Special Report: The journey to Office 365 Part 7: Understanding Unified Support
Conclusion: Microsoft is pushing its enterprise clients from Premier Support to Unified Support. Unified Support bundles many new and existing support services into a single program. As a result, the adoption of Unified Support is, for many clients, significantly increasing their support costs. The problem is that there can be a vast difference between support that the client has been consuming for the last decade or more, compared to what Microsoft gives them with Unified Support.
The challenge for organisations is how to decide if Unified Support is appropriate for them. If Unified Support is appropriate, how will the organisation ensure it draws new value from the program to justify the expense? If not, what are the alternatives for obtaining support services?
About The Advisor
Joseph Sweeney
Dr. Joseph Sweeney is an IBRS advisor specialising in the areas of workforce transformation and the future of work, including; workplace strategies, end-user computing, collaboration, workflow and low code development, data-driven strategies, policy, and organisational cultural change. He is the author of IBRS’s Digital Workspaces methodology. Dr Sweeney has a particular focus on Microsoft, Google, AWS, VMWare, and Citrix. He often assists organisations in rationalising their licensing spend while increasing workforce engagement. He is also deeply engaged in the education sector. Joseph was awarded the University of Newcastle Medal in 2007 for his studies in Education, and his doctorate, granted in 2015, was based on research into Australia’s educational ICT policies for student device deployments.