Written by Stephen Kitay, Senior Director of Microsoft Azure Space

At Microsoft, we’re dedicated to partnerships, and it's also a foundational part of our approach to space.

Since launching Azure Space in October 2020, we’ve built meaningful partnerships across the space industry in order to empower our customers both on and off the planet. Today, our partners span the entire ecosystem – from space operators, to manufacturers, systems integrators, data providers, ISVs, startups and more. These partners cover a breadth of capabilities – such as connectivity, earth observation, virtualization, data processing, analytics, and ground infrastructure – adding unique, value-added services on top of our Azure Space platform.

As we’ve forged these partnerships, we’ve increasingly seen an opportunity for this community to benefit from Microsoft engineering and go-to-market resources. That’s why today we are launching the Azure Space Partner Community, an ecosystem of space partners with exclusive access to technical support and scaling solutions.

Our inaugural cohort of space community partners. New partners can now sign up for the Azure Space Partner Community here.

The Azure Space Partner Community enables our partners to deliver the most comprehensive and innovative offerings to joint customers, helping to shape the future of space technologies and services. The space industry is rapidly advancing and we believe in the power of bringing together this community in an ecosystem. This ecosystem is enabled with opportunities such as co-engineering, go-to-market scaling and support, alongside many other benefits designed to empower our partners. We are excited to rapidly innovate and advance the industry with our inaugural cohort of partners, and we look forward to welcoming new partners in the days to come. Read on to learn more about the specific benefits of becoming a member of the Azure Space Partner Community.

Azure Space Partner Community benefits

By joining the community, you can gain access to various benefits - such as co-innovation, go-to-market and technical support, industry selling, and solution scaling.

Azure space partner community benefits

Co-innovation and engineering
The Azure Space Partner Community will have direct access to Microsoft engineering and specialist resources to turn our partnership vision into reality, including:

Participation in Azure Space training to learn about and onboard the latest Azure Space technologies.
Collaboration and innovation with our engineering and sales specialist teams for customer proof of concepts to demonstrate the value of our partnership.
Access to quarterly Azure Space NDA roadmap reviews and newsletters, and ability to directly influence the produce roadmap.
Partner highlighting in reference architectures and training materials.
Priority access to early adopter and private preview programs.

Go-to-market scale and support
Our Azure Space Partner Community will be able to increase their go-to-market opportunities by participating in the following opportunities:

Microsoft first party product integration or add-ins, such as in Teams, Power BI, or productivity tools.
White glove onboarding to the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program, to become a cloud solution provider or managed solution provider via direct or indirect channels.
Support onboarding to the Azure Marketplace as an indirect or transactable offer, with access to a broad set of Azure sellers and customers.
Joint go-to-market coordination with a regular cadence of customer pipeline reviews.

Marketing and community involvement
Azure Space provides a unique opportunity for our partners to expand their marketing through public outreach via our marketing channels, such as:

Opportunities to be showcased in Microsoft customer presentations and sales training.
Participation in space and spectrum focused Microsoft events – such as BUILD, Inspire or sales readiness.
Joint public relations and marketing opportunities, such as press releases, blogs, and speaking events at conferences.

Product offering incentives
The Space Partner Community will also have special access to our premier incentives offered for Azure Space product offerings:

Azure credits, sponsored accounts, and volume discounts in return for Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment.
Enterprise Agreement Programs, such as Licensed Service Providers (LSPs) and Azure Online Services Government (AOSG), with rebates based on resell criteria.
FastTrack dedicated modernization and migration architecture support for qualified opportunities.
Many other Microsoft Partner Network benefits, such as credits for gold competencies and partner marketing benefits via co-sell programs.

Sign up today

Sign up here for the Azure Space Partner Community to expand your business with Azure today.

Learn more about Azure Space and the partner community.

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