With
CSP (Cloud Solution Provider), you only pay for the resources your organisation consumes, without an up-front commitment to hit consumption or licensing thresholds. The Microsoft-licensed partner you choose to be your CSP will manage your
Azure and Microsoft 365 subscriptions, provide premium support for your organisation, and give insight into what your cloud spend looks like as well as make suggestions to help optimise your budget and the resources you consume.With CSP, you’re getting the same cloud resources you would from a credit card subscription bundled with the premium offerings of the partner you trust — all at a similar or reduced rate compared to Credit Card subscription pricing. With your CSP partner’s support, you can provision and deactivate resources, and add or drop subscriptions at any time. For most organisations, CSP provides the most value over the long run and near-instantaneous flexibility rivalling that of the credit card purchasing model.
With an
EA (enterprise agreement) organisations will need to commit to consume a certain amount of Azure or fill enough Microsoft 365 “seats” for the duration of your contract. Enterprises are eligible for discounts if they plan on spending millions of dollars in Azure or filling more than 500 seats with Microsoft 365 subscriptions. While these plans can often time provide valuable cost discounts for enterprises, the high-volume requirements and huge upfront cost places them out of reach for most organisations.All Microsoft EAs are made on a “use it or lose it” basis. If your organisation spends less than your Azure commitment or drops below 500 users for Microsoft 365, you will still be billed for the full amount your organisation committed to. EAs are commitments made for multiple years. EAs lack flexibility in spending and command that the organisation hits its pre-committed consumption threshold or seat count to prevent losing the value made possible through the agreement.