing their client environments. The Azure platform Azure Arc can help organizations bridge the gap between old and new environments with the ability to run across data centers, at the edge, and in multicloud environments. Learn about Azure Arc and how it plays a key role in addressing the challenges caused by this announcement by taking our Windows Server 2012 and 2012R End of Life course.
In addition, it’s become more important than ever to put into place rigorous fraud prevention and detection risk mitigation controls. That’s because direct-bill and indirect CSPs are financially responsible for any fraudulent purchase made by their customers as well as customers’ nonpayment.
As we enter the holiday season, it is imperative to protect against increasing cyber threats. Attack patterns related to crypto mining are resulting in dramatically more damage than at any point in history. Prevent a potential business-killing threat by following Azure security best practices to ensure you’re doing everything possible to guard against fraudulent activities with our course dedicated to the subject.
Updates on Dynamics 365
This year, Pax8 announced it had acquired Microsoft Dynamics services company Bam Boom Cloud. This deal has created a new market opportunity for MSPs to easily add new lines of business services offerings by leveraging Bam Boom’s Microsoft Dynamics expertise.
Dynamics consists of a portfolio of intelligent applications that deliver operational efficiency and breakthrough customer experiences, enabling businesses to become more agile and reduce complexity without increasing costs. Offering Dynamics can help you garner annual contract value (ACV) deal size on Microsoft 365 of 600%, based on internal Pax8 data.
New to Dynamics? Pax8 can help. Leverage Pax8 for support while still owning the client relationship and remaining the main point of contact with them.
Implementation options for Dynamics are as follows:
- Launchpad: self-guided implementation with setup checklist, knowledge base portal, and support access and $299 per month.
- Fixed-price, fixed-scope plans: a consultant-led approach to implement core “out-of-the-box” modules of the software starting at a $9,000 one-time fee.
You can learn more about selling Dynamics at our blog as well as learn how you can maximize the impact of your client opportunity with our Cloud Ascent course.
Featured vendors
There are a number of third-party vendors whose solutions pair well with those of Microsoft. Learn about some of the solutions that can bring added value to your clients together with Microsoft.
Perimeter 81
Perimeter 81 is a cloud-delivered converged networking and network security service that connects all users, in the office or remote, to all resources. It works well whether your clients’ workloads are located on-premises or in the cloud, using a private global backbone. Perimeter 81 offers advanced capabilities such as Zero Trust network access, firewall as a service (FWaaS), unmanaged device remote access, ransomware, and other malware protection. Perimeter 81 integrates with both Microsoft Azure and Entra single sign-on (SSO) to provide secure access to both Microsoft and Perimeter 81 resources. This integration with Microsoft solutions enables organizations to leverage Perimeter 81’s Zero Trust framework and Microsoft’s threat intelligence and endpoint management capabilities, providing a more comprehensive security solution.
Blackpoint Cyber
Blackpoint Cyber is a cybersecurity company that provides managed detection and response (MDR) services designed to detect and neutralize cyber threats in the earliest stages. By combining network visualization, tradecraft detection, and endpoint security, Blackpoint Cyber’s MDR technology is faster than many of the competitors and can harness metadata around suspicious events, hacker tradecraft, and remote privileged activity to stop advanced attacks immediately.
When integrated with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Blackpoint Cyber provides a comprehensive security solution to end users while leveraging the power of Microsoft’s threat intelligence and endpoint protection capabilities. Additionally, Identity Response for Entra ID offers protection for Entra ID and Entra single sign-on (SSO) services by gathering contextual analysis on where Entra SSO logins are used. This protects Entra ID environments and their connected services.
The MSP Collective
The MSP Collective is a network of MSPs who collaborate and share best practices to deliver high-quality IT solutions to government clients. Their mission is to inform the US government and infrastructure industries on topics related to MSPs who serve national security. It acts as an industry advisory group to governmental bodies such as Congress and the Department of Defense, delivering insight into the importance of MSPs in securing critical technologies for government contractors and the DIB (the Defense Industrial Base, a program of the Department of Defense that protects intellectual property and safeguards DoD content).
The MSP Collective advocates for members within the DIB though their support for governments proposals that help offset the investment MSPs must make to receive CMMC compliance (the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, which helps the DoD determine if an organization has the security necessary to work with sensitive data). Partners receive access to exclusive training and tools to help grow their businesses and improve their service delivery for the DIB. By joining The MSP Collective, partners benefit from the collective wisdom, experience, and resources of hundreds of MSPs who also work with the DIB.
Nerdio
Nerdio empowers MSPs and enterprises to build successful cloud practices in Microsoft Azure with Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365. With key infrastructure management tools, Nerdio makes it easier than ever to support and scale virtual environments. Nerdio Manager for MSP empowers MSPs to deploy, manage, and optimize virtual desktop environments in Microsoft Azure through easy, multi-tenant management. Nerdio Manager for Enterprise is a packaged Azure application that runs in users’ own tenant without compromising security and compliance by allowing third-party vendors access into the IT environment.
DropSuite
DropSuite enables businesses and organizations globally to easily backup, recover, and protect their important business information. The DropSuite commitment to advanced, secure, and scalable cloud technologies make them an industry leader around the globe. Paired with Microsoft solutions, DropSuite offers peace of mind with full backup, archiving, and recovery solutions across the Microsoft 365 suite – including Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams.
Power your Microsoft journey with help from Pax8
Get help on all things Microsoft with the enablement and resources you need to grow your business. Visit the Microsoft Hub in Pax8 Academy, where you’ll find On-Demand courses, hands-on labs, content streaming, and event recordings that offer support on selling Microsoft solutions. Additionally, visit the Pax8 Microsoft page for more information and support for all your Microsoft needs. And you read our Microsoft blogs to stay up to date on the latest with Microsoft.
That’s it for 2023 — be sure to register for our monthly webcasts starting in February of 2024 to help you sell Microsoft solutions into the new year!
