Lukas Beeler’s IT Blog

Partner Programs are something for sales and marketing people. In smaller businesses however, this rule doesn’t always hold true.

Because of this i gathered some experience with the Microsoft Partner Program (MPP), which might help other people in the same position as me to get this job done with as quickly as possible.

Most of these things are already covered in the Partner Program Details.

First things first: the Microsoft Partner Program is only for companies which do work in IT - if you’re just an internal IT dept, the Partner Program isn’t for you, at least officially.

The program levels

Registered Partner

The lowest level in the MPP is that of a Registered Partner. You actually don’t get anything from that, except that you have access to some partner resources and can purchase the Microsoft Action Pack - the Registered Partner Level itself is free.

The Microsoft Action Pack costs about 500 CHF per year, and gives you lots of Microsoft Software Licenses, like Office, Vista, Server, Exchange, Office Sharepoint Server etc. With the Action Pack, you get 10 Internal Use Licenses for both Server CALs and Client Programs/OS. So if you’re a small company, you can get all the Microsoft software you will ever need for just 500 CHF a year.

No need to hunt after customer references or partner points.

Certified Partner

You can achieve the this level by getting partner points. Partner points are primarily gained by achieving competencies. Competencies are achieved by having Microsoft Certified Professionals on your company roster, and by submitting customer references. More about this later.

The Certified Partner Level costs 2500 CHF per year, and you loose the ability to purchase the Action Pack. Instead of having to buy it separately, it’s included in the Certified Partner Level, and gives you 25 Internal Use Licenses. You can even extend these Internal Use Licenses with Volume Licenses.

You also get both a Technet and MSDN subscribtion included into the nominal partner fee (these two subscriptions alone are worth more than 2500CHF per year, but you also get the Internal Use Licenses and other benefits).

There are also 5 free Support Incidents included, and you can order free marketing posters and other material from the Microsoft Partner Shop.

Gold Certified Partner

This is mostly the same as Certified Partner, except you need more points and get more internal use licenses. It’s usually not worth to pursue it, if you need more than 25 Internal Use Licenses you’re usually already big enough to get Gold Certified Partner Level.

Getting points

You’ve decided that you want to be a Certified Partner or Gold Certified Partner. First, you will need to register at the normal Registered Partner level, and then get at least 50 (Certified) or 120 (Gold Certified) Points.

The easiest way to get the Certified Partner Level is gaining a single, simple Competency.

First competency

I would recommend the Networking Infrastructure Solutions competency for most companies as the first competency. You just need three references and two MCPs.

If you already have Microsoft Certified Personal, you don’t need to much more than to figure out their MCP IDs. If you do not have certified personnel yet, you will need to get certified.

The easiest way for this are the client exams Windows XP and Windows Vista. If you and your coworkers know your stuff, you can take either exam without preparation and pass. Both my apprentices passed 70-620, with room to spare and without much preparation. Remember, you need two people for this!

After gaining two MCPs, and having them and their MCP IDs properly registered on the Partner Program Site, you will need to add customer references. You will need at least three customer references every year. Adding customer references is simple enough, ask the customer for permission (by phone), add the company, a tagline for the project (a detailled description is not needed) and the customer gets an e-mail. These e-mails are usually in the spam bin, god knows why. With a link in the e-mail, the customer can approve your reference.

With three references assigned to the Networking Infrastructure Solutions competency and two MCPs, you should already be a Microsoft Certified Partner (after coughing up the 2500CHF).

More points

Getting gold partner is a bit more complicated - you can get a second competency easily by getting the Information Worker competency with the Office Systems Desktop Deployment specialization. Just add three more customer references, and you’re set. You won’t have Gold Partner status yet.

You can get a few more points and a few extra quirks by having someone complete the Small Business exam, which will give your company the additional status Small Business Specialist. Microsoft offers a course for this exam for about 1000 CHF, but it’s not worth it. If you have setup more than one Small Business Server, and looked a bit at the internal SBS tools (like the integrated backup utility), you should be able to pass this exam too without much preparation. This will usually give you 5 extra points. You will also need to do a online sales assessment (look at the source, the solutions are in there), where you have unlimited free retries anyway.

If you want to get the Gold Partner level, you will need to get either a certified product (works well if you’re also an ISV), or get points by getting more sales. I have no idea how you get partner points for sales, as that’s not really my field of work.

An important tip

There are two Microsoft Partner Web Sites:

http://partner.microsoft.com/

Contains mostly marketing material and program Informations

http://partners.microsoft.com/

Contains the Partner Administration website, where can do all the cool stuff like getting your volume license keys, and adding MCPs.