Azure Specialization: AI and Machine Learning in Microsoft

Your organization must have an active Solutions Partner for Data & AI (Azure) or Digital & App Innovation (Azure) designation.

**How to attain a Solutions Partner designation**
The partner capability score provides flexibility to demonstrate knowledge, skills, and experience across subcategories of performance, skilling, and customer success.

A minimum of **70** points must be earned, with points in each category. There are **100** points possible in total across categories.

- Performance - Measured by net customer adds

- Skilling - Verifies and demonstrates your dedication to skilling and training by intermediate and advanced certifications

- Customer success - Measured by usage growth and the number of solution deployments

Admins can sign-in to [Partner Center](https://partner.microsoft.com/dashboard/mpn/overview) to see how your organization is progressing towards a Solutions Partner designation.

![](/PartnerResources/assets/aiml/SolutionPartnerDesignation.png){width="6.19375in" height="5.175in"}

Make sure your organization is receiving the points you've earned by having the right associations in place. Associations are the sole mechanism by which customer success, performance, and skilling subcategory points are acknowledged and calculated towards achieving Solutions Partner designations

There are two paths to earning points:

- Partner associations recognize partners for performance and customer success subcategories including net customer adds, usage growth, and deployment

- Certified professional associations provide visibility into the certifications individuals in your company have earned

**Which option should I choose?**

If these activities describe the work that you do, consider **Solutions Partner for Data & AI (Azure)**:

- Analyzing existing workloads, generating schema models, and performing extract, transform, load (ETL) operations to migrate data to cloud-based data warehouses and enable cloud-based analytics solutions.

- Planning and delivering tailored Microsoft analytics solutions using Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Lake, Azure Data Factory, and
Azure Databricks.

- Enabling customer adoption of Al and implementing Azure solutions for Alpowered apps and machine learning life cycles.

If these activities describe the work that you do, consider **Solutions Partner for Digital & App Innovation (Azure)**:

- Migrating and deploying production web application workloads, applying DevOps, and managing app services in Azure

- Managing production workloads in the cloud using containers and managing hosted Kubernetes environments in Azure

- Implementing secure DevOps practices and driving DevOps adoption while using Azure and GitHub

**How to Prepare**

- [Overview Deck: Solution Partner for **Azure Data & AI (Azure)**](https://assetsprod.microsoft.com/mpn/en-us/overview-solutions-partner-for-data-and-ai-azure.pdf) -- Deep dive into the Solution Partner Designation and product benefits \[7/18/2023\]

- [Overview Deck: Solution Partner for **Digital & App Innovation (Azure)**](https://assetsprod.microsoft.com/mpn/en-us/overview-solutions-partner-for-digital-and-app-innovation-azure.pdf) -- Deep dive into \[7/18/2023\]

- [Technical Requirements: Solutions Partner for Data & AI (Azure), Infrastructure (Azure), and Digital & App Innovation (Azure) - Partner Center \| Microsoft
Learn](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/solutions-partner-azure) -- Detailed requirements for Solutions Partner designation \[10/3/2022\]

- Explore the [Partner Associations Playbook](https://assetsprod.microsoft.com/mpn/en-us/solutions-partner-associations-playbook.pdf) for more information on which associations are right for you and additional steps to maximize your partner capability score.

- Ensure your partner associations are connected as you prep to attain Solutions Partner designations.

**Module A: Cloud Foundation is required for multiple Azure Specializations**
- The partner may present evidence of a previous pass result from Module A or from another Azure specialization audit conducted on V2.0 or later.

- Partners who have passed an Azure specialization audit before July 1, 2021 and for the Analytics on Microsoft Azure specialization audit before Oct 1, 2021, have likely not passed the Module A audit and will need to do so to qualify for the Module B workload audits.                                         |

**Module B: AI and Machine Learning on Microsoft Azure workload**
- Each control has one (1) or more requirements and required evidence the partner must provide for the auditor.

- Both the requirements and the required evidence are defined in the [audit checklist tables](https://assetsprod.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-azure-ai-audit-checklist.pdf).

- For some controls, a reference customer or customer evidence is the documentation requested.

- Unless otherwise stated, the partner must show at least three (3) unique customers with deployments completed within the last twelve (12) months.

- Please note some checklists call for four (4) customer examples.

- The partner can use the same customer across audit checklist controls, or they can use a different customer. For audit evidence relating to customer engagements, the partner can use a customer case study and reference it multiple times. The same or different customers can be used for Modules A & B if they demonstrate requirements.

You can use the same customer across audit checklist controls, or you can use a different customer. For audit evidence relating to customer engagements, you can use a customer case study and reference it multiple times. The same or different customers can be used for Modules A & B if they demonstrate requirements.