Premier Support for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration

http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/solutions/hmcpremiersupport.mspx

MS Support Contract is Strongly Recommended for all Exchange Service Providers –

Notice of elimination of "Microsoft Professional" Credit Card Support option for Exchange Hosters under SPLA

The Hosted Exchange marketplace has continued to evolve through consolidation, mergers and acquisitions and the need to provide high quality support has emerged as one of the key values in the Hosted Exchange Service Provider industry . As the market has evolved we see the impact of large providers driving consolidation of the operational segment of the business through "white label" services being resold by vertically-focused VARs and service providers that cannot invest the resources required to maintain world-class operations of the platform. As end customers are moving more and more to the hosted service model, it has become clear that proactive support and a close support relationship between the Service Provider and Microsoft are essential to the ability to deliver a high-quality, highly available service.

Microsoft has created three new support options that are tailored specifically for the Hosted Exchange Service Provider.

The Premier Foundation, Premier Standard and Premier Plus services offerings, combined with the Solution Support add on, will provide all necessary proactive and reactive (break/fix) services to properly support your hosted solution.

Based on the customer requirements for availability along with the need to provide high quality support to end customers, Microsoft will be discontinuing Professional per-incident support for MS Hosted Messaging and Collaboration and Hosted Exchange applications as of June 30, 2008, since the Professional offer does not include the proactive support elements required to maintain the high operational availability of the hosted Exchange platform.

Please let me know if you would like to talk to someone about getting access to MSPA and Premier support.