The questions enterprise leaders bring to us before a renewal, a true up, or a compliance review, answered plainly and from the buyer's seat. If the seller wrote the vocabulary, the buyer should at least know the rules.
These are the questions enterprise leaders most often bring to the practice before a Microsoft renewal, a true up, or a compliance review. The answers are written from the buyer's side of the table, the same posture we take into every engagement. For specific product families see the dedicated Microsoft 365, Azure, and Dynamics 365 FAQs.
An Enterprise Agreement is Microsoft's traditional volume licensing structure for large organizations, typically a three year term with committed quantities and an annual true up. The new commerce model, in its enterprise form known as MCA E, is the path Microsoft increasingly steers renewals toward. The two are not interchangeable. Moving from an EA to MCA E is a pricing event, because discount structures and terms are recalculated rather than ported across. See our EA versus MCA E comparison.
No. The opening quote is a position, not a price. It is typically built on the entitlements you hold today rather than what you actually consume, with an uplift presented as standard. A renewal rebuilt from consumption data, benchmarked against the concession bands comparable enterprises are signing, almost always moves materially. Our flagship discipline is EA renewal negotiation.
An accurate effective license position, the reconciled view of what you are entitled to against what you have actually deployed. It is the only thing that turns an audit assertion or a renewal quote from a claim into a contestable number. Most organizations do not maintain one, which is why they negotiate and defend from the seller's version of reality. See effective license position.
Six to twelve months before the agreement anniversary for a standard estate, and earlier for large or multinational ones. The work that creates leverage, reconstructing consumption, identifying shelfware, sizing Azure commitments to reality, takes time, and a renewal engaged late is a renewal negotiated from the seller's timeline rather than your own. See the twelve month timeline.
No, and conflating them works against the buyer. A true up is a contractual annual reconciliation that you control the timing and framing of. An audit is a formal compliance review initiated by Microsoft, often through a third party. They are governed by different clauses and call for different responses. See our true up FAQ and audit FAQ.
Microsoft's fiscal year runs 1 July to 30 June, and the field is most motivated to close as quota deadlines approach, particularly the 30 June year end. Timing a renewal into that window is frequently worth more than another point of headline discount argued at the wrong moment. See the fiscal year calendar.
Shelfware is licensing you pay for but do not use. It accumulates quietly through default renewals and overprovisioning. Identifying and removing it before you negotiate is one of the fastest sources of savings, because you renew against a clean baseline rather than an inflated historical one. See shelfware identification.
No. We are buyer side only. We hold no reseller relationship and no partnership of any kind with Microsoft, and we earn nothing from products sold or renewed. Our only interest is the outcome delivered against your contract. Across the practice that has meant more than $420M recovered over 340 engagements.
Yes. A quote in hand is a useful artifact, not a deadline you are bound to accept. We can reconstruct the baseline beneath it, benchmark it, and reframe the negotiation even late in the cycle. The earlier we engage the more room there is, but a quote is the beginning of the conversation, not the end of it. Reach the practice through contact.
Engagements are scoped to the work, whether that is a single renewal, an audit defense, or an ongoing advisory retainer across the contract lifecycle. The first conversation is two analyst calls with no pitch, where we tell you what we would do, what the leverage actually is, and whether we are the right firm. See how we work.
An FAQ explains the landscape. An engagement is where your specific contract gets rebuilt from consumption data and benchmarked against what comparable enterprises are signing this quarter.