The Microsoft ISV Success Program Helps Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) Transition to the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program
Estimated Read Time: 3 minutes
Intended Audience: Microsoft Partners, Microsoft ISVs
Revised August 2023
How The ISV Success Program Can Help
The ISV Success Program is designed to help accelerate app development and innovation, reach more customers across the globe, and scale businesses by selling through Microsoft Partners. By joining the ISV Success Program, you can take advantage of over 128K USD retail value in free benefits and gain access to a comprehensive package that includes:
- Application Support: Access support to develop applications built on or integrated with Microsoft Cloud platforms and to publish applications to the Microsoft commercial marketplace. Grow your application sales through effective Go-To-Market strategies and earn rewards for applications that are most successful in the market.
- Developer Sandbox: Access powerful tools including Microsoft Azure, GitHub Enterprise Cloud subscription, Visual Studio Enterprise subscription, Dynamics 365 partner sandbox, Microsoft 365 E5 developer subscription, and much more.
- Expert Guidance with 1:1 Consultations: Meet with Microsoft experts to use technical advisory hours to discuss app architecture design, app architecture review, publishing, and marketplace listing optimization to help you get to market faster.
- Valuable Resources and Events: Expand your knowledge with content and resources tailored for ISVs, including code samples, client libraries, reference architecture, and SaaS accelerator tools. Attend virtual and community events, Q&A sessions, webcasts, workshops, hackathons, and more to discover new ways to build, sell, and thrive.
- On-Demand Readiness: Get access to up to 3 exam vouchers, self-paced learning paths, and hands-on labs and videos.
- Engagement Manager: Provide feedback to a member of the Microsoft support team, in a 1:1 session, assigned to you to help you utilize the benefits of the program to their full extent.
How to Participate in the ISV Success Program
- Join the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program: Previously known as the Microsoft Partner Network, you must be willing to join the Partner Program, if not already a member.
- Have an app in development: You must be building a B2B application leveraging the Microsoft Cloud and be committed to publishing it to the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace. The ISV Success Program supports several development scenarios including newly built applications, apps built on Azure or not, apps not yet on Microsoft cloud and apps already built on Azure. Take a look at the requirements for each of the development scenarios below:
- Headquartered in a supported region: Supported regions currently include the US, Canada, UK, Western Europe, Germany, Israel, UAE, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
- Willingness to utilize the benefits: You must be willing to participate in a kickoff call, two surveys upon beginning and completion of the 9-month program, focus groups that consist of two one-hour feedback sessions, and 1:1 feedback with your Microsoft engagement manager.
The public preview of the ISV Success Program is now available to all ISVs across the Microsoft Cloud. With the consolidation of Marketplace Rewards, the ISV Success Program is designed to support your entire journey of building, publishing, and growing sales of apps built on the cloud, as well as rewarding applications that are most successful in the market.
The ISV Industry Designation Initiative
Since ISVs have not felt at home in the past, Microsoft is dedicated to changing that with the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program and the different ISV-focused initiatives. One of these initiatives is the ISV Industry designation, which is designed to drive customer success and accelerate Partner growth with industry-leading ISV solutions that will address specific customer scenarios.
Although not much is known about the initiative yet, we do know that the first wave will be focused on the retail, healthcare, and financial service industries. The goal is to provide customers with differentiated Industry-Specific Cloud Partner Solutions that achieve data interoperability with Microsoft Cloud, technical capability, and customer case requirements.
