A new breed of industry-leading company is taking shape — Frontier Firms. These organizations blend human ambition with AI-powered technology to reshape how innovation is scaled, work is orchestrated and value is created. They’re accelerating AI transformation to enrich employee experiences, reinvent customer engagement, reshape business processes and unlock creativity and innovation.

To empower customers in becoming Frontier, we’re excited to announce the launch of the reimagined Microsoft Marketplace, your trusted source for cloud solutions, AI apps and agents. This further realizes Marketplace as an extension of the Microsoft Cloud, where we collaborate with our partner ecosystem to bring their innovations to our customers globally. By offering a comprehensive catalog across cloud solutions and industries, Microsoft Marketplace accelerates the path to becoming a Frontier Firm. With today’s announcement, we are excited to share:

• The new Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, buy and deploy cloud solutions, AI apps and agents. Azure Marketplace and Microsoft AppSource are now unified to simplify cloud and AI management. Available today in the US and coming soon to customers worldwide.
• Tens of thousands of cloud and industry solutions in the Marketplace catalog across a breadth of categories ranging from data and analytics to productivity and collaboration, in addition to industry-specific offerings.
• Over 3,000 AI apps and agents are newly available directly on Marketplace and in Microsoft products — from Azure AI Foundry to Microsoft 365 Copilot — with rapid provisioning within your Microsoft environment through industry standards like Model Context Protocol (MCP).
• Marketplace integrations with Microsoft’s channel ecosystem, empowering you to buy where and how you want — whether from your cloud service provider (CSP) or relying on a trusted partner to procure cloud and AI solutions on your behalf.

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AI apps and agents for every use case

Microsoft Marketplace gives you access to thousands of AI apps and agents from our rich partner ecosystem designed to automate tasks, accelerate decision-making and unlock value across your business. With a new AI Apps and Agents category, you can easily and confidently find AI solutions that integrate with your organization’s existing Microsoft products.

“With Microsoft Marketplace, we reduced configuration time of AI apps from nearly 20 minutes to just 1 minute per instance. That efficiency boost has translated into increased productivity and lower operating costs. Marketplace is a strategic channel for Siemens, where we’ve seen an 8X increase in customer adoption. It’s a powerful platform for scaling both sides of our business.”

— Jeff Zobrist, VP Global Partner Ecosystem and Go To Market |
Siemens Digital Industries Software

Special thanks to these partners who are launching new AI offerings in Microsoft Marketplace today:

Comprehensive catalog across cloud solutions and industries

Microsoft Marketplace offers solutions across dozens of categories ranging from data and analytics to productivity and collaboration, in addition to industry-specific offerings. Microsoft Marketplace is a seamless extension of the Microsoft Cloud, uniting solutions integrated with Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Microsoft Security and more.

“The Microsoft Marketplace, in particular, helps us balance innovation with confidence by giving us access to trusted solutions that integrate seamlessly with our Azure environment — ultimately enabling us to move faster while staying true to our Five Principles.”

— Matthew Hillegas, Commercial Director – Infrastructure & Information Security |
Mars Inc.

For organizations with a Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment, 100% of your purchase for any of the thousands of Azure benefit eligible solutions available on Marketplace continue to count toward your commitment. This helps you spend smarter to maximize your cloud and AI investments.

Integrated experience from discovery to deployment

Contextually relevant cloud solutions, AI apps and agents built by our partners are also available directly within Microsoft products — providing users, developers and IT practitioners with approved solutions in the flow of work. For example, Agent Store includes Copilot agents within the Microsoft 365 Copilot experience. The same applies for apps in Microsoft Teams, models and tools in Azure AI Foundry and future experiences including MCP servers.

By integrating offerings from Marketplace directly into the Microsoft Cloud, IT is equipped with management and control tools that enable both innovation and governance. When you acquire a Copilot agent or an app running on Azure from Microsoft Marketplace, it’s provisioned and distributed to team members aligned to your security and governance standards.

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Powering partner growth

For our partners, Microsoft Marketplace sits at the center of how we work together. We’re continuously expanding its capabilities to help our partners drive growth — whether that means scaling through digital sales, deepening channel partnerships or landing transformative deals.

We’ve invested in multiparty private offers, CSP integration and CSP private offers to connect software development companies and channel partners on Marketplace, creating more complete solutions to address customers’ needs. Today, we’re excited to share that valued partners including Arrow, Crayon, Ingram Micro, Pax8 and TD SYNNEX are integrating Microsoft Marketplace into their marketplaces, further extending customer reach.

Additionally, a new Marketplace capability called resale enabled offers is now in private preview. This empowers software companies to authorize their channel partners to sell on their behalf through private offers — unlocking new routes to market.

“We’re incredibly excited about the path forward with Microsoft. This integration with the Marketplace catalog is just the beginning — we see endless potential to co-innovate and help customers navigate their AI-first transformation with confidence.”

— Melissa Mulholland, Co-CEO | SoftwareOne and Crayon

Nicole Dezen, Chief Partner Officer and Corporate Vice President, Global Channel Partner Sales at Microsoft, shares more details about the partner opportunity with Microsoft Marketplace in her blog.

Becoming Frontier with Microsoft Marketplace

Whether you’re seeking to accelerate innovation, empower your teams with AI or unlock new value through trusted partners, Microsoft Marketplace brings together the solutions, expertise and ecosystem to meet your business needs. Explore the new Microsoft Marketplace. Thousands of solutions. Millions of customers. One Marketplace.

Alysa Taylor is the Chief Marketing Officer for Commercial Cloud and AI at Microsoft, leading teams that enable digital and AI transformation for organizations of all sizes across the globe. She is at the forefront of helping organizations around the world harness digital and AI innovation to transform how they operate and grow.

The post Introducing Microsoft Marketplace — Thousands of solutions. Millions of customers. One Marketplace. appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Our mission is to empower everyone to achieve more, and we design our products and services with enterprise-grade security, privacy, compliance, and transparency. As part of this commitment, we continue to evolve our offering to provide administrators with enhanced tools and reporting to optimize access and licensing within Dynamics 365 finance and operations applications.

On April 30, 2025, we delivered a set of enhancements to user license reporting in the Power Platform admin center, providing customers with comprehensive visibility into license usage across security roles. These improvements build on the momentum from our earlier investments in governance tools, as outlined in our March blog post on simplifying license management in Dynamics 365. Together, these updates are designed to help organizations better understand and manage their licensing footprint.

Microsoft is updating the timeline for in-app notifications and per-user license validation to give customers more time to prepare. To enable a smoother and more predictable experience, license validation will follow a staged rollout aligned with customer’s contract renewal or anniversary date. In parallel, we are introducing additional tools and reporting capabilities to increase transparency and improve the overall experience for customers managing their licensing footprint.

Why We’re Taking a Staged Approach

Starting January 15, 2026, license validation for Dynamics 365 finance and operations applications will begin for customers with contract renewals or anniversaries occurring after that date – refer to the FAQ to learn how this applies to your organization. This approach enables several important benefits:

• Proactive Engagement: Aligning validation with contract milestones helps customers plan to review user counts and licensing needs.
• Reduced Operational Impact: This timing allows organizations to plan and implement necessary adjustments with less likelihood of operational disruption.
• Scalable and Transparent: A staggered timeline provides better transparency when license validation occurs, helping customers plan ahead.

Note: Customers granted a grace period as described in this customer blog will continue to have that status honored.

To maintain continuous access and reduce disruptions in the future, we recommend organizations proactively review and assign licenses in advance.  Users without assigned licenses will no longer have access to these applications after technical validation until licenses are assigned and will instead receive prompts to request the appropriate licenses from their administrator.

Preparing for a Smooth Transition

To help customers confidently navigate the upcoming license validation process starting January 15, 2026, we’ve outlined clear steps to enable your organization to be prepared.

As we approach this important milestone, we encourage your administrator to: 

1. Understand licensing requirements: Review the licensing model for clarity on how security roles, duties, and privileges map to license types.
2. Review User Role and License Mapping: Use the Power Platform admin center or Dynamics Lifecycle Services reporting to generate a high-level summary of active users and respective license requirements.
3. Role to license optimization: Use the License Usage Summary Report in Dynamics 365 finance and operations to identify opportunities to optimize user role assignments by removing unnecessary entitlements or permissions.
4. Align license assignments in Microsoft 365 Admin Center: Provision and assign the appropriate licenses to users in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, ensuring they match the license types mapped in the reports. If needed, make reservations or place supplemental orders for additional licenses.

Following this guidance will help facilitate a smooth transition and position your organization for success managing Dynamics 365 finance and operations licensing across your Microsoft Cloud solutions. This shift toward centralized license assignment underscores our commitment to simplifying administrative processes, providing greater visibility, security, and governance.

For additional information, use the following resources to continue adapting to the new modern reporting tools:

• Licensing Resources
• User security role reporting and technical validation for finance and operations apps FAQ​
• View license consumption for finance and operations apps​
• Stay compliant with user licensing requirements​
• User security governance overview​

The post Simplifying License Management for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations: Improved User License Validation appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

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