Use Partner Center to apply for specializations and check their status
Appropriate roles: Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program partner admin
This article describes how to use Partner Center to:
- Apply for a specialization.
- Complete the required steps and validations for a specialization, including specializations that require an audit or customer references.
- Track your progress toward attaining a specialization.
To learn more about the benefits of specializations and the requirements to attain them, see Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program specializations.
Prerequisites for specializations
To qualify for a specialization, you must first fulfill certain prerequisites, such as earning a Solutions Partner designation in a related area. Then you can apply for the specialization in Partner Center and complete the required steps and Microsoft validations.
Use Partner Center to apply for specializations and track your progress
Much of the process for applying for a specialization is available at Membership > Specializations in Partner Center.
Note
Only users with the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program partner admin user role for their organization's Microsoft partner account have access to the Membership > Specializations section.
Access the specializations area and track your status
To access specializations and track your status, use the following steps:
- Sign in to Partner Center as a Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program partner admin and select Membership.
- Select Specializations and then select the area you're interested in:
- Azure
- Modern work
- Security
- Business applications
- Requirements differ for each specialization, go through the following list for specific details. To check your performance for each specialization, sign in to Partner Center, and go to the respective specialization page.
AI and Machine Learning on Microsoft Azure
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in any one of two solution areas: Data & AI or Digital & App Innovation
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must show a total of $6,000 of Azure Consumed Revenue (ACR*) from AI from at least three customers from the previous three months.
- Azure AI ACR is determined through Service Group 2 as AI.
* ACR can be achieved through Digital Partner of Record (DPOR), Partner Admin Link (PAL), and Cloud Solution Provider (CSP). Government subscriptions (such as Fairfax) aren't eligible for ACR via PAL association.
Skilling requirements:
- Three or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following certifications. Each certification must be held by at least one individual:
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Audit required
Analytics on Microsoft Azure
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Data & AI solution area
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must achieve a total of $9,000 of ACR in the last three months from eligible Azure workloads and eligible association types. For more information, see the Azure Consumption Revenue filters for specialization section.
Eligible workloads: Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Lake, Azure Data Factory, Microsoft Fabric, Azure Databricks
Eligible association types: : DPOR, PAL, CSP
Government subscriptions (such as Fairfax) associated via PAL aren't valid.
Skilling requirements:
- Five or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following certifications. Each certification must be held by at least two individuals:
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Audit required
Build and Modernize AI Apps with Microsoft Azure
- Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in any one of two solution areas: Data & AI or Digital & App Innovation
- Performance requirements:
- Your organization must show an average ACR in the previous three months from at least three customers of the following:
- Your organization must show a total of at least $15,000 USD from Azure application platform services: Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure RedHat Open Shift, Azure Spring Apps
- Your organization must show a total of $9,000 from Azure managed database services: Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Database for PostgreSQL
- Your organization must show a total of $6,000 from Azure AI services: Azure Cognitive Services, Azure Machine Learning, Azure OpenAI Service
- Your organization must show an average ACR in the previous three months from at least three customers of the following:
- Skilling requirements:
- Five or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following certifications. Each certification must be held by at least one individual:
- AppSource: N/A
- Audit or customer references: Audit required
Data Warehouse Migration to Microsoft Azure
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Data & AI solution area
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must achieve a total of $30,000 of ACR in the last three months from eligible Azure workloads and eligible association types. For more information, see the Azure Consumption Revenue filters for specialization section.
- Your organization must have at least three unique customers contributing to ACR in the last three months from eligible Azure workloads and eligible association types. For more information, see the Azure Consumption Revenue filters for specialization section.
Eligible workloads: Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Fabric, Azure Databricks
Eligible association types: DPOR, PAL, CSP
Skilling requirements:
- Five or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following certifications. Each certification must be held by at least two individuals:
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Audit required
Accelerate Developer Productivity with Microsoft Azure
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Digital & App Innovation solution area
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must show a total of $30,000 of ACR* from at least three customers from the previous three months, or
- Your organization must have at least two MSX engagements** with engagement workload as Apps: DevOps (GitHub, Azure DevOps, other) in a trailing 12-month (TTM) period.
* ACR can be achieved through DPOR, PAL, and CSP. Government subscriptions (such as Fairfax) aren't eligible for ACR via PAL association.
** Engagement status should commit or higher. Leads aren't counted towards this requirement.
Skilling requirements:
- Three or more individuals from your organization must pass the DevOps Engineer Expert certification exam.
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Audit required
Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure with Microsoft Azure Stack HCI
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in any one of three solution areas: Data & AI, Digital & App Innovation, or Infrastructure
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must show a total of $1,500 of ACR* from Azure Stack HCI from at least two customers from the previous three months.
- Azure Stack HCI ACR is determined through Service Level 2 as Azure Stack HCI.
* ACR can be achieved through DPOR, PAL, and CSP. Government subscriptions (such as Fairfax) aren't eligible for ACR via PAL association.
Skilling requirements:
- Three or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following certifications. Each certification must be held by at least one individual:
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Audit required
Infra and Database Migration to Microsoft Azure
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in any one of two solution areas: Data & AI or Infrastructure
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must show customers migrating to Azure.
- Your organization must show a total of at least $30,000 USD Windows Server Virtual Machine (VM) ACR* in the previous three months from at least three customers (aggregated from across your customers)
- Your organization must also show a total of at least $15,000 USD Linux Virtual Machines (VM) ACR* in the previous three months from at least three customers (aggregated from across your customers)
- Your organization must show a total of $9,000 USD from SQL Managed Instance (MI), SQL Database (DB), and SQL VM ACR* in the previous three months from at least three customers (aggregated from across your customers). At least $3,000 USD of that total must be from SQL MI or SQL DB
- Your organization must also show a total of $4,500 ACR* in the previous three months from at least three customers (aggregated from across your customers) from any, or a combination of, these databases:
- Azure Database (DB) for MariaDB
- Azure DB for MySQL
- Azure DB for PostgreSQL
- Azure Cosmos DB
Infra and Database Migration to Microsoft Azure is determined through list. For more information, see the Azure Consumption Revenue filters for specialization section.
You can have the same three customers meeting the requirement for Infrastructure and Database Migration to Azure or they could be different.
* ACR can be achieved through DPOR, PAL, and CSP.
Skilling requirements:
- Three or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following certifications. Each certification must be held by at least one individual:
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Audit required
Kubernetes on Microsoft Azure
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in any one of two solution areas: Data & AI or Digital & App Innovation
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must show a total of $15,000 from Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) or Azure RedHat OpenShift ACR* in the previous three months from at least three customers (aggregated from across your customers).
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) ACR is determined through Service Influencer as AKS, AKS-Engine. Azure RedHat OpenShift ACR is determined through Service Group 3 as ARO, Service Level 2 as All except Unknown. For more information, see the Azure Consumption Revenue filters for specialization section.
* ACR can be achieved through DPOR, PAL, and CSP
Skilling requirements:
- Three or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following certifications. Each certification must be held by at least one individual:
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Audit required
Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Infrastructure solution area
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must show an average of at least $7,500 of Azure Virtual Desktop ACR in the previous three months from at least three customers (aggregated from across your customers).
- Azure Virtual Desktop ACR is determined through Service Influencer as NATIVE WVD.
- Your organization should achieve ACR through DPOR, PAL, and CSP. Government subscriptions (such as Fairfax) aren't eligible for ACR via PAL
Skilling requirements:
- Three or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following certifications. Each certification must be held by at least one individual:
- Three or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft Certified: Azure Virtual Desktop Specialty certification exam.
You can have a combination of the same individuals or different individuals to meet the certification requirement.
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Audit required
Microsoft Azure VMware Solution
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Infrastructure solution area
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must show a total of $30,000 of ACR* from Azure VMware Solutions (AVS) from at least one customer from the previous three months.
- Azure VMware Solutions (AVS) is determined through Service Level 4 - Azure VMware Solution, Azure VMware Solution by CloudSimple, Azure VMware Solution by Virtustream, Specialized Compute Azure VMware Solution
* ACR can be achieved through DPOR, PAL, and CSP. Government subscriptions (such as Fairfax) aren't eligible for ACR via PAL association.
Skilling requirements:
- Three or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following certifications. Each certification must be held by at least one individual:
- Three or more individuals from your organization must pass the AVS Technical Assessment.
You can have a combination of the same individuals or different individuals to meet the certification requirement and technical assessment.
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Audit required
Migrate Enterprise Apps to Microsoft Azure
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in any one of two solution areas: Data & AI or Digital & App Innovation
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must show a total of $5,000 from Azure AppService or Azure Spring Cloud ACR* in the previous three months from at least three customers (aggregated from across your customers).
Government subscriptions (such as Fairfax) aren't eligible for ACR via PAL association.
* ACR can be achieved through DPOR, PAL, and CSP. Learn more about Azure ACR.
Skilling requirements:
- Three or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following certifications. Each certification must be held by at least one individual:
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Audit required
Networking Services in Microsoft Azure
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Infrastructure solution area
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must show a total of $30,000 of ACR* from Networking from at least three customers from the previous three months.
Networking ACR is determined through Service Group 2 as Networking.
* ACR can be achieved through DPOR, PAL, and CSP. Government subscriptions (such as Fairfax) aren't eligible for ACR via PAL association.
Skilling requirements:
- Three or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following certifications. Each certification must be held by at least one individual:
AppSource: Your company must have at least one managed service or consulting service offer under the Networking category published on Azure Marketplace.
Audit or customer references: Audit required
SAP on Microsoft Azure
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Infrastructure solution area
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must show a total of $30,000 of ACR* (aggregated from all Azure workloads) from the last three months, aggregated from at least three customers.
Government subscriptions (such as Fairfax) aren't eligible for ACR via PAL association.
* ACR can be achieved through DPOR, PAL, and CSP. Learn more about Azure ACR.
Skilling requirements:
- Three or more individuals from your organization must pass the following certification:
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Audit required
Adoption and Change Management
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Modern Work solution area
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must have a minimum of three customer tenants with 40% usage on SharePoint, Teams, and/or VivaEngage in a TTM period.
- Your company must achieve a minimum of 10,000 Monthly Active User (MAU) growth within SharePoint, Teams, and/or VivaEngage in a TTM period.
MAU is calculated on a rolling 28-day basis and represents the unique number of users taking an intentional action on a specific service.
Your company should achieve MAU through Claiming Partner of Record (CPOR).
Skilling requirements:
- Two or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft Adoption Service Specialist Assessment certification.
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Customer references required
Calling for Microsoft Teams
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Modern Work solution area
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must achieve a minimum growth of 1,000 Teams Phone enabled users in a TTM period.
Enabled users: Users with a Teams Phone license and a telephone number assigned to them (using either a first-party calling plan or third-party calling plan) so that they're able to make and receive PSTN calls. Partners should use the TeamsPhoneEnabledUsers workload (previously referred to as TeamsPhoneSystem) to claim and track their contribution.
Skilling requirements:
- Four or more individuals from your organization must pass both Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Administrator Associate and Teams Calling Technical Assessment.
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Customer references required
Custom Solutions for Microsoft Teams
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Modern Work solution area
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must achieve a minimum of 1,000 Microsoft Teams Apps MAU growth in TTM period (CPOR data).
- Teams Apps MAU is apps/solutions that are developed by partners using pro dev tools, Power Platform, or MS-provided templates, integrated through embedding, extension, or a Graph API calls (Teams Apps) (Coming soon Teams Apps with/or Teams App ID)
MAU is calculated on a rolling 28-day basis and represents the unique number of users taking an intentional action on a specific service. Your company should achieve MAU through CPOR.
Skilling requirements:
- Four or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft 365 Certified: Developer Associate certification.
- This certification requires a private access code, and the code depends on where you're taking the exam.
- In-person exam in a test center:
MS600TC_Hike
- Online exam:
MS600OP_Summer
- In-person exam in a test center:
- This certification requires a private access code, and the code depends on where you're taking the exam.
- Four or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft 365 Certified: Developer Associate certification.
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Customer references required
Meetings and Meeting Rooms for Microsoft Teams
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Modern Work solution area
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must achieve a minimum of 5,000 MAU growth of Microsoft Teams Meetings in a TTM period.
MAU is calculated on a rolling 28-day basis and represents the unique number of users taking an intentional action on a specific service. Your company should achieve MAU through CPOR.
Skilling requirements:
- Four or more individuals from your organization must pass both Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Administrator Associate and Teams Meetings and Meeting Rooms Technical Assessment.
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Customer references required
Modernize Endpoints
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Modern Work solution area
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must achieve a minimum of 5,000 MAU growth of Microsoft Intune in a TTM period.
MAU is calculated on a rolling 28-day basis and represents the unique number of users taking an intentional action on a specific service. Your company should achieve MAU through CPOR.
Skilling requirements:
- Four or more individuals from your organization must pass both Microsoft 365 Certified: Modern Desktop Administrator Associate and Microsoft 365 Certified: Administrator Expert (previously known as Microsoft 365 Certified: Enterprise Administrator Expert)
- Two or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft Certified: Azure Virtual Desktop Specialty certification.
You can have a combination of the same individuals or different individuals meet the exam requirements.
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Customer references required
Teamwork Deployment
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Modern Work solution area
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must ensure that three out of four eligible Teamwork services show a minimum growth of 2,500 MAU each over the last 12 months.
- Maintain a 20% average of MAU for customers associated to your company in three out of four eligible Teamwork services in a TTM period.
- Associate a minimum of 12 new customer tenants with your company for one of the eligible Teamwork services in a TTM period.
Eligible Teamwork services: Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, VivaEngage
MAU is calculated on a rolling 28-day basis and represents the unique number of users taking an intentional action on a specific service. Your company should achieve MAU through CPOR.
Skilling requirements:
- Four or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft 365 Certified: Team Administrator Associate certification.
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Customer references required
Cloud Security
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Security solution area
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must demonstrate $200,000 of ACR* from Hybrid Environment XDR and Network Security in a TTM period.
Hybrid Environment XDR and Network Security ACR are determined through the Service Level 4 list.
* ACR can be achieved through DPOR, PAL, and CSP. Government subscriptions (such as Fairfax) aren't eligible for ACR via PAL association.
Skilling requirements:
- Six or more individuals from your organization must pass the AZ-500: Microsoft Azure Security Technologies certification.
- Four or more individuals from your organization must pass the SC-200: Microsoft Security Operations Analyst certification.
You can have a combination of the same individuals or different individuals to meet the certification requirement.
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Customer references required
Identity and Access Management
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Security solution area
Performance requirements:
- Your organization must achieve a minimum of 2,000 MAU growth of Microsoft Entra ID in a TTM period.
MAU is calculated on a rolling 28-day basis and represents the unique number of users taking an intentional action on a specific service. Your company should achieve MAU through CPOR.
Skilling requirements:
- Six or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft Certified: Identity and Access Administrator Associate certification.
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Customer references required
Information Protection and Governance
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Security solution area
Performance:
- Your organization must achieve a minimum of 1,000 MAU growth of Microsoft Purview Information Protection (MIP) in a TTM period.
MAU is calculated on a rolling 28-day basis and represents the unique number of users taking an intentional action on a specific service. Your company should achieve MAU through CPOR.
Skilling requirements:
- Six or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft Certified: Information Protection and Compliance Administrator Associate certification.
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Customer references required
Threat Protection
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Security solution area
Performance:
- Your company must achieve a minimum of 1,000 MAU growth of Microsoft Defender for Identity or Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps (MDCA) in a TTM period. or
- Your company must demonstrate $100,000 ACR from Microsoft Sentinel in a TTM period.
MAU is calculated on a rolling 28-day basis and represents the unique number of users taking an intentional action on a specific service. Your company should achieve MAU through CPOR.
Your organization should achieve the Azure consumption revenue through DPOR association to a customer, or as the CSP direct-bill partner or CSP indirect reseller for a customer or by using the PAL. Offer types Trial, Benefits programs, Support, and Internal are excluded. Government subscriptions (such as Fairfax) aren't eligible for ACR via PAL association.
Skilling requirements:
- Six or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft Certified: Security Operations Analyst Associate certification.
AppSource: N/A
Audit or customer references: Customer references required
Microsoft Low Code Application Development
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in any one of three solution areas: Digital & App Innovation, Business Applications, or Modern Work
Performance:
- Your organization must have at least five unique customers as new deployments, each with at least one application deployed in that customer’s production environment. The customer’s production application must meet the following criteria within the TTM:
- A production Power App is an app in a production environment with at least five users.
- The app must be built on paid eligible SKUs: Power Apps per User or Power Apps per App or Portals.
- Each app must have the Partner user listed as the Owner or Coowner of the application and have the same user associated to your Partner Center account through PAL. Learn more about lining a partner ID to your Power Apps accounts
- Your company must achieve growth in MAU of at least 35% across your customer base in the TTM. To be eligible for the growth calculation, your customer base must have at least 50 MAU at the start of the TTM.
Growth in MAU is calculated across all PAL associated applications in your customer base. At the application level, only paid subscriptions under the customer’s tenant qualifies. You must have PAL associated to your Partner Center account to attain this specialization. You must perform this association for all your customer deployments. PAL is used to calculate all requirements listed in the performance section.
- Your organization must have at least five unique customers as new deployments, each with at least one application deployed in that customer’s production environment. The customer’s production application must meet the following criteria within the TTM:
Skilling requirements:
- Five or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft Certified: Power Platform Functional Consultant Associate certification.
- Two or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft Certified: Power Platform Developer Associate certification.
- One or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft Certified: Power Platform Solution Architect Expert certification.
You can have a combination of the same individuals or different individuals to meet the certification requirement.
AppSource:
- Your organization must have at least one (1) Power Apps Consulting offer published on Microsoft AppSource with Power Apps as the tagged product offer. Learn more about publishing consulting offers.
Audit or customer references: N/A
Business Intelligence
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in any one of two solution areas: Data & AI or Business Applications
Performance:
Your organization must have at least five (5) unique Power BI customers as new deployments, each with at least one Enterprise Power BI project deployed in that customer’s production environment and meet the following criteria within the TTM:
- An Enterprise Power BI project is defined as a project deployed in a customer production environment with at least one dataset and at least 100 monthly active users (MAU) in the prior 28 days
- The project must be built on paid eligible SKUs: Power BI Pro, Power BI Premium per User or capacity, or Microsoft 365 E5. Learn more about Power BI pricing.
- Each project must have the partner user listed as the owner or co-owner of the project and have the same user be associated to your Partner Center account through PAL. Learn more about linking a Partner ID to your Power BI accounts.
- Your organization must achieve growth in Power BI MAU of at least 25% across your customer base in the TTM. To be eligible for the growth calculation, your customer base must have at least 1,000 MAU at the start of the TTM.
Growth in MAU is calculated across all PAL-associated projects in your customer base over the past 12 months. MAU is counted at the production tenant level and summed up across only the paid licenses under the tenant. MAU is calculated at the end of every month.
At the project level, only paid subscriptions under the customer’s tenant qualifies.
Skilling requirements:
Five or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate certification exam.
Two or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate certification exam.
One or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following certifications:
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Enterprise Data Analyst Associate
- Microsoft Certified: Fabric Analytics Engineer Associate
You can have a combination of the same individuals or different individuals to meet the certification requirements.
AppSource:
- Your organization must have at least one (1) Power BI consulting offer published on Microsoft AppSource with Power Automate as the tagged product offer. Learn more about publishing consulting offers.
Audit or customer references: N/A
Finance
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Business Applications solution area
Performance:
- Your company must have five new large deployments from the Finance and Operations workload. New large deployments are defined as the number of deployments that are > 5,000 Monthly Consumption Value (MCV) compared to 12 months ago.
- Your company must have at least 30% MCV gross growth in the TTM in the Finance and Operations workload, starting from a baseline of 25k MCV 12 months ago. Learn more about the MCV by relevant workload.
Skilling requirements:
- 15 or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following intermediate certifications. Each certification must be held by at least three individuals:
- Five or more individuals from your organization must pass the following advanced certification:
You can have a combination of the same individuals or different individuals to meet the certification requirement.
AppSource:
- Your organization must have at least one Finance Consulting offer published on Microsoft AppSource with Dynamics 365 Finance as the tagged product offer. Learn more about publishing consulting offers.
Audit or customer references: N/A
Intelligent Automation
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in any one of three solution areas: Digital & App Innovation, Business Applications, or Modern Work
Performance:
- Your organization must have at least five unique Power Automate customers as new deployments, each with at least one flow project (either Cloud or Desktop) deployed in that customer’s production environment. The customer’s production flow must meet the following criteria within the TTM:
- The flow must be built on paid eligible SKUs: Power Automate per user plan or Power Automate per user plan with attended RPA. Learn more about Microsoft Power Automate pricing.
- Each flow must be associated to the partner network ID for your organization. Follow the guidance at Link a partner ID to your Power Platform and Dynamics Customer Insights accounts with your Azure credentials.
- Your organization must achieve growth in deployments of at least 35% across the entire customer base in the TTM. To be eligible for the growth calculation your customer base must have at least five deployments at the start of the TTM.
- Your organization must have at least five unique Power Automate customers as new deployments, each with at least one flow project (either Cloud or Desktop) deployed in that customer’s production environment. The customer’s production flow must meet the following criteria within the TTM:
Skilling requirements:
- Five or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft Certified: Power Platform Functional Consultant Associate certification.
- Two or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following certifications.
- Three or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft Certified: Power Platform Solution Architect Expert certification.
You can have a combination of the same individuals or different individuals to meet the certification requirement.
AppSource:
- Your organization must have at least one Power Automate consulting offer published on Microsoft AppSource with Power Automate as the tagged product offer. Learn more about publishing consulting offers.
Audit or customer references: N/A
Sales
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Business Applications solution area
Performance:
- Your company must have five new large deployments from the Common Data Service workload. New large deployments are defined as the number of deployments that are > 5,000 MCV compared to 12 months ago.
- Your company must have at least 30% MCV gross growth in the TTM in the Common Data Service workload, starting from a baseline of 25k MCV 12 months ago. Learn more about the MCV by relevant workload.
Skilling requirements:
- 15 or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following intermediate certifications. Each certification must be held by at least three individuals:
- Five or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft Certified: Power Platform Solution Architect Expert advanced certification.
You can have a combination of the same individuals or different individuals to meet the certification requirement.
AppSource:
- Your organization must have at least one Sales or Marketing Consulting offer published on Microsoft AppSource with Dynamics 365 Sales or Marketing as the tagged product offer. Learn more about publishing consulting offers.
Audit or customer references: N/A
Service
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Business Applications solution area
Performance:
- Your company must have five new large deployments from the Common Data Service workload. New large deployments are defined as the number of deployments that are > 5,000 MCV compared to 12 months ago.
- Your company must have at least 30% MCV gross growth in the TTM in the Common Data Service workload, starting from a baseline of 25k MCV 12 months ago. Learn more about the MCV by relevant workload.
Skilling requirements:
- 15 or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following intermediate certifications. Each certification must be held by at least three individuals:
- Five or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft Certified: Power Platform Solution Architect Expert advanced certification.
You can have a combination of the same individuals or different individuals to meet the certification requirement.
AppSource:
- Your organization must have at least one Customer Service or Field Service Consulting offer published on Microsoft AppSource with Dynamics 365 Customer Service or Field Service as the tagged product offer. Learn more about publishing consulting offers.
Audit or customer references: N/A
Small and Midsize Business Management
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Business Applications solution area
Performance:
- Your company must have at least 10 new Business Central deployments with five or more monthly active users in the TTM.
- Your company must have the deployments with a monthly active user growth of at least 35% in the TTM. Your company must have a baseline of at least 50 monthly active users across their entire customer base 12 months ago.
Monthly active users are counted at the production tenant level and summed up across only the paid subscriptions under the tenant.
Partners are associated to tenants at the subscription level and are mapped to the Dynamics 365 Business Central product. All partners associated to any paid subscription under a tenant gets credit for all the monthly active users summed up across all paid subscriptions under that tenant.
Skilling requirements:
- Five or more individuals from your organization must pass the Microsoft Certified: Dynamics 365 Business Central Functional Consultant Associate certification.
AppSource:
- Your company must have at least one Dynamics 365 Business Central focused Consulting offer published on Microsoft AppSource.
Audit or customer references: N/A
Supply Chain
Eligibility: Active Solutions Partner designation in the Business Applications solution area
Performance:
- Your organization must have five new large deployments from the Finance and Operations workload. New large deployments are defined as the number of deployments that are > 5,000 MCV compared to 12 months ago.
- Your organization must have at least 30% MCV gross growth in the TTM in the Finance and Operations workload, starting from a baseline of 25k MCV 12 months ago. Learn more about the MCV by relevant workload.
Skilling requirements:
- 15 or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following intermediate certifications. Each certification must be held by at least one individual:
- Five or more individuals from your organization must pass at least one of the following advanced certifications. Each certification must be held by at least one individual:
You can have a combination of the same individuals or different individuals to meet the certification requirement.
AppSource:
- Your organization must have at least one Supply Chain Consulting offer published on Microsoft AppSource with Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management as the tagged product offer. Learn more about publishing consulting offers.
Audit or customer references: N/A
Complete an audit or include customer references
To earn a specialization, you must earn an aligned Solutions Partner designation and fulfill other prerequisites unique to that specialization.
To earn some specializations, you must also:
Both tasks can be performed in Partner Center.
Specializations that don't require an audit or customer references
Specializations that don't require an audit or customer reference include:
- Microsoft Low Code Application Development
- Small and Midsize Business Management
- Sales
- Service
- Finance
- Supply Chain
- Intelligent Automation
- Business Intelligence
Specializations that require an audit with a third-party auditor
Specializations that require an audit from a third-party auditor include:
- Analytics on Microsoft Azure
- Build and Modernize AI Apps with Microsoft Azure
- Data Warehouse Migration to Microsoft Azure
- Kubernetes on Microsoft Azure
- Infra and Database migration to Microsoft Azure
- Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop
- Migrate Enterprise Applications to Microsoft Azure
- AI and Machine Learning on Microsoft Azure
- Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure with Microsoft Azure Stack HCI
- Microsoft Azure VMware Solution
- Accelerate Developer Productivity with Microsoft Azure (formerly known as DevOps with GitHub on Microsoft Azure)
- Networking Services in Microsoft Azure
- SAP on Microsoft Azure
Complete an audit with a third-party auditor
In addition to fulfilling a specialization's prerequisites, you must pass a scheduled audit to earn some specializations.
To schedule an audit, follow these steps:
- Sign in to Partner Center as a Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program partner admin and select Membership.
- Select Specializations, and then select Azure.
- Select the name of a specialization, for example, Modernization of Web Applications to Microsoft Azure.
- The prerequisites for the specialization appear.
- Select Schedule audit.
- The Schedule audit button isn't available and your status is Not started until you meet all the prerequisites on the page.
- After you meet all the prerequisites and complete the audit, your status changes to Active.
Specializations that require customer references
In addition to fulfilling prerequisites, you must also provide customer references to earn some specializations.
Specializations that require customer references include:
- Adoption and Change Management
- Calling for Microsoft Teams
- Custom Solutions for Microsoft Teams
- Meetings and Meeting Rooms for Microsoft Teams
- Modernize Endpoints
- Teamwork Deployment
- Identity and Access Management
- Threat Protection
- Information Protection and Governance
- Cloud Security
Provide customer references
To provide customer references in Partner Center, follow these steps:
- Sign in to Partner Center as a Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program partner admin and select Membership.
- Select Specializations, and then select an area you're interested in:
- Modern work
- Security
- Select the name of the specialization.
- The prerequisites for the specialization appear. As an example, for the Meetings and Meeting Rooms for Microsoft Teams specialization, in addition to a Solutions Partner designation, certifications, and a performance requirement, you must also provide three customer references that demonstrate your ability to deploy and manage.
- Until you meet all the prerequisites and provide customer references, your status is Not Started.
- After you meet all the prerequisites and provide the required references, your status changes to Active.
- The prerequisites for the specialization appear. As an example, for the Meetings and Meeting Rooms for Microsoft Teams specialization, in addition to a Solutions Partner designation, certifications, and a performance requirement, you must also provide three customer references that demonstrate your ability to deploy and manage.
How Azure consumption revenue is calculated for each specialization
Partner-to-customer associations include:
- DPOR association with a customer
- CSP direct-bill partner or CSP indirect reseller for a customer
- PAL association with a customer
Not counted toward the specialization is Azure consumption revenue (ACR) from subscriptions to the following types of offers:
- Trial
- Benefits programs
- Support
- Internal
Azure consumption revenue fields
Field name | Field description |
---|---|
Service Level 1 | Highest level at which Azure services are bundled. See Directory of Azure Cloud service. |
Service Level 2 | Second-highest level Azure Services based, for example Pricing overview - How Azure pricing works |
Service Level 3 | Third-highest level Azure Services based, for example Pricing - Linux virtual machines |
Service Level 4 | Fourth-highest level Azure Services based, for example Pricing - Linux virtual machines |
Service Group 2 | Grouping of Azure services according to a service category |
Service Group 3 | Grouping of Azure services according to a service subcategory |
Service Influencer | Grouping of Azure services mapped to a specific consumption activity |
Compute OS | Compute Operating System |
Compute Core Software | Compute Core Software |
Azure consumption revenue filters for specialization
- AI and Machine Learning on Microsoft Azure
- AI ACR: Service Group 3 in any of the following:
- Anomaly Detector
- Document Intelligence
- Immersive Reader
- Metrics Advisor
- Video Indexer
- Bot Service
- Health Bot
- Azure Machine Learning
- Search
- Azure OpenAI
- Content Moderator
- Content Safety
- Health Insights
- Language
- Personalizer
- Speech
- Translator
- Vision
- AI ACR: Service Group 3 in any of the following:
- Analytics on Microsoft Azure
- Azure Synapse Analytics ACR: Service Level 2 = Azure Synapse Analytics
- Data Lake ACR: Service Group 3 = Azure Data Lake
- Databricks ACR: Service Group3 = Databricks
- Azure Data Factory ACR: Service Level 2 = Azure Data Factory, Azure Data Factory v2
- Microsoft Fabric ACR: Service Level 2 = Microsoft Fabric
- Build and Modernize AI Apps with Microsoft Azure
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) ACR: Service Group3 = AKS
- Azure RedHat OpenShift ACR: Service Group 3 = ARO
- Azure Spring Apps ACR: Service Group3 = Azure Spring cloud
- Azure Cosmos DB: Service Group 3 = Cosmos DB
- Azure Database for PostgreSQL: Service Group 3 = PGSQL
- Azure Cognitive Services: Service Group 3 = Cognitive Services
- Azure Machine Learning: Service Group 3 = Azure Machine Learning
- Azure OpenAI service: Service Group 3 = Applied AI Services
- Data Warehouse Migration to Microsoft Azure
- Azure Synapse Analytics ACR: Service Level 2 = Azure Synapse Analytics
- Azure Databricks ACR: Service Group 3 = Azure Databricks
- Microsoft Fabric ACR: Service Level 2 = Microsoft Fabric
- Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure with Microsoft Azure Stack HCI
- Azure Stack HCI ACR: Service Level 2 = Azure Stack HCI
- Infra and Database migration to Microsoft Azure
- Windows ACR:
- ACR Adjustment Type = N/A, Compute Core SW = Core,
- Compute OS = WINDOWS THEN Compute OS Attribute = WINDOWS, UNKNOWN, or Compute OS = LINUX THEN Compute OS Attribute = WINDOWS-AHUB
- Service Level 2= Cloud Services, Container Instances, Container Registry, Specialized Compute, Virtual Machines, Virtual Machines Licenses
- SQL Database (DB) ACR: Service Group 3 = SQLDB
- SQL Managed Instance (MI) ACR: Service Group 3 = SQL DB MI
- SQL VM ACR: Service Group 3 = SQL on IaaS, SQL on IaaS VM
- Linux Virtual Machines (VM)ACR:
- Option 1:
- ACR Adjustment Type= N/A, Service Level 2 = Virtual Machines, Compute OS= Linux, Compute OS Attribute = Non-Windows, UNKNOWN, Windows
- Service Level 4 = All EXCEPT Cloud Services MS Series, Virtual Machines MS Series, Virtual Machines MS Series Windows, Virtual Machines MSv2 Series, Virtual Machines MSv2 Series Windows, MS Series Dedicated Host, MSv2 Series Dedicated Host
- Option 2: only require filters on Service Level 4, other fields like Compute OS/Compute OS Attributes aren't required
- Service Level 4 = Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux with HA, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Basic, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for HPC Priority, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for HPC Standard, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Priority, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Standard
- Option 1:
- Azure Database (DB) for MariaDB ACR: Service Level 1 = Databases and Service Level 2 = Azure Database for MariaDB
- Azure DB for MySql ACR: Service Level 1 = Databases and Service Level 2 = Azure Database for MySQL and MySQL Database on Azure
- Azure DB for PostgreSQL ACR: Service Level 1 = Databases and Service Level 2 = Azure Database for PostgreSQL
- Azure COSMOS DB ACR: Service Level 1 = Databases Level 2 = Azure Cosmos DB
- Windows ACR:
- Kubernetes on Microsoft Azure
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) ACR: Service Influencer = AKS, AKS-Engine
- Azure RedHat OpenShift ACR: Service Group 3 = ARO, Service Level 2 = All except "Unknown"
- Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop
- Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop ACR: Service Influencer = NATIVE WVD
- Microsoft Azure VMware Solution
- Azure VMware Solutions (AVS) ACR: Service Level 4 in any of the following:
- Azure VMware Solution
- Azure VMware Solution by CloudSimple
- Azure VMware Solution by Virtustream
- Specialized Compute Azure VMware Solution
- Azure VMware Solutions (AVS) ACR: Service Level 4 in any of the following:
- Migrate Enterprise Apps to Microsoft Azure
- pp Service ACR:
- Service Level 1 = Compute
- Service Level 2 = Azure App Service
- Azure Spring Cloud ACR:
- ACR Adjustment Type = N/A
- Service Group 2 = Digital and App Innovation
- Service Group 3 = Azure Spring Cloud
- Service Level 2 = All except "Unknown"
- pp Service ACR:
- SAP on Microsoft Azure
- SAP Workloads ACR: Service Level 4 in any of the following:
- Cloud Services MS Series
- Virtual Machines MS Series
- Virtual Machines MS Series Windows
- Virtual Machines MSv2 Series
- Virtual Machines MSv2 Series Windows
- MS Series Dedicated Host
- MSv2 Series Dedicated Host
- SAP HANA on Azure Large Instances
- SAP Cloud Platform Alert Notification
- SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory - Kyma Runtime
- SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite - Additional Messages
- SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite - Standard Edition
- SAP Cloud Platform Transport Management
- SAP Edge Services
- SAP Embrace API Management
- SAP Embrace Application Logging
- SAP Embrace Application Runtime
- SAP Embrace Bandwidth
- SAP Embrace Business Application Studio
- SAP Embrace Business Rules
- SAP Embrace Cloud Integration
- SAP Embrace Credential Store
- SAP Embrace Custom Domain
- SAP Embrace Data Intelligence
- SAP Embrace Enterprise Messaging
- SAP Embrace Extension Factory
- SAP Embrace HANA Cloud
- SAP Embrace Identity Authentication
- SAP Embrace Job Scheduler
- SAP Embrace MACC
- SAP Embrace Mobile Services
- SAP Embrace Object Store Service
- SAP Embrace Open Connectors
- SAP Embrace Portal
- SAP Embrace Process Visibility
- SAP Embrace Web Analytics
- SAP Embrace Workflow
- SAP HANA Service
- SAP Web IDE
- SAP Workloads ACR: Service Level 4 in any of the following:
- Cloud Security
- Hybrid Environment XDR
- Network Security ACR: Service Level 4 in any of the following:
- Azure Defender for SQL
- Azure Defender for container registries
- Azure Defender for Kubernetes
- Azure Defender for Storage
- Application Gateway WAF v2
- WAF Application Gateway
- Azure Active Directory B2C
- Microsoft Entra Directory Domain Services
- Microsoft Entra External ID
- Azure Bastion
- Azure DDOS Protection
- Azure Firewall
- Azure Firewall Manager
- Azure Front Door Service
- Azure Defender for IoT
- Azure Dedicated HSM
- Key Vault
- Network Watcher
- Azure Defender for App Service
- Azure Defender for servers
- Sentinel
- Threat Protection
- Microsoft Sentinel ACR: Service Level 4 = Sentinel
Data freshness
Performance is typically refreshed by the 20th of every month. However, there might be more minor data refreshes throughout the month.
Skilling subcategories are typically refreshed within 10 days after certification is complete.