Product Updates

Claude gains five new agentic capabilities in Foundry, MongoDB Atlas deployment arrives in the Azure portal preview, and Azure Copilot advances agentic cloud operations. Copilot Studio's GitHub Copilot harness reaches GA, giving partners new ways to build production-ready AI agents.

Partner Enablement and Go-to-Market

FY27 demo experiences help sellers showcase Azure value, while a new hosting modernization playbook and customer stories from Ingram Micro and Planet DDS provide proven paths from migration to AI transformation. New Fabric SMB resources support data and AI conversations with smaller customers.

Incentives and Offers

Frontier Accelerate introduces new FY27 funding, incentives, and skilling investments. Updated co-sell referral requirements and Azure promotions help partners strengthen pipeline quality and drive Azure consumption growth.

Partner Skilling

The FY27 skilling roadmap adds an AI-powered learning plan agent, and a new AI sales skilling event helps partners lead Frontier Conversations and position agentic AI solutions with customers.

Events

Microsoft Ignite registration is now open, while MCAPS Start for Partners and the FY27 GTM Kickoff are available on-demand, providing guidance, resources, and priorities to help partners accelerate FY27 planning and execution.

Product Updates

Claude on Azure Gets Five New Agentic Capabilities in Microsoft Foundry

Microsoft Foundry now brings five new Claude capabilities to Azure-hosted deployments, including Structured Outputs, Web Search, Web Fetch, MCP Connector, and Tool Search. These enhancements help partners build more capable, production-ready AI agents that can connect to enterprise systems, access current information, and orchestrate tools while staying within Azure governance and compliance boundaries.

Everpure Cloud adds elastic block storage to Azure VMs

Everpure Cloud Azure Native lets customers provision enterprise-grade block storage and attach it to Azure VMs directly in the portal, with no appliances to manage. Billing follows effective capacity after deduplication and compression, and capacity scales independently from compute. Partners running Azure VM estates can put lower storage spend and cleaner capacity planning at the center of migration and cost-optimization work.

Deploy MongoDB Atlas clusters from the Azure portal (preview)

A new preview lets teams create MongoDB Atlas projects and deploy clusters, from free M0 to dedicated M10 and M30 tiers, directly in the Azure portal through the Atlas Azure Native Integration. Each cluster’s Azure region sets where data lives, and billing stays unified through the existing Azure Marketplace plan.

Data-focused partners can stand up managed MongoDB for customers inside Azure governance and connect those clusters to Foundry agents for retrieval scenarios.

Pilot a preview cluster in a customer sandbox and pair it with Foundry vector search to prototype a grounded AI use case.

Copilot Studio: GitHub Copilot harness is now generally available

The GitHub Copilot harness is now generally available in Copilot Studio, giving makers an orchestration option for agents that need advanced reasoning, planning, coding-intensive work, and agentic execution. Existing agents are unaffected, while GitHub Copilot harness agents use usage-based billing. Partners can help customers move from experimentation to production-ready agents for multi-step business processes and grow consumption by attaching new product value.

Resources: Copilot Studio GitHub Harness Overview

Azure Copilot advances agentic cloud operations

The Azure Copilot observability agent is generally available and continuously analyzes telemetry to surface issues, group related signals, start investigations, and recommend likely root causes. The Azure Resource Manager MCP Server is in public preview, bringing cost and usage data into AI-enabled workflows. Partners can help customers reduce operational burden across complex cloud and AI workloads through faster troubleshooting, workflow-level governance, and continuous cost optimization.

Partner Enablement & Go-to-market

Explore FY27 demos on Microsoft Demo Experiences

Microsoft Demo Experiences is a one-stop shop for finding and launching live, simulated, and add-on Azure demos, including FY27 conversation-specific modules. Partners can use the same demo platform as Microsoft sellers to showcase product experiences and bring customer conversation scenarios to life.

Visit Microsoft Demo Experiences.

New e-book maps a modernization path for hosting partners

Microsoft published Navigating the Next Era of Hosting, a practical guide for hosting and hybrid cloud partners working through major infrastructure transitions. The guide focuses on protecting margins, retaining customer trust, and defining a clear modernization path. Hosting partners facing infrastructure change get a structured way to defend margins and frame a modernization story customers can follow.

Download the e-book and use its framework to shape one modernization proposal for an at-risk hosting customer.

Ingram Micro case study: from cloud savings to AI modernization

With Ingram Micro’s help, partners moved customers from legacy infrastructure to scalable, cost-efficient Azure environments, then built on that foundation for AI modernization. The case study shows how the progression expanded partner revenue and deepened customer relationships.

The story gives partners a reference model for sequencing customers from cost-driven cloud migration into higher-value AI engagements.

Planet DDS cuts provisioning time from six weeks to one day with Azure modernization

Planet DDS modernized its dental-software platform using Azure App Service, Azure SQL Database, and Azure Cosmos DB to meet enterprise demands for availability, multi-region resilience, and AI-ready analytics. Reported outcomes include faster provisioning, deployment, recovery, and application response. Partners running migrate-and-modernize engagements get a concrete proof point for how Azure modernization can deliver enterprise-grade resilience and speed.

Use the Planet DDS story with a comparable ISV or SaaS customer to frame a modernization proposal.

New Microsoft Fabric resources for SMB customers under 50 employees

A new partner guide outlines a five-step path to get small businesses started on Fabric. A customer-ready deck explains the value of Microsoft Fabric for small businesses, including the data reality, three core values, and a before-and-after story. Partners get ready-made narrative and enablement assets to open Fabric conversations with the under-50-employee SMB segment.

Review the partner guide, then use the customer-ready deck to introduce Fabric to a target SMB account.

Resources: Fabric Conversation Guide for Partners for SMB (partner only)

Incentives & Offers

FY27 Azure partner update: Frontier Accelerate and new promotions

Microsoft introduced Frontier Accelerate, aligning FY27 funding, incentives, and skilling to how partners deliver transformation across solution areas. FY27 co-sell referrals now validate Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline upfront, alongside new Azure consumptive promotions. FY27 gives partners new levers to grow Azure consumption and improve referral quality, while sales teams need to map co-sell submissions to the BANT fields.

Partner Skilling

FY27 skilling roadmap adds an AI agent for learning plans

The Partner Skilling Hub includes a Skilling Plan AI Agent that returns personalized recommendations and builds learning plans by role, solution area, or readiness goal. FY27 skilling spans sales, presales, architecture, delivery, and customer success. Practice leads can shorten ramp time by pointing each role to a targeted learning path instead of a generic catalog. Have team members use the Skilling Plan AI Agent and align individual plans to FY27 solution-area priorities.

Differentiate and grow your AI practice: Sales Partner Skilling Event, September 16-17

This two-day virtual Microsoft partner sales event focuses on leading FY27 Frontier Conversations and turning AI ambition into sales opportunities. Microsoft experts will cover customer questions, sales tools, FinOps, agentic spend, and developer productivity.

Partners get direct enablement to open AI-led sales conversations, position agentic solutions, and address customer questions about cost management and developer productivity. Register for the virtual event on September 16-17.

Accelerate Agentic AI

Sept 7–11 (IST, BST, PDT)

Build practical skills to create, deploy, and scale AI agents using Microsoft Copilot Studio, Microsoft IQ, Microsoft Foundry, and Microsoft Agent Framework. Gain hands-on experience with agentic AI and learn how to architect sophisticated AI agent solutions.

Microsoft Fabric workshops

Sept 15–17 (IST, BST, PDT)

Learn how to turn enterprise data into contextual, conversational insights with Fabric IQ and Fabric Data Agents. Get hands-on experience modeling business knowledge, building intelligent data agents, and enabling natural-language interactions across your data.

Modernize apps and databases

Sept 22–24 (IST, BST, PDT)

Build the practical skills to migrate and modernize legacy applications and databases with Microsoft Azure. Explore cloud adoption strategies, modernization patterns, tools, and Azure-native solutions you can apply to customer projects.

Microsoft Fabric: Databases

Sept 29–Oct 1 (IST, BST, PDT)

Learn how to build and manage intelligent, cloud-scale databases with Microsoft Fabric. Explore SQL databases and Cosmos DB, connect operational and analytical data across clouds, and use AI to help scale, tune, and secure your databases.

Events

Microsoft Ignite registration is open for November 17-20

Registration is open for Microsoft Ignite, taking place November 17-20 in San Francisco, with a focus on AI innovation and hands-on skill building. Ignite gives you an opportunity to explore the latest innovations, hear practical insights, and build skills you can apply right away.

MCAPS Start for Partners: Now available on-demand

MCAPS Start for Partners is now available on-demand, with the full recording and deck ready to explore. Microsoft leaders share the priorities, investments, and opportunities shaping FY27, plus actionable guidance across AI, Security, Cloud, Marketplace, co-sell, and incentives. Watch the recording and review the deck to ground your FY27 planning in Microsoft's stated investments and opportunities.

Microsoft Partner FY27 GTM Kickoff: Now available on-demand

All sessions from the FY27 GTM Kickoff are now available on-demand. Get a double click on opportunities across AI Business Solutions, Commercial Cloud & AI, and Security, with guidance, skilling, and resources to accelerate customer outcomes with AI. The session library lets each practice go deep on the GTM motions, skilling, and resources most relevant to them and turn FY27 opportunities into pipeline.

Choose the sessions most relevant to your practice and access the recordings and resources on your schedule.