Microsoft Unveils Premier Support for Mission-Critical Applications

Offered as a new Microsoft Services Premier Support add-on, Premier Mission Critical Support is available worldwide as of February 3, 2009. Premier Support is tailored to the needs of enterprise customers and was designed in order to deliver support for mission-critical solutions. In this manner, the Redmond company has enhanced its portfolio of support offerings with a solution that is capable of reducing downtime on mission-critical components of a corporate infrastructure with higher levels of both response time and effectiveness, according to the software giant.

“Customers told us they wanted Microsoft to help ensure that their mission-critical applications remain available and to help get their solutions up and running as fast as possible should they go down,” explained Bryan Belmont, general manager, Support and Health for Microsoft Services. “Premier Mission Critical Support is evidence of our longstanding commitment to meeting our customers’ needs.”

Microsoft indicated that at this point in time, Premier Mission Critical Support is available exclusively for the following products: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 and Service Pack 3, and SQL Server 2008, but only in the context in which the solutions are running as mission-critical components. Delivered as part of the Microsoft family of Premier Support offerings, Premier Mission Critical Support allows customers to take advantage of professionals that possess an insight on their solution configuration and deployment environment.

“More customers than ever before are entrusting their mission-critical applications to SQL Server 2008,” added Dan Neault, general manager, SQL Server product marketing at Microsoft. “With Premier Mission Critical, customers receive our highest level of enhanced support and direct expertise from the SQL Server product team to quickly respond to immediate customer issues, minimize costly downtime and prevent future occurrences.”