Microsoft Finalizes Roll-Out of New Dynamics Partner Standards, Prepares ERP VARs for the Cloud Economy

With the restructuring of standards in the Microsoft Partner Network, Dynamics-focused partners know they are going to work harder for gold certification in terms of sales, testing, and industry expertise.  But even hard work won't be enough for some partners, especially those who simply don't have the right footprint in terms of talent. 

"In the old program, seventy-five percent of partners could be gold," said Doug Kennedy, Microsoft's vice president for Dynamics partners.  "Hopefully we will see it flip upside down. It should go from over seventy five to twenty five percent over time."

Microsoft has made the gold and silver qualification rules for Dynamics products more rigorous.  In the past, a partner with gold certification in one area of the Microsoft product line could promote themselves as "gold" for all the other products as well.  This loophole weakened the classification and hurt customer confidence, Kennedy believes.

New partner certification standards, now applied on a per-Dynamics-product basis, include new testing standards. The deadlines for passing the tests were originally set for May, but they have now been pushed back by a quarter.  According to Kennedy, low passing rates, even for top partners, had Dynamics partner team scratching their heads. "We looked at the number of partners who had gone through the process at the end of our Q3 and [the number getting their certification] was short of our goal," he said.  "We dug into this to see what the issue was.  What was interesting was that the partners who were helping us write the certification tests - even they were failing the tests.   We didn't think we had raised the bar that high."