Businesses have previously purchased Enterprise Agreements (EA) through LAR’s (Large Account Resellers), who were authorised by Microsoft to sell licences to medium and enterprise accounts through a special volume licensing programme. These have been known to be more generous with discounts than Microsoft’s standard licensing programme and therefore, have proved beneficial from a cost perspective for many businesses looking to reduce their expenditure.

Businesses now looking to renew their future EAs with Azure, need to factor in Microsoft’s changes that came into effect last year. As per the new rules, you’re unable to renew an EA, but LARs are allowing business to extend on a month by month basis at a 3% uplift to the original cost, meaning businesses are paying more but for no guarantee of it lasting more than a month at a time.

As of August 2019, Microsoft stopped Azure being sold within its Enterprise Agreements. This means that businesses with EA looking to renew with Azure must consider other licensing models and services. Moving to a CSP (Cloud Solutions Provider) or SPLA (Service Provider Licencing Agreement) licensing is much more agile due to the licences being provisioned, managed and supported by partners directly, giving the customer greater control; and that it is everything we are here at Timico. We also own data centres that offer public and private cloud solutions for individual customer requirements, designing high availability and secure networks for some of the UK’s biggest brands.

Many businesses are approaching the end of their three-year EA agreements and this brings its own challenges. In the current economic climate where several companies face uncertainty about the future, it can be difficult agreeing to a new licensing model of this length and magnitude. Businesses don’t want to have to commit to lengthy contracts or take on the responsibility of cost managing their own environments. Azure is also fully optimisable and without a flexible and scalable platform, no customer can truly have the outcome desired for its purpose.

Timico has recognised that the way agreements are approached must change in order to meet business requirements and we understand how end-users work; companies need to remain as agile as the working conditions around us, so having that one provider to provision, manage and support is key.

Due to our hybrid flexibility, excellent in-house expertise and knowledge, options for renewing your licence with us are vast, enabling us to meet these changes and keep you connected, productive and secure.

When looking at Azure, it isn’t necessarily about the ‘lift and shift’ element of a licensing model, it’s important to consider optimisation benefits and the cost-saving options of running Azure through CSP – whether it is managed by us or not.

We have been a Microsoft Gold Partner since 2004 and with our own Network Operations Centre and Professional Services teams, we can be full end to end consultants, when you need to digitally transform.

If you’d like further advice, consultancy or assistance, please reach out to us today for a free consultation.