When Mission Critical Isn't Critical Enough -- Redmond Channel Partner

Barney's Blog

When Mission Critical Isn't Critical Enough

Vendors loves to toss around the term "mission critical," as if every organization was NASA. Truth is, mission critical is in the eyes of the beholder. What's meaningless to you may be critical to me.

For those that truly care about data and uptime, Microsoft is offering the Dom Perignon of support -- a mission-critical add-on to the company's Premier program. When you pay the top shelf price, you expect top shelf service. In this case, you get a team of dedicated solutions engineers who promise to respond in a half hour (although, if 30 minutes of downtime is acceptable to a mission-critical system, how mission critical is it?). You'll also get 24x7 support.

Like an SLA, if Microsoft doesn't perform, you get some of your money back.

What is your impression of Microsoft support, or do you use another option. Talk about either at [email protected].

Posted by Doug Barney on August 11, 2010

Featured

Microsoft Dismantles RedVDS Cybercrime Marketplace Linked to $40M in Phishing Fraud

In a coordinated action spanning the United States and the United Kingdom, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) and international law enforcement collaborators have taken down RedVDS, a subscription based cybercrime platform tied to an estimated $40 million in fraud losses in the U.S. since March 2025.
CrowdStrike's Acquisition of SGNL Aims to Strengthen Identity Security

CrowdStrike signs definitive agreement to purchase SGNL, an identity security specialist, in a deal valued at about $740 million.
Microsoft Acquires Osmos, Automating Data Engineering inside Fabric

In a strategic move to reduce time-consuming manual data preparation, Microsoft has acquired Seattle-based startup Osmos, specializing in agentic AI for data engineering.
Linux Foundation Unites Major Tech Firms to Launch Agentic AI Foundation

The Linux Foundation today announced the creation of a new collaborative initiative — the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) — bringing together major AI and cloud players such as Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic and other major tech companies.