EA Vs CSP

[ayman_zaher]

I'm pretty sure this subject is the most concern for all LSP's worldwide, especially when the EA renewal coming. At this time, the customer and the partner started the negotiation about the benefits for both EA & CSP.
During this negotiation, the customer notes the price difference between the two programs, which required a lot of effort from the partner side to convince the customer to continue under the EA to get the (lock prices - licenses dual rights - licenses reservation - etc.)
Therefore the customer starts to ask for a discount from Microsoft to reduce the price gap between EA Vs. CSP.

My suggestion here, since there was a great success story between Microsoft and the LSPs, I believe that Microsoft should reconsider its terms of the CSP agreement, for example, to set a maximum threshold of the number of users for the CSP program to be 499 users and starting from 500 users the customer should go through the EA option.

[PerWerngren]

Hi Ayman,

I think that it is OK that there is some overlap as that gives the customer more choice - and it also shows the value of a skilled Microsoft partner guiding the customer.

There are benefits with most programs but we see that CSP is winning more and ground as it provides higher flexibility. And if the world is about to enter some kind of recession, being on CSP helps customers to lower their cost in case they're laying people off.

CSP is also much more that just licenses - it's a program designed for partners to combine licenses with services based on their IP.

Regards, Per