The Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) was designed for organizations with more than 500 users and/or devices and offers an annual payment of 3 years for certain products. The option to acquire either software licenses through enterprise registrations or Enterprise subscription programs allows you to find a pricing plan that matches your budget requirements. Since the advent of microsoft online services` commercial offering, which began in 2008 with business Productivity Online Services (BPOS), one of the benefits marketed by the software giant has been to improve the way customers could pay for the service. This was a move away from the traditional annual prices used by Microsoft`s volume licensing program, Software Assurance, and to a more “flexible” monthly pricing that would allow customers to adjust the amount they pay based on the number of users over the term of the license agreement, which is typically 36 months. At that time came the only improvement in monthly pricing that allowed customers to add new users in the middle of an agreement, pay only for the number of months remaining until the anniversary of that agreement, and then pay the annual amount for subsequent years. Interestingly, Microsoft has no option to reduce the number of users in full agreement, which, in the worst case, meant that customers had to pay 12 full months for licensed users on the first day, even though those licenses were never needed until the next anniversary. Microsoft launched the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) program in 2014 to enable the reseller community to sell Microsoft`s online services to the masses. CSP is currently the only license program available that offers the opportunity to increase and decrease the number of Office 365/Microsoft 365 users per month. Unfortunately, CSP is geared towards small and medium-sized businesses and its prices are negotiated by Microsoft`s reseller community, which means that customers are limited in their ability to negotiate prices and cannot negotiate commercial terms. In addition, it represents administrative complications related to more than one license agreement to cover a company`s license inventory. These program limitations can be costly for customers who end up paying between 20 and 40 percent more for the same workloads by maintaining the current EA model instead of being able to reduce the number of users per month. You can certainly expect Microsoft to reject requests to fix this overpayment and claim that their back-end systems for the EA program are not able to handle these scenarios. It reminds me of an old Venezuelan proverb that is translated pretty much like this: “In the blacksmith`s house, they use wood knives.” At this time, there is no indication that the Enterprise Agreement program offers such flexibility, even though it has been available to CSP customers for the past five years.
If Microsoft wants to continue to evolve toward a more consumer-centric business model, as it says, it needs to better “fill” operations and pricing in order to provide the flexibility enterprise customers need. In the meantime, ISG can help companies coordinate costs and realize value so they can make the right decisions for their business. Watch ISG Insights to learn more about the latest news and announcements from Microsoft. And contact us to find out how we can help you. the term used to describe people who use Microsoft software or online services in a meaningful way to perform work on behalf of an organization; Term is an important factor in determining how many enterprise online subscriptions EA customers are required to purchase. A form that is required when subscription licenses and/or SA coverage for perpetual licenses are renewed or consolidated from multiple old contracts into a new EA registration. . . .
