Understanding Your Azure Enterprise Agreement and Setup Process

An Azure Enterprise Agreement (EA) is a great way to manage your organization's cloud spend and resources, but it can be a bit overwhelming to set up. This agreement is designed for large and medium-sized businesses, and it offers a single billing and management system for all your Azure services.

To start, you'll need to enroll in the Azure EA program, which involves creating an account and providing some basic information about your organization. You'll also need to assign an administrator to manage your agreement.

The Azure EA program is free to enroll in, and it doesn't require a credit card or any upfront costs. You can start using the program immediately after enrolling.

Once you're enrolled, you can start adding users and services to your agreement, and you'll have access to the Azure EA portal where you can manage your resources and billing.

The Customer Price Sheet (CPS) is a customized document that outlines the prices for each product and service offered by Microsoft under the EA program. It provides a detailed breakdown of the quantity, price, and costs associated with each product and service.

The CPS includes specific terms and conditions of Microsoft's pricing model, prices for each product and service based on the customer's specific requirements, and a Future Pricing Table detailing all prices for any future purchases.

A Plan SKU is a suite of integrated services offered at a discounted rate, designed to complement each other through further integrated offerings and suites for greater cost savings.

Azure savings plans can be a bit tricky to understand, but don't worry, I've got you covered.

Azure rounds calculations to eight decimal precision, which can cause minor variances in the utilization numbers for end customers.

If you enter an Azure Savings Plan commitment amount, like 3.33/hour, and there's a 13% markup, you might see a minor variance in the numbers.

Here's a breakdown of what happens:

Plan SKUs offer a way to purchase a suite of integrated services together at a discounted rate.

One example is the Operations Management Suite (OMS) subscription, which includes analytics, configuration, automation, security, backup, and disaster recovery.

Partner Markup is a feature in the Azure portal that allows partner administrators to add a percentage markup to their indirect enterprise agreements. This markup applies to all Microsoft first-party service information in the Azure portal.

The markup can be added at any time during a term, starting in September 2019, and is not limited to the term next anniversary. This gives partners more flexibility when it comes to pricing and savings.

Partner administrators can add markup by selecting the Markup option under Settings in the left navigation menu. From there, they can enter the markup percentage and review the credit and usage charges before and after the markup update.

The customer can view credits and charges details after the partner publishes the markup. This includes usage summary, price lists, and downloaded usage reports.

Here's a summary of the markup status:

Resource Prepayment is a way to ensure you get the resources you need. Microsoft provides services up to the level of the associated usage included in the monthly Prepayment you purchased.

The Service Prepayment is separate from quotas, so don't confuse the two. You can determine the number of simultaneous small compute instances provided as part of a Service Prepayment by dividing the number of committed small compute instance hours purchased for a month by the number of hours in the shortest month of the year.

For example, if you purchased 672 committed small compute instance hours for a month, you would divide that by 672 hours, which is the number of hours in the shortest month of the year, February. This calculation gives you the number of simultaneous small compute instances Microsoft provides as part of a Service Prepayment.

The Customer Price Sheet (CPS) is a customized document that outlines the prices for each product and service offered by Microsoft under your Enterprise Agreement (EA) program.

It's a detailed breakdown of the quantity, price, and costs associated with each product and service, which is essential for understanding the costs of your agreement.

The CPS includes specific terms and conditions of Microsoft's pricing model, which is crucial for compliance and avoiding any potential issues.

Prices for each product and service are based on your specific requirements, making it a tailored document for your business needs.

A Future Pricing Table is also included, detailing all prices for any future purchases, which can help you plan and budget accordingly.

The Future Pricing Table usually only includes future pricing for products present in your order, unless you negotiated additional price locks for products you want in the future.

With an Azure Enterprise Agreement, you can manage your resources more efficiently.

You can assign a billing administrator to manage your organization's spending, and they can create and manage budgets for different departments or teams.

This helps prevent overspending and ensures that each team is held accountable for their costs.

Azure Enterprise Agreement allows you to add or remove users, and manage their access to Azure services, which is useful for teams that are constantly changing.

To request a quota increase, you'll need to submit an online request at any time. This is a straightforward process that requires some specific information.

You'll need to provide the Microsoft account or work or school account associated with the account owner of your subscription, which is the email address used to sign in to the Microsoft Azure portal to manage your subscriptions. Make sure this account is associated with an EA enrollment.

To specify the resources and amount for which you desire a quota increase, simply list them out. This will help Azure understand what you need.

You'll also need to provide the Azure Developer Portal Subscription ID associated with your service. This is an important piece of information that helps Azure process your request.

Here's a quick rundown of the information you'll need to provide:

Syncing your tags with Azure can be a bit tricky, but it's essential for keeping your resources and tags in sync. You need to change the level of access the Client Portal has for your Azure subscription.

By default, the Client Portal assigns the Reader role, which allows it to import resources and tags from Azure, but not to sync tag changes back. To fix this, you need to change the access level.

To change the access level, follow these steps:

After granting consent, you'll be redirected to the Client Portal to view the updated access level. If you notice a blank screen, refresh the page.