CSP Product Overview – The Microsoft CSP Program

There are a number of licensing programs to choose from so what makes CSP so special? I would argue that although this site is csplicensing.com, CSP is not necessarily a licensing program but a solution program. The main reason as to why its different is support. There are numerous reasons why CSP, the list below are ideas you should thing about both for the end customers as well as the managed service provider who is building a CSP practice.

Monthly Billing – lower upfront costs.

Scale user adoption – You can scale easier. Many organizations lose ROI on large upfront volume licensing agreements.

Support Included – Every one talks about moving to the cloud, very few actually tell you how. CSP helps you migrate to the cloud quicker, by leveraging your CSP support partner (which is required to be a CSP authorized provider)

Reliable – Most CSP partners have a platform to manage licenses, adoption, and customers through one portal.

Discounts – CSP is competitive. This is good for the end user to shop around. Many providers offer free migration or discounts for partnering.

If you are thinking of signing up to be a CSP partner, there are important things to consider as well. Again, its not just about the licensing, it’s about controlling the end-end customer experience from support escalations to migration. You are the first point of contact, resolve issues, and billing platform.

A great resource for CSP partners https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-solution-provider/resources

Thanks for reading,

CSP Man

When Microsoft Teams were first announced in November 2016, the first thing that came to mind was here’s another application, another “tool” to make life easier; why not just use Skype, SharePoint, and Yammer? In a way, that’s true. Why not use the tools already in place? I think what Microsoft Teams accomplishes is what those other three applications does separately. I like to think of Microsoft Teams as a real-time forum to chat, review content, and even participate in voice and video conferences with the integration of Skype.

For a full review and demo of the product check out the Office 365 blog It will be interesting to see how this will play with Project Online and other management tools.

At this time, only business subscribers in plans such as “Business Essentials, Business Premium, and Enterprise E1, E3, and E5” have access to Microsoft Teams. E4 subscribers who bought that plan before its retirement also will get access.

Thanks for reading,

CSP Man