CLOUD LICENSING

Rightsizing your software consumption with CSP

Scalability is both the beauty and the beast of cloud. The magic wand you wave, to control the beast and bring out the beauty, is your license agreement.

With the wrong license agreement, you can easily end up committing to more than you need. Or consume more than you paid for, resulting in heavy true-up payments lurking on the horizon.

For the majority of organizations, a good CSP (Cloud Service Provider) agreement is the way to go.

Our solution

Things to consider

Plan your IT strategy

How much do you need to scale your licenses up and down in the course of the next couple of years?

A lot of analysis, strategy and insight goes into answering that question!

At CTGlobal we have extensive expertise in the infrastructure disciplines that impact software consumption: Cloud, security, endpoint management and digitalization, to name a few. We use this to help you get a pretty good overview of your current and future needs. Even so, you can’t predict everything:

The travel industry could not have foreseen the need for the drastic, temporary downsizing brought on by the Corona pandemic in 2020. Just as the public sector did not foresee the need for upsizing, that hit them overnight.

The lesson? Flexibility and scalability in your licensing agreement is paramount.

Is CSP the right fit for you?

Most likely. For companies with up to 10,000 users, a CSP contract with a technically competent provider is the best solution:

It allows you to scale up and down at will, as your business evolves and changes. And your provider can provide you with support in implementing and maintaining your products, and continuously monitor and adjust your consumption.

The alternative to getting your Microsoft licenses through a CSP agreement is a three-year Enterprise Agreement (EA) which only allows you to scale up and down once a year, and has very limited support (with the option to purchase additional support at a high price).

This can be a good match for very large enterprises.

A CSP solution can also be an add-on to an EA, for enterprises who compartmentalize parts of their infrastructure.

More than just licenses

What exactly is a CSP agreement?

Essentially, it’s a piece of paper allowing you to use Microsoft software programs in the cloud. The licensing program provides you with your Microsoft public cloud subscriptions, such as Office365, Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS), Azure and Dynamics CRM Online.

More and more Microsoft solutions are only sold through the CSP model, making it increasingly important to choose a partner who can offer all current and future Microsoft solutions.

It’s important to remember that the provider who sells the licenses is also your tech support provider, if you need help configuring and implementing those products.

When you use CTGlobal as CSP partner, you effectively get our 20 years of endpoint and cloud expertise on the side.

CTGlobal’s CSP consultants takes you through all stages, and help you:

Analyze
Plan
Implement
Maintain

It is an ongoing process with regular check-ins, to make sure cost and consumption is always adequate and balanced.

CSP with Office 365 or Azure?

Office 365:
If you have an existing Office 365 agreement, you can ask CTGlobal to migrate your subscription to CSP.

If you are a new customer to Office 365 CTGlobal will help you set up the subscription and a company tenant and get you access to Office 365 within minutes.

Azure:
Azure is invoiced based on consumption and not the number of licenses. CTGlobal can set up a subscription on your behalf. You then decide if we should have access to your Azure environment or not.

CTGlobal is one of only very few Microsoft Azure Advanced Specialization Partners, so your Azure management is safe with us. Read more