Organizations often underestimate the ongoing and future costs of Azure.
There are two aspects to this: Firstly, cost optimization is crucial, requiring monthly expense management. However, many organizations have locked themselves into a single cloud provider, such as Azure.
For example, one organization we spoke with recently had fully committed to Azure over the past three years, migrating everything from AWS and promising future growth without securing any benefits in return. Now, during renewal negotiations, Microsoft is leveraging this commitment, demanding increased spending for any further discussion. The pre-planned 90 million dollar spend, due to consumption, is now essentially worthless for negotiation purposes.
#Microsoft #Cloud #procurement
👉 Find us here:
—
WHO WE ARE
SAMexpert is an international independent business consulting company focused on Microsoft vendor management, including strategy, cost, compliance, and audit defence. Our commercial advice for CFOs, CIOs, procurement, and IT leaders is always unbiased because we do not sell Microsoft licenses or services.
Daryl Ullman is a co-founder, senior partner in SAMexpert, renowned negotiation expert, and public speaker. Daryl is an ex-Microsoft. He helped launch the Enterprise Agreement program in the 2000s. After leaving Microsoft, he founded Emerset, the world’s first independent Microsoft licensing consultancy, which he sold in 2018. He joined SAMexpert in 2021 as the Chief Negotiation Officer. Daryl is the author of the book “Negotiating with Microsoft”.
This channel is our knowledge-sharing platform.
-~-~~-~~~-~~-~-
Please watch: “Windows Server 2025, Azure Cost Management, FY2024 Results – August 2024 Microsoft Update”
-~-~~-~~~-~~-~-
[ad_2]
source
They likely got a good discount when they migrated everything. They can't and should not expect discounts every time they renew. The ask for more discounts while taking into account existing spend is not realistic. Would they offer discounts based off existing spend to their customers at every renewal? I highly doubt it.
Talk to AWS or any other cloud provider similar to Azure. You will get the same deal. So at the end of the day the enterprise you are talking about is asking for more than needs to be given based off the market standard.