Azure Technical Support Options for Enterprises

As Azure usage has increased and more enterprises have deployed production systems, Microsoft has introduced four tiers of paid Azure technical support that can provide customers with unlimited 24×7 technical assistance and initial response times of as little as 15 minutes for high-priority Azure issues. However, purchasing paths and support policies differ from traditional Premier Support, and organizations should be careful to avoid misplaced or duplicate spending.

Paid Azure Support Tiers

Azure customers get free support for billing issues and access to peer forums (discussed later in this sidebar), but break-fix support from Microsoft personnel requires a paid support plan. Consequently, most organizations will want one of these plans for production environments and important development projects. The support provided by these plans uses the same support engineers and case-handling policies as Microsoft Premier Support. Paid Azure plans provide unlimited 24×7 technical support, unlike classic Premier agreements, which define how many hours of 24×7 support a customer can access. However, non-Premier levels of Azure support may carry longer initial case response times and may be limited to e-mail-based support.