Introducing Microsoft Services Ready

With the new Services Ready, Microsoft is streamlining the planning, development and deployment of services. The program is available to Microsoft Gold Certified Partners that are building services on top of the Microsoft Platform. Services Ready comes to respond to the generalized trend to cut back on costs while enhancing performance. By slashing costs and driving efficiency, the Redmond company indicates that the current $383 billion market opportunity for Microsoft Platform-based services will explode to as much as $490 billion by 2012.

“In good economic times and bad, customers count on services partners to help them adopt, deploy and maximize the value of their Microsoft investments,” explained Maria Martinez, corporate vice president, Microsoft Services. “Services Ready goes a long way toward ensuring our customers have a consistent, high-value experience with partners who are armed with Microsoft’s own tested and proven tools.”

Launched on April 20, 2009, Services Ready is currently focused on the following areas: identity and security, virtualization, systems management, desktop platform, portals and collaboration, search, unified communications, deployment services and Customer Care Framework. The program is a collection of best practices that come accompanied with guidance and guidelines, but also templates and what the software giant referred to as field-tested engagement tools. The promise from Microsoft is that Gold Certified Partners will be able to reduce the financial investments poured into the process of introducing a new service.

“Every time we add a new service offering to our portfolio it’s like starting a new business: enormous revenue potential, but it requires investment of time and resources to develop the processes, materials and resources to get it right,” added Raman Venkatraman, global director, Tata Consultancy Services. “Services Ready eliminates a great deal of that risk because Microsoft has essentially blazed the trail and provided resources to guide our implementation and help us provide greater satisfaction for the customer.”