Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) agreement - should, should not?

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Should you choose a CSP agreement?

It can be incredibly difficult to find your way around the many different licensing agreements in the Microsoft universe while maintaining the overview, and ignorance quickly becomes a habit.

You may still be buying your Azure on credit cards and what are the benefits of the various agreements in relation to your company and needs? - Let me try to help you the right way in the post here.

Why choose a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) agreement at all?

With a CSP agreement between the customer and the Microsoft partner, that partner owns everything from providing solutions, purchasing licenses, 1st level support as well as billing and invoicing. The chosen "Provider" will thus be, in short, your close partner and not just a distracted purchaser of your licenses, who sends an invoice every now and then.

Microsoft has here tried to create some more flexibility towards the end customer and at the same time manages to form a closer and more efficient bond between customer and partner.

The advantages are thus many in relation to e.g. purchasing cloud and Microsoft Azure on credit cards, which I have tried to outline with the most obvious below:

  • Your Microsoft CSP manages all of your licenses , including ongoing purchases, renewals, and any upgrades. Your CSP will bill you directly.
  • Get direct support on all licenses on the CSP agreement.
  • High flexibility with the ability to turn up and down your license usage from month to month . So you should never be afraid of being over- or under-licensed.
  • Simple and clear pricing model, no binding combined with monthly invoicing .
  • No lower purchase limit on the number of licenses, e.g. as opposed to 500+ at Enterprise Agreements (EA).
  • No up-front licensing costs.

So if you are a growing company or just need a certain degree of flexibility in your license purchases, and can see the idea of ??being closely linked to a competent implementation and sparring partner, then a CSP agreement could be worth considering.

Can I migrate my existing Azure services to a CSP agreement?

One question that I often get from customers in relation to switching agreements to a CSP agreement is whether it is at all impractical to migrate workloads over and how difficult it will be in that case.

As a starting point, most migration proceeds completely without challenges and major hassles, but some Azure services may require more focus than others. In order to get a conclusion and final answer closer, our clear recommendation is therefore to start with an adequate data collection, which forms the basis for an assessment / analysis of the environment in question.

Based on such an analysis, we can at the same time become wiser about any licensing optimization and consolidation options across the entire infrastructure, by taking a holistic approach to the entire current setup.

You can read more about and possibly order such a Cloud Assessment, by clicking on the link here.

Get the overall overview here

As mentioned earlier, it can be a big challenge just to create and maintain an overview of all the different options within Microsoft's licensing world, and many therefore quickly give up considering a switch and continue their current agreement as always.

If it is not already an ongoing regular part of your considerations within IT, it is my clear recommendation to either revisit or start reflecting a little on whether your current purchasing model is the right one for you according to your needs and future prospects.

If there are any questions or other in relation to the post here, then you should be more than welcome to reach out and we can talk by online or over a cup of coffee.

Otherwise, there is nothing left but to wish everyone out there a continued rewarding journey to the cloud.


Best regards and untill next time

Team Automize

A mountain top peeking through the clouds

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