Available for EA and MCA customers, the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) is a 3-year agreement where an organisation commits to spend a certain amount on Azure over that time period.
It doesn’t require an upfront payment of the agreed amount, rather the total must be reached by the end of the MACC term. Ongoing qualifying Azure spend (either PAYG or the purchase of Azure Prepayment) is deducted* from the total on a regular basis by Microsoft and the remaining balance can be seen in the Azure portal (or via REST API). In this way, it adds some flexibility to what’s possible with Azure commitment and budgets.
However, it is a contractual commitment so if future Azure spend has been over-estimated, an organisation will find itself expected to make up any shortfall at the end of the agreement.
*If you receive Azure credits from Microsoft, any services paid for using those will not count towards your MACC total.
Azure Marketplace
Certain 3rd-party services in the Azure Marketplace are eligible to count towards a MACC. In the Marketplace portal, there will be an “Azure benefit eligible” option to filter the applicable services.
Microsoft have announced today a series of updates and changes to their Partner Program, kicking in from October 2022. There’s a LOT of into to go through but below contains a lot of the key changes and an overview of how some of the new elements will work.
New name
It is now known as the “Microsoft Cloud Partner Program” and, according to Microsoft, this “ better reflects the enormous and ongoing transition of business operations to the cloud, and how Microsoft intends to support partners in the future” and “aligns…partners’ go-to-market motions with the way customers buy today“.
From competencies to designations
The various (19) competencies that Microsoft partners have long worked to attain are now “legacy” and have been replaced by 6 “Solutions partner designations”:
Solutions partner for Infrastructure (Azure)
Solutions partner for Data & AI (Azure)
Solutions partner for Digital & App Innovation (Azure)
Solutions partner for Modern Work
Solutions partner for Security
Solutions partner for Business Applications
They map across from legacy to new as follows:
How do they work?
Partners will need to earn at least 70 points, from a potential total of 100.
Performance: Measured by net customer adds.
Skilling: Verifies and demonstrates your dedication to skilling and training. Points are awarded for each person on your team with specified certifications.
Customer success: Measured by usage growth and number of successful deployments.
A Modern Work example
The Solutions partner for Modern Work is split into SMB & Enterprise tracks.
Customer adds
Enterprise
A customer add of 300+ seats = 4 points and partners can accrue 20 points in this manner – so a total of 5 customers.
SMB
Customers must be between 10 & 300 seats and each one = 2 points. Again there is a cap of 20 points, this time equating to 10 customers.
Partner skilling
This section is divided into Intermediate & Advanced certifications, the applicable certifications are:
This area is also divided into 2 categories – Usage Growth & Deployments. The calculations for points are slightly less than straightforward as this example from Microsoft demonstrates:
If you have 2000 MAU growth from DPOR associations over the past 12 months and 1500 MAU growth from CPOR associations, then this is the way the scoring is decided for the Usage growth metric.
DPOR based growth = 2000 MAU DPOR based points = (actual growth / Threshold growth level) * max points = 2000/4000 * 30 = 15
CPOR based growth = 1500 MAU CPOR based points = (actual growth / Threshold growth level) * max points = 1500/1000 * 30 = 45
Usage growth net score = 30 ~ higher of 15 and 45 from above, for up to a maximum of 30
A similar calculation is used for the deployment metric:
Each new qualifying CPOR deployment gets 5 points OR each new qualifying DPOR deployment gets 2.5 points, whichever aggregates to higher points, for up to a maximum of 25 points.
For example, if you have four net new deployments from DPOR associations over the past 12 months and 3 from CPOR associations, the scoring is decided for Deployments metric as follows:
DPOR based growth = 4 DPOR based points = (actual growth / Threshold growth level) * max points = 4/10 * 25 = 10 points
CPOR based growth = 2 MAU CPOR based points = (actual growth / Threshold growth level) * max points = 3/5 * 25 = 15 points
**Deployments net score = 15** ~ higher of 15 and 10 from above, for up to a maximum of 30
As well as the receiving licensing of on-premises software such as SQL Server, Windows Server, and System Center, qualifying partners will also receive allowances of:
Windows 365
Microsoft Viva
Project & Visio Online
Windows IoT
and more.
Timeline of changes
Conclusion
Overall this seems like the next step in Microsoft’s long-term plan to keep moving partners towards being more service based around cloud technologies. This was the case the 7+ years ago and is still where they want their partner base to go – offering as many cloud technologies as possible and providing the services to ensure customers get the best results.
This will likely cause plenty of upset and confusion among partners but, ultimately, how much difference it will actually make remains to be seen. Usually, the bigger the partner the more able the are to absorb and adapt to these new initiatives – we’ll see if this is any different.
Again, not a huge amount of change in the Microsoft Product Terms for March 2022:
Microsoft 365 Privacy Management has been rebranded “Priva”…I thought they might change their mind on this one 😂 I guess they wanted to make sure there was something people could confuse with Viva?!
Expanded pre-requisite licenses for Cloud for Healthcare add-on
Azure Virtual Desktop per user access promo extended to March 31st, 2022 (although the section doesn’t appear to have actually been updated)
SQL Server Big Data Nodes have been retired – anything other than the “core” SQL editions just never seems to quite work does it?
Updated “no cancellations after 72 hours” terms for online services under CSP NCE
Another relatively quiet month in Feb 22 but there are a couple of things to note:
Microsoft have added a number of education and government SKUs to the eligible SKUs for a range of add-on licenses. This includes Office 365 A1 being an eligible pre-requisite for Business Voice and bringing the Privacy Management SKUs to government.
The Azure “Hosting Exception” is now called the “Azure Customer Solution”
Microsoft have added another Industry Cloud to the Product Terms – this time it’s Microsoft Cloud for Retail.
I’m still working through some of the info and it doesn’t necessarily all seem complete yet but here’s the overview I can give so far.
Licensing
It is available as an add-on SKU, currently only Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is listed as an eligible base license to purchase the add-on. The Microsoft Docs site lists other licenses that are required in order to use certain elements of the retail cloud solution, these are:
Retail cloud feature
Required license
Omnichannel for Customer Service
Dynamics 365 Commerce / Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Microsoft 365 for Frontline Workers
Microsoft 365 (F or E SKUs)
Power Virtual Agents
Power Virtual Agents
as well needing an Azure subscription to use:
Synapse Analytics
Cognitive Search
Intelligent Recommendations
Pricing
The Microsoft datasheet lists it as being $20,000 per tenant per month but also states that you “only pay for what you don’t already own“.
This makes sense as they won’t want to penalise customers who are already investing in some of these products but does suggest negotiations will be needed to get pricing…leading to the potential for different rates at different points of the year.
Availability
Available only via EA/EAS, Microsoft Cloud for Retail can currently be deployed from:
USA
Canada
United Kingdom
Singapore
Australia
and is available in English and French – the latter only being an option in Canada at the moment though.
Microsoft have announced a new way for Azure Stack HCI customers to license their Windows Server guest VMs. The snappily titled “Windows Server subscription for Azure Stack HCI” (WSSASHCI) allows organisations to purchase Windows Server licenses via their Azure subscription.
Currently the versions available are:
Windows Server 2022 Datacenter: Azure Edition
Windows Server 2022 Datacenter
Windows Server 2019
Windows Server 2016
Windows Server 2012 R2
Pricing
WSSASHCI is currently free in public preview but once it hits General Availability (GA) it will be $23.6 per physical core (in your Azure Stack HCI cluster) per month.
Microsoft’s financial results are, once again, fantastic. For Q2 FY22 (Oct – Dec 21) their headline results are:
Revenue = $51.7 billion, an increase of 20%
Operating Income = $22.2 billion, an increase of 24%
Net Income = $18.8 billion, an increase of 21%
That’s over $51 billion in 3 months – a single quarter bigger than recent annual revenues for companies like Oracle, Nike, and Coca Cola.
Looking at the separate business units we see the following…
Productivity & Business Processes
Revenue = $15.9 billion, up 19%
Office 365 Commercial up 19%
“Continued momentum” for E5
LinkedIn up 37%
Dynamics 365 up 45%
Power Apps up 161%
Office Commercial (i.e on-premises) down 17%
Intelligent Cloud
Revenue = $18.3 billion
Azure up 46%
“Significant growth” in long-term contracts (again)
Enterprise Mobility up to 209 million+ seats
Yet more strong double digit growth across all these product divisions, as we’ve seen so many times before over the last few years. Although the growth is still very strong with Azure, it’s perhaps worth noting that the % increase is dropping slightly over time…from 50 in Q1 to now 46…although this makes sense – as the base grows, maintaining the same % increase becomes more difficult.
We also saw that the security business surpassed $15 billion in revenue, up almost 45% YoY.
“Digital technology is the most malleable resource at the world’s disposal to overcome constraints and reimagine everyday work and life.”
Earnings Call
There is always plenty of great info in the earnings call and this quarter was no different.
Azure Arc has tripled its user base YoY as organisations expand hybrid environments.
New Azure customers include:
CVS Health
Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices
Kyndryl
Wells Fargo
Cosmos DB transactions increased 100% YoY
Industry Clouds are driving “significant usage” across Microsoft Cloud
Teams has 270 million+ monthly active users
Microsoft Viva has over 1,000 paying customers already
Microsoft Sentinel has over 15,000 customers – a 70% increase YoY
Satya Nadella also discussed “Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces” (currently in preview) which is focused on automating and managing physical processes. This is part of their “Metaverse” play for business.
Note that many of the new “exotic” products are being name checked here:
Azure Arc
Cosmos DB
Industry Clouds
Power Apps
Microsoft Sentinel
This really helps to highlight Microsoft’s future plans and the successful growth they’re seeing there already. It also seems that there’s plenty of room for growth over the next few years so it doesn’t seem that Microsoft’s growth will be slowing any time soon.
It’s the first Microsoft Product Terms of 2022 and, as expected, it’s a very quiet one.
A statement re: the end of Open Licensing confirms that:
“…commercial, government, education, and non-profit organizations won’t be able to buy new or renew software licenses, Software Assurance, or online services through the Open License program”
Another name change: “Phone System” is now “Microsoft Teams Phone Standard”.
Microsoft Viva Insights is an employee experience product from Microsoft that provides insights into how employees are spending their time – are they in too many meetings, are their meeting productive, do they have the time needed to focus on tasks, who do they collaborate with and plenty of other areas.
While it provides a range of pre-built views into that data, organisations are able to build their own too – known as queries. Users, known as analysts, are able to create queries against the vast amounts of data collected by Viva Insights in order to gain more specific…insights into their organisation.
This introduces a range of new metrics and price considerations for organisations. Viva Insights queries are licensed based on capacity credits and every query costs a certain amount of credits, based on factors such as:
The number of measured employees included in the analysis
The number of weeks of data included in the query output for each measured employee
The number of metrics used in the query
The type of metrics used from the different price tiers
Within the query designer it will give an estimate of the required credits:
How is it priced?
You’ll be pleased to know that Microsoft have introduced some low-level algebra to help calculate pricing, the formula being:
A*B*C*D/1000
Where:
A = measured population i.e. number of employees included in the query
B= metrics – there are a range of metrics to choose from
C = price tier cost – yep, there are different price tiers
D = week i.e. the length of time covered by the data being analysed
Price tiers
There are 3 price tiers:
Tier 1 = 1.25 credits
Tier 2 = 2.25 credits
Tier 3 = 6 credits
Tier 1 includes a total of 68 metrics (at the time of writing) such as collaboration hours andlow quality meeting hours
Tier 2 includes “advanced metrics” which, at the time of writing, is the “network query” group which includes 10 individual metrics dealing with connections and levels of influence between staff.
Tier 3 includes metrics with CRM data
An example of a query calculation is shown here:
I think it’s interesting that, although they have this formula, Microsoft state:
“The cost shown is only an estimate. The estimate might vary from the query’s actual cost, which can be seen after the query is successfully ran”
What if you run a query with multiple metrics at different tiers? You calculate as above for each metric and then add the totals together.
How do you get credits?
Each Viva Insights license includes 1 capacity credit per month, pooled across the tenant. If an organisation requires additional capacity credits, they are licensed in increments of 5,000 credits and costs $5,000 per month.
Unused credits expire monthly.
Insights v Workplace Analytics
Viva Insights is the replacement for Workplace Analytics but the latter doesn’t appear to have disappeared completely – the SKU still seems to be available and the Microsoft documentation talks about the differences between Viva Insights Consumption tenants and Workplace Analytics tenants. Analysts working in a Workplace Analytics tenant won’t see query usage or consumption units.
