Microsoft upgrades co-sell programme, launches Kubernetes tool with Red Hat

Microsoft has announced two upgrades to its first co-sell programme for channel partners, ever since whose launch 12 months ago close to 3,000 independent software vendors (ISVs) running on Microsoft public cloud Azure have generated over $5 billion in revenue.

The first is an expansion of co-selling to Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform in a bid to create deeper collaboration in selling line-of-business applications.

The second is expanding the sales incentives to Microsoft’s channel partners that resell ISV solutions through the cloud solution provider (CSP) programme. This would offer small and large ISVs a “channel as a service” platform.

The original co-sell programme was designed to help customers in their digital transformation through relevant solutions from Azure-based ISV partners.   

Microsoft also announced transactable seat-based SaaS capabilities for AppSource and Azure marketplace. The updates are expected to benefit 141 countries with access to Microsoft’s cloud marketplaces and through its worldwide reseller channel.

In another major development, Red Hat and Microsoft announced the general availability of Azure Red Hat OpenShift. OpenShift provides an enterprise-grade Kubernetes solution to Azure. The solution would also enable better onboarding to hybrid cloud computing, thus allowing IT companies to use the Red Hat Container Platform in their data centres.

The offering would help enterprises benefit from Kubernetes, which provides a common bridge between the data centre and public cloud environments, which Microsoft and Red Hat bet are a key technology in taking hybrid cloud computing forward.

“Hybrid cloud provides a clear vision into the future of enterprise computing, where public cloud services stand alongside virtualisation, Linux containers and bare-metal servers. Together, this forms the new data centre in the hybrid cloud world,” said Paul Cormier, president, products and technologies, Red Hat.

The release said that OpenShift would combine the innovation of enterprise Kubernetes with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which would complement the functions of Azure. The two would provide a solution to easily manage and orchestrate cloud-native workloads in a hybrid cloud environment.

OpenShift would also allow customers to bring in containerised applications into workflows, and help reduce complexities in container management, the statement said.