The Microsoft Solutions Partner designation is a formal recognition that an MSP has demonstrated verified expertise in one or more Microsoft solution areas. For MSPs, it’s a meaningful market differentiator that influences how prospects evaluate potential partners. Earning it requires consistent performance across skilling, customer growth, and measurable usage improvement, and retaining it requires ongoing delivery. inforcer helps MSPs meet those requirements efficiently by enabling efficient deployments that drive the usage growth metrics at the core of the designation.
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When a business is evaluating MSPs, they’re usually comparing organizations they know very little about. In that context, credentials are more than a formality. They become an important trust signal as well.
The Microsoft Solutions Partner designation is one of the most meaningful credentials an MSP can hold, because it symbolizes that Microsoft has verified their value in one or more specific solution areas, according to measurable standards.
Earning this designation makes your MSP more credible to prospects and changes how you’re perceived in the marketplace. Read on to learn what the process involves, how scoring works, which designations matter most for MSPs focused on Microsoft 365, and how inforcer can help you meet the relevant requirements more efficiently by streamlining Microsoft 365 deployments across customers.
The Microsoft Solutions Partner designation replaced Microsoft’s previous Gold and Silver partner tiers when the old competency framework was retired in 2022. Whereas the old system awarded a single Gold or Silver status, the new framework recognizes partners across six distinct solution areas, each representing a specific set of Microsoft capabilities.
Partners can hold one designation or all six. Larger MSPs often pursue multiple, but Modern Work and Security are the natural priorities for organizations focused primarily on Microsoft 365, which includes most MSPs that work with SMBs.
Each designation is earned and renewed independently, and each requires an organization to score at least 70 points out of 100 on Microsoft’s Partner Capability Score for that solution area.
Every individual metric within the score must also be above zero. This ensures that there’s no way to coast on strength in one area while ignoring another entirely.
Here’s an analogy that helps illustrate how becoming a Microsoft Solutions Partner can help your MSP win new business: buying a car from a franchised dealer is often preferable to buying from an independent used lot.
That’s not because the cars at the dealership are always better. It’s because the dealer has a formal relationship with the manufacturer, operates within a defined set of standards, and is accountable to someone beyond themselves.
The Microsoft Solutions Partner designation works the same way. When a prospect sees it, they know that Microsoft has evaluated an MSP against their own rigorous standards. The prospect doesn’t need to understand the scoring methodology to understand what the badge implies: this MSP knows what it’s doing, and Microsoft has said so.
For MSPs operating in a crowded market where many competitors offer broadly similar services, this is a meaningful competitive differentiator. It’s particularly relevant when a prospect is comparing two or three MSPs and looking for a reason to choose one. A Solutions Partner designation gives them that reason.
See Also: The MSP’s Guide to Selling Microsoft 365 Security to Skeptical Customers
Beyond the market credibility, Microsoft Solutions Partner status comes with a set of tangible commercial benefits. These vary by designation and tier, but for MSPs pursuing Modern Work or Security, the most relevant ones include:
When taken together, these benefits can make it meaningfully easier for an MSP to grow.
If you’re wondering how to earn the Microsoft Solutions Partner designation for your MSP, the natural next question is: how does Microsoft evaluate potential partners?
The Partner Capability Score (PCS) is the mechanism Microsoft uses to evaluate eligibility for each Solutions Partner designation. It’s a composite score out of 100 points, calculated across three categories: performance, skilling, and customer success.
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Category |
What It Measures |
Key Metric |
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Performance |
Your ability to grow Microsoft’s customer base |
Net customer adds in the trailing 12 months |
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Skilling |
Certified individuals linked to your organization in Partner Center |
Intermediate and advanced certifications in the relevant solution area |
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Customer Success |
Your ability to help customers grow their usage of Microsoft products |
Usage growth and workload deployments across your customer portfolio |
Here’s a more detailed breakdown of the metrics in each category and how to achieve them.
The performance category measures how effectively an MSP is growing its customer base. Points are awarded for net new customers added in the previous 12 months (new customers added minus any lost during that period). Each solution area has its own threshold for what counts as a qualifying customer.
The skilling category tracks the number of people in the partner organization who hold relevant Microsoft certifications, linked to the organization via Partner Center. Both intermediate and advanced certifications count, with advanced certifications weighted more heavily.
The specific certifications that count toward each solution area change as Microsoft updates its product areas and exam tracks. This makes it extremely important for qualifying MSPs to keep their knowledge and relevant certifications up to date.
For the most current list of eligible certifications for Modern Work and Security, refer directly to the Partner Center documentation for each designation below:
Microsoft built this category into the framework deliberately. A high score here shows that a partner doesn’t just sell licenses; it genuinely helps customers get value from them.
An MSP that deploys Business Premium across a customer’s organization and then does nothing with Intune, Defender, or Entra ID isn’t going to score well here. An MSP that configures everything properly and drives measurable adoption will.
This is the metric where the day-to-day work of managed services is most directly reflected in the scoring. It’s also where the gap between MSPs who deliver well and those who don’t becomes visible.
For most MSPs that focus on Microsoft 365 and provide managed services to SMBs, Modern Work is the designation that matters most. It speaks directly to an MSPs ability to provide the solutions their prospects are shopping for, and it’s the one Microsoft’s own partner finder prioritizes when a business searches for Microsoft 365 expertise.
Security is the natural complement. As managed security services become an increasingly central part of the value proposition for MSPs, holding both Modern Work and Security designations signals to prospects that an MSP can take care of their essential needs.
Larger organizations may pursue Infrastructure alongside these two designations, or expand further as their practice areas grow. But for smaller MSPs focused on Microsoft 365 for small businesses, Modern Work and Security are the two most important designations to pursue first.
Meeting the requirements for a Solutions Partner designation requires consistent, high-quality delivery across your customer portfolio. That’s harder to do at scale when deployments are manual, configurations vary from tenant to tenant, and there’s no efficient way to monitor whether settings are drifting over time.
Multi-tenant management tools enable MSPs to solve these problems by performing efficient, repeatable deployments for all their customers from a single dashboard. As a multi-tenant management platform designed specifically for Microsoft 365 environments, inforcer streamlines an MSPs ability to:
With this approach, what would otherwise take hours of manual work per customer can be completed in minutes. This has gives MSPs a clear edge for satisfying Microsoft’s PCS metrics.
Usage growth, the metric that most directly reflects whether customers are getting value from their Microsoft 365 licenses, is driven by actually deploying and activating the features customers are paying for. Every feature that goes from licensed-but-unused to actively deployed can contribute to an MSP’s score in this area.
MSPs who rely on manual processes to do this work face a practical ceiling on how many customers they can serve well. inforcer removes that ceiling.
Faster and more consistent deployments > More customers getting full value from their licenses > Stronger usage growth metrics > Better Partner Capability Score.
The same efficiency that helps MSPs earn the designation helps them retain it. Renewing the designation each year requires maintaining the score, which means keeping up with new deployments, monitoring for drift, and continuing to drive adoption across the customer base. inforcer’s multi-tenant visibility makes this ongoing work manageable rather than overwhelming.
The Microsoft Solutions Partner designation is one of the most credible things your MSP can put in front of a prospect. It builds trust faster, strengthens your position in competitive situations, and opens doors to Microsoft’s own referral and incentive programs. But earning it and keeping it requires consistent, demonstrable delivery across your customer base.
inforcer gives MSPs like yours the tools to do that work efficiently: fast repeatable deployments, multi-tenant visibility, and the kind of measurable usage growth that keeps your Partner Capability Score where it needs to be.
Book your demo today and see how inforcer can work for you.