Thought Leadership
Microsoft is planning a significant cut in its partner program: The popular Microsoft Action Pack and the Microsoft Learning Pack will be discontinued on 21 January 2025. This decision could have far-reaching consequences for many partner companies.
Until now, the Action Pack and the Learning Pack, together with the Silver and Gold memberships, offered Microsoft partners access to a large number of on-premises licenses for Microsoft software. However, the alternatives now proposed by Microsoft – Partner Success Core Benefits and Partner Success Expanded – rely more heavily on cloud services and largely drop the previous on-premises benefits.
Microsoft justifies this step with the need to adapt to the changing technology landscape. However, critics also see this as a strategic move to bind partners more closely to its own cloud solutions.
For many partner companies, this change will initially mean higher costs. According to TheRegister, one affected partner reports that his expenses will increase from £390 (plus VAT) for the Action Pack to £735 (plus VAT) for the new Partner Success Core. He also complains that the focus is now almost exclusively on online services, which could make working with older customer systems more difficult.
Many companies have now moved to the cloud, and for some partners, the Action Pack no longer offers all the tools they need for modern technologies such as AI. Nevertheless, the loss of on-premises options will be a challenge for many.
The announcement does not come as a complete surprise. Microsoft had already introduced three new benefit packages at the beginning of 2024, which are now set to replace the Action Pack. From January 22, 2025, these packages will be expanded to include additional products such as Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft GitHub.
The Microsoft Action Pack will be discontinued on January 21, 2025. From this date, no new purchases or renewals of the Action Pack will be possible. However, partners who purchase or renew an Action Pack before this date can continue to enjoy the benefits for up to one year after purchase. This means that the benefits associated with the Action Pack will remain available until January 21, 2026 as long as the subscription is active
