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What you need to know about the new commerce experience

The new commerce experience in the Cloud Solution Provider program accelerates your business growth and your customers’ cloud adoption. Become a partner or sign in to learn how.
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The new commerce experience makes transacting licenses and attaching and managing your services easier

The new commerce experience in the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program accelerates your business growth and your customers’ cloud adoption.

See how the new commerce experience improves the customer experience and your profitability

Standardization of offers, policies, and terms is creating parity in how and where customers buy. The new commerce experience provides you with more opportunities to sell and upsell to a larger set of customers.
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Faster time to value with solutions from Microsoft and partners
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Increased flexibility without compromising control
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Optimize costs and unlock new savings
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Built on a foundation of trust and security
Learn more about the Microsoft investments in the CSP program and new commerce experience, designed to deliver more benefits to you and your customers.
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Stay informed and prepared

Visit this page often to learn more about upcoming program changes and opportunities.

Match customer needs with flexible purchasing options

The new commerce experience lets you recommend the purchasing motion (CSP, EA, or self-service) that best fits a customer’s intent and service needs. This flexibility reduces the time and costs associated with managing multiple licensing programs and optimizes economics for you.

Our partners have opportunity to sell to customers across all of our purchasing motions, the breadth (SMB) motion through CSP is where most Microsoft customers purchase and where we can provide best-in-class partner economics. This includes wholesale pricing and graduated incentives, optimized for deals below 2,400 seats for new commerce seat-based offers, or Azure deals below $1M USD annualized consumption. Partners can sell deals of more than 2,400 seats through CSP, but the underlying deal economics will be more compelling through the Enterprise Agreement (EA) at this higher seat count.

Ensure you’re informed

Optimizing purchasing motions

Read about the ways the new commerce experience in CSP optimizes purchasing and profitability.

Read the announcements

Learn about recent and planned changes the new commerce experience is bringing to CSP.

Review resources for the new commerce seat-based offers

Review and understand the details of and guidance for the changes to CSP.

Review resources for the new commerce experience for Azure in CSP

Review and understand the details of and guidance for the Azure in CSP in the new commerce experience.

Explore the new commerce experience for Azure and become eligible for partner earned credit

The new commerce experience for Azure in CSP aligns across the customer purchasing motions, uses a single global price list, and provides new transition and management tools like Azure Cost Management and Azure Lighthouse for tenant management. Partners with admin access to subscriptions are eligible for partner earned credit (PEC). PEC provides a new mechanism for partners to drive more revenue with continuous governance of customer Azure environments.

Prepare yourself

Learn about Azure in CSP

Review the benefits, program changes, and roadmap for the new Azure offer.

Dive deeper with these resources

Understand the tools and opportunities and discover how the new Azure offer in CSP impacts your business.

Partner earned credit (PEC) explained

Learn how to become eligible for the PEC for continuous governance of customer Azure environments.

Take the partner earned credit training

Build expertise in eligibility, scenarios, role-based access, and monitoring your earned credit in this on-demand training.

Sell signature solutions with seat-based offers in CSP

Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Windows 365 are signature solutions that customers know and rely on to address a wide range of business scenarios. You can now sell these products in the new commerce experience in the CSP program, offering customers a consistent and simplified purchasing experience. Begin transacting now with the technical release and get prepared for general availability in January 2022. Additionally, two introductory timebound promotions are being made available from January 10th which will accelerate our customers transition to the new commerce experience.

Prepare yourself

Get an overview of new commerce seat-based offers

Read this blog for a program overview, roadmap, and information about promotions.

Learn more about new commerce seat-based offers in CSP

Understand the opportunities and program terms and prepare to sell seat-based offers in CSP.

Take advantage of promotions

Use the Global Promo Readiness guide to get the details on promotions in market that your customers may be eligible for.

Use APIs to manage customer subscriptions

Review documentation for using APIs for selling, managing, and billing seat-based offers.

Watch this session about the new seat-based offers

This webinar will help you get ready to transact these offers, covering new functionalities, capabilities, and policies.

New CSP earning opportunities when you enroll in the Microsoft Commerce Incentive (MCI) program

As part of our path to consolidate and simplify incentives for our partners, the Microsoft Commerce Incentive (MCI) program now includes earning opportunities for offers sold through the new commerce experience in CSP.

Prepare yourself

Learn about earning in CSP with MCI

Review the details about how you can take advantage of this incentive program.

Enroll in MCI

In Partner Center, select Incentives, and then select Enroll. Leverage rate cards to update economic modeling.

Open License program transition to CSP

After December 31, 2021, partners will no longer be able to transact in the Open License program. Customers can now purchase perpetual licenses along with cloud services through partners via the CSP program. Learn about this transition so you can migrate your existing Open License business to CSP perpetual licensing, and help your customers experience a smooth transition. Use this change as an opportunity to help migrate customers to cloud subscriptions.

Prepare yourself

Watch the overview video

Learn the basics about the Open License to CSP transition in this short video.

Get more details

Review these materials to learn even more about the Open License to CSP transition.

Enroll in CSP

If you aren’t already enrolled, follow these instructions and enroll today.

Direct bill eligibility

To sell in the direct bill program in CSP, a partner is required to have $300K in trailing-12-months CSP revenue and an active Microsoft support contract, either Advanced Support for Partners (ASfP) or Premier Support for Partners (PSfP). If your company does not meet these requirements, you’ll need to transact in CSP as an indirect reseller after establishing a partnership with an indirect provider.

Prepare yourself

Switch from direct bill to indirect reseller in CSP

Follow these steps to transition from direct bill partner to indirect reseller.

Find an indirect provider

Review the list of US indirect providers to find a good fit for your business and customer base.