Six ANZ partners sign AI MOUs with Microsoft

Six Australian and New Zealand MSPs and Microsoft have signed MOUs agreeing on shared goals to “lift security baselines for customers in the age of AI” while providing the MSPs with direct support from Microsoft in addition to support they already receive from distributors.

The partners – IT&T, Manage Protect, PKCG, Infotrust, Alliance Business Technologies and Fusion5 – will receive resourcing, engineering support and funding from Microsoft. Each MSP will build a “secure AI service” for its clients.

The agreements cover 16,500 seats and more than 1,500 small businesses across the six partners.

It is the first time Microsoft has made this kind of commitment to MSPs who buy through distributors, according to Microsoft Director of Partner Sales for Cybersecurity, Asia, Yvonne Noble.

The MSPs were chosen because they “are the important leaders that will change the shape of this market”, Noble told techpartner.news.

She said Microsoft plans to look “later” for more partners to sign the MOU, saying "graduating and satisfying our commitment to the first batch is important.”

These MSPs were among 12 partners at Microsoft’s North Sydney office on October 15 for the first Microsoft Secure AI Partner awards.

The awards aim to recognise Australia and New Zealand partners building secure AI services, such as managed security, data governance and AI governance – and those that have “already made an impact to their customers at speed and scale”.

“They set a new gold standard nationally and worldwide,” Noble said.

Microsoft considered 16 partners for the awards: Infotrust, PBTech, TechClick, Blackbird IT, Virtual IT Group, PKCG, Integrated ICT, Manage Protect, Alliance Business Technologies, Fusion5, AfterDark Technology, IT&T, Exigo Tech, Securecom, IT Partners and blueAPACHE.

It picked which partners it considered for the awards – it didn’t invite nominations or submissions.

The finalists were AfterDark Technology, Alliance Business Technologies, Integrated ICT and Securecom.

The award went to Queensland-based Alliance Business Technologies, which received praise for the level of advanced security take-up by its customers, and for having the “highest customer uptake within their base of any Microsoft MSP partner in ANZ.”

Noble congratulated Alliance Business Technologies for being “the first globally to uplevel over 60% of your managed services customer to security baseline including AI governance.”

Microsoft also acknowledged ABT for deploying Purview for 105 customers in five days – the Purview deployment global average for is 68 days, it said.

At the event last week, the partners and Microsoft also discussed how Microsoft can partner better with them.

Noble publicly thanked Dicker Data, Ingram Micro, SoftwareOne and TechClick for joining "us for these events mutually supporting MSPs”.

The awards were presented by Microsoft ANZ’s Daniyel McAvoy, Senior Partner Solution Sales, Security Transformation, and Danny Mesrop, Senior Director, Partner Development ANZ, and Vaishali Kasture, General Manager, Leader Asia SMB Business, Microsoft.