Microsoft's Gold Certified Partner programme gains momentum

Microsoft's enterprise certification programme, Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, has been awarded to 10 partners over the past year, including Affinity Logic, Azisa, Business Connection, Electronic Entertainment & Exchange, Enterprise Connection, FutureWorks, Getronics, IDION Solutions, Siemens Business Services and Unisys.

For 25 years, Microsoft has invested significantly in building partner programmes to assist partners in building Microsoft services capacity to service the growing market for Microsoft-based solutions. The Gold Certified Partner programme assists IT professionals and business owners to identify companies that have proven their commitment and expertise in one or more specialised areas when delivering Microsoft technologies.

This programme is intended to raise visibility and increase awareness of Microsoft's partners' enterprise expertise among customers and prospects. Its primary objectives are to make it easier for customers to find the correct partner to work with, and to increase the credibility of partners in the eyes of customers.

Whether customers require expertise in large-scale enterprise deployments and complex server design and planning projects; delivering data warehousing or online analytical processing (OLAP) functionality; custom knowledge-sharing solutions on one of Microsoft's core server platforms or any other solution based on Microsoft technology, this programme clearly helps customers identify the partner with the appropriate focus on and expertise in the relevant category to meet customers' specific business requirements.

Microsoft Certified Partners are independent companies working with Microsoft technologies to solve business problems or enhance opportunities for corporate, government and small business customers. They use Microsoft products as the building blocks for various value-added services, such as integration, consulting, software customisation, application development, e-business development, Web and application hosting, technical training and support or building software products.

Any Microsoft Certified Partner can qualify to be a Gold Certified Partner through demonstrated expertise and success in deploying Microsoft technology-based solutions. Additional certification criteria apply and partners receive incremental benefits over and above those provided to Certified Partners. Gold Certified Partners are required to meet rigorous worldwide certification standards and must prove their expertise in a given solution area by providing three positive real-world customer references.

Microsoft Gold Certified Partners currently qualify in several areas of specialisation: E-commerce, Enterprise Systems, Software Products, Hosting and Application Services, and Support Services. Two new categories for service providers, Collaborative Solutions and Business Intelligence, were introduced earlier this year.

According to Craig Nielsen, partner group manager at Microsoft South Africa: "Our highly-competitive industry forces customers to evaluate technology providers critically and this programme ensures that partners deliver effective, innovative, high-quality solutions to provide customers with the agility to succeed in a fast-changing digital world."