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News and Announcements

• Select Azure Virtual Machine Reserved Instances ending July 1: Effective July 1, 2026, Microsoft will end new purchases and renewals of select Azure Virtual Machine (VM) Reserved Instances (RIs). Visit the transition guide to review impacted VM series, check RI expiration dates, and take action to avoid workloads reverting to pay‑as‑you‑go pricing once existing reservations expire. 

• Find out what you missed at Microsoft Build: This annual event was about more than the technology that developers and engineers use; it was a partner growth moment. New capabilities across the Microsoft Agent platform, Foundry, Microsoft IQ, Azure, Agent 365, GitHub, Microsoft Marketplace, and Microsoft for Startups are creating practical opportunities for partners to build, modernize, secure, and scale AI-ready solutions. Explore how partners can translate the announcements into repeatable offers and measurable customer value. 

• Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards submissions now open: Nominations for the Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards are open through July 7. Submit your entry to showcase how your organization is driving Frontier Transformation and delivering meaningful customer impact on a global stage.  

• Azure HorizonDB now in public preview: Azure HorizonDB is now in public preview, giving partners new ways to empower customers to build resilient, high‑performance, and intelligent data platforms. Unlock opportunities across migration, modernization, and AI‑powered application development with the portfolio of PostgreSQL databases on Azure.  

• Azure Linux now in public preview: Azure Linux is now in public preview, offering a secure, cloud‑optimized Linux platform built by Microsoft for consistency and control at scale—at no licensing cost. Equip customers to reduce operational overhead and simplify compliance, patching, and security management across Azure infrastructure. 

Incentives and Offers

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  Accelerate migrations and modernization with Azure Accelerate: Access Microsoft resources designed to speed migrations and modernization, including Azure Accelerate, Cloud Accelerate Factory, and Dr Migrate. Nominate eligible projects to support faster deal closure, predictable payouts, and AI‑assisted migration planning. Review our streamlined incentives guide for more information on tools and resources built for your customer migrations and modernization projects. 

  
  

Skilling and Events

• Deepen your Microsoft Fabric expertise at FabCon + SQLCon Barcelona: Join Microsoft to explore the latest Fabric and SQL innovations and unlock new business opportunities at FabCon + SQLCon Barcelona (September 28–October 1). Build your skills in hands-on labs, connect with engineering leaders, and learn how products are evolving in the Frontier era. Microsoft will host an exclusive Partner Day on September 28—your chance to align with the Microsoft data and AI priorities and deepen your engagement with key offerings. Act fast—early bird pricing ends July 16. 

• Build your FY27 strategy on a winning cloud and AI platform: Join us at MCAPS Start for Partners on July 22 to discover practical strategies for connecting the Microsoft platform vision to actionable results. Learn how to modernize your IT environments, leverage the full power of your data, and build innovative solutions with agentic AI. Register now, and if you’re already registered, encourage your team members to register so they can access the sessions most relevant to their roles and growth goals. 

• Kick off FY27 with us: Continue the momentum on July 28 with the Microsoft Partner FY27 GTM Kickoff Event, exploring FY27 go-to-market priorities and initiatives across AI Business Solutions, Cloud and AI, Security, and more. Register now and start prepping for the new fiscal year.

Go-To-Market

• Get small and medium-sized business (SMB) Azure asset placement guidance: Access updated SMB Azure asset placement guidance to help you align workloads to the right Azure services. Use this resource to simplify customer conversations and position Azure solutions that match SMB needs and growth plans 

Partner success stories

• Appfie creates unified operations for a dispersed theme park system using Microsoft Power Platform: Microsoft partner Appfie helped Studio Plopsa NV modernize and centralize finance operations across eight theme parks by replacing fragmented, manual processes with a low‑code solution built on Power Platform. The unified system now supports more than 1,500 cashiers, reduced errors by 85%, and cut employee onboarding time by more than half, all while enabling Plopsa’s team to build and extend apps independently. 

• Copeland scales traditional manufacturing through Azure solutions: Copeland rapidly migrated its Connect+ platform from a legacy datacenter to Azure under a hard deadline, using services like Azure Data Box, App Service, and SQL Managed Instance to modernize operations without disrupting customers. By automating deployments with GitHub Actions and Bicep, Copeland cut customer onboarding from weeks to hours, increased release cadence to monthly, achieved 99.9% uptime across 40,000 sites, and reduced cloud costs by 20%, enabling a small DevOps team to scale and innovate. 

• Banco Bradesco accelerates development while balancing security needs: Watch this video case study to discover how Banco Bradesco is scaling enterprise AI innovation on Microsoft Azure—leveraging Microsoft Foundry, Azure API Management, and Azure Red Hat OpenShift. By standardizing on Azure Red Hat OpenShift, Bradesco is running 200+ generative AI projects with improved governance, security, and operational control—accelerating development while meeting the stringent requirements of a leading financial institution. 

Additional Resources