Microsoft EA Impact.

First of all, a common concern when considering support alternatives other than Microsoft is how it will affect your overarching relationship with such an important software partner. After 6 years of transitioning new enterprise clients away from Microsoft Premier and Unified Support, we have not seen a single instance of negative repercussions with Microsoft software sales or implementation teams.

The Unified Support sales organization is completely separate from Microsoft enterprise software licensing and product teams. While your Unified Support sales team may not be very happy, it will have zero impact on future Enterprise Agreement (EA) negotiations or support for new software implementation.

Although the vast majority of  break-fix issues, even with Microsoft cloud products, can be addressed without Microsoft, some problems will definitely need the OEM’s access to tenants or enterprise software code base. This is why any independent partner or service provider MUST have a proven and efficient path to Microsoft Support. US Cloud has spent the last six years creating, testing, and proving a consistent escalation path using Microsoft Premier Support for Partners.

This gives us the ability to rapidly escalate high-severity Microsoft technology tickets and lower-severity cloud tickets – which on average represents only 10-15% of a typical enterprise client’s total ticket submissions. US Cloud manages and coordinate these ticket escalations for you, applying pressure and tracking down Microsoft resources so your IT staff can focus on more important tasks.

A financially-backed Microsoft Escalation Service Level Agreement (SLA) defines the level of support expected by a an enterprise client from a third-party support provider, laying out the metrics by which support tickets are escalated to Microsoft, and the remedies or financial penalties, should the agreed-on service levels not be achieved.

It is critical when working with a third-party support provider to get a financially-backed Service Level Agreement (SLA) that guarantees how and when a support ticket will be escalated to Microsoft. An escalation SLA keeps the support provider from holding on to a ticket too long because they don’t have the skillset needed to resolve the issue. US Cloud provides a comprehensive SLA governing Microsoft escalations in all our Microsoft Enterprise Support contracts.

US Cloud has invested tens of millions in engineering in order to solve as many enterprise client tickets in-house as possible. By fixing the ticket ourselves, your support ticket is resolved 25% faster than Microsoft and at about half the cost of Microsoft. Hence the “fanatical Microsoft support for less” moniker.

In 2023, US Cloud has closed 86% of tickets without Microsoft or partner support. And the vast majority of escalations were due to Microsoft enterprise software bugs or tenant issues. Our ability to rapidly resolve the lion’s share of support tickets submitted ultimately reduces costly downtime and provides your enterprise’s end users or customers a better experience.