January Microsoft Newsletter
As we bid farewell to another incredible year, we want to express our deepest gratitude for the unwavering support and collaboration you’ve brought to the intY family.
We hope 2024 is filled with boundless opportunities, prosperous partnerships, and unparalleled success and above all you managed to take some time to unwind and reset with loved ones over the festive period.
Was your new year’s resolution to stay on top of what’s going with Microsoft? Ours was, here’s the latest for January 2024…
Featured Microsoft Product/Service:
Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 is here! We’re sure you know that already, but have you been told about the opportunity it presents for making profit?
Don’t worry if you haven’t – our Lead Microsoft Consultant has collated all the ways you can make money with Copilot and has even shared some of her top tips for selling success to really send your profits sky high!
Read the blog here to start unlocking profit this 2024!
Tech tips & tricks:
Did you know that our Modern Workplace Practice conducts 121 upsell training workshops?
In less than 1 hour, our +One workshop will guide you through the value of moving your customers through the Microsoft stack, starting at Exchange Online all the way through to Microsoft 365 Business Premium.
Learn more about the products, get to grips with the customer benefits and understand what the value is for you as a partner! Plus, with Microsoft 365 Copilot’s recent release in CSP, make sure your customers are on the right licensing.
Don’t have time to book a workshop? Watch it on demand here.
News & updates:
intY
We are happy to announce we’ve joined forced with specialist cloud marketplace provider Giacom.
What’s happening?
The acquisition, which includes intY’s UK revenues, partners, and business operations, scales Giacom’s Microsoft cloud capabilities in the rapidly evolving cloud services market and further strengthens its position as the largest and most technically proficient provider of Microsoft licensing to the SMB-focused UK channel.
What does this mean for you?
You will be seamlessly integrated into Giacom’s thriving ecosystem, opening the doors to new MSP opportunities. You’ll gain access to a broad range of curated products and services including cloud, communications, hardware, and billing solutions, all conveniently available in one place.
What are the benefits of this acquisition?
The acquisition not only solidifies Giacom’s leadership in Microsoft licensing but also presents an exciting cross-sell opportunity. Giacom is committed to leveraging this expanded portfolio to create added value for partners, facilitating their growth and success in the dynamic SMB landscape.
“The integration of intY’s expertise and capabilities will strengthen our ability to support partners in this critical growth sector of the market, while further establishing Giacom as the go-to provider for Microsoft cloud services to the SMB-focused UK channel” commented Terry O’Brien, CEO at Giacom.
Marcus Ollenbuttel, SVP, Digital Distribution, Europe, intY added, “Giacom is a business that intY has long admired as a best-of-breed UK-focused peer that shares our commitment to working exclusively through the channel. We’re excited to become part of the Giacom team. We look forward to a seamless integration process, and to the transformative impact this acquisition will have on our ability to not only support our partners but to add increasing value to them moving forwards.”
Azure
General availability – “As on Premise” sizing in Azure Migrate SQL discovery and assessment
Do you need a quick assessment for the SQL instances discovered by Azure Migrate appliance and cannot wait for a detailed performance profile? The newly introduced “As on-premises” sizing criteria in SQL assessment enables just that.
Now use the “As on-premises” sizing criteria to generate a quick and reliable assessment that leverages the provisioning decisions for the source instance. The source instance configuration is used to generate size recommendations for the target Azure SQL service.
See Microsoft’s announcement here or contact the Azure Practice for more information
Modern Work
Updated timeline for Public Sector availability in New Commerce Experience
In December 2023, Microsoft updated their timeline for the availability of Public Sector Offers in NCE. Previously they were to go live on 1st January 2024, however Microsoft have now delayed this until 1st March 2024. This is still happening in 4 waves with the revised launch wave dates shown in the following table:
| Education, nonprofit, US GCC offers | Price list preview | Available in new commerce |
|---|---|---|
|
Wave 1 |
February 1, 2024 |
March 1, 2024 |
|
Wave 2 |
February 1, 2024 |
March 1, 2024 |
|
Wave 3 |
March 1, 2024 |
April 1, 2024 |
|
Wave 4 |
April 1, 2024 |
May 1, 2024 |
The Microsoft led migrations from Legacy to New Commerce are still scheduled to begin on 11th January 2024 for Commercial customers and 1st July 2024 for Public Sector.
View the full Microsoft announcement here: December 2023 announcements – Partner Center announcements | Microsoft Learn
Microsoft named a Leader in 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Unified Communications as a Service for the fifth year in a row
For the fifth consecutive year, Microsoft has been named a Leader in the UCaaS space by Gartner. The report evaluates Microsoft for Microsoft Teams which provides telephony, meetings, and messaging and this recognition showcases Microsoft’s continued investment in UCaaS products and Teams more broadly.
Read the announcement here Microsoft named a Leader in 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Unified Communications as a Service| Microsoft 365 Blog
The new Microsoft Planner: A unified experience bringing together to-dos, tasks, plans and projects
Microsoft will be integrating Microsoft To Do, Microsoft Planner, Microsoft Project and the intelligence of Microsoft Copilot into a simple, familiar experience providing users with a new way to manage tasks individually or at scale, empowering everyone to manage their work in one place and accelerate business outcomes.
Starting in early 2024, the new Microsoft Planner app will be available in Microsoft Teams with web experience following later in 2024.
Sign up here to be the first to know when the new Planner will be available as a preview, and generally available.
Microsoft Teams Premium Security Feature Update – Turn off copying/ forwarding of meeting chat
“Turn off copying/ forwarding of meeting chat” allows the meeting organiser to disable copying and sharing features of meeting chat messages to reduce data leakages.
Once enabled, meeting chat participants will be unable to copy chat messages using menu option or keyboard shortcuts, forward messages or share to Outlook. This feature will be rolled out in General Availability in January 2024 for Teams Premium users.
Partner Announcements:
We want to continue to make every effort to only communicate with you the important things.
We’ve toned down the number of emails we send to you, and instead, we’re putting all you need to know on the Partner Announcements page on our website, that way you have a historical log on any updates from our vendors and intY, which allows you to easily catch up with anything you miss in your own time.
Training & Resources:
At intY, we understand that true strength lies in knowledge. We’ve ramped up our support and training initiatives, ensuring that our partners are not just equipped with tools but also armed with the expertise to navigate the Microsoft ecosystem successfully.
Elysian:IT – Making IT easy
Do you come across opportunities that you don’t have the technical capability to deliver? Do you have more opportunities than your team has the capacity for? Well, look no further than Elysian: IT, a specialist in professional services delivery.
We have partnered with Elysian: IT to provide you with a team of Microsoft experts to enhance your offering and provide you with the confidence to deliver scalable, secure and governed Cloud solutions to your customers.
With expertise across Azure, Modern Work, Security and Power Platform solutions Elysian: IT are the perfect partner to bolster your in-house capability, drive new opportunities and accelerate your cloud growth.
Get in touch with your account manager to find out more.
Azure Applied Skills
Microsoft are continuing to add to their Applied Skills portfolio exam offering, giving us the ability to sit exams remotely based on common deployment topics such as Deploying Azure monitor and Deploying Azure sentinel.
These Applied skills offer a comprehensive learning plan to get you up speed with your chosen exam product getting you ready for the assessment.
Applied skills are a great option for exam/leaning and development if you are someone looking to progress your hands on expertise with azure and grab yourself a certificate to prove it.
Most applied skills exams are only 2 hours long, allowing you to achieve them in an afternoon and are a great accompaniment to your 104 or 305 exams.
Applied skills exams are purely practical so there is no need to learn answers to tricky questions.
Elevating expertise with Azure Ascend
We are continuing to enable our partners with all the essential knowledge and skills to resell Microsoft Azure solutions with confidence. This year, we’ve worked tirelessly to make Azure Ascend more accessible and partner-friendly to get you to reach that Azure summit sooner!
We’ve converted more of our live workshops to on-demand sessions so that you can make the most of our platform – when it’s most convenient for you. But don’t worry, there’s still the opportunity to book a call if you need us!
If you haven’t experienced our partner-exclusive enablement programme yet, get started here.
But if you’re not yet convinced, or you’ve fallen behind on your Azure Ascend journey and need a little boost to jump back in, hear from one of our partners on how their startup business is ascending above and beyond thanks to Azure Ascend in our case study blog.
Industry Insights:
Digital Marketing Content OnDemand – Your free Digital Marketing Strategy toolkit
We’re sure you understand the importance of Digital Marketing, but perhaps there’s a skill or resource gap in your organisation. Microsoft have created the Digital Marketing Content OnDemand (DMC) platform to address this gap, help increase your reach and expand your marketing strategy.
DMC provides weekly, multi-channel, go-to-market content including pitch decks, email templates and social media posts at no cost for Microsoft Partners.
Contact your account manager or our Microsoft experts to understand how you can unlock its capabilities, drive customer engagement and elevate your business.
Current promotions and incentives:
Azure Incentives
We are running an exclusive Proof of Concept (or ACO) incentive for partners on our partner enablement platform, Azure Ascend. This incentive will reward you for creating new opportunities in Microsoft Azure. If you are interested in applying for this funding, please read the terms & conditions below and then register via the form.
To qualify, you’ll need to be signed up to Azure Ascend and have completed your onboarding call in Stage One, Step One. Once you’ve registered for this incentive and transact through a Microsoft Azure subscription, you will receive a credit against your Azure consumption for the first two billing cycles.
Public preview – Free SQL Managed Instance
Experience the full capabilities of SQL Managed Instance, now available for free!
We recognise the significance of effortless cloud migrations to the enhancement of your database operations. With 4 or 8 Cores and 32GB of user data, SQL Managed Instance simplifies testing of your cloud migrations, ensuring a seamless transition while mitigating potential complications.
Explore a solution that offers efficiency, scalability, and security. Free SQL Managed Instance empowers you to optimise database operations, reduce downtime, and realise improved performance.
For more information contact the Azure Practice or visit here
Microsoft Promotions
At the beginning of each month, Microsoft release a Promo Guide which highlights the current promotions they are making available for partners.
Check out this month’s promo guide here but keep in mind region and programme availability!
Upcoming Events:
CloudThrive: London
1st Feb 2024 | Storey Club, Paddington, London
Join us in London at our latest partner event as we kickstart 2024 with insightful discussions on cloud growth.
Elevate your AI expertise with exclusive insight on Microsoft Copilot, delivered by our in-house Microsoft experts. Explore innovative SMB brand positioning strategies that will supercharge your marketing efforts and make you really stand out from the competition.
Plus, you’ll get a chance to ask a member of Giacom’s leadership team about the great opportunities available to you since their recent acquisition of intY.
Sign up here and let’s thrive together in the cloud!
CSP Masters: Reading
20th – 22nd Feb 2024 | Microsoft UK Headquarters, Reading
Unlock MSP success at this year’s Microsoft CSP Masters Bootcamp.
Gain insight to help you grow capabilities in selling, deploying, and managing Microsoft 365 portfolio solutions for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
Sign up here for one or all the dates to gain valuable insights and drive adoption with confidence.
Azure Ascend Base Camp: Reading
6th March 2024 | Microsoft UK Headquarters, Reading
Ready to explore Security, Backup and Disaster Recovery?
Join us for the next instalment of Azure Ascend Base Camp, where our Azure specialists will guide you through unlocking the true potential of Microsoft’s cloud platform. Access insights, tips, and hands-on expertise to safeguard your Microsoft Azure estate, ensure business continuity and protect your investment.
You’ll gain specialist advice for businesses taking their first steps in Azure Security, Backup and Disaster Recovery and have any questions answered directly by the experts.
Sign up here and don’t miss this opportunity to ascend to new heights in the cloud!
Thursday Think Tank with our Microsoft experts
Bi-weekly on a Thursday, we’re rolling out the virtual red carpet for an exclusive drop-in session: Thursday Think Tank.
Hosted by our Microsoft maestros – sessions will focus on the latest news on Microsoft solutions, key learning opportunities for you and your team and answers to your burning questions on all things Microsoft.
It’s not just a meeting; it’s a chance to connect, learn, and thrive with fellow Microsoft professionals.
Take a look at the workshops we have coming up here.
Upcoming Microsoft workshops
Keep an eye on Microsoft’s upcoming Digital Events here.
[Top tip: Bookmark this page so you can always stay up to date!]
Concluding thoughts…
As we step into the promising AI-realm of 2024, a year poised for transformative change, we are thrilled to embark on this exciting journey with you. We anticipate a year of growth, innovation, and shared success.
If you have any feedback on the way we do things around here, please feel free to get in touch at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you!
Related Posts
How adding Microsoft Teams into your stack can unlock new business potential
Unlock the potential of Microsoft’s Modern Workplace for business growth and competitiveness with intY’s support.
Unleashing the power of Microsoft Security Copilot
Microsoft Security Copilot is an AI-powered security analyst that uses GPT-powered natural language to investigate and respond to security incidents, threats and vulnerabilities.
Azure and OpenAI: Why should you care?
We’ll be examining what OpenAI models actually are, exploring how you can create custom solutions using these models within the Azure OpenAI Service, and then discussing how small to medium businesses (SMBs) could potentially benefit from all of this.
