Here are a few guidelines to follow if you have an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft and looking to decide whether or not to renew or work with a CSP partner to help you with your licensing needs.
Enterprise Agreement
The EA is a legacy program by Microsoft and in the current licensing world in which we live, is designed for organizations who are the largest and most complex environments. In most of these customer situations, there are amendments, exceptions, and additional terms that need to be negotiated. If this is you, a CSP model is probably not ideal for your situation.
Other hot buttons that will help you make the case to sign an Enterprise Agreement
- All affiliates to be included in one agreement
- Multi-tenant solutions
- Fixed price requirement for 3 years
- Existing agreement with existing licenses that will qualify them for discounts such as “From SA” or “Add-On” licenses
Cloud Solution Provider Program
The CSP program is designed to help customers move to the cloud. The case for CSP can be summarized this way – how dated is it to buy software that you have yet to deploy? Many organizations make upfront commitments for licenses they will never use to get a better discount. CSP is a program that supports pay as you go and deploy (or use) with little commitment. Why pay for something that you haven’t used?
Other hot buttons that will help you make the case for CSP:
- Less than 500 USL licenses
- Partner requirement to help deploy and manage
- Fluctuation in user count
- Simplified workloads
- Pay for consumed services (Azure) on a monthly basis
Without question this post is a generalization, but hopefully it will give you an idea of what to look for and questions to ask if you are signing a new agreement. CSP or EA, it doesn’t matter, Microsoft still gets their fair share.
Thanks for reading,
CSP Man
The Microsoft CSP Program 