When a private equity firm evaluates a portfolio company, security is rarely the first line item on the deal thesis. It is, however, almost always the first question that surfaces in diligence, the first finding in a 100-day plan, and the first thing a board asks about after an incident anywhere in the portfolio.
That is why we are announcing this particular milestone the way we are. Last month, ne Digital attained the Microsoft Solutions Partner for Security designation. With it, we now hold all three of Microsoft's Solutions Partner designations: Security, Cloud & AI Platforms, and AI Business Solutions.
Three designations. Each one earned against Microsoft's own data on how we perform for clients. Microsoft consolidated its partner solution areas into these three, so holding all of them means Microsoft has validated our capability across the entire stack a portfolio company runs on — the cloud platform, the workplace on top of it, and the security layer that protects both. Not one slice of it. All of it.
A Solutions Partner designation is not a marketing tier, a fee-based membership, or a self-declared competency. Microsoft calculates it from a Partner Capability Score: a composite of data Microsoft already records in Partner Center about how a partner actually operates.
To attain the Security designation, a partner must earn at least 70 of 100 points, and must score above zero in every metric. The score is built from three categories:
| Category | Weight | What Microsoft measures |
|---|---|---|
| Skilling | 40 points | Individuals on the team holding specified intermediate and advanced Microsoft security certifications |
| Performance | 20 points | Net new customers added on Microsoft security workloads |
| Customer success | 40 points | Growth in customer usage of security workloads, and the number of successful deployments |
Two features of this framework matter more than the number itself.
First, no single category can carry a partner across the line. A firm with a deep bench of certified engineers but no deployment history does not qualify. Neither does a high-volume reseller with thin skills. The designation requires demonstrated strength in all three at once.
Second, the evidence is telemetry, not testimony. Usage growth and deployment counts come from Microsoft's own records of what is running in client tenants. Certifications are verified against Microsoft Learn transcripts. There is no application essay.
The designation is also reviewed on an ongoing basis. A partner that stops investing in skills or stops delivering successful deployments does not keep it.
The Security solution area spans four workload groups: Identity and Access Management, Threat Protection, Information Protection and Governance, and Cloud Security. In practice, that maps directly to the technologies we deploy and operate for clients every day:
Earning the designation means Microsoft has confirmed that our engineers hold the certifications on these workloads, that clients are adopting them through us, and that the deployments succeed and grow.
Operating partners and deal teams increasingly ask a portfolio company's IT provider to prove security competence. A Microsoft-validated designation is a third-party answer, not a vendor claim. It sits alongside our SOC 2 Type 2 attestation as independent evidence of how we operate.
Because the designation reflects a repeatable operating model rather than a single successful deployment, the same identity, threat-protection, and data-governance baseline can be applied to every entity a firm acquires, across the Americas and Europe. Security posture stops being a function of which portfolio company hired which local provider.
Solutions Partners work with Microsoft through dedicated partner channels, technical resources, and support paths that are not available to unaffiliated providers. When a client-affecting issue needs Microsoft engineering attention, we are not starting from a public support queue.
As a Microsoft Direct CSP, ne Digital holds both the license relationship and the security services on one contract. The next section explains what that means in practice.
There are many Microsoft partners. Three things separate ne Digital.
Most partners hold one designation. Some hold two. ne Digital holds all three: Security, Cloud & AI Platforms, and AI Business Solutions.
That is not a collecting exercise. Security controls do not respect product boundaries. A Conditional Access policy is only as good as the Intune compliance state feeding it and the Azure network posture beneath it. When those three layers sit with three different vendors, the gaps between them are where incidents happen. Holding all three designations means the firm that hardens your identity layer also runs the Azure platform underneath it and the Microsoft 365 workplace on top of it — designed together, operated by one team, accountable to one contract.
ne Digital is a Microsoft Direct Cloud Solution Provider (CSP). We hold the licensing, billing, and support relationship with Microsoft directly, with no distributor in the middle. For a portfolio company this means one invoice, one support path, and one accountable party for both the licenses and the security services running on them. It also means we control tenant provisioning and entitlement changes ourselves, which matters when an acquisition closes on a Friday and the new entity needs to be inside the portfolio's security baseline by Monday.
We were built for private equity. Our operating model assumes multiple entities, multiple jurisdictions, aggressive integration timelines, and a board that expects reporting it can act on. Every security service we deliver is designed around documented controls, evidence collection, and attestation-ready reporting, because that is what our clients are asked to produce. Our own SOC 2 Type 2 attestation reflects the same discipline applied to ourselves.
Attaining the Security designation is a milestone we are proud of. It is also a floor, not a ceiling. The Partner Capability Score is measured continuously, and we intend to keep meeting it the same way we earned it: by putting certified engineers on client work and by making sure what we deploy actually gets used.
To the clients whose environments contributed to this score: thank you. This designation is, in the most literal sense, a measure of your success on Microsoft's platform.
Ready to see where your portfolio stands? Request a Security Posture Review for one or more portfolio companies. We benchmark identity, threat protection, and data governance against the Microsoft baseline we operate across our client base, and deliver a board-ready findings summary.
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