Welcome to our Microsoft and Pax8 monthly update for June. Find a summary of everything you might have missed below. To get even more in-depth information about our unique partnership and everything it offers managed service provider (MSP) partners, sign up for our monthly live webcast.
Program updates
Public sector for NCE
There are some new deadlines to keep in mind when transitioning your public sector clients to the new commerce experience (NCE):
- Legacy end of sale – August 1, 2024
- Microsoft-led transition – September 1, 2024
- Legacy incentives – March 1, 2025
NCE products for the public sector have all been launched and are available now for purchase in the Pax8 Marketplace. You can take advantage of a 16.67% discount for eligible monthly commitment subscriptions for the following public sector NCE products:
- Business Standard
- Business Premium
- Microsoft 365 E3
- Microsoft 365 E5
GDAP
As part of Microsoft’s transition to granular delegated admin privileges (GDAP), any relationship between Pax8 and end clients, either initiated from the Pax8 GDAP tool or the Microsoft-led transition, will be auto-extended for a minimum of six months. Existing relationships, either self-initiated or Microsoft-led, between a partner and end client need to be monitored for expiration and either extended or regenerated in partner center.
Microsoft 365 Suites without Teams
Any new purchase for Microsoft 365 Suites needs to use the (no Teams) product and purchase Teams as a standalone if needed. Active quotes for Microsoft 365 Suites with Teams created prior to April 1, 2024, will be honored. Meanwhile, existing subscriptions purchased prior to April 1, 2024, are grandfathered in and can keep utilizing Teams indefinitely.
Existing subscriptions moving from one Microsoft 365 Suite to another will need to purchase Teams separately. And existing subscriptions of Microsoft 365 Suites with Teams can increase quantity with no impact to services.
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft has now expanded the list of eligible pre-requisite base offers for Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot for Service, and Copilot for Sales.
- Business: Basic Business Standard, Business Premium
- Enterprise: Office 365 E1, E3, E5, Microsoft 365 E3, E5
- Education: Microsoft 365 Education A1, A3, and A5 (for students ages 18+)
- Frontline: Microsoft 365 Frontline F1 and F3
Microsoft SQL Server 2014
SQL Server 2014 will reach the end of its 10-year product life cycle on July 9, 2024. This end-of-support milestone is an opportunity to help customers modernize their IT estate to Azure. Three options to consider for this transition are:
- Modernize to SQL as a service in Azure
- Extend SQL 2014 in Azure with Azure Arc
- Extend on-premise SQL 2014 services and support
Dynamics pricing increase
Effective October 1, 2024, Microsoft will be increasing pricing for commercial and government offers. Products impacted include:
- Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise
- Dynamics 365 Sales Device
- Dynamics 365 Sales Premium
- Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise
- Dynamics 365 Customer Service Device
- Dynamics 365 Field Service
- Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
- Dynamics 365 Commerce
- Dynamics 365 Human Resources
- Dynamics 365 Project Operations
- Dynamics 365 Operations Device
- Microsoft Relationship Sales
- Dynamics 365 on-premise solutions Customer Engagement and Operations
One Cloud
The improved Pax8 One Cloud program enables Pax8 partners to transact the entire Microsoft stack across Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and the Power Platform. Its goal is to help partners maximize their earning potential with each customer add, attract more net-new customer adds, and grow their businesses faster.
The fact is, fewer than 8% of partners transact all Microsoft solutions. But that small percentage of partners is responsible for more than 60% of annual revenue through the channel. We want to help all our partners get there, as the average year-over-year growth rate of a partner cross-selling clouds to their customers is 20% faster than partners transacting a single solution.
In addition, partners transacting across Modern Work, Azure, and Business Apps, on average, transact 2,500% more in licensing each year than partners transacting one cloud alone. And, on average, the annual contract value increases by 600% in licensing when a cross-sell occurs from Microsoft 365 into Dynamics 365 — with an additional 50% chance of a lead into Power Platform and the opportunity to triple Azure consumption.
These numbers reveal that transacting across the solution portfolio equals faster business growth. It’s also worth noting that these solutions are not sequential; they work best as one complete solution and can be combined as needed to solve customer problems.
In addition to helping partners offer the entire Microsoft stack to their clients, the Pax8 One Cloud program offers access to our partner-to-partner (P2P) program, Professional Services, training, and enablement to ensure our partners have the chance to achieve growth faster and more efficiently. This approach provides unmatched ROI for Pax8 partners with churn reduction, increased customer adds, increased deal size, faster growth, and more.
Pax8 and Copilot
Despite AI’s promise, clients still want to know: How do we know our data is safe?
That’s why Microsoft built Copilot on a comprehensive approach to security, privacy, compliance, and responsible AI. Copilot protects your data with Microsoft 365 policies and controls that include data access and permissions, a user-tenant focus, customer data protection, and data processing and residency. These features expand as you scale from Business Standard to Business Premium, offering a way to upsell these solutions.
Restricted SharePoint search
The recently released restricted SharePoint search is like an easy button for Microsoft 365 data governance. It’s free if you have SharePoint, although restricted search is turned off by default and needs to be enabled.
Restricted search addresses data oversharing concerns by allowing organizations to prevent sites from showing up in organization-wide search results and Copilot experiences while honoring existing site permissions. On the other hand, enabling this feature gives Copilot less data to reference, so organizations should weigh the implications of this choice.
Microsoft Purview with Business Premium
Microsoft Purview with Business Premium is a comprehensive solution to secure and govern your data. It’s built on a shared set of industry-leading, AI-powered data classification, data mapping, and audit logging technologies, and shares a unified management experience. As a result, its solutions seamlessly integrate with each other, aiding organizations in protecting their data and mitigating their risks with lower complexity and better outcomes across their entire data estate.
With Microsoft Purview, you can:
- Extend comprehensive data security and compliance capabilities to AI.
- Protect and govern your entire data estate, wherever it lives.
- Get better and faster outcomes with an integrated and simplified set of solutions.
Data security features include data loss prevention and information protection. Data governance features include data mapping, data catalog, and data estate insights. And features to improve risk and compliance posture include a compliance manager as well as eDiscovery and audit capabilities.
Kickstart client adoption of Copilot for M365
A recent study showed that a third of executives think that less than half of their data is consumable — meaning it can’t be mined for use in generative AI. Part of this is due to security concerns, as data governance issues are among the top blockers to AI adoption, especially among small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
Through an exclusive partnership with Microsoft and CYRISMA, you can prepare customers with the data discovery they need to adopt Copilot for M365 securely. This funded CYRISMA assessment is an exclusive offer designed for Pax8 to provide partners with a snapshot of the sensitive data that may not be properly secure across their customers’ Microsoft cloud environments.
The offer includes assessing OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams environments for sensitive data and other personally identifiable information. It provides executive summaries of ways to enhance AI adoption, reports for remediation and measurable governance feedback, and key resources from Pax8 Professional Services to support effective Copilot adoption conversations.
Complete this form with your client information to get a data assessment started.
