If you buy your Azure Services direct from the Microsoft website then you pay the advertised consumption prices, but if you’re prepared to make a 12-month upfront payment of at least $6,000 then you receive a 5% discount on these prices.
If this sounds fab, then you need to get your existing subscriptions to bill under the prepayment plan by following the instructions here: http://bit.ly/1s9piOy.
Check the prepayment option is the right one for you here: http://bit.ly/1TxYP9E.
The Microsoft data centres grow again: two data centres are now open in Canada offering Azure and Office 365 with data residency for business customers in Canada, and CRM Online available later this year in Q3. There are also plans for a new data centre region in Seoul, South Korea.
Find the Microsoft announcement here: http://bit.ly/1XLVxPZ and if you’re interested in where customer data is stored for Office 365 and CRM Online, then these interactive maps are worth a look: http://bit.ly/1YQuBwP.
Microsoft announce that Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is generally available in the current Azure portal – and thus also available through the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program.
Find the announcement here: http://bit.ly/1TWXqWO and this is a splendid article if you want to know more about how ASR works in CSP: http://bit.ly/1XwocbA.
Microsoft announce a free Azure Support upgrade for EA customers.
It’s available for new or existing customers who have Azure Services on their EA and gives them an upgrade to an Azure Support Plan between 1 May 2016 and 30 June 2017 for 12 months.
The details from Microsoft are split across these two pages: http://bit.ly/1XZCUpL and http://bit.ly/1TBVG5k but we’ve consolidated it into the table below:
Take a customer who has not purchased any Azure Support (the first row) – if he’s made a Monetary Commitment of less than $100,000 then he’s upgraded to an Azure Standard Support Plan, but if he spends more than $10,000 a month on Azure Services for 3 consecutive months or he does make a Monetary Commitment of at least $100,000 then he’s upgraded to Professional Direct Support.
You can see the options for the existing Standard Support customer – he’s automatically upgraded to Professional Direct Support but with the higher spend will also get 6 App Consulting Services sessions. And the existing Professional Direct Support customer receives either 6 or 12 App Consulting Services sessions dependent on his spend on Azure Services.
List prices are $300/month for Standard and $1,000/month for Professional Direct Support (http://bit.ly/1rHFmY4) and Microsoft say that the upgraded support will be enabled automatically by September 2016.
You can find the fine print on this offer and a description of App Consulting Services here: http://bit.ly/1TBVG5k.
There’s a new offer for MSDN subscribers who want to run dev and test workloads in Azure.
Essentially you set up an MSDN Dev/Test Subscription in your EA or MPSA and then you get special rates on certain services (such as virtual machines) and the usual EA/MPSA rates on other ones. Even better, it’s all managed through the usual Azure Enterprise Portal.
Note that this is completely unrelated to the Azure credit that MSDN subscribers also get, and if a customer doesn’t have an EA/MPSA then there is a similar MSDN Dev/Test offer on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Find full details here: http://bit.ly/1VDYthQ.
If you’re a Cloud Solution Provider partner selling Azure then this Getting Started guide from Microsoft is worth a look.
There’s useful information on the Azure admin portals, the relationship between tenants, subscriptions and services, and how to use the various parts of the Partner Center.
You’ll also find links to useful resources and how to get help from Microsoft.
Get the guide here: http://bit.ly/1KUBdbF.
Microsoft release more information on the Azure Hybrid Use Benefit – here are the highlights from the FAQ:
Find the full FAQ here: http://bit.ly/1jeqDj6.
This new white paper is aimed at Service Providers giving them an overview of the different licensing options they have if they want to offer services based on Azure Site Recovery to their customers.
It’s a useful reference document with a list of related terms and a generous 28 FAQs.
Find the document here: http://bit.ly/1RhZpFD.
From 1 February 2016, organisations with Windows Server licenses with SA can make use of the Azure Hybrid Use Benefit.
Called “HUB” for short, this brand new benefit means that you can procure an Azure virtual machine without Windows Server and can then assign an existing Windows Server licence to it.
Even more interestingly, if you have Datacenter licences then they can be assigned to on-premises AND Azure virtual machines, while you need to make the choice of either on-premises OR Azure virtual machines for Standard. A single Processor-based licence will allow you to use Windows Server on up to 16 cores in Azure.
Get the full wording on page 50 of the February 2016 Product Terms.
There’s now an extra option available for purchasing Azure Multi-Factor Authentication and it’s added to the January 2016 Product Terms document (page 53) as a user-licensed product available through Volume Licensing programs. The other options are to pay for it out of Azure Monetary Commitment on either a consumption basis per 10 authentications or on a per user basis with an unlimited number of authentications allowed per month. This page is a good resource: http://bit.ly/1JUVugq.