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February 2025 announcements

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This page provides the announcements for Microsoft Partner Center for February 2025.

Monthly update: Important actions partners need to take to secure the partner ecosystem

Important capabilities and updates to improve your security posture and protect your customers' tenants are now available.

  • Date: February 7, 2025
  • Workspace: General
  • Impacted audience: Direct-bill partners, indirect providers, and indirect resellers transacting through the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program and with advisors

Available now

Multifactor authentication (MFA) for Azure portal: Microsoft is enforcing multifactor authentication (MFA) for all users signing into Azure portal. Review the latest information and timeline.

Removal of unused Azure subscriptions: Microsoft has begun to block unused Azure subscriptions from December 2024. These subscriptions will then be deleted after 90 days. A subscription is considered unused if there's no activity or consumption for more than 12 months. Account owners and service admins will be notified by email 30 days before the block is applied.

Security requirements API is available in beta version and gives partners direct access to essential security compliance data.

Coming soon

MFA for Microsoft 365 admin center: Starting February 3, 2025, Microsoft will begin enforcing MFA for all users signing into the Microsoft 365 admin center portal. Review the latest information and timeline.

Deprecation of graph.windows.net audience tokens: To enhance our security measures, we're deprecating graph.windows.net audience tokens. So, we're updating the way you interact with Partner Center APIs. Take the necessary steps to prepare for this transition. To facilitate this transition, we're hosting office hours.

Next steps

Monthly Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program update

Here's what's new for Solutions Partner designations, specializations, and other Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program offerings and benefits.

  • Date: February 6, 2025
  • Workspace: Membership
  • Impacted audience: Partners enrolled in the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program

We're introducing important capabilities, offers, and updates to improve the way partners can further differentiate their deep technical expertise across a set of priority scenarios with high customer demand. We added benefits for eligible Solutions Partner with certified software designations.

Available now

Updates to the AI Platform on Microsoft Azure specialization and Build AI Apps with Microsoft Azure specialization: Changes are now live for the previously named "AI and Machine Learning" and "Build and Modernize AI Apps" specializations. To learn more about the details of the requirements, see Apply for specializations.

AI assistant for prepurchase: As of December 18, 2024, a new AI assistant plugin became available to answer prepurchase questions related to queries. Partners can open the AI assistant from the Membership offer page or global entry point (sparkle icon in top right corner) in Partner Center and ask questions. This feature helps partners know all the details before purchasing or renewing any available program in the Membership workspace. AI assistant can answer queries instantly. For example, partners can ask and get answers to:

  • Why is the buy now button disabled for solution partner designation?
  • Why is the renew now button disabled for solution partner designation?

What's coming

SMB path for Data & AI (Azure), Digital & App Innovation (Azure), Infrastructure (Azure) will be available: In February 2025, the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program is introducing SMB paths for Solutions Partner designations in Data & AI (Azure), Digital & App Innovation (Azure), and Infrastructure (Azure). With the SMB paths launching next month, now is the perfect time to start your preparations to qualify. For more information on Azure solution areas qualifications, see the SMB paths for Azure designations deck.

Updates to Business Applications specializations will be available: In early February 2025, four business applications specializations, Sales, Service, Finance, and Supply Chain, are getting an update to their performance and skilling requirements. And we're adding a new skilling certificate for Sales.

  • We're changing the performance requirements by lowering the threshold for new large deployments from five to three and lowering the MCV growth rate requirement from >= 30% to > 0%.
  • For skilling, we're reducing role-based certifications from 15 to five, with no minimum per role, and advanced certification requirements from five to two.

We want to encourage more partners to enroll in these specializations. These changes are available in the first week of February 2025. The partners who qualify as per the new requirements are automatically enrolled.

Reminders

  • Apply today to attain one of seven Solutions Partner with certified software designations and qualify for top-tier benefits, along with Azure Migrate and Modernize and Azure Innovate incentives. If you missed our announcement last month, Microsoft is offering subsidies on a first-come, first-serve basis for assessments conducted by the third-party auditor for qualification for the designations. To learn more, read this blog post.
  • Announcement of new benefits: On January 22, 2025, Microsoft introduced more than 20 in-demand product licenses, including Microsoft 365 Copilot products, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and GitHub Enterprise. These new benefits are designed to help streamline tasks, enhance creativity, and drive efficiency across businesses. Partners can access these benefits when they go live, by purchasing partner benefits packages, Solutions Partner designations, or specializations. The new packages offer comprehensive support and advisory benefits, helping partners accelerate business growth, scale their operations, and stay updated with the latest offerings.

Next steps

Updated timeline: Enhanced Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider Billing Reconciliation APIs migration extended to April 21, 2025

The new Asynchronous APIs for billing reconciliation in Partner Center are now live. Partners must migrate to these improved APIs by April 21, 2025, to ensure uninterrupted service and benefit from faster download times and reduced latency.

  • Date: February 4, 2025
  • Workspace: Billing, APIs
  • Impacted audience: Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) direct-bill partners and indirect providers who use billing APIs in Partner Center to retrieve invoice and usage reconciliation

Understand the timeline and changes

In March 2024, we introduced new Asynchronous APIs (asynchronous v2 APIs) for billing reconciliation in Partner Center. The new asynchronous v2 APIs represent a significant improvement in how billing data is retrieved. Instead of the current synchronous approach, the new APIs support more efficient data retrieval, especially when dealing with large volumes of billing information.

Affected APIs

Here are the four APIs affected by this change:

API name Version Learn more
Get invoice line items API V1 Get invoice line items
Invoicing and reconciliation v2 API (beta) V2 Invoicing and reconciliation API v2 (beta)
Get invoice billed commercial consumption line items V1 Get invoice billed commercial consumption line items
Get invoice unbilled commercial consumption line items V1 Get invoice's unbilled reconciliation line items

Note

Billing APIs that aren't specified in this communication remain operational in their current state without any changes or disruptions.

Deadline

Partners must migrate to these new APIs before April 21, 2025, to avoid service disruption.

Why this update matters

After April 21, 2025, trying to access billing data from April 2025 billing period onward using the older APIs will result in errors. This update is important because it could disrupt your ability to:

  • Reconcile your billing information
  • Manage Azure consumption data
  • Track unbilled usage

Limitations

The new Microsoft Graph APIs are currently available only for the public/global cloud. Other cloud environments like Azure Government, Azure Germany, and Azure China 21Vianet can continue using old APIs, as new ones aren't available yet.

Resources and available help

We encourage you to use the readiness resources provided in this announcement or in the Partner Center documentation.

Next steps

To ensure a smooth transition and to prevent any service disruptions, partners are required to migrate to the new APIs by April 21, 2025. By following these steps, you can ensure that your organization is prepared for migration and can continue to provide uninterrupted service to your customers. Here are the next steps you should take:

End-of-sale scheduling for billing frequency changes in Partner Center UI and API is coming soon

End-of-sale (EOS) Scheduling for Billing Changes in UI and API available on March 10, 2025.

  • Date: February 4, 2025
  • Workspace: Billing, APIs
  • Impacted audience: Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) direct bill and indirect providers

EOS scheduling billing frequency changes capability

Beginning March 10, 2025, customers on EOS and EOS with Conversion offers can schedule a change to edit the billing frequency for their annual term or triennial term subscriptions at renewal. Customers can refer to the EOS Pricelist to see all EOS and EOS with Conversion offers, which include Microsoft 365 E3/E5 and Office 365 E1/E3/E5 suites with Teams. More details regarding sandbox availability is being shared at February's CSP Technical Training. Partner feedback was instrumental in guiding our decision to make EOS scheduling for billing changes available ahead of schedule.

Standardizing the billing structure with a pricing update; pricing updates for Microsoft Teams Phone and Power BI

As a reminder, starting on April 1, 2025, all new and renewing monthly billing plans for annual and triennial subscriptions will be priced five percent higher than the annual/triennial billing plan for annual/triennial subscription plans.* For example, a customer with monthly billing for annual/triennial subscriptions renewing on May 1, 2025, will see the price update starting with the next monthly billing cycle.

This capability, releasing on March 10, 2025, will help scheduling billing frequency changes ahead of the renewal date for customers on EOS and EOS with Conversion offers before the pricing update to standardize the billing structure across Buy Online, CSP, and MCA-E** effective April 1, 2025.

For more information about the upcoming pricing changes in April, see our November announcement.

Note

In order for a customer with Microsoft 365/Office 365 Enterprise suites with Teams to maintain their subscription of active licenses to those EOS SKUs, partners need to manage the renewals by enabling autorenew and scheduling the change. Partners can no longer purchase EOS SKUs for CSP customers or make edits to term duration.

*There might be slight variations in price due to exchange rate fluctuations, local pricing policies, and rounding rules. **For more information on in-scope products, see the FAQ.

Key resources

Next steps

Discount on Microsoft E5 Compliance

Microsoft is offering a 50% discount on Microsoft E5 Compliance for all customers with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses.

  • Date: February 3, 2025
  • Workspace: General
  • Impacted audience: Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners for Modern Work and Security

Microsoft is offering a 50% discount on Microsoft E5 Compliance for all customers with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses. This promotion will be available from February 1, 2025, to February 1, 2026, for both new and existing customers who have previously purchased Microsoft 365 Copilot without the Microsoft E5 Compliance SKU.

Next steps