3rd Party: The Microsoft Support Show – Episode 1.

Welcome to the debut of US Cloud’s brand-new video series, 3rd Party: The Microsoft Support Show! In this first episode, we interview Mike Jones, US Cloud’s VP of Product Development. We dive into the intricacies of the Microsoft Partner Support Ecosystem in this episode and episode 2 to see how these changes will impact your business moving forward..

The Microsoft partner ecosystem is an external network of vendors acting as intermediaries between Microsoft and customers. These vendors extend Microsoft’s reach by offering specialized solutions. ISVs create niche applications for the Microsoft ecosystem, VARs resell Microsoft solutions, products, or hardware, and solutions partners provide services like implementations or migrations to enhance IT infrastructure. LSPs and LARs focus on contract-related services. Partners often wear multiple hats; for instance, an ISV can also be a solutions provider, or an LSP might offer VAR services, depending on their expertise.

There are different partner tiers currently, though this is going to change in the future. Right now, there are three partner tiers: gold, silver, and bronze. Gold is the “gold standard” that every partner is trying to achieve. There are benefits to each tier, such as better funding or access to the latest Microsoft technology sooner, but the lion share of those benefits are in the gold tier.

Microsoft is in the process of changing the tier system to be a process called solutions designations. They will split these designations into six categories, such as data and AI or Azure cloud. Anyone that is a silver or gold tier partner now will be grandfathered in and allowed to choose and give proof that they meet the new solution designation requirements, while hopefuls will need to start fresh with the new scoring system.

You must score across three categories:

1. Skilling is based on competency in your specific designation.
2. Performance is how many customers are you adding through the partner network and how do you attach yourself to them from a partner standpoint, i.e., What type of support do you offer them.
3. Customer Success is how you expand a customer’s product use, like adding new cloud services to their stack and making it successful.

With these metrics and designations in place, it will be easier for partners to enter the tier classifications and know what to aim for from the onset. We suspect they will add new designations in the future, like support, and although they haven’t given a hard date, we suspect this tier change will occur in this fiscal year.

From a support model standpoint, Microsoft has Unified support. From a partner model standpoint, there are a few models that feed back into the Microsoft network.

Cloud solution providers (CSPs) sell Microsoft licensing and offer support. They are essentially a partner that buys licenses through Microsoft and sells them to you, while also offering level 1 and 2 support. It’s a little of everything.

On Microsoft’s end, advanced support is cloud-only, so you don’t get on-premises assistance or the full-service catalogue. Premier support is the highest level and offers on-prem and cloud-based support, with critical situation support as an attachment. Partners will purchase a tier of support, like advanced or Premier, and then engage on behalf of the customer with Microsoft.

Unified support is the buffet model and more of a needs-based support model, similar to US Cloud.

Speaking of US Cloud, we run our services on the old Premier Support model. Unified is a bit pricy and doesn’t always fit a client’s needs, so our approach is needs based. You get a bucket of hours for however long your contract stipulates and you can use those hours for any service.

We also don’t make you estimate reactive and proactive time into different buckets. Instead, we combine them into a single bucket for the sake of simplicity. You can ping us for 24/7 reactive support, proactive or implementation and advisory services, and consulting solutions. The only add on currently is consulting which is a dedicated support option.

When you choose a partner, you should determine based on your needs. Do you need someone to handle the primary support for your business? Do you need project or consulting services with advisory assistance? Look internally at your organization and determine your strengths and weaknesses, then evaluate your partner options based on how they can offset those weaknesses.

How do you know if your partner meets your needs? Many are just getting into the industry or branching out into new services, so you can’t always be sure they’re able to meet your demands. Check with third party analysts like Redmond to get a fair, unbiased assessment and if they seem right, set up an intro call to see if they are the right fit for you.

US Cloud offers a low-risk trail of our services that gives you all our solutions for 30-60 days with the option to back out at any time if it doesn’t seem like a good fit. This is built into ever contract so you don’t have to feel like you’re locked into a service that doesn’t work with your setup.

Finally, SLAs are a good way to determine if a support option means business. Financially backed SLAs are a sure sign that your partner has financial skin in the game. Microsoft doesn’t offer financially backed SLAs because they can’t guarantee that they will respond when you need them to. US Cloud, on the other hand, have financially backed SLAs that guarantee 15-minute responses to tickets of all severities. If we fail to follow through, you get service hours and credits as compensation. We put the money where our mouth is, which is something you will rarely see in the industry.

Stay tuned for next month’s episode. For faster Microsoft support for less, US Cloud has you covered.