We are happy to announce panagenda has now achieved four silver and two gold Microsoft competencies. Thanks to several panagendians and the massive usage of our SaaS platform, our Cloud Platform competency rose from silver to gold. By being a Microsoft certified organization and achieving yet another gold competency, we are now even better equipped to meet your SaaS needs.

Not sure what these competencies and certifications mean for you? Read on! If you’re only here to see which certifications we have, scroll down to the bottom of the post.

3 Things You Can Expect from a Microsoft Partner

  1. A close-knit collaboration with Microsoft
    When looking for a partner to help you implement SaaS solutions, you should always keep their qualifications in mind. Especially, whether they are a Microsoft Gold Partner or not. It’s not just about having a track record of their expertise, but a Microsoft Gold Partner is on the fast lane when they need advanced support from Microsoft. What does this mean for you? We are able to provide you with better response times and first-class support.
  2. Top and an extremely specialized skillset
    Although the silver level already shows a certain commitment to Microsoft’s solutions, only Gold Partners have the extremely specialized skillset to implement and support customer-centric solutions. They excel at what they offer. In fact, only a very small amount of Microsoft Partners worldwide are gold certified.
  3. Keeping up to date
    As it is often the case with software, Microsoft’s solutions keep changing and evolving. In turn, requirements for keeping the certifications change too.  This means Gold Partners need to “keep up with the times” to meet all the new requirements – if they don’t, they lose the competence.

The Four Pillars of Microsoft Competencies and Their Subcategories

Microsoft’s competencies stand on four pillars: Applications and Infrastructure, Business Applications, Data and AI, and Modern Workplace and Security.

  • Applications and Infrastructure prepares an organization to assist customers throughout their cloud journey by helping them improve and grow their cloud services.
  • Business Applications competencies certify an organization to help its customers create intelligent applications with Microsoft Dynamics 365.
  • Organizations that are Data and AI certified can help deliver their customers business insights through data analytics and harnessing big data in multiple platforms.
  • By being certified for Modern Workplace and Security, organizations are equipped to assist customers in improving collaboration, communications, and cloud productivity.

But that’s not all: Each of these four pillars is divided into further subcategories. Each of these has different requirements for silver and gold competencies. Silver stands for consistent capability and commitment, and gold for showing the best-in-class capability within a certain Microsoft solution area:

  • Applications and Infrastructure: Application Development, App Integration, Cloud platform, DevOps, and Datacenter.
  • Business Applications: Cloud Business Applications, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Project and Portfolio.
  • Data and AI: Data Analytics and Data Platform.
  • Modern Workplace and Security: Collaboration and Content, Communications, Cloud Productivity, Enterprise Mobility Management, Messaging, Security, Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions, Windows and Devices.

Our Milestones and What They Mean for You

panagenda currently holds two gold certifications and four silver certifications.

Gold Partnership

  • Our newest certification, gold Cloud Platform, proves our technical expertise in handling – deploying, migrating, and maintaining – cloud applications and services on Microsoft Azure. For you, this means we are qualified to help you leverage secure, scalable, and reliable cloud solutions.
  • Our other gold certification, Windows and Devices, helps us to provide you better SaaS services, as well building, testing, and maintain applications based on a Windows environment.

Silver Partnership

  • The Communications certification proves we have the skillset to implement unified communications strategies with your necessities in mind.
  • Datacenter plays an important role for us to work with scaled and highly virtualized Windows Server infrastructures, from their design process to their maintenance.
  • Project and Portfolio Management is invaluable to build and deploy large-scale project management solutions tailored to your needs.
  • Application Development equips us with the technical skills needed to provide and support you with web-based Azure and Microsoft 365 applications.

What’s the ‘Microsoft Cloud Partner Program’?

Microsoft recently announced a huge change in their current partner system described before. This doesn’t mean everything you just read is obsolete, it just keeps on evolving. Above all, with the name change of the partner program the system will also adjust to your advantage. It will get harder for partners to proof their competencies, which will then lead to the conclusion, that you can be entirely sure about the achieved goals and expertise of your chosen partner. It will split up into these six new key areas:

  • Data & AI (Azure)    
  • Infrastructure (Azure)    
  • Digital & App Innovation (Azure)    
  • Business Applications    
  • Modern Work    
  • Security

We are currently preparing for the change that will get effective in October 2022. You can read about the details in Microsoft’s official blog.

Hungry for More?

Learn more about the Microsoft Partner Network and Microsoft Certifications here: