In the words of Microsoft themselves "Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) certification validates IT professional and developer technical expertise through rigorous, industry-proven, and industry-recognized exams. MCP exams cover a wide range of Microsoft products, technologies, and solutions."
There are multiple levels of partnership, Gold being the highest achievable.
So why work with a Microsoft gold partner?
In the tech and business industries it’s now common place to see a long list of awards, certifications and resellers logos on most peoples websites. It can be hard to separate the less impressive ones from the actual meaningful ones. Sometimes a company has to simply register for an account to get these accolades.
Microsoft offer a 3 reliable certifications which indicate different levels of competency; The Microsoft partner, silver partner, and gold partner.
Microsoft certification requires more than basic knowledge. It requires that a certain number of people pass a lot of difficult exams. Similar Google certifications you can't just don these exams once either, partners require to constantly keep up to date as every year in order to keep your certification you have to do the exams all over again.
Gold level partnership represents the highest certification available for Microsoft partners. When an agency is a Gold partner you know they meet the rigorous standards set to attain this. Because a number of people have to take the exams each year you also know there is not just one expert who has been recruited in but a number of qualified team members who have the expertise and knowledge to provide your business with the best solutions.
Where do Spinbox fit in to all this?We ourselves recently made the jump from being a silver partner to a now fully certified Microsoft gold partner specialising in application development. We're committed to constantly improving, learning and training in order to develop mobile and web apps using Microsoft technologies that exceed our clients expectations.