285 – Why Most Partners Will Fail in the AI Era (If Your Missing the 4 Pillars)!

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In this episode, we dive deep into Microsoft’s new “Frontier Firm” concept—a strategic framework designed to help organizations become AI-first. We explore the four key pillars of the success framework: enriching employee experiences, reinventing customer engagement, reshaping business processes, and bending the innovation curve. The discussion also covers critical updates from Microsoft Ignite, including the introduction of “IQs” (Work, Fabric, and Foundry) and the new Agent 365 for observability. Finally, we outline the massive opportunities for Azure partners, from core migration to building unified data platforms and deploying AI agents.

Key Takeaways

• A Frontier Firm is an AI-first organization built on a four-pillar success framework.
• The four pillars are enriching employee experience, customer engagement, business process, and innovation.
• New “IQs” (Work, Fabric, Foundry) provide the intelligence layer for AI agents to operate effectively.
• Agent 365 was announced to provide security, identity, and observability for AI agents.
• Change management is just as critical as technology implementation for AI adoption.
• Azure partners have three main opportunities: migration, unified data platforms, and building AI apps.

If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins.

Key Tags:

Frontier Firm framework, Microsoft AI strategy, Azure partner ecosystem, AI-first organization, enriching employee experiences, reinventing customer engagement, bending the innovation curve, Work IQ, Fabric IQ, Foundry IQ, Agent 365, AI observability, AI agents, Azure migration, unified data platform, Microsoft Ignite announcements, AI change management, Ultimate Partner winter retreat, Boca studio, ISV success, Azure incentives, tech leadership.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Cyril Belikoff: AI is changing our daily operations. And how can, uh, on a day-to-day, uh, basis can those people get their heads around what AI is and then help them, um, you know, leverage ai more

[00:00:16] Vince Menzione: talking about leadership, Microsoft’s leadership around frontier firms. How should partners think about frontier firms?

[00:00:23] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah, it’s a great question.

[00:00:25] Cyril Belikoff: Uh, in the last, you know, six months or so, we introduced, uh, this concept of a frontier firm, which is really around an organization that is AI first. Yeah. Uh, now of course that’s not new. Um, but really we wanted to try and leverage all the experiences that we’ve had with many, many customers and partners and put it into some sort of.

[00:00:47] Cyril Belikoff: Success framework and provide sort of, uh, uh, ingredients, if you will, on how to best get there. And so we came up with the success framework for Becoming Frontier, uh, in, in four areas. One is about, uh, enriching employee experiences, reinventing customer engagement, reshaping business process, and bending the innovation curve.

[00:01:07] Cyril Belikoff: And if you look at any of the innovation that’s happened around AI and, and, and becoming AI first, um. All of the projects that we’ve done, the thousands, the tens of thousands of projects on a LA we’ve done have fallen into one of those four categories. So we really, we, we spoke about the success framework and how we can help customers, you know, become frontier.

[00:01:28] Vince Menzione: Take us through it one more time. Maybe just a, a, a few, a little comment on each one of those four, because I think, yeah. Every single one of ’em standing on their own is so important for organizations.

[00:01:36] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. That if you really think about it, it’s about how are we driving business outcomes. So the first one is en enriching employee experiences.

[00:01:44] Cyril Belikoff: Nice. So each of us is an employee of some organization. And how is that organization enriching that experience, leveraging AI so that individuals can do great work, uh, whether they’re a developer. Or a marketer like myself or a salesperson or someone in HR or finance, AI is changing our daily operations.

[00:02:06] Cyril Belikoff: And how can, uh, on a day-to-day, uh, basis can those people get their heads around what AI is and then help them, um, you know, leverage AI more? Then there’s reinventing customer engagement that’s really about. Our, our customer’s customer. And so how do we rethink that, uh, help them rethink those engagements with ai.

[00:02:28] Cyril Belikoff: The third is reshaping business process. Of course, uh, we know about the opportunity with AI and agents and how we can streamline process, you know, remove hurdle, move, remove friction, make it faster and easier. Then the final is about bending the innovation curve, and that’s really about the new wave of, of experiences and applications and maybe even business models that might come up for our customers and how we help them with ai.

[00:02:54] Cyril Belikoff: So, uh, like I mentioned, this concept of becoming frontier is relatively new, but we have the success framework on those four areas and, and deep experience in those four areas where we’ve helped, you know, thousands and thousands of customers over the last three or four years.

[00:03:09] Vince Menzione: So you lead the Azure partner business.

[00:03:11] Vince Menzione: How do you think about product strategy and can you share more about Azure partner opportunities specifically?

[00:03:21] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. Um, I’ll take a little, a, a minor step back and talk just more broad, more broadly about, uh, Microsoft and then I’ll drill into Azure. It’s a great question. I love Azure. As you know, I’m Yes.

[00:03:32] Cyril Belikoff: Um, part of the Azure team, um, but I, I mentioned becoming Frontier and at. At, um, at Ignite, we announced some company-wide announcements around products that we have available to help fulfill on those promises of becoming Frontier. Um, we announced three, what we call IQs, a work iq, a Fabric IQ, and a Foundry iq.

[00:03:54] Cyril Belikoff: Those are really the intelligence within the organization that your AI and agents can leverage as a platform to get smarter. So Work IQ is essentially the knowledge about your employees and how your employees work. Um, of course, that’s, uh, confidential and proprietary to you, so no one else gets to see it.

[00:04:12] Cyril Belikoff: Yeah. But we provide you with the ability to leverage that information so that employees can, you know, work better. Then Fabric iq, that’s the how your business operates. Uh, so your business processes and then Foundry iq, that’s the sort of business knowledge, how, you know, different types of knowledge, whether it’s a database or a web storage or.

[00:04:31] Cyril Belikoff: Document storage and how you can curate that so that you can have AI and agents sort of get smarter in the organization. Nice. And then of course, observability. You want to be able to observe all of this as an organization. AI can do interesting things and so you want to, you know, govern and observe. And so we announce this thing called Agent 365.

[00:04:49] Cyril Belikoff: They’ve got a lot of news, which, um, just think about that as a, um. Like Microsoft 365 provides security and identity for a human agent. 365 does that for agents. So of course you want to make sure that agents, uh, have access to some things, not everything. They have an identity so you can track them and what they’ve, and what they’ve done on your behalf.

[00:05:12] Cyril Belikoff: Um, and, uh, there’s observability in terms of, you know, how they operate. So we made a ton of product announcements to serve how we are helping customers becoming frontier. So lots of great new and, and lots of opportunity. ’cause as you, as you know, um, in ai it’s not only about the technology implementation or project identification, there’s a lot of change management there, um, in, in, in the technical systems, but in humans like.

[00:05:40] Cyril Belikoff: We all workers today, and we, we operate our daily work in a certain way. In order to operate differently with ai, we have to train ourselves and there’s a bunch of change management opportunity for partners in addition to the technology adopt, uh, adoption implementation opportunity. So that’s sort of at the all up Microsoft level for Azure.

[00:06:01] Cyril Belikoff: Obviously Azure’s, you know, fabric and foundry I mentioned earlier, that’s part of Azure and so yeah. Azure is the AI foundation, but we have other areas that customers are looking to us for. First is, you know, core migration and modernization. There are many customers that have plenty on premises estate and in order to Yeah.

[00:06:19] Cyril Belikoff: Put AI around their data, it needs to be in the cloud. Exactly. Um, and so we’re still working with customers to migrate and modernize their infrastructure and then build a unified data platform. Uh, sort of the next area. Once they get the, their data in the cloud, they wanna stitch it together, whether it’s structured data or unstructured data into one sort of experience.

[00:06:41] Cyril Belikoff: And then finally, obviously you wanna build AI apps and agents on top of all of that. So those are three major areas and tons of opportunities for partners, you know, in those areas. Uh, through things like our incentive programs, uh, Azure accelerates our, our, um, program for software companies or ISVs IV success, all layering out incentives, programs, and assistance to help customers in those three or four areas.

[00:07:06] Vince Menzione: The Ultimate Partner Winter Retreat is gonna be here in the Boca Studio. This is the third year that we’re gonna be here in Boca. This is always a favorite of our community members, our executive members. Our sponsors and speakers, we’ll all be here in the studio, which is a really intimate setting. We can see it upwards of 40, 50 people.

[00:07:29] Vince Menzione: Uh, we’ll be hosting an incredible dinner at the Boca Resort overlooking the golf course. That’s an incredible property. And, uh, we’d love to have you join us. Thank you for being part of the ultimate Partner community, and I hope to see you this year at one of our events. Thank you.