100 INTERVIEW Microsoft has overhauled its Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) incentive model for fiscal year 2027 (FY27), shifting investment toward partners who actively drive customer growth and adoption of strategic technologies such as AI. Core incentives for Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 have been replaced by growth accelerators that have increased from 7.5 per cent to 12.5 per cent. When these are combined with premium accelerators, partners can earn potential rebates of up to 19.5 per cent. Microsoft will also introduce a new Growth Margin programme from 1 October 2026, alongside a tiered structure for Azure growth accelerators. “Microsoft is calling FY27 the ‘year of growth’ and has made huge changes to the CSP incentive structure,” says Majd Madina, senior partner development manager for EMEA at OpenText, a Microsoft CSP distributor. “Partners can no longer rely on maintaining their existing licensing base to generate the same returns. Instead, this new structure rewards partners for winning net-new customers, increasing licences, expanding workloads and upgrading customers to strategic products like Business Premium, Copilot, E5, Defender and Purview.” In addition, Microsoft has introduced new Change of Channel Partner (COCP) rules to ensure CSP incentives reward genuine customer growth rather than partner to partner subscription transfers. COCP only applies when both a customer’s partner and distributor change, and is assessed individually by solution area. When triggered, the incoming partner loses access to the core incentive and strategic product accelerators for 12 months, but can still earn the 12.5 per cent growth accelerator if they grow the customer’s revenue after the transition. “Historically, a partner could earn incentives when they took a customer from another partner, but they won’t in FY27,” says Madina. “That means it will be less profitable for partners to focus on takeovers and basic licence renewals. Instead, they’ll be rewarded for prioritising net new customer growth and expansion.” Partners who successfully navigate these complex changes stand to gain significantly. Those who don’t risk leaving tens – or even hundreds – of thousands of dollars unclaimed. “It’s hard to keep up with Microsoft’s frequent changes, so partners often have no idea they’re missing out on incentives, rebates or funding,” says Madina. “For example, one partner we work with had unknowingly left $36,000 in monthly incentives unclaimed for five years, while another had been eligible for $51,000 in funding every six months for six years but OpenText’s Majd Madina shares with Rebecca Gibson how Microsoft CSP partners can adapt to FY27 incentive changes, recover unclaimed rebates and optimise earnings across Microsoft’s cloud and AI ecosystem Unlocking millions in missed Microsoft incentives “ OpenText has spent years providing one-to-one guidance to thousands of partners, so we know all the shortcuts”
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