We’re pleased to share that Simform has earned the Microsoft Azure Expert Managed Services Provider (MSP) designation.
Azure Expert MSP is the highest level of recognition Microsoft offers to partners who deliver managed services on Azure. Fewer than 105 companies worldwide hold this status out of more than 400,000 Microsoft partners.
Simform is a cloud-native engineering company that goes beyond IT services, and brings DevSecOps automation and SRE practices directly into its managed services offering.
We have earned this designation with four Solution Partner designations, nine advanced specializations, 300+ certifications, and a managed services practice built on proprietary platforms and automation-first operations. We are also a Microsoft Fabric Featured Partner.
For organizations running production workloads on Azure, this designation signals a partner whose engineering and operational capabilities have been independently audited and validated against Microsoft’s highest standards.
The Azure Expert MSP standard and how partners earn it
The designation is aimed at partners who already have an established managed services practice and at least 25 actively managed customers using their cloud management platform.
Microsoft evaluates these partners on a fundamentally different standard than traditional MSPs. An Azure Expert MSP must place greater emphasis on automation and DevOps than on traditional people-and-process models.
It must be managed from the application and solution levels down, rather than from the infrastructure up. It must operate an automated cloud management platform integrated with the Microsoft cloud platform. And it must tie performance monitoring and management to business outcomes.
The bar to entry is high before the audit even begins. Partners must hold active Solution Partner designations in Data & AI, Digital & App Innovation, Infrastructure, and Security. They need Cloud Solution Provider enrollment, an MSP offer listed on Azure Marketplace, and a minimum Azure consumption revenue threshold.
Microsoft also requires at least 15 full-time Azure-certified engineers, four verifiable customer references, including a public case study, and an Advanced or Premier Support for Partners agreement.
The audit process
Once prerequisites are met, the partner undergoes an independent third-party audit spanning weeks of preparation and a multi-day assessment. The auditing firm evaluates architecture governance, operational controls, security and compliance enforcement, incident and change management discipline, and customer reporting practices.
Customer references are independently validated to confirm these capabilities are applied in live environments. Partners must also complete progress audit annually to retain the designation.
Simform earned the designation on the strength of these capabilities and a track record across 50+ Azure transformation engagements.
What Simform’s Azure Expert MSP status means for your cloud operations
When you engage Simform as your Azure managed services partner, several aspects of how your cloud operations are structured and supported change.
Access to Microsoft funding and engineering resources
Simform unlocks Microsoft funding programs available exclusively through top-tier partners. These include the End Customer Investment Fund (ECIF) and Azure Migrate and Modernize Partner-Led (AMM PL) funding, which can cover assessments, proofs of concept, pilot implementations, and deployment costs.
For organizations planning Azure migrations or modernization initiatives, this funding can meaningfully reduce upfront project investment.
Simform also receives monthly calls with Azure Engineering, early visibility into upcoming platform changes, and access to Microsoft engineering tools and internal systems that are unavailable to most partners. These channels allow Simform to prepare your environment for updates before they reach general availability.
Tool-driven operations powered by proprietary platforms
Simform’s managed services run on three integrated delivery platforms, i.e. SimDesk, SimOps and Azure Lighthouse. SimDesk handles IT service management for incident, change, and request workflows with SLA-backed response and resolution tracking.
SimOps serves as the cloud management platform, providing real-time cost visibility, spend forecasting, anomaly detection, rightsizing recommendations, and operational reporting. Azure Lighthouse enables secure, delegated multi-tenant management with cross-subscription visibility and centralized policy enforcement.
Together, these platforms give Simform and its clients a shared view of every environment under management. Operational decisions are informed by live data from SimOps, executed through structured workflows in SimDesk, and governed through consistent policies via Lighthouse.
Engineering-grade operations built on automation
Simform applies SRE principles and DevSecOps automation directly into day-to-day Azure operations. Changes are delivered through automation-first runbooks, Infrastructure-as-Code using Terraform, Bicep, and GitHub Actions, and ITIL-aligned change management with Azure Policy enforcement.
It reduces configuration drift, lowers incident rates, and makes every operational change safe, repeatable, and auditable.
Simform operates a two-track delivery model across its managed services engagements. For ISV and digital-native customers, Simform applies platform-engineering expertise to deliver SRE-level operational excellence.
For mid-market enterprises, Simform delivers ITIL-aligned operations focused on stability, governance, and continuous improvement. Both tracks run on the same audited operating model and the same delivery platforms.
FinOps and cost governance are integrated into every engagement
Every managed services engagement includes real-time cost visibility, spend forecasting, anomaly detection, and automated optimization recommendations as standard components.
Simform continuously tracks Azure Policy compliance, Azure Advisor recommendations, tagging governance, and rightsizing opportunities. Governance guardrails and FinOps practices have helped clients reduce unnecessary Azure spend by up to 30%.
Security and compliance embedded in the operating model
Simform implements zero-trust architectures using Azure-native tools, including Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Sentinel, and Entra ID. Ongoing threat detection, identity governance, and managed SOC services are part of the operating loop, with findings tracked, remediated, and audited through SimDesk workflows.
Quarterly security reviews, Well-Architected assessments, and compliance audits for frameworks like HIPAA and GDPR are built into the engagement cadence.
Disaster recovery and business continuity planning
Simform designs and manages disaster recovery strategies using Azure-native tools, including Azure Site Recovery, geo-redundant backups, and failover orchestration.
DR runbooks are standardized across environments and tested through scheduled recovery drills to validate recovery time and recovery point objectives. Backup monitoring, health reporting, and DR validation are built into the L1 and L4 operations tiers, so recovery readiness is continuously verified rather than assumed.
Scalable infrastructure that adapts to business demand
Simform’s managed services model is designed to scale alongside your Azure footprint. Auto-scaling rules, rightsizing recommendations, and Reserved Instance or Savings Plan guidance are part of ongoing operations.
When your business expands into new regions, onboards acquisitions, or adds new workloads, Simform can extend coverage under the same operational framework without the delays of renegotiation. The engagement model supports pay-as-you-go resourcing with flexible scaling, so operational support scales up or down in step with your actual Azure consumption.
What Simform’s managed Azure operations look like in the field
Two recent engagements show how Simform’s Azure Expert MSP capabilities translate into real-world operations.
Billboard advertising provider
A nationwide billboard advertising company was running its campaign management platforms on an on-premises VMware environment built in the early 2000s. Fixed hardware capacity was slowing advertiser onboarding, and tightly coupled Windows and SQL Server dependencies made routine maintenance risky.
Simform migrated over 60 Windows and SQL workloads to Azure, rehosting servers to Azure Virtual Machines and re-platforming databases to Azure SQL Managed Instance. The team built an Azure landing zone with governance controls, validated migration waves in dev environments first, and completed the production cutover in under 6 hours. Post-migration, Simform took over ongoing operational ownership under a managed services model.
The result was 40% faster onboarding of advertisers and internal users, a standardized operating model across the full workload estate, and controlled infrastructure change without disrupting live operations.
Last-mile delivery platform
A logistics provider’s shipper portal and driver apps ran on legacy Windows Server VMs in a single data center. Peak delivery volumes caused portal slowdowns, pushing shippers back to phone calls and emails for status updates. Hardware provisioning timelines gated expansion into new metros.
Simform used Azure Migrate to discover the VMware environment and plan migration waves. Windows servers and SQL databases were rehosted to Azure Virtual Machines. Shipper-facing portal components and APIs were re-platformed to Azure App Service and Azure Container Apps. After the migration, Simform took over continuous Azure operations.
The migration reduced manual status calls and email escalations from shippers by 30%, accelerated feature rollouts by 45%, and achieved production cutover in under four hours.
Both engagements follow the same operational approach. Assessment-led discovery, phased migration with controlled cutovers, governance built into the landing zone from day one, and sustained managed services after go-live.
Partner with Simform for engineering-led managed services
When your Azure operations are managed by a partner with Microsoft’s highest operational certification, your internal teams stop managing infrastructure and start building what differentiates your business.
Simform takes ownership of cloud operations, governance, security, and cost optimization. That shift enables your organization to execute business priorities faster while your Azure environment runs on an audited, automation-first operating model.
We start with an assessment that baselines your cloud estate, security posture, and cost profile within the first 30 days. From there, we structure ongoing operations around your environment’s complexity and your team’s needs.
Ready to discuss your Azure operations? Connect with our team for a free consultation.
