Microsoft Contract and Commercial Options

Unlocking Savings by choosing the right contract type

Microsoft has multiple programs to contract their technology. With the tons of different options, it can be hard to determine the best and most optimal route for you. The differences are quite significant and can also vary by product.

Let us give you a high-level overview of the differences, focusing on optimizing your contract spend.

What is my ideal contract type?
It depends! Unfortunate it’s not that straight forward.

• It depends on what technology you want to buy,
• it depends on the investments you want to make, and if you have a strong position to negotiate the Microsoft contract,
• It depends on your region where you want to buy,
• It depends if you need support,
• It depends if you need exceptions,
• It depends in what currency you want to be invoiced.

There are so many dependencies that it makes navigation difficult. However, there are a few general rules of thumb. When you are an enterprise organization with more than 6,000 users, we can easily say that the EA is your best contract type. Again, for some licenses, it depends on your region and the type of licenses. For example, if you have your EA agreement in Europe and are located in the US, you are probably better off procuring your on-premises licenses through MPSA in the US.

Also, Co-Pilot is a different story. Co-Pilot has the same price in the EA for every organization. Here, you could leverage the CSP.

Another rule of thumb is for organizations with less than 2,400 users. Your most effective route is likely CSP. You then also benefit from the inclusion of support, which saves you good costs. However, this could depend on your product exceptions. When you have FromSA SKUs that are not available in CSP, we need to consider the EA contract option again.

How should we navigate?
The overview presented above is a good first step in navigating your main contract type. Use the described rules of thumb as a second layer, and you will be on the right track to finding your most optimal route.

What do you need to know!

• MCA is based on dollar with monthly FX rates. This means that when you are billed in your local currency your (monthly) invoice could change every month or twice a year with Microsoft his price harmonization strategy.
• CSP only has a price lock for the term of the subscription. With most subscriptions that is only 1 year. On the longer term 3 to 5 years your more cost-effective license could turn out more expensive.
• CSP doesn’t have all the possible license options compared to EA. This could drive higher cost if you can’t benefit from step-ups that are not available through the program.
• Azure doesn’t have price protection through MCA, while you did have it in the SCE agreement.
• CSP doesn’t have Dev/Test subscription offers.

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