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Purchase options with the Microsoft Customer Agreement

This is the third post in the Microsoft Customer Agreement series.

Purchase options with the Microsoft Customer Agreement

December 14, 2020

In our previous posts, we’ve shared how we’re transforming the way you buy from us and creating a better end-to-end experience. Once our improved commerce experience is fully launched, your company, regardless of size, will be able to engage Microsoft and our partners through different purchasing options that are suited to your needs.

As we started to roll out the Microsoft Customer Agreement, we’ve considered how these purchasing options align to the different types of customers who will transact through the new commerce platform:

As an enterprise and large corporate customer, you typically purchase technology through the enterprise motion with help from your Microsoft account team. This includes multinational organizations with multiple affiliates and multi-tenant requirements, who have a wide variety of roles within your organization making technology purchasing and deployment decisions.
As a small corporate and breadth customer, you generally purchase through the breadth motion from a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partner. You have fewer roles involved in making purchasing and deployment decisions. You tend to have more needs for partners to support IT expertise and managed services.
Individuals and departments across all customer types, from large to small, also need to make agile technology purchases. In many cases, you’re doing the buying and know what you want to try or buy. You can now buy online through the self-service motion.

Each purchasing option is underpinned by one digitally stored customer agreement, which is the Microsoft Customer Agreement. This agreement has streamlined terms and conditions, and no expiration or renewal. Our long-term goal is for you to be served with this new agreement experience for everything you buy.

As an enterprise customer, it's possible that your more complex purchasing needs may not be immediately met by the new commerce model. If this is your case, you can still choose to purchase through the Enterprise Agreement, which supports many complex purchasing scenarios. If your needs are less complex or if you’re buying through a CSP partner today, then you will continue to buy with the support of your partner via the Microsoft Customer Agreement.

We're bridging two worlds as we transition from older volume licensing programs and contracts to the new commerce experience, which will ultimately support all your buying needs.

Next month, we’ll explore how to transition to the Microsoft Customer Agreement.