Microsoft launched the new Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program and many other news during the global event Microsoft Inspire 2023, held on 18 and 19 July. This program focuses on collaborating with beyond 400,000 partners worldwide. But it is not the only novelty, in fact Microsoft has reaffirmed its commitment to making artificial intelligence a transformational tool, heralding new AI tools.
Microsoft Inspire 2023, here are the news announced at the event
Il Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program will offer each partner access to a comprehensive portfolio of business value-add solutions and technologies, leveraging the potential of Microsoft AI and the power of the Cloud. The program will integrate the entire partner business cycle: onboarding, skilling projects, go-to-market, and co-selling, along with AI-specific offerings and benefits.
During the event, Microsoft also showcased new solutions to support channel and enterprise growth, emphasizing their commitment to accelerating AI transformation. Among these:
- Bing Chat Enterprise:
- It offers AI-powered business chat with commercial data protection. Outgoing and incoming information is protected to ensure managed access and better responses.
- Launched in preview for organizations licensed with Microsoft 365 E5, E3, Business Premium, and Business Standard at no additional cost. It will also be available as a standalone subscription in the future.
- New Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing:
- Available at $30/month per user for Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard, and Business Premium customers.
- New features for Microsoft Sales Copilot:
- Insert directly into Dynamics 365 Sales.
- They include AI-generated deal summary, contextualized email drafts, and meeting preparation. And they improve salesperson productivity and enable more efficient business management through automation of CRM tasks and real-time insights generated by AI.
- Power Automate Process Mining:
- New next-generation AI capabilities for Power Automate Process Mining. It offers AI-powered insights to optimize existing processes and increase efficiency through low-code automation.
- New features and Azure investments:
- More than 4,500 companies have adopted Azure OpenAI features.
- Substantial investment to increase the scale and availability of Azure Migrate & Modernize.
- Launch of Azure Innovate to address growing demands for Analytics and AI.
MUNICH, GERMANY – DECEMBER 26, 2018: Microsoft logo at the company office building located in Munich, Germany
Partnership between Meta and Microsoft (and also with Epic)
Meta and Microsoft announce a new collaboration: they support the Llama family of language models on Azure and Windows. Microsoft will be Meta’s preferred partner in releasing the new version of Llama 2 to commercial customers. It will allow Azure customers to tune and deploy Llama 2 templates from parameters 7B, 13B and 70B in Azure. Llama will be optimized to run on Windows, allowing developers to take advantage of Llama 2 with Direct ML through the ONNX runtime.
Expanded Strategic Partnership with Epic: Epic has integrated Azure OpenAI into its EHR software. It also provides solutions to explore clinical data more intuitively for clinicians. And it offers more efficient help in managing patient messages.
The other announcements
Furthermore, ISV Success is a new path within the AI Cloud Partner Program, aimed at ISV partners. It offers many benefits, such as discounts on products and clouds, demo environments and technical advice for developing and publishing applications. Also announced Private Multiparty Offerings, which allow partners to work together to sell customized offerings through the Microsoft Marketplace. And new certifications arrive within the AI Cloud Partner Program.
Finally, named i Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. Microsoft Italy awarded Avvale come Country Partner of the Year 2023. But there are many other awarded partners: find the complete list here.