DSE Support Engineer.

A Designated Support Engineer (DSE) is a senior architect-level engineer who specializes in a specific Microsoft technology, such as Azure, M365, SQL, Windows Server, etc… These experts offer unparalleled expertise and dedicated support for your enterprise’s most important Microsoft products through on-demand advisory, health and performance checks, system or initiative assessments, and hands-on in-depth engagements in addition to broader technology consultative services.

DSE’s go well beyond break-fix and enhance your organization’s capacity to accelerate planning and completion of large-scale projects. By embedding these key strategic resources into your team, US Cloud provides you with subject matter experts who develop a deep understanding of your unique environment and can dramatically optimize your software investment, saving you both time and money.

Microsoft spent three years on this. And we used all of our support hours before they were able to fix it. I basically ran out of hours and then they gave me grief about this wasn’t break-fix. And they gave me the runaround on which hours to use. ‘You’re out of these hours and you can’t switch them’, and ‘you can’t change them’, and ‘we can’t help you until you sign a new contract’. They were all about contracts, all about money, all about getting paid. They were not about taking care of me. They were not about making sure that my patients weren’t impacted.

Well, US Cloud came in, and they dedicated one engineer to it. He sat down, he met with me, met with my customers. I said, look, I don’t care what it costs, get it done. When Microsoft finally shut down access to that 2010 workflow we had one, just one, e-mail that wasn’t getting sent out and that was just a bug in the code, but everything else worked seamlessly. Approvals were there, the sites were created, the permissions were created, everything was phenomenal.

So it was a phenomenal experience. I can’t tell you how great it was to feel like somebody was putting me first. You just don’t get that from support these days.

– Jeff Maxfield
Director of Technical Services
Parkland Hospital

Microsoft DSE’s exist separately from their Unified Support operations. US Cloud DSE’s, by design, are deeply integrated with our break-fix engineers and act as escalation points within their areas of expertise. As a result, these senior-level practitioners get a more holistic view of a client’s environment and can offer key strategic recommendations to avoid future break-fix and turbocharge your business.

This broader, deeper understanding can help IT teams to close security gaps, gain unexpected efficiencies, or discover root cause issues for remediation that reduces ticket-to-ticket fixes. Our DSE’s also offer better insight into potential threats or opportunities within a client’s Microsoft ecosystem that can translate into powerful proactive recommendations.

• On-demand advisories
• Proactive reviews of systems, applications, and initiative
• Hands-on proactive project work (solo or with extended teams)
• “As-built” initial environment assessment and documentation (automatic at onboarding)
• Scheduled training/education sessions
• Regular client meetings and check-ins (project/initiative update)
• Strategic Roadmap Sessions (TUBs)
• Workshops and team training
• Break-fix escalation point within specialty
• Reviews of client PRS tickets for proactive remediation
• Root Cause Analysis after major outage

Preventing problems is more difficult than resolving them, but it’s also more cost effective. Our trained technicians are adept at isolating root causes and determining the best course of action to prevent future occurrences. At US Cloud, each DSE engagement is focused on a particular Microsoft technology. This allows us to combine deep technical knowledge, experience, and exclusive access to internal Microsoft resources with our unique understanding of the customized needs and expectations aligned to your ongoing Premier Support engagement.

• Deploy, upgrade, or migrate to the latest Microsoft technologies with more confidence knowing that a DSE has reviewed existing architectural and configuration plans and made appropriate recommendations to ensure future supportability.
• Supportability reviews provide a detailed assessment of a product’s current or planned configuration with recommendations on best practices for your business scenario to significantly reduce time needed for successful deployments or migrations.
• Root cause analysis of any critical situation along with recommendations and plans for preventing recurrences. Working with the Technical Account Manager (TAM), the DSE examines trend analyses to identify recurring issues and common threads, then will troubleshoot and engineer changes based on best practices to correct problems before they happen.
• Coordinated service delivery and planning ensures maximum impact from the various engineers working on your extended team. A DSE will coordinate with your team, your US Cloud TAM, and dedicated US Cloud Premier Support Engineers to assist with reactive troubleshooting or preventative services delivery, such as a Risk Assessment or Healthchecks. A DSE can significantly boost the speed and efficiency of both your team and the US Cloud team by understanding your infrastructure and drawing on their deep technology-specific expertise to align resources and maximize output.
• Technology-specific training can be tailored and delivered in person or online by your DSE to increase your teams’ skill sets and depth of knowledge on key Microsoft technologies.

First: Evaluate

Our DSE’s will visit with your team, seek to understand your needs, and build a plan to reach your targets. We can collaborate directly with your team to gather information, assess your unique situation, and build a vision for a more dynamic business future.

Then: Design

Based on a collaborative agreement and our evaluation of your needs and risks, we take our shared vision and deliver our IT knowledge where you need it most. Our experts can jumpstart your biggest initiatives, taking you all the way to the objective or working in tandem.

Finally: Launch

We will implement a plan of delivery based on your goals that will attack the targets, piece by piece, with a delivery plan that takes you from design to completion to bolster your total infrastructure and deliver results where you need them.

US Cloud DSEs support the full portfolio of Microsoft enterprise software products.

US Cloud maintains a growing bench of top Microsoft experts in the industry, including many former Microsoft engineers. We focus on primary technologies like Azure, Azure AD, M365, Dynamics, Teams, SQL, Windows Server, etc. For more specialized needs such as Dynamics AX, Azure DevOps, complex Intune, Power Platform, etc., US Cloud has created a proprietary Elite Microsoft Partner Network, which leverages CSP’s and MSP’s who are in the top 1% of all Microsoft’s partners globally.

Whether it’s one of our in-house DSE’s or an elite partner DSE, we make it easy and seamless to access the expert you need to support every facet of your Microsoft ecosystem.

US Cloud clients understand that support isn’t just about break-fix. Leverage your US Cloud DSE to take advantage of various “proactive accelerators” that help you get the most out of your Microsoft application investment, in the shortest amount of time, with the least headache.

Your DSE can help attack areas of opportunity or vulnerability such as:

• Cloud adoption planning
• Server readiness and migration
• Environmental health checks and assessments
• Microsoft Security Layer
• Remote work and employee experience applications
• System architecture best practices

We know some clients have a key Microsoft DSE who is critical to a particular group or initiative, and we understand. Switching support to US Cloud does not mean giving up your current DSE.

US Cloud can leverage one of our Microsoft CSP partners to contract that exact DSE using Premier Support for Partner hours. Although more expensive than our standard DSE model, this ensures continuity and sets you up for success by integrating our enhanced level of client support with the deep knowledge of your existing team.