First, a bit of history. The original Microsoft partner programme had only two levels: Certified Partner or Gold Certified Partner.
Literally anyone could sign up to be a Partner but the Gold Partner status could only be earned for demonstrable excellence in various broad areas known as competencies. Examples of these included Advanced Infrastructure, Security and Information Worker Productivity Solutions.
To gain a Gold competency it was necessary to prove a level of capability by having a specific number of Microsoft-certified consultants and to have three customer-verifiable projects of a certain size (20+ servers or 1000+ users). This was renewed every two or three years, with different project references.
In 2010, Microsoft decided to create a new and improved partner programme called, the Microsoft Partner Network. Essentially, this is an extension of the accreditation system I’ve just described but the competencies are now more aligned to the solutions and services that customers are buying.
Now there are three levels of partners: a partner, a partner with Silver competencies, and a partner with Gold competencies.
Just like before, a basic partner needs to do nothing more than sign up.
To earn a Silver competency, an organisation has to have a minimum of two Microsoft Certified Professionals (MCP) and three unique customer references per competency.
To reach Gold, four MCPs and five unique references are required for each competency. However, unlike for Silver where the MCPs can count across multiple competencies, the MCPs for Gold can only count across one.
So, gaining Silver competencies isn’t super-hard but for any organisation to gain Gold competencies, there is a requirement for a high number of qualified people and a large number of verifiable projects. This is the primary reason why consultancies like Silversands will likely have a handful of the 28 Gold competencies that are currently available.
Of course, we will be trying our hardest to go for Gold in as many competencies as we can but Silver still represents a level of attainment and competency that clearly demonstrates our capabilities in all the areas that we provide consultancy in.