Security ‘is crucial’ and ‘a non-negotiable asset in this climate and environment that we’re operating in,’ Microsoft Chief Partner Officer Nicole Dezen tells CRN.
Nicole Dezen, Microsoft’s chief partner officer and corporate vice president of global channel partner sales, sees skills in artificial intelligence and security as “non-negotiable” for the tech giant and its partners in the modern business climate.
“AI skilling is non-negotiable,” Dezen told CRN in an interview where she touched on the Redmond, Wash.-based company’s investments in providing more AI training to its ecosystem of more than 500,000 partners worldwide. Research viewed by Dezen shows that “frontier firms”—that is, companies at the leading edge of AI adoption—invest 10 percent to 20 percent of their internal time on skilling.
Dezen also defended the high requirements Microsoft has for solution providers earning security-related badging, designations and specializations, including in the area of security.
“We do have an incredibly high bar for security—it is crucial. It’s a non-negotiable asset in this climate and environment that we’re operating in,” she said. “I feel very confident in the security partners we have. And we welcome more security experts to join the Microsoft ecosystem as well.”
[RELATED: Microsoft Ignite 2025: The Biggest Partner Program, Security News]
Microsoft Partner Program
Microsoft’s chief partner officer spoke with CRN in the waning days of the vendor’s Ignite 2025 conference focused on users and partners. Ignite lasted through Friday in San Francisco and online.
In her keynote address to attendees, Dezen shared that the vendor has trained more than 2.4 million learners across all solution areas in the last year. The vendor increased course offerings 66 percent year on year, now delivering 145 courses across 1.7 million learners.
Dezen’s talk highlighted new opportunities for partners to make money and advance their AI practices. The new Agent 365 AI orchestration and monitoring tool available to members of the Microsoft Frontier program presents a way for partners to get a handle on existing and future AI agents within a customer’s estate while also presenting a managed service wrapping opportunity post-implementation.
The Agent Factory program gives partners an agent pre-purchase plan, access to 32 Microsoft services through one flexible pool of funds, a metered plan that eliminates up-front licensing and provisioning and other benefits, Dezen said in her keynote address.
Highlighting the reasons for partners to adopt a strategy for Microsoft’s newly unified Marketplace, Dezen said in her keynote that 75 percent of Marketplace partners say they close deals faster and 69 percent of partners land larger deals through multi-party private offers and resale-enabled offers on Marketplace.
In her CRN interview, Dezen emphasized that Marketplace is not only a transaction engine but one for increasing partners’ reach to prospective customers and a way to work better with Microsoft internal sellers. “It’s core to the strategy,” Dezen told CRN. “This is the engine for co-sell.”
Read on for more of what Dezen shared with CRN in her interview.
What’s your message to solution providers as we enter 2026?
Frontier. This is truly about frontier transformation. We’ve seen now so many partners really embrace [AI] technology internally.
Both Pax8 and SoftwareOne-Crayon [SoftwareOne completed its acquisition of Crayon in July] have phenomenal examples of the way that they’ve rethought their own organizations, how they think about employees, the implementation of agents and agent bosses and how that extends to the way that they work–and then how they’ve taken that and packaged it into the way that they go to market with us.
The real-world experience that creates for a partner, it translates so nicely to customers that are quite hungry to understand, ‘Who do I entrust with this?’ I was really, really proud to see so many examples across the partner ecosystem.
How well is Microsoft’s ecosystem doing in meeting the AI moment and fostering the proliferation of the Microsoft AI portfolio?
As an organization and certainly as an ecosystem, we’ve made pretty phenomenal progress.
This is no longer a question about is AI a thing—this is really about, ‘How do I activate this in a way that is connected to my business, my business model and the way that I go to market with Microsoft?’
I’ve seen that transition. And as with anything, in an ecosystem of 500,000 partners, partners are at different stages of their journey.
We just talked about some great examples of partners that are fully embracing ‘frontier.’ Another great example of that on the enterprise side is Accenture and Avanade [Avanade was formed as a joint venture by Accenture and Microsoft].
[They’ve done] world-class implementations internally. The way that they’re changing their go-to-market with us—not just in the enterprise, but also the way that Avanade has embraced SME&C [Small, Medium Enterprises and Channel, a partner organization Microsoft launchedearlier this year. Dezen reports to SME&C President Ralph Haupter].
That’s thanks to their industry-leading work around Microsoft’s AI platform. And then there are partners that are very early in their journey, and I’m really optimistic that the things that they heard from Microsoft … give them the confidence that now is the time to embrace agents.
[News coming out of Ignite was] really focused on not just how to create agents, but also how to manage agents in a very thoughtful way—the same way organizations would manage their data and their own employees.
What should the news out of Ignite say to partners about what Microsoft has in store for 2026 and beyond?
Everything we do to enable partners comes through the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program.
Partners will go through their resources in the Microsoft AI Club partner program to get new benefits. Skilling was a really big focus for us. AI skilling is non-negotiable. I was really inspired by the recent research we had that showed that frontier firms invest 10 percent to 20 percent of their internal time on skilling.
That’s such a great call to action for all of us. And it’s the reason why we’ve made record levels of investment this year in skilling—first across all solution areas and then certainly on AI skilling. We’ve increased our AI skilling courses 66 percent year on year.
The same applies for go-to-market, how we co-sell with partners and incentives, all of that will continue to come through the program.
Campaign in a box [is an example of go-to-market] resources for partners. It is really valuable because it allows partners to just take the assets as is, and they can customize [them] in any way that makes sense for their business. So it’s truly a flexible, scalable way for partners to go to market.
And with Microsoft delivering so much new innovation … It’s necessary. It’s what the market needs and expects from us.
It’s crucial that partners have those assets right away. We publish them in 12 languages. Partners have the ability to go to market right away. I had quite a few partner meetings [during Ignite]. They were already getting go-to-market out the door immediately following the keynotes, which is great.
One other thing I think is really important to call out … is so much of that new innovation that we introduced is immediately available in CSP [Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Provider partner program].
That’s an important step for Microsoft. It’s our commitment to the channel to enable the channel to deliver all of this innovation at scale, particularly to small and medium businesses. And I’m really, really proud of the intentional investments we’re making there.
How about the role of distributors looking ahead?
Distribution is front and center to our strategy, particularly as we think about the way that we can deliver value to small- and medium-business customers. It’s the reason that we announced the frontier distribution badge.
I’m really excited for this. This is recognition of distributors that meet the very highest standards of excellence, performance, capability. These are distributors that really enable the full life cycle of solutions through their MSP and reseller communities. And I think we have phenomenal examples of partners that do that.
Pax8 … another really strong example of a global distributor is Arrow. I love what they’ve done with ArrowSphere.
ArrowSphere is their partner portal. It’s all built on Microsoft’s platform. They’ve really made AI a first-class citizen in that.
It’s really about giving their resellers a first-hand experience with Microsoft AI. And it’s everything from suggesting next best workloads to unsolicited proposals to customers—how to understand the customer’s data environment, security posture.
It’s incredibly powerful. And that is value that these resellers can only get from these distributors.
Over the years, Microsoft has made big changes to its partner program, qualifying for different parts of the program. Any message to partners that find themselves leaning more on distributors for resources they might rather get from Microsoft directly?
It’s pretty important for all Microsoft partners to understand the full complement of the partner program.
Those partners that work through a distributor get the added support, guidance and additional resources that distributors provide to them. But I encourage any partner to aim high, to earn the designations and specializations because that’s the way that they signal to customers that they have the capability, the capacity and the overall strength to deliver this frontier transformation that customers expect.
I think it’s wonderful there are so many companies around the world that see the benefit of being part of Microsoft’s partner ecosystem.
Partner is core to Microsoft’s DNA. And it makes me really proud to see how many different kinds of entities around the world see the benefit of that. I do think it is crucial for any kind of partner and any size, any business model, to think about the way that they can continue to advance their capability and demonstrate their value to customers.
Because that’s actually what customers are looking for right now. When customers listen to an event like Ignite, and they hear about all of this innovation, they’re going to call their partner and ask the partner, ‘How does this apply to me? How should I think about this?’
And I want every Microsoft partner to have confidence, capability, skill to deliver that.
How should partners think about the unified Marketplace’s importance as we enter 2026?
It’s core to the strategy. … This is the engine for co-sell.
We announced [during Ignite] global general availability of resale-enabled offers. This now is really the vehicle for software development companies and channel partners to come together to deliver those software solutions that customers need through the Marketplace.
And this is really in service of small and medium businesses that buy through our channel today.
I’m really excited about this step forward. Marketplace is the destination for agents. And you heard so many announcements about agent capability.
This is where I would encourage customers to go to find the agents that they need for their businesses.
Our sales force is well aware of the fact that Marketplace is the destination for co-sell. There’s value for our sellers, whether we’re talking about an enterprise seller all the way through to sellers in small and medium enterprise.
This is about how we enable transactions quickly. It’s digital capability. This is where publishers will present their solutions and their agents. And anyone can be a publisher now, which is quite exciting.
What should partners know if they have feedback for Microsoft on changes they want to see in the partner program?
We take quite a lot of partner feedback before we roll out new products, new features, new capabilities.
A great example of that is the SMB security suites that we introduced a couple of months ago.
[n September, Microsoft introduced three add-ons for Microsoft 365 Business Premium customers—a $10 per-user, per-month Defender Suite add-on, $10 per-user, per-month Purview Suite add-on and $15 for both together. The add-ons are limited to 300 seats per customer.]
That was informed by market opportunity, plus partner feedback. It’s a critically important aspect of what we do, so that we have very high confidence that the partners that we count upon to scale this capability out to customers are ready to do so and have the right capability and motivation. So I feel very good about that.
We have an always-on listening mechanism, and so we’re always keen to hear how things land for partners and what we need to continue to refine. I feel very good about the level of flexibility we’ve introduced in our licensing models as well.
This month marked major changes to the Enterprise Agreement licensing program, not to mention other changes this year to ease transitions from EA to CSP. What does that mean for partners?
CSP is the hero motion in SME&C. That’s really the place where we count on our channel partners to be able to deliver the full life cycle of solutions for customers.
So the transaction, of course, is very important. And they transact in CSP. But if you think about some of the other announcements we made at [Ignite]it’s a reflection of the very high expectations we have of these CSP partners.
The support designation is a great example of that. In the CSP business model, the CSP partner is that first line of customer experience. And that’s where trust is created.
And we use verified external standards of excellence there, so that customers know that we have the highest bar for them—for the support needs that they may have.
There’s always more to come. Our job is to ensure that we are meeting customer needs, which are evolving very quickly. And we align it to Microsoft’s innovation road map, which is also evolving very quickly.
So we compose those two things into the partner ecosystem and ensure that the partners can meet the highest standards of quality and capability, and they demonstrate that through the designations and specializations.
Partners that earn designations, specializations, badges, are eligible for the best co-sell benefits.
The way that I would encourage partners to think about this is earning those badges is what allows them to showcase, not only to customers, but to Microsoft sellers, that they’ve done the hard work to demonstrate that capability.
And we do intentionally have a very high bar for that. One of the things I’m always inspired by is I see partners promote that on their websites. They promote it on LinkedIn. That’s a great tool for them to showcase their capability.
What else should partners keep in mind coming out of Ignite?
One is the frontier badge. This felt like the right time for us to be able to proudly showcase what it means for partners that have embraced all disciplines across the Microsoft Cloud and AI with a frontier badge.
I was really very inspired to see the reaction from partners. … This is what customers are asking for. ‘How do I participate in frontier transformation?’ And they’re going to look to partners that have that capability proven.
Copilot Business—this is Copilot in a set of offerings designed specifically for SMB at an extremely competitive price, $21 for organizations up to 300 users.
This is right in the heart of SMB. We announced a whole set of end-to-end offerings [during Ignite] that really pair Microsoft 365 Business, Copilot Business, our Purview suite, Business Central.
This is one-stop shopping for small and medium businesses, and [we are] really, really focused on the channel delivering this value to our customers.
What patterns are you seeing from some of Microsoft’s most successful solution providers?
One of the things that we’re seeing as an accelerant to growth is the combination of Copilot Chat plus security.
It’s a reflection of the fact that you can’t have a conversation about AI without having a conversation about security—how do customers secure their estate? Partners can do that and, at the same time, they can deliver this chat capability.
You can have our free chat, enterprise-grade security from Microsoft.
And then there are a cohort of employees in any organization that will benefit from the paid SKUs as well.
I see just phenomenal work from the partners [that] are doing what we would call ‘wall-to-wall chat.’
So really being intentional and thoughtful about what each cohort in a customer’s organization needs and ensuring that they’ve got full security capability, full Copilot capability and chat throughout.
Do you see room for further investment by partners in the Microsoft security portfolio?
Partners that have cyber capability should really think about the way to further invest in their Microsoft practice. We have significant security advantages in the market.
This is a place where customers are all asking for help with their AI transformation. And partners that have security capability are best equipped to say, ‘Let’s secure the estate and then build AI capability on top of that secure estate.’ There’s huge value.
I’m really proud of the work that our partner ecosystem is doing there.
Partners should continue to earn the security designations and specializations because that’s the way that they demonstrate their technical depth.
We do have an incredibly high bar for security—it is crucial. It’s a non-negotiable asset in this climate and environment that we’re operating in.
I feel very confident in the security partners we have. And we welcome more security experts to join the Microsoft ecosystem as well.