South African Firm Joins Mircosoft’s Gold Certified Partner Program

South African e-commerce solution provider eCompany was recently granted entry into Microsoft’s prestigious Gold Certified Partner Programme.

Designed to increase members’ technical competency and e-business proficiency, MS’ Gold Programme has a network of e-commerce partners worldwide.
Impressed by eCompany’s e-payment credit card solution, iVeri, Microsoft decided to include the company in its Programme, effectively making the company one of only two e-commerce Gold Partners in South Africa.

Microsoft sees the Gold Programme as heralding great e-commerce opportunities for entrants. “The fact that Microsoft Gold Partners have to meet rigorous and stringent certification criteria makes the Gold Certification a great credential for customers to use when selecting a partner,” explained Craig Nielsen, partner group manager of Microsoft Partner Programmes. “The Gold Certified Partner Programme helps customers identify the partners that are best suited for the areas of their speciality, while Microsoft is able to identify the partners that warrant a higher investment from Microsoft in certain areas.”

Before granting membership Microsoft needs to assure itself that the company in question has a unique set of technology development resources at its disposal. Furthermore it needs to ensure that the company is delivering a cutting edge product in a high potential e-commerce application area.

Satisfied that eCompany’s iVeri’s product range comprised a comprehensive portfolio of payment solutions for e-, m- and virtual-commerce applications, it decided to put eCompany to the test.

Resultantly eCompany had to submit three of its iVeri Credit Card Payment Solution customers as references. Each of these customers had to process more than 1,000 transactions a day, have 125 concurrent users or devices (for intranet-based systems) and have in excess of $200,000 in services revenue.

“We are really proud of our Gold status,” asserted eCompany CEO Sheldon Cohen on hearing that they had been awarded membership to MS’ exclusive e-club. “For us it demonstrates where eCompany stands in the international e-commerce arena and that the standards of our products and services are truly world-class.”