For Silver competency partners and partner aspiring to attain competency status

  • Article

As a silver cloud competency partner, you already enjoy great benefits such as Unlimited Signature Cloud Support, internal usage rights (IUR) software and a competency badge that you can use in customer-facing Marketing.

As the cloud market continues to grow at a robust CAGR of 14% through 2020, compared to overall IT/Telecom spending which will rise at a rate of only 6% over the next four years*, this is an ideal time for Microsoft cloud competency partners to increase their engagement.  * (Source: Channel Partner Profitability Study- AMI June 2016).

 

Why Gold?

Only top partners attain Gold Cloud Competency status.  For those that make the extra investment and focus needed to meet the high bar of Gold Cloud Competency status, there are rich rewards and partner satisfaction increases.

94% of all Microsoft partners are satisfied with the overall relationship they have with Microsoft. Microsoft Gold partners are even more satisfied with their relationship at 97%. (Source: Channel Partner Profitability Study- AMI June 2016)

The Gold Competency badge exclusively includes the Microsoft logo – a huge endorsement from Microsoft in the eyes of the Customer.

73% of customers associate trustworthiness with the Gold Competency badge and 77% associate it with high quality. (Source: Value of Partner Messaging Summary Report - MDC Nov 2015)

Microsoft Gold Competency partners focused on the cloud attract, on average, 5% higher margins than non-gold partners.  They are also more likely to be satisfied with their profitability than less engaged partners or partners working with a competitor – profitability with Microsoft is 19% greater than experienced with competitive vendors like Google, Salesforce and Amazon. And 88% of Microsoft Gold partners are satisfied with Microsoft’s Portfolio. (Source: Channel Partner Profitability Study- AMI June 2016)

The MPN Program rewards the elite partners who achieve Gold Cloud Competency status and helps them maintain their competitive advantage with a number of tools and resources unique to gold cloud status:

  • Customer Connection
  • Gold Competency badge – recognized by customers as the pinnacle of Microsoft partner excellence
  • Priority placement on Solution Directory – ensuring our best partners are promoted to customers looking for solution support
  • Promotion to customers on Microsoft campaign pages
  • Gold partners are given priority for leads and referrals.
  • Support
  • Get 50 Partner Advisory hours instead of 20
  • Get 20 Product support incidents instead of 15
  • Guaranteed Named Microsoft Contact
  • Concierge service for Gold Cloud partners only
  • Gives partners a named individual who can help them navigate MPN
  • Concierge will offer partners proactive outreach on a on-going basis
  • Tools & Resources
  • Up to 100 IUR licenses per product vs 25
  • More product flexibility – N-1 and ability to spread IUR benefits for dev/test scenarios
  • 10 Visual Studio Enterprise licenses with MSDN subscription instead of 5

Attaining Gold Cloud Competency status demonstrates partner commitment to helping our mutual customers adopt the Microsoft cloud and is rewarded by Microsoft tools and resources to maintain competitive advantage and accelerate cloud growth; higher customer regard and increased margins and profitability.

For more information on the Road to gold – see Presentation on road-to-gold-to-partner_nov-2016-post