This one was a bit of a surprise to me, but my Dad, who is an IT Consultant phoned me up to explain that when he range business critical support for a customer down situation he was told that his registration had lapsed.  He then had to go through a process to re-register before his call could be processed - and this all took valuable time.

I put this down to my Dad's unique way of finding problems with systems, however the very next day I got a mail from another partner who hit exactly the same thing, so think of this as a warning, go give yourself the ability to call MS Support without them charging you when your customers are "down".

To get more information and registration information (it is not a long process honest), go to Register for free- Business Critical Telephone Support for registration and http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/tech_support/b... for information.

Once you are set up, you MUST note your Support ID - this is the magic that will make it work when you need it.

ttfn

David