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For years now Microsoft has shared figures which reveal how much extra revenue its partners can make selling additional products and services.

The magic figure this year is $9.65 (£6.74) which is the extra money generated by the ecosystem for every $1 of Microsoft revenue.

The update on the vendor's channel revealed that it now has 68,000 cloud partners, which was a 33% increase year-on-year and it has seen an 83% climb in the number of those transacting in the cloud solution provider programme.

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There have also been 80,000 customer referrals to partners in the past year and a blog post sharing these numbers from Gavriella Schuster, corporate vice president, one commercial partner at Microsoft, talked up the growth to come.

"We generate more than 95 percent of our business through our robust and constantly evolving partner ecosystem. Last fall, partners helped us exceed a $20 billion commercial cloud annualized revenue run rate goal we set just two years ago," she stated.

Looking forward the firm also highlighted the success so far of its co-selling partner incentive with the 500 partners that have worked with the vendor so far just the first wave.

"In just six months with 500 partners, last year’s co-sell pilot generated $6bn in partner pipeline and more than $1bn in partner revenue. Project size was on average nearly six times larger, and partners closed deals nearly three times faster when we sold together. Since formally introducing our approach to co-sell at Inspire, more than 9,000 partners have become co-sell ready—a 543% increase since July—and that number continues to rise," she stated.

The other initiative that the vendor is pushing towards the channel is to do with AI, with the firm getting a practice development playbook to help get partners on their way.

"As Microsoft sellers deepen their relationships with partners through co-sell conversations, they want to build and expand their practices across the solution areas, especially artificial intelligence. By 2025, the anticipated market in the space is expected to reach nearly $60 billion, so it’s a greenfield opportunity—and partners are already creating customer solutions in new and unexpected ways," stated the blog post.