Microsoft partner program updates aims to accelerate embrace of AI

As part of Microsoft’s 2026 State of the Partner announcements, Chief Partner Officer Nicole Dezen revealed that the Frontier Badge is evolving into a Frontier Partner specialization. The specialization differentiates partners between channel partners and service partners, in a bid to help field sales teams to ID partners ready for agentic AI. 

Microsoft is also changing the Frontier Distributor designation to highlight distributor capabilities that can be used for scaling agentic AI. The goal is to make it easier for partners to spot distributors who are able to offer reliable skilling, manage agents, and grow agent sales. 

Together with the Frontier Badge, Microsoft is expanding skilling with the addition of Project Ready workshops and the Frontier Engineer Badge. App Accelerate offers ways for software companies to build AI apps and agents with the Microsoft agent stack, with expanded ways to bring agentic AI offerings to market.

Dezen noted the recent launch of Microsoft 365 E7. The offering brings together Microsoft 365 E5 for secure productivity, Copilot for AI, Entra Suite for identity and access control, plus the Agent 365 control plane. She wrote: