Microsoft announced a new way for traditional enterprise clients the ability to purchase perpetual based licensing through the CSP program.
Historically, perpetual licensing fell into the Open Licensing or Enterprise Agreement bucket in which customers were offered volume discounts and software assurance benefits for Microsoft software they purchased. A customer can still purchase under these programs, but it is clear Microsoft is heading towards CSP across all licensing programs. You can read about it here (you will need a Microsoft account to sign in) https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/collection/software-in-csp#/
Is this a good thing? I think it provides flexibility regarding who you purchase from and options for products you cannot move to the cloud. This opens the door for VARs to sell into enterprise accounts that traditionally were only sold through the larger LSP resellers. In addition, there’s no partner incentives or support included when an enterprise customer purchases licenses through an Enterprise Agreement or Open program like there is with CSP. In a lot of ways, CSP makes a lot of sense. So what are things that you should watch out for when looking at CSP over an EA?
CSP perpetual licenses are sold without Software Assurance (SA). SA is a key ingredient if you want to move workloads to the cloud. With CSP perpetual, this is an on premise solution as oppose to cloud. That being said, under the same CSP agreement, you could buy Office 365 or Windows Server subscriptions which will allow flexibility for hybrid type environments.
The other thing to consider is upfront payments. With traditional CSP, you are buying a subscription versus buying perpetual. With CSP perpetual, you are paying upfront and you own that license. There’s no minimum requirement and of course no maximum. In short, this means there are no volume discounts.
There’s a lot more information coming with this new announcement. We will certainly keep you updated. I will be curious on your thoughts! Drop us a note or leave a comment below.
Thanks for reading,
CSP Man
The Microsoft CSP Program 