A New Commerce Experience in CSP for Azure

Frequently asked questions

• What is the difference between the Azure plan and Azure subscriptions?

  Azure Plan is a commerce structure for pay-as-you-go Azure resources, available in other sales motions and now coming to CSP. ​

  Partners will be invoiced for consumption of the Azure resources that are mapped to a customer’s Azure Plan. This allows for the simplification of the partner’s purchase experience, as a partner can provision multiple Azure subscriptions under the Azure plan​

  For billing, resource usage across all Azure subscriptions will be aggregated at Azure plan level, beneficial for the resources that support tiered-pricing. At any given time, an Azure subscription is only under one Azure Plan. ​

• What are the prerequisites to move to Modern Azure?

  Your customer will be eligible to be transitioned to an Azure Plan if:​

  (i) Indirect Reseller must have signed the Microsoft Partner Agreement.​

  (ii) End user customer has accepted the Microsoft Customer Agreement. ​

  (iii) The subscription is in active status.

   

• Can a partner purchase both an Azure subscription (0145P) and Azure Plan (017G) for a customer?

  No. Partners can purchase either an Azure subscription or Azure Plan not both. Partners will be able to transition existing Azure CSP customers to the Azure Plan

• What is the “Azure plan”?

  With the new commerce experience, partners gain access to Azure services at the pay-as-you-go rate for customers under the Microsoft Customer Agreement, through an “Azure plan”. This plan simplifies the purchase experience because you can create multiple Azure subscriptions in an Azure plan. An Azure Plan is essentially a shell or container to house customer Azure subscriptions. A partner can order one Azure plan per customer, and then provision and manage subscriptions under the Azure plan. 

  A partner can provide a single Azure plan per customer (tenant), yet a customer (unique tenant) can have multiple Azure plans provided by distinct partners. But a customer cannot share a same Azure plan with multiple partners.  

  The new commerce experience in CSP for Azure more cleanly separates the ordering process from the provisioning process.  Ordering the Azure plan is done in Partner center – this sets up the customer billing and invoicing relationship and creates a subscription by default. 

• What is “partner earned credit for services managed”?

  Partner “earns” the partner earned credit by default when they are (1) the partner who has the billing relationship with Microsoft, (2) provisions the subscription, and (3) has 24x7 operations and management control of the Azure resources on the subscription. The result is a credit calculated daily and attributed to that partner MPN ID as long as the partner maintains their Azure RBAC role. 

• How will I know if I no longer am earning the partner earned credit for services managed?

  There are several ways a partner can confirm they have admin access to a customer’s Azure resources:

  - Review the daily usage file: If a partner is receiving the partner earned credit for services managed,, then they have admin access. This can be determined by reviewing the unit price and effective unit price within the daily usage file and confirming if a discount is being applied. 

  - Create an Azure Monitor Alert: You can create an Azure Monitor activity log alerts <https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/platform/alerts-activity-log> to receive the notification when your RBAC access is removed from CSP subscription. 

• How does TD SYNNEX determine the exchange rate each month?

  TD SYNNEX will apply the exchange rate available at the moment when the invoice will be issued to base USD prices to arrive at total charges incurred for Azure services purchased or consumed each calendar month.

• Impact to Admin-OnBehalf-Of (AOBO) or Designated-Partner-of Record (DPOR)?

  Access to the customer environment is a sign of trust and influence, and, no matter how a customer buys Azure, partners can support a customer’s needs through managed services, influence consumption and be recognized for this outcome. Microsoft measures this access and link to a partner organization using either AOBO or PAL (Partner Admin Link) information. In CSP, partners that have a billing relationship with Microsoft have AOBO (also called admin access) rights granted to their customers’ Azure subscriptions by default. In the partner-led sales motion, the new Azure offer on CSP continues to grant full AOBO rights by default to partners billed directly by Microsoft.  In the self-serve and field-led motions today, Microsoft provides a method to enable partners to track and attribute their influence over Azure consumption. The Partner Admin Link (or PAL), associates a partner organization (MPN ID) to the user account provided by the customer. PAL supports multiple partners per customer tenant.

  Both AOBO and PAL help partners track their influence in Azure engagements more precisely, so they can more accurately represent activities and value to specific customers on a granular basis.  DPOR will remain in place for customers that are buying Azure in Enterprise Agreements and other motions.  

• How do CSP Indirect Providers participate in the AOBO designation structure?

  All partners in the CSP program that are billed by Microsoft, including indirect providers, are granted admin on behalf of (AOBO) by default. As a managed services-partner oriented program, we expect partners in CSP to provide ongoing value-add services to customers. In the new Azure offer in CSP, partners billed directly by Microsoft continue to have AOBO (admin access) rights granted by default – partner influence over consumption will be tracked based on the partner’s continued admin access to the customer’s Azure subscriptions sold by the partners.  

• Can a CSP partner lose admin access to a customer’s Azure subscription?

  As mentioned, partners in CSP are granted admin on behalf of (AOBO) access by default to all new Azure subscriptions. A partner can grant customers admin access upon request.  At that point, a customer must actively choose to cancel a partner’s admin access. However, a customer can cancel a partner’s admin access only after they have been granted admin access privileges by the partner.  

• What happens if a customer removes partner admin access?

  It should be noted that a partner without full AOBO or partial admin access in CSP still retains the customer’s Azure billing relationship and accountability with Microsoft. While this does not affect a partner selling the current Azure offer in CSP, for the new Azure offer the invoiced partner will not be eligible for CSP partner earned credits for services managed on their Azure invoice.  Partners can achieve partial admin access in CSP by obtaining access through a user account via Directory/Guest access using RBAC or through Azure Lighthouse via ADRM.    

• What is Azure Lighthouse?

  Azure Lighthouse provides capabilities for cross customer management at scale, for partners to differentiate and benefit from greater efficiency and automation. With Azure Lighthouse, partners have a single control pane from which they can view and manage the Azure resources across all customers. Benefits include:  - Management at scale: Customer engagement and life-cycle operations to manage customer resources are easier and more scalable. - Greater visibility and precision for customers: Customers whose resources you're managing will have greater visibility into your actions and precise control over the scope they delegate for management, while your IP is preserved. - Comprehensive and unified platform tooling: Our tooling experience addresses key service provider scenarios, including multiple licensing models such as EA, CSP and pay-as-you-go. CSP used many times already APIs, licensing models, and partner programs such as the Cloud Solution Provider program (CSP). The Azure Lighthouse options you choose can be integrated into your existing workflows and applications, and you can track your impact on customer engagements by linking your partner ID. 

• If an end customer move to the new Azure Modern, can they move back to legacy?

  No.  After the move to the Azure Modern plan you cannot go back to Legacy Azure

• If an end customer move to the new Azure Modern, can they transfer the plan to another service provider?

  End users can not tranfer the subscription to another service provider until June when Microsoft will make available this functionality​.

• What happens if I remove the administrator on behalf status from TD SYNNEX?

  The main consequence will be the loss of all the privileges and advantages that you get from TD SYNNEX supporting your activity with relation to Microsoft partner center administration. Moreover, TD SYNNEX will reserve the right to apply a no PEC uplift policy to your invoices. ​