Frontier Accelerate for Azure: How ANZ partners can say yes to Azure and AI work without hiring a delivery team

Microsoft’s FY27 guidance has relaunched Azure Accelerate as Frontier Accelerate for Azure, folding migration, modernisation, Data and AI, application innovation and security into a single program. For ANZ MSPs and CSP partners, the funding and the customer intent now arrive together. The gap is delivery and it is a gap the market can't hire its way out of.

The full scope of that challenge and opportunity is covered in the Future of Operations 2025, commissioned by Crayon and conducted by Forrester Consulting, which surveyed 673 companies across 21 industries in eight APAC countries. The report measures what customers have decided to spend on cloud and AI work, and how thin the supply of people who can deliver it has become.

The demand is funded, the skills are the constraint

The demand side of the study shows that 84 per cent of APAC SMBs have AI in place, in motion or in plan. A similar number (87 per cent) are increasing budgets for third-party service expertise.

Customers are moving because the results are visible. Fifty-five per cent of SMBs with existing AI implementations grew revenue by 15 per cent or more year-over-year over the past two years, against 35 per cent of those yet to start.

Meanwhile, the constraints show in 46 per cent, who name limited availability of skilled professionals as the top barrier to operationalising AI in the cloud, ahead of cost, licensing and every technical factor. A further 42 per cent report difficulty accessing, cleaning and preparing data for AI workloads, which is specialist work in itself.

Most partners will recognise the pattern in their own pipeline. A customer raises modernisation, security or AI, the conversation stops at interest because nobody in the business can scope the work, and the opportunity ages out or a competitor scopes it first.

A route in that does not start with hiring

Partners have defaulted to two answers, though neither would be considered ideal for a mid-sized MSP. Building a delivery practice is slow and expensive, and it means competing for certified Azure and Data and AI specialists against firms with deeper pockets. Subcontracting is faster, but it puts an unknown quantity in front of the partner’s own customer.

There is a third route. Crayon, a SoftwareOne Company, puts its own Microsoft-certified specialists behind the partner (not a subcontractor bench). As a Microsoft Cloud Solutions Partner holding all six Solutions Partner designations and Azure Expert MSP status, Crayon covers assessment and planning, secure migration, deployment and post-deployment optimisation, following Microsoft's Cloud Adoption Framework. Between the partner's customer and the engineer doing the work, there is no one else.

Importantly, this model is partner-led. The partner nominates the customer, Crayon delivers the engagement end to end, and the partner keeps the relationship without carrying the delivery overhead. It is open to partners who do not currently transact with Crayon.

“This is about helping partners say ‘yes’ to more customer opportunities,“ Mathew Howard, Crayon Australia GM – ANZ Channel, said. “We deliver the technical expertise behind the scenes, while transferring knowledge throughout the engagement, enabling partners to build capability, deliver with confidence, and grow their Microsoft practice over time."

From customer conversation to scoped engagement

The practical value of the program is that it turns a vague customer conversation into something a partner can scope, price and take back to the customer.

The security row is the one most likely to be live already. Seventy-six per cent of SMBs in the study rate security and data privacy a high to critical priority, so the conversation is already open.

In the partner’s own terms, the pathways add up to capacity that did not have to be hired, margin on work that would otherwise have aged out or moved to a competitor, and a customer relationship that stays put. A tiered partner incentive is attached to the program and is confirmed at sign-up.

Registration for Frontier Accelerate for Azure is open now through the Crayon page, and the full Future of Operations 2025 findings are available to partners who want the numbers behind it.

For partners, the next move is clear: identify the first customer opportunity ready to nominate.