Frequently Asked Questions
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What are the prerequisites for purchasing an NCE Azure RI subscription?
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How can customers know which Reserved Instance SKUs to purchase?
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How does provisioning and billing work for Azure Savings Plans?
What does the NCE Azure Reserved Instances offer consist of?
This offer allows partners and resellers to invoice customers for their purchases of NCE Azure Reserved Instances (ordered via self-service or through Business Ops). This is a standalone offer and separate from the NCE Azure pay-as-you-go offer. Some key highlights include the following:
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Enable Azure Reserved Instance (RI) self-service option for customers to purchase reserved instances via their Azure portal from the Microsoft reservation catalog.
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This subscription will invoice RI purchased during a monthly calendar billing cycle.
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This plan is valid only for NCE Azure and not for Legacy CSP Azure subscriptions.
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There is a standard upfront margin, and no Partner Earned Credit, as is the case with NCE Azure pay-as-you-go consumption.
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Customers can purchase NCE Azure reserved instances either from the Azure portal if the self-service option is enabled in the marketplace, or via Business Operations requests.
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Cancellation of the NCE Azure Reserved Instance subscription does not cancel the RI SKUs purchased. The cancellation of NCE Azure RI SKUs needs to be done separately.
How does the subscription provisioning work?
Provisioning will create a subscription in the Cloud Marketplace for NCE Azure RI, which will be utilized to invoice the customers for their subsequent purchases of reserved instances. The actual purchases of Azure Reserved Instances SKUs are made in the customer's Azure portal. The Azure reserved instances catalog is not displayed on the Cloud Marketplace.
Purchasing reserved instances can also be executed via manual processes through Business Operations, as is currently done in the RI traditional mode. Regardless of how the reserved instance is purchased, the subscription in the Cloud Marketplace will detect and invoice it as usage. The invoice will show all reserved instances purchased for the customer's NCE Azure subscription created via either the self-service or the traditional mode (in the associated Marketplace).
What are the prerequisites for purchasing an NCE Azure RI subscription?
The customer should have a valid NCE "Azure plan" and Azure subscription. The customer should have signed the Microsoft Cloud Agreement (MCA) and accepted the terms. Only one RI subscription per customer (MS customer/domain) is allowed.
Can I purchase Reserved Instances for Legacy CSP Azure?
No, the NCE Azure RI subscription is only valid for NCE Azure subscriptions. The customers who are on Legacy CSP Azure subscriptions would need to transition to NCE Azure in order to take advantage of this NCE Azure RI offer self-service purchase mode. Otherwise, customers would need to purchase reserved instances for Azure CSP legacy through the existing Traditional Process (via a business ops request).
How are margins managed?
The margins for the purchased reserved instances SKUs is different from the margins for NCE Azure pay-as-you-go consumption. Unlike pay-as-you-go consumption, reserved instances have a 5% margin that is shared between the indirect provider (e.g., Ingram Micro) and the indirect reseller. The customer cost is the list price.
What are NCE Azure Reserved Instances purchase plans?
Customers can purchase NCE Azure reserved instances SKUs in their Azure portal when self -service is enabled. The reserved instances are typically for one year or three year terms. The customer can pay upfront for the total cost, or can choose the monthly installment plan. The Cloud Marketplace will invoice the reserved instances purchased in either mode. If purchased under an installment plan, the invoice will show the monthly installment for the term of the reserved instance purchase. There are no additional finance charges for choosing installment plan vs upfront purchase.
How can customers know which Reserved Instance SKUs to purchase?
As the customer purchases reserved instance SKUs in the Azure portal, the RI purchase experience is between the customer and Microsoft. Microsoft provides recommendations based on the workload that customer has. It is the customer's responsibility to make sure that they are purchasing the correct VM family and region so that the reserved instance can be properly assigned. The assignment of the purchased reserved instances to the resources in the workload is done automatically by Microsoft. Hence, it is essential for the reseller and the customer be aware of the fact that the correct reserved instances SKUs should be selected before going ahead with a costly reserved instances purchase.
How is invoicing managed?
A Customer can purchase NCE Azure Reserved Instances SKUs in either a monthly installment mode or a total amount upfront payment. Microsoft automatically assigns the reserved instances purchased to appropriate resources within the customer's NCE Azure subscription or across multiple customers' subscriptions if purchased with a "shared" option. The customer would receive the invoice around the 8th of every month for the reserved instances purchased in the previous monthly billing period. If the monthly installment option is chosen, the invoice will reflect the monthly installment amount for the reserved instances (over the term). The pay-as-you-go consumption costs will reflect the assignment of the RI to particular resource (for example, a VM machine).
The customer can have multiple reserved instances and the invoice will reflect the costs for all of them. The invoice will also reflect any terminations and exchanges. The reseller invoice reflects the costs after the margin adjustment.
What should I know about currency exchange rates?
The billing currency exchange rate is based on the end customer's location currency (as determined by Microsoft) converted to the currency configured in the CMP (as determined by the provider). The currency exchange rates are obtained via API. Microsoft publishes the currency exchange rates to be used for consumption costs at the start of every month. When the invoices are generated, the NCE Azure connector uses the published currency exchange rates to convert to the currency used by the Marketplace.
NCE Azure pricing is based off USD, and converted to the following currencies: AUD, CAD, CHF, DKK, EUR, GBP, INR, JPY, KRW, NOK, NZD, RUB, SEK or TWD.
For end customers located outside of these currency regions, Microsoft determines a different local currency than the one used by the particular country. In many cases this is either USD or EUR, depending on the location.
Microsoft provides currency exchange rates for approximately 160 global currencies. NCE Azure Connect now offers the following capabilities:
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The ability to manually override the currency exchange rate published by Microsoft.
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The ability to define a manual currency exchange rate for any currency not included in the list of 160.
To perform the actions above you will need to configure the usage_exchange_rate_list as explained in the Distributor Portal Configuration Guide.
What happens when I cancel an NCE Azure RI subscription?
The cancellation of NCE Azure RI subscriptions from the Cloud Marketplace does not terminate any actual NCE Azure RI SKUs. The cancellation of the RI subscription in Cloud Marketplace will disable the customers capability to purchase reserved instances in self -service mode. All exchanges and cancellations of the underlying RI SKUs must be processed through the Azure portal or the Microsoft Partner Center by the customer, reseller or service provider staff. At the time of writing this article, Microsoft allows exchanges and cancellations to be done only through the provider or Microsoft Partner.
Officially, there is a termination fee of 12% for NCE Azure reservations. However, at the time of writing this article, Microsoft is waiving the 12% termination fee. It is important to take this into account, as Microsoft may opt to re-enable the termination fee without notice.
There is also a credit return limit of $50K USD per customer, for a rolling period of the previous 12 months. This means if the customer tries to cancel and returns more than $50K USD of RIs (either one large RI or multiple RIs) within the previous 12 months, their credit will be capped at $50K and anything above that amount will not be credited.
How does provisioning and billing work for Azure Savings Plans?
Provisioning of Azure Savings Plans
Customers with a new RI subscription can have the Azure Savings Plan self-serve capability enabled. This feature can be managed through the sp_self_serve_policy configuration parameter. Please refer to the Distributor’s Configuration Guide or contact your TAM for additional details.
Customers with existing subscriptions who need to have the Savings Plans self-serve capability should request their Partner to enable this feature for them on the Microsoft Partner Center. Please refer to the Microsoft Partner Center documentation for additional details.
Partners can purchase Azure Savings Plans for their customers even if the self-serve option is not enabled for a particular customer. Please refer to the Microsoft Partner Center Documentation for more information.
Billing for Azure Savings Plans
Customers with a new or existing RI subscription who purchase Azure Savings Plans will be invoiced. Both upfront and installment options are supported.
If you would like your customers to have the Savings Plans self-serve option enabled when purchasing new Azure RI subscriptions and need assistance during the process, please reach out to the TAM or PdM.