Becoming an Azure Expert MSP is one of the most challenging and rewarding milestones a managed service provider can achieve. It’s not just a technical certification; it’s a validation of your maturity, processes, and customer impact. To earn the title, an MSP must prove they operate at the very highest level of quality, automation, and trust.
In this post, we’ll unpack what Microsoft actually looks for in the Azure Expert MSP audit and how the right tooling, such as Turbo360, helps you demonstrate those capabilities with confidence.
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The Core of the Azure Expert MSP Program
The Azure Expert MSP framework is built around four key pillars that define what Microsoft expects from top-performing partners:
- Customer Relationship Management – Demonstrating consistent customer success, references, and satisfaction.
- Technical Capability – Proving deep Azure expertise across infrastructure, app innovation, data, and security.
- Operational Excellence – Showing that your MSP runs with discipline, automation, and continuous improvement.
- Business Health and Scalability – Evidence that your business model is stable, scalable, and aligned with Microsoft’s cloud-first strategy.
Let’s explore each in more detail.
Customer Relationship Management
Microsoft wants to see that you’re not just managing Azure environments and also you’re helping customers achieve business outcomes. This means:
- Providing at least four customer references, including one public case study.
- Demonstrating measurable customer success stories (e.g., cost savings, performance improvements, or migrations).
- Offering transparent communication and regular reporting.
How Turbo360 helps: Turbo360’s customer dashboards and cost reports make it easy to show tangible value in real-world savings, proactive cost optimization, and improved cloud governance.
Technical Capability
An Azure Expert MSP must demonstrate deep technical skills across the Azure ecosystem:
- Certified professionals across infrastructure, data, and application domains.
- Proven delivery experience in Azure migrations, DevOps, and security.
- Use of Azure-native tools (Monitor, Policy, Lighthouse, etc.) and strong automation practices.
How Turbo360 helps: Turbo360 complements Azure-native capabilities by giving MSPs a multi-customer view of cost, performance, and operations – the kind of holistic visibility auditors love to see.
Operational Excellence
This is the heart of the audit. Microsoft assesses whether your MSP operates in a repeatable, automated, and proactive way. Expect to be asked for:
- Documented SOPs for onboarding, monitoring, incident management, and change control.
- Evidence of automation (for example, stopping idle VMs, enforcing tagging, managing cost budgets).
- Governance and compliance policies applied consistently across all customers.
How Turbo360 helps:
- Scheduler: Automates resource start/stop schedules for cost and energy efficiency.
- Cost Analyzer: Continuously monitors costs across customers and flags anomalies.
- Budget Planner: Aligns spend to business plans and forecasts.
- Anomaly Detection: Provides early warning for runaway costs or misconfigurations.
These capabilities directly reinforce the operational maturity criteria of the audit.
Business Health and Scalability
Finally, Microsoft looks for partners who can scale sustainably. You’ll need to show:
- A clear growth strategy for your Azure practice.
- Financial stability and ongoing investment in staff and tooling.
- Strong relationships with Microsoft Partner Managers and field teams.
How Turbo360 helps: By reducing the manual effort in managing cloud costs, Turbo360 frees your team to focus on growth and innovation – improving service delivery efficiency and profitability.
Preparing for the Audit
The Azure Expert MSP audit is a deep dive – you’ll be expected to provide real examples, logs, and evidence of your operational excellence. The best approach is to:
- Conduct an internal pre-audit using Microsoft’s published checklist.
- Document everything from process flows to screenshots.
- Use tools like Turbo360 to produce evidence dashboards that demonstrate maturity and proactive management.
Summary
Becoming an Azure Expert MSP means proving you can deliver trust, transparency, and transformation at scale. It’s about showing Microsoft and your customers that you’re not just managing cloud resources but you’re managing outcomes.
With Turbo360 providing deep visibility, automation, and cost governance, MSPs can move confidently through the audit and demonstrate the kind of operational excellence that defines an Azure Expert MSP.
In the next post, we’ll focus on building the foundation – the people, certifications, and culture you need to start the journey.
