Recorded Live at Ultimate Partner LIVE in Redmond, WA

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Is your business ready for 2026?

Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast.

Join us for an insightful conversation with Lori Borg, Vice President of Microsoft America’s Go-to-Market, as she shares her incredible journey from Microsoft partner to a key executive at Microsoft. Dive deep into the critical importance of organizational and technical agility in today’s rapidly changing tech landscape, especially within the Microsoft ecosystem. Lori emphasizes the need for technical intensity, urging partners to not only adopt the latest Microsoft technologies, including agentic AI, but also to apply them internally to drive innovation and efficiency. Discover the magic that happens when you strategically build with, sell with, and market with Microsoft, and gain valuable insights on how to foster a culture of growth and adaptability within your own organization to become the ultimate Microsoft partner.

We’re curating the very best of these moments—fireside chats, expert panels, and executive insights—so you can stay ahead of the curve and fully aligned to where Microsoft and the industry are heading.

And this is just the beginning.
More sessions. More voices. More of what you need to know.

If you’re not yet part of the UPX Community, now’s the time to join us. Access exclusive content, events, and strategies that keep you in front of what’s next.

Thanks for being on this journey with us.
— Vince

Key Takeaways

• Agility—both organizational and technical—is essential for Microsoft partners to adapt to rapid changes in the tech landscape.


• Partners should actively adopt and apply technical intensity, leveraging new technologies like agentic AI internally to drive innovation and efficiency.


• True success for Microsoft partners lies in strategically integrating efforts to build with, sell with, and market with Microsoft.


• A strong culture of agility, fostered from the top down, is crucial for organizations to remain competitive and adaptable.


• When introducing new initiatives, it’s vital to not only generate energy but also provide clear clarity on practical implementation steps.


• Microsoft is committed to simplifying partner engagement and enhancing clarity in its processes, keeping partners at the core of its strategy.

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If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community.

At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins.

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Key Tags:

Microsoft, Lori Borg, Microsoft Partner, Go-to-Market, Technical Agility, Organizational Agility, AI, Agentic AI, Ecosystem, Partnerships, Growth Mindset, Digital Transformation, Business Strategy, Innovation, Technology, Microsoft Americas, Channel Partners, Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Customer Success, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Cloud, Satya Nadella, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Change Management, Business Growth, Co-selling, Solution Areas, Digital Marketing, Cloud Computing, Microsoft Programs, Partner Hub, Future of Work, Tech Trends.

Transcription:

Lori Borg 

[00:00:00 ] Lori Borg: I think we talk so much about ai. We talk so much about how it’s changing everything and the opportunity in front of us, but we really need to hold the mirror up. Yeah, I do as well. And go, what am I doing to make sure I’m using it for myself? Yes. And I’m encouraging and supporting my teams to be using it as well.

[00:00:21 ] Intro: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, all the hyperscalers in the world. If you add them all together. Managed services will be one and a half times larger because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models.

Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership.

[00:00:59 ] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner Live at Microsoft Redmond Campus, our most powerful event. Yet, over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry.

If you weren’t in the room. This episode featuring Lori Borg, Microsoft’s new Vice President for Go to Market, kicks us off for day two and brings us right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in. I have an incredible privilege this morning. Um, we, we wanna have the conversation about embracing change, and I could think of no one better to come on stage with me today than someone who’s been around the Microsoft ecosystem and around the community of partnerships her entire career.

In fact, and we will talk a little bit about it. I want, I wanna save some of the conversation for her. She recently joined Microsoft like a hundred days ago, became a vice president at Microsoft. So she went from being one of you all, like one of us in the, in the ultimate partner world that we live in to now being an exec at Microsoft and shaping a very important part of Microsoft’s business.

You see, if you know anything about how Microsoft is organized, you have the global roles and Nicole’s organization drives it at. The global level. But when you get into the Americas, which is where you all sit, whether you’re in Canada, Latin America, or the United States, there’s an America’s business that’s very deliberate, very focused on driving success.

And within that business, a very, very strong component of that business is go to market. It’s marketing. Because as you know, being around Microsoft, all the engines, all the support, all the investments that make partners successful, that go to market strategy is critically important. So I am thrilled to invite my friend, we’ve known each other for many years around the partner ecosystem.

I can’t wait for her to spend some time with us this morning talking about embracing change. Laurie Borg is the vice president of Microsoft America’s go to market for the. Global partner community. That’s a mouthful. A lot of acronyms out there. Lori, I’d love to have you up on stage. Come on up. Come up.

So good to see you. Good. So good to see you, my friend. So good to meet here. We got to be together. We, we were together just a little, was it a month ago? It seems like a hundred years ago. Of course, before a lot has changed. Before I sit down, I have to

[00:03:24 ] Lori Borg: say who noticed? The ultimate partner pillows the amazing attention to detail.

I love it.

[00:03:30 ] Vince Menzione: Thank you.

[00:03:30 ] Lori Borg: Yes. I’ve got a whole

[00:03:32 ] Vince Menzione: collection of them in my house, by the way. But, uh, we, we will give you a ch we’ll give you a challenge coin and an ultimate partner pillow if you sign up today. How’s that?

[00:03:40 ] Lori Borg: Perfect.

[00:03:41 ] Vince Menzione: And a hat. So, and a hat. Absolutely. You got a hat ab Absolutely. For being here. So thanks for having you.

So great to be here with you. Yeah. So great to be here. Um, and I, I just wanna spend a moment talking about your journey. ’cause it’s been incredible. You’ve had an incredible career in the, in the ecosystem that we know and love.

[00:03:57 ] Lori Borg: Yes.

[00:03:58 ] Vince Menzione: And, and now you jumped and you came over to the other side. I did. So I want to, let’s, let’s talk about it.

I did tell, take us through it.

[00:04:03 ] Lori Borg: I, I, I would love to ask before I jump into it. I’ve been in the Microsoft ecosystem for 26 years, so it’s been a minute. Um, and I have some of my peers on my team now at Microsoft celebrating 15, 20, 25 years at Microsoft. And we do a lot to celebrate them inside of Microsoft.

Amazing. What I’m curious of, is anybody in the room? Have you been in the Mark, Microsoft partner ecosystem? Like 20 plus years. Can you raise your hand? Yes. What about 25 plus years? Keep your hands up. There’s several of you. 30 years, anybody? 30 years. Yeah. A few of you, Jeff. Yeah. Good. Well, I wanna do celebrate all those people.

Absolutely. Yeah. Congratulations. Because we celebrate, we celebrate inside of Microsoft. So, um, thank you for choosing Microsoft