Renew Your Microsoft Premier/Unified Support or Switch to Third-Party.

Every year, thousands of businesses are renewing their Microsoft Premier/Unified Support contracts, but many are going in without a full hand. There are risks associated with renewal that every company should be wary of, especially when these contracts could lock you in for 3-5 years at a time. There are third-party support alternatives to help you overcome the struggles of renewal, but it’s up to you to decide which path to take.

One of the biggest factors behind a business’s decision to switch from Premier/Unified to a third-party alternative is pricing. Over the past few years, Microsoft Unified Support prices have been on the rise across the world and show no signs of slowing down. This “consistent pricing change” is done to align service costs with economic shifts, but results in fluctuating contract prices that can change in the middle of a term.

Stabilizing your finances is on the of the first steps before consistent growth and future planning, but the chances of Microsoft altering your contract mean that you can never be sure just how much you’ll be spending on support by the end of the year. Unlike standard contracts, these are a bit more open-ended. Recently, Microsoft’s pricing has been changing every few months, so the price you’re paying now might not be the same in the future.

While the promise of unlimited Premier/Unified product support is enticing, third-party options like US Cloud offer the same unlimited support package but without the pricing shifts. Switching to US Cloud brings you the financial stability you need without any strings attached. Our Premier/Unified Support saves you 50% on your annual IT support budget with no changes to your contract (unless you want more hours). We keep your services running smoothly while saving you money; a win-win situation for those looking to switch.

There are so many tickets coming into Microsoft every day that they are forced to outsource some tickets to overseas engineers. While this opens more time for domestic engineers to handle higher-priority tickets, those that go overseas often take longer to see an initial response, resolution, and are outside the compliance laws of the US, putting that data at risk.

Microsoft no longer offers Technical Account Managers (TAMs) as a support role. Instead, Customer Success Account Managers (CSAMs) are the new primary customer facing support role. CSAMs mainly deliver on customer success through the management of program deliveries while strengthening customer relationships. TAMs were responsible for planning, managing, and reviewing the delivery of support services with clients and ensuring everything aligns with client goals, also acting as the escalation point of contact.

US Cloud offers every role that Microsoft has or currently does in our support process, giving you access to CSAMs and TAMs that are dedicated to the success of your business. Our 15-minute financially backed SLAs guarantee that every ticket has a response as soon as it comes in, regardless of priority. On top of that, due to our team of expert engineers, our resolution time for tickets of all severities is twice as fast as Microsoft and if they can’t be handled in-house, we can escalate accordingly.

Microsoft has been the leading support option for their products for years due to them being the only entity capable of offering support and expertise. This has gone on long enough, and recently some companies have started moving in and offering solutions to break up the monopoly that Microsoft has created. Under Premier, companies could buy the support hours they needed, as needed, but under Unified you are forced to pay for every service under the Microsoft Unified support banner, even if you don’t need it. For instance, even if you don’t use Azure, you still must pay for Azure support in your package.

Microsoft can do this because, up to this point, they were the only ones who could support companies across the world, so they could dictate what their support model looked like, how it was priced, and how it was supported. US Cloud and other third-party alternatives have created a stopgap, offering support options that use the best parts of both Unified and the Premier model.

At US Cloud, you buy a bucket of hours that goes into any service that needs support. Instead of a wide net that catches services you don’t need, we let you choose where you require support and act accordingly. Our team is not only fully domestic (which ensures your support is fully compliant), but we have 24/7 services that can service businesses worldwide. No matter where you are, we can give you the support you deserve at a more reasonable price.

At the end of the day, who you get your Microsoft Premier/Unified support from is up to you, your budget, and your business goals. If you’re preparing to renew and need a comparative reference point to lower the contract cost, US Cloud is happy to help and give you a quote or even a free trial. However, if your renewal is looming closer and you’re starting to get nervous about the potential long-term cost and ticket coverage, an alternative like US Cloud is the best option for you.

US Cloud exemplifies faster Microsoft support for less. Our fully domestic team of engineers are on standby to help with tickets of any severity. We have a financially backed SLA that guarantees tickets of all severities will have a response time of 15 minutes or less. We work closely with your team to gain a better understanding of your systems, how they operate, and how we can proactively improve them to prevent issues from occurring down the road. If saving 50% or more on your yearly Unified support costs sounds like a good deal and your renewal is right around the corner, US Cloud is more than happy to help.