Azure Technical Support Options for Enterprises

Paid Azure technical support can provide customers with unlimited 24×7 technical assistance and initial response times of as little as 15 minutes for high-priority Azure issues. 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 a paid plan for production environments and important development projects. (See “Comparison of Azure Paid Support Plans.”)

Paid Azure Support Overview

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.

All levels of paid Azure support also cover technical issues related to the use of non-Microsoft technologies, such as Python or Hadoop, when these technologies are deployed as part of an Azure product feature. Azure Stack is covered by the same paid Azure plans.

Microsoft defines maximum initial response times for each level of service, but these are considered goals, not formal service level agreements. Therefore, Microsoft is not contractually penalized if it misses a response time window.