Is Microsoft Unified Support Required For Enterprise Success?.

This question is asked across the world by thousands of Microsoft Premier Support enterprise customers that are currently transitioning to Unified or will be soon.

These same organizations find that support costs are only going up, which begs the question: is Unified Support through Microsoft worth the price of admission?

Most Microsoft reps that sell Unified Support will tell you that it’s necessary because the support that’s included with your Enterprise Agreement (EA) is only the baseline model.

They claim Unified will provide better, faster support but at a premium price point. This could be interpreted as double dipping on Microsoft’s part.

First, you are already paying for basic support services from Microsoft through your EA agreement. Then, you add on purchasing Unified Support from Microsoft to cover additional technologies. For some businesses that are on Premier Support until July 1, 2024, this could be seen as triple dipping. Not only do you have basic support and Unified Support coming up, but you’re currently on Premier, so in essence you will be paying for three services at the same time at some point. While Premier will eventually fall off, you’re still left with the inflated cost of Unified as your only additional support solution.

Microsoft Unified Support isn’t mandatory, but with how they spin it, you would think it’s required.

In fact, with how many Microsoft technologies and products are on the market that require specialized support from industry experts, it’s almost a requirement. However, your support doesn’t have to be through Unified. People typically see only two choices: Either subscribe to vendor support services or build out your own internal team to handle general support. The third option that is often left out of the equation is the viability of third-party Unified Support options like US Cloud. Gartner has a great look at the effectiveness of our services, so don’t just take our word for it.

Microsoft Unified Support sales representatives are quick to point out that any business relying on Microsoft technologies needs a support safety net for the Unified model.

This lets you lean on Microsoft and open as many tickets as you need to free up your internal team or deal with any issue that comes through, regardless of how serious it is.

It’s important to understand that Unified was created in response to a study done for Microsoft Services that showed how Microsoft was underperforming compared to their peers such as Salesforce, Oracle, and SAP. Microsoft Services needed to increase their support margins across the board for their enterprise clients to compete with their other increasingly profitable lines like Microsoft Cloud Services.

If you are a Microsoft-centric organization, this leaves you with two options. Take the expensive deal and go with Unified Support or create your own internal team to manage the increasingly complex Microsoft technology landscape. While Premier wasn’t perfect, it did allow organizations to buy the amount of support they needed to operate efficiently. It was more a la carte than a bundled “deal”, so the support costs were more consistent each year. You simply picked the services that you used on a consistent basis and that was the support you received. With Unified, you can’t buy what you specifically need. Instead, you buy a bundle of hours that covers a wide range of services and products, some of which you may never use, but still have to pay for. This also leads to more difficult cost predictability, as the terms of these bundles fluctuate yearly.

Unified Support is expensive, bloated, and slow. Compared to Premier, it almost feels like night and day.

When faced with Unified as the only option, there are three options available to you. First, you could continue to work with Microsoft Unified Enterprise Support and absorb the increased cost year over year. Second, you could build your own internal team to take on the monumental task of handling all Microsoft support severity 1-4 incidents across all your mission-critical technologies.

Third, you could work with a Gartner-approved third-party competitor that offers Unified support at 30-50% the cost of Microsoft’s support. US Cloud offers faster support, for far less than the competition. Don’t stick with Microsoft just because they say they’re the only option. You always have other options and US Cloud is here to keep you running smoothly.