New Signature is proud to announce the achievement in two new Microsoft advanced specialization areas. Our core values call us to be innovative and, in that vein, we are constantly working to elevate our expertise to provide better service to our customers.
For several years, Microsoft has worked to develop a way to better-distinguish partners within their ecosystem. Over the past twenty years, that has resulted in the requirements for partners to achieve a “Gold” or a “Silver” competency.
As more partners became certified, Microsoft has worked to tighten the requirements for Gold partners, and as recently as three years ago, there were still a huge number of partners who had accomplished a gold certification, but have not yet demonstrated true acumen in emerging cloud technologies.
Customers want to know, as they browse through the public partner directories, which partners have truly excelled in specific technology areas. In order to accomplish that customer objective, Microsoft created two programs to badge specific partners with an indication of greater excellence:
- Azure Expert MSP partners (for managed services providers) – announced in July of 2018
- Advanced Specialization partners (for professional services providers) – announced in July of 2019
Both of these tracks started from a similar foundation–a partner would need to prove that they have done enough work in the particular domain area and are subject to a yearly audit conducted by a third-party to validate their accomplishments. Acquiring these advanced specializations results in a higher level of confidence customers could have in a partner’s ability to deliver services.
Partners such as New Signature, that is a global managed services provider, as well as a traditional systems integrator delivering professional services engagements, needed to go down both paths.
Out of the over 300,000 Microsoft partners in the ecosystem, there are less than 70 that have the Azure Expert MSP designation, and of those, only three that have it, as well as 16 different “Gold” certifications. Right now, there are four Advanced Specializations that partners can try to obtain and New Signature has already passed the audit for two of them:
- Modernization of Web Applications to Microsoft Azure
- Windows Server and SQL Server Migration to Microsoft Azure
We are actively going through the process to obtain our third Advanced Specialization (focusing on Kubernetes) over the course of the next month, and anticipate as more of these come online over the course of the year to continue to excel at obtaining them.
Our website hosts some success stories in these areas; you can read more about those here. If you’re interested in discussing any technological needs, reach out to a New Signature expert today.
