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Microsoft Co-Sell Program Tally Reaches $8 Billion

Microsoft's co-sell program that incentivizes the Microsoft field to sell partner solutions is on pace to exceed last year's total by a wide margin.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella provided an update on the program during an earnings call with investors.

"The co-sell program we introduced 18 months ago has already generated $8 billion in contracted partner revenue," Nadella said Wednesday. Nadella offered the statistic as part of a broader comment about the way Microsoft is partnering with companies across the industry to build their digital capabilities, and how that effort creates new opportunities for both customers and the partner ecosystem.

The co-sell program is designed to motivate Microsoft field sellers to push partner solutions by setting aside Microsoft funding to pay those Microsoft sellers 10% of the total value of the partner solution. Microsoft channel chief Gavriella Schuster said at the Microsoft Inspire show at the start of the company's fiscal year in July that the co-sell funding was intended to run through June 2019.

The $8 billion milestone that Nadella touted is a significant increase from the last time Microsoft talked about the program in July 2018. At that time, Schuster said the program had landed $5 billion in partner sales.

Nadella's updated figures suggest that Microsoft's field sold an additional $3 billion from July to December of 2018. Given that Microsoft had clocked $1 billion in sales when it was a pilot program prior to its public launch in July 2017, the co-sell effort is well on its way to surpassing the full fiscal year total of $4 billion from 2018.

With the all-out effort that the Microsoft field usually engages in during Microsoft's fourth quarter (April-June), expect the company to have some interesting co-sell figures to report at Inspire this July.

Posted by Scott Bekker on January 31, 2019


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