Welcome to the May edition of the Oaka Studio partner newsletter. It has been a busy few weeks across the Microsoft ecosystem, and we have a lot to share.
There is a lot happening in the Microsoft partner ecosystem right now. AI is still dominating conversations and more partners are asking the same question: How do we stand out in an increasingly crowded market? Across the last few months, we have spoken with partners exploring everything from AI readiness and commercial positioning through to sales strategy, customer engagement and long-term growth. One thing is becoming very clear. The partners gaining the most traction are not trying to be everything to everyone. They are getting much clearer on who they serve, where they add the most value, and how they want to be known in the market. That is exactly why our next Oaka Partner Insights session is focused on industry specialisation.
Every July, LinkedIn fills up with the same posts declaring that Microsoft has changed everything. Most of them are written before anyone's actually opened the rebates guide. The honest version is fairly simple: Microsoft has doubled down on net-new business. In our experience, a lot of partners still haven't. The part that catches people out the most has been the pace of change - This didn't creep in over several renewal cycles. The direction changed sharply between FY26 and FY27 and it's still moving and every quarter the gap widens between the model Microsoft is funding and the one most partners are still running. Treat it as a slow drift you'll adjust to eventually and you'll be building a plan for a market that has already moved on. As always – and as Oaka often refer to in our “Partner Genome” being ambiguity tolerant is not just something for the technical delivery leads within the practices we serve, but also the partnership focused leaders.