A few months ago I posted about some of opportunities/challenges we have here in New Zealand and around the world with regards to SharePoint capabilities.  That post serves as some background to some work that I’ve been doing for the last couple of months – namely working out how to solve these problems.

With that I’d like to introduce you to the SharePoint Elite Partner Initiative. This is an initiative designed to bolster the capability of SharePoint partners focused on large scale SharePoint deployments and also build a stronger partnership between these partners and Microsoft.

How does the SharePoint Elite Initiative build partner capability?

Successful SharePoint deployments have four core skill sets involved through the life of the project.  Two of these skills are technical (Infrastructure and Development) and the other two are business skills (Information Architecture and End User Engagement). Each has different but complimentary roles.  In a smaller SharePoint deployment, these roles  will be combined, but will still exist.  I’ll be detailing more about these skill sets in a future post.

To build capability, we have worked closely with Combined Knowledge - the SharePoint training experts to build courseware and exams to build and validate skills in these four skill set areas.  Combine Knowledge partner closely with MindSharp in the US and between them are recognised as one of – if not the – best SharePoint training organization in the world.  Combined knowledge have a local partner in New Zealand, KnowledgeCue who helped us coordinate the first round of training.

This training is for experienced SharePoint people – for the technical courses the requirement is Microsoft Certification with 85% pass rate.  In addition you’ll need some significant experience to be able to keep up with the course and pass the exam.

Building a stronger partnership

The other part of the SharePoint Elite initiative is a closer working relationship with Microsoft around Enterprise SharePoint deployments.

The SharePoint Elite Initiative is governed by a council within Microsoft who hold a variety of business functions across Microsoft New Zealand. The council will proactively engage with Elite partners and work through recent projects with them to understand what worked, what didn’t and what needs to be done – both inside the partner and in the broader market to ensure success with SharePoint.

What does this mean to customers?

For customers, working with a SharePoint Elite Partner will mean working with some of the best trained staff in New Zealand, and working with a partner who is committed to optimising their processes and practices in order to consistently deliver quality SharePoint Deployments regardless of the size or complexity of the business being delivered to.

Who are the partners?

The first round of training has been completed and the following partners have invested heavily in training their staff.

My company does SharePoint deployments – Can we join?

The SharePoint Elite Initiative is open to any organization deploying SharePoint to enterprise customers.  More details about the qualifications for partners are available at http://www.microsoft.co.nz/elite. Going forward we anticipate more partners will join, and to that end, Gen-i have already committed to participate in the initiative in the next round of training.

If you have questions about this group, please feel free to contact me here.