Partner Program Absorbs Certified Support

A partner program for firms that offer support to Microsoft customers will be retired at the end of 2004, and most partners will be referred to the new Microsoft Partner Program (MSPP). Microsoft believes that the MSPP and associated support programs will provide most of its Gold Certified for Support Services (GCSS) partners with services similar to those they now receive, allowing the company to phase out the GCSS program.

GCSS and MAPS

The GCSS partner program was a channel for joint delivery of software support by Microsoft and 169 of its partners. Partners whose staff had sufficient training in Microsoft products could provide a first level of support for their customers’ Microsoft products.

A related program, Microsoft Authorized Premier Support (MAPS), allowed GCSS partners to escalate difficult problems to Microsoft’s Premier Support program on behalf of the partners’ customers.

Popular with hardware vendors, such as Dell, Fujitsu, and Hewlett-Packard (HP), GCSS and MAPS allowed these companies to offer their customers a single support contract that covered the vendor’s hardware, Microsoft software, and any other products they bought from the vendor. The customer did not require a separate Premier Support agreement with Microsoft but received many of the benefits of such an agreement, such as the ability to escalate thorny problems to Microsoft and receive custom hotfixes.