In an effort to bring more industry ISV solutions from around the world into the Dynamics Channel and spur upgrades from Partners with customers on aging versions of Dynamics AX and CRM systems, Microsoft announced the launch of its new partner type, ISV Development Centers or Dev Center, at Inspire 2017 in July.
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Similar to GSIs and CSPs, Dev Center is a new Microsoft Partner type with seven organizations already on board to provide 3rd party services which VARs, ISVs and NSIs can leverage for additional bandwidth and scale to deliver new functionality to customers and drive cloud upgrades.
Focused primarily on redeveloping non-Microsoft ISV industry solutions to bring them into the channel for Dynamics 365, Dev Centers are also trained to do development upgrade and customization work with factory efficiency to allow Partners to upgrade their customers at rapid pace.
“Naturally, [Dev Centers] raise an eyebrow among partners, who worry about losing customers to the Dev Centers. But the Dev Centers are obliged by Microsoft to honor Microsoft Partner-of-Record (POR) relationships. If a Dev Center is after repeat business, says Fitzhenry, it is with a partner, versus a customer,” said Dann Anthony in a recent article at MSDynamicsWorld.com
According to the MSDW article partners must meet the following requirements to become a Dev Center:
- A minimum of 25 developers with proven Microsoft Development Competencies
- 50+ referenceable ISV/development projects, for either Microsoft partners or their customers
- 15+ customers with an aggregate satisfaction score of 8 or higher.
- Referenceable experience with AppSource solution vetting and curation
- A Quality Assurance plan approved by the appropriate Dynamics 365 R&D vetting teams.
Dev Center partners are embedded with Microsoft’s R&D teams with 400-level training and support. Dev Centers have special access to Microsoft’s new technology previews, beta programs, and technology adopter programs (TAP).
In short, Dev Centers are “Partner’s Partners” to provide technical services around ISV products to either the Microsoft Partner directly or via subcontract to the Microsoft Partner’s end customer.