Microsoft Introduces “Ultimate” Support Offering for Premier Family

Premier Ultimate helps customers achieve a mature, healthy IT environment.

REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft Corp. today announced the worldwide availability of Microsoft Services Premier Ultimate, a new addition to the Microsoft Services Premier Support family. Premier Ultimate offers a new level of collaboration to select customers who have made the conscious decision to direct their technology investments toward a proactive support strategy focused on attaining IT health. For a fixed price, Premier Ultimate combines a “road map to IT health” — leveraging Microsoft’s expertise through pre-agreed proactive services — with unlimited* problem resolution support.

“IDC recommends that vendors provide preventive and proactive support services to help customers minimize downtime and to ensure consistent availability of their business-critical processes,” said Elaina Stergiades, senior research analyst, IDC. “Microsoft is doing just that with Premier Ultimate, highlighting the industry shift toward deeper, more collaborative support relationships with customers.”

Premier Ultimate builds on the current Premier Support family of offerings by combining unlimited* problem resolution support with current Premier features such as proactive IT health assessments, account management (both on-site and dedicated) and on-site support, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“Customers told us they wanted risk reduction, support planning simplification and easy administration in an increasingly complex IT environment,” said Luca Barone, general manager, Support and Health Offerings for Microsoft Services. “By adding Premier Ultimate to our existing Premier Support portfolio, we are investing alongside our customers to plot an individualized road map to a mature and healthy IT infrastructure, while sharing the risks and responsibilities of optimizing their software investments.”

More information about Microsoft Premier Support is available at http://www.microsoft.com/services/microsoftservices/srv_enterprise.mspx.