We’re pleased to announce that Surveil’s complete portfolio has achieved Microsoft 365 certification on Azure Marketplace—a milestone that reflects both our technical maturity and the rapidly evolving dynamics of cloud financial operations in 2025.
What’s Now Certified:
- Surveil for Microsoft 365
- Surveil for Microsoft Azure
- Surveil – Health Check for Microsoft Azure (Europe & North America)
- Surveil – Health Check for Microsoft 365 (Europe & North America)
While certification announcements typically focus on technical validation, this achievement matters more for what it signals about the FinOps market’s transformation—and Surveil’s position within it.
The FinOps Inflection Point
The cloud financial management landscape has reached a critical juncture. After years of treating FinOps as a tactical cost-cutting exercise, enterprises are recognizing it as strategic financial governance. The numbers tell the story: organizations managing $2 billion in Microsoft subscription revenues (like Surveil’s client base of 160,000 companies) are discovering 18-37% optimization opportunities—representing hundreds of millions in recoverable spend.
Microsoft Marketplace has become the primary battleground for this market. The platform now hosts numerous FinOps solutions, each claiming AI-powered insights, automated recommendations, and seamless integration. Yet the certification barrier separates serious platforms from opportunistic entrants.
The M365 certification audit exceeds even ISO27001 and SOC2 Type2 requirements in specific technical domains. Microsoft isn’t simply verifying security controls—they’re validating that the solution can safely operate within the most sensitive enterprise environments, handling licensing data, usage telemetry, and spend analytics at scale. Most marketplace FinOps tools haven’t attempted this certification because they can’t pass it.
Why Certification Matters Beyond the Badge
1. Procurement Unlocking in Regulated Industries
Many enterprises—particularly in financial services, healthcare, and government—mandate M365 certification for any application touching their cloud infrastructure. This isn’t bureaucratic red tape; it’s risk management. Our certification means Surveil can now compete for deals that were procedurally closed to us, regardless of technical superiority.
2. MACC Transactability: The Hidden Procurement Accelerator
Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) has become the dominant enterprise cloud purchasing mechanism. Customers with MACC agreements can now procure Surveil directly through Marketplace, drawing down against existing commitments rather than navigating separate budget cycles.
MACC transactability fundamentally changes the buyer’s journey. Instead of asking CFOs to find new budget, organizations can optimize spend they’ve already committed. This shifts the conversation from “Should we buy another tool?” to “Which existing budget line item should fund our optimization platform?” It’s a completely different buying dynamic.
The circular investment model this enables is particularly compelling: organizations can purchase optimization tools using budget recovered from waste identification, creating self-funding improvement cycles.
3. Resale Enabled Offers: Extending Certification Through the Channel
Microsoft’s recently launched Resale Enabled Offers capability represents a fundamental shift in how channel partners can deliver certified solutions at scale. This new feature—which reached general availability in November 2025—allows Surveil to authorize channel partners to resell our M365 certified offerings independently, by geography, without requiring us to be involved in each transaction.
The strategic significance is profound: when we delegate our certified public offers through the Resale Enabled Offers framework, our channel partners inherit the same M365 certification credibility. Partners can now create private offers for their customers using Surveil’s certified platform, with those purchases counting toward customers’ MACC commitments when applicable. The combination of certification, MACC transactability, and resale authorization creates a frictionless path for partners to deliver enterprise-grade FinOps capabilities without the overhead of managing separate product listings or undergoing redundant security reviews.
For channel-led businesses, this is transformative. Partners can scale their FinOps practice by geography without waiting for our involvement in each deal, while customers benefit from the procurement efficiency of Marketplace transactions backed by Microsoft’s validation of our security and quality standards. Microsoft handles billing and collections, pays the resale partner directly, and the partner manages their commercial relationship with Surveil outside the Marketplace—simplifying operations for everyone involved.
4. Marketplace Visibility in an Increasingly Crowded Category
Azure Marketplace’s search and filtering algorithms preferentially surface certified solutions. As FinOps becomes more competitive on Marketplace, certification provides organic discovery advantages. Buyers filtering for “Microsoft 365 certified” applications automatically exclude most competitors—not through our marketing, but through Microsoft’s curation.
The Competitive Landscape: Certification as Market Segmentation
The FinOps category on Azure Marketplace has expanded significantly over the past 18 months. Solutions range from basic cost dashboards to sophisticated AI-driven recommendation engines. What’s notable isn’t the quantity of options—it’s the growing technical sophistication gap between certified and non-certified platforms.
Certification naturally segments the market into three tiers:
Tier A: M365 certified, MACC-transactable platforms with comprehensive licensing and consumption optimization across Microsoft’s ecosystem. These solutions have demonstrated enterprise-readiness through rigorous technical audit and can leverage Resale Enabled Offers for scalable channel distribution.
Tier B: Marketplace-listed tools without M365 certification, typically focused on narrower use cases (single-cloud cost tracking, specific resource optimization) or serving mid-market segments where certification requirements are less stringent.
Tier C: External FinOps platforms requiring separate procurement, often multi-cloud solutions where Microsoft represents just one component of their coverage.
Each tier serves legitimate market needs, but enterprises increasingly expect Tier 1 capabilities—particularly as Microsoft’s own AI innovations (Agent 365, expanded Copilot deployment) drive consumption complexity requiring sophisticated governance.
Strategic Timing: Why 2025 is the FinOps Market’s Defining Year
Microsoft’s announcements around Agent 365 and autonomous AI workflows represent more than feature releases—they signal a fundamental shift in how organizations will consume cloud services. As AI adoption accelerates, so does consumption complexity. Licensing models designed for relatively static SaaS subscriptions now face dynamic, usage-based AI workloads.
The next 12-18 months will separate FinOps platforms that can adapt to AI-driven consumption patterns from those built for yesterday’s licensing models. Certification provides a foundation for this evolution—Microsoft needs partners who can help customers optimize new AI workloads, and they’re investing in platforms that meet their technical standards.
For Surveil, certification timing aligns with this market evolution. Our Expert Recommendation Engine (EREN) was built anticipating complex, AI-powered consumption scenarios. Certification validates that foundation while positioning us for the consulting and implementation partnerships that will define premium FinOps delivery in 2026.
What This Means for Customers and Partners
For Enterprise Customers: The procurement friction that often delayed optimization initiatives has been substantially reduced. Security review cycles can reference Microsoft’s certification audit rather than conducting redundant evaluations. Budget allocation leverages existing MACC commitments rather than competing for discretionary spend. The qualification process shifts from lengthy security assessments to streamlined procurement through trusted channels—whether directly with Surveil or through authorized channel partners who can deliver the same certified solution.
For Partners: Whether you’re a Tier 1 enterprise partner or a Tier 2 partner serving mid-market and SMB clients, this certification elevates every customer conversation. Your clients benefit from the same enterprise-grade platform security and Microsoft validation regardless of their size.
The Resale Enabled Offers capability is particularly significant for partner growth. Tier 1 partners can now independently create private offers for enterprise customers in their authorized geographies, leveraging Surveil’s M365 certification without waiting for our involvement in each transaction. This removes procurement barriers in regulated industries and accelerates enterprise sales cycles. For Tier 2 partners, the combination of certification credibility and streamlined Marketplace transactions provides a competitive edge with increasingly sophisticated mid-market buyers who are adopting enterprise-grade requirements as they scale.
The MACC transactability opens opportunities with growing accounts who’ve graduated into commitment-based purchasing, while the resale authorization framework allows you to scale your FinOps practice efficiently across your customer base.
Looking Forward: Certification as Foundation, Not Destination
Achieving M365 certification positions Surveil competitively for the FinOps market’s next phase, but the real work is applying that foundation to customer outcomes. The 18-37% optimization results our clients achieve don’t come from certification—they come from sophisticated analytics, licensing expertise, and proactive recommendation engines that help teams govern increasingly complex Microsoft consumption.
What certification provides is market access: the ability to compete for enterprise deals where technical credibility is table stakes, the procurement mechanisms that turn that credibility into efficient buying processes, and the channel enablement infrastructure that allows partners to scale delivery of certified solutions independently.
As FinOps matures from tactical cost management to strategic financial governance, the platforms that combine technical certification, marketplace transactability, resale enablement, and genuine optimization sophistication will define the category’s premium tier.
Surveil’s complete portfolio is now certified and available on Azure Marketplace: View our Microsoft Marketplace listings.