Altaris Cloud Partners with reseller Insight in Western Europe

Altaris Cloud is proud to announce it recent partnership with Insight Enterprises Netherlands, providing professional services to Service Providers in Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. This partnership furthers Altaris’ channel strategy beyond the North American partnership announced with DXC in August 2018.

Insight SPLA customers will now have access to the top SPLA specialists in the market, providing License Management, Health, Risk and Cloud Assessments.

Large and Small Service Providers in Western Europe can now leverage Altaris’ SPLA skills, regardless of what tools they may have deployed, to not only ensure compliance but also optimize SPLA spend.

Being certified in both Movere and Turbonomic, Altaris Cloud can go beyond SPLA license inventory and explore options in the public cloud. Knowing what your costs of running workloads in the public cloud is only half the equation. Only by truly understanding your current licensing entitlements can you get a true TCO on either Azure or AWS.

Future plans are to expand this partnership beyond Benelux and into greater Europe.

If you are struggling with managing your SPLA footprint, or exploring your public cloud options, talk with the experts.

As always, be SPLAWESOME!!!

Qualified Multitenant Hoster Program (QMTH): How to host O365 and Windows 10

Learning when you can/can’t allow your end-customers to use their existing Microsoft software licenses in your hosted environment is one of the most challenging licensing topics for Service Providers to master. As a Service Provider who has customers that want to use their existing licenses in your multitenant hosted environment, you need to be well-versed in Microsoft’s concept of “License Mobility” and thoroughly understand how to read the “Product Terms”. If there’s a failure in understanding and or application of the rules, the “customer licensed software” running in your datacenter could very likely become a huge liability come audit time.

Today we’re focusing in specifically on how customers can use their licenses for Microsoft “Online” products (i.e. O365 Applications, Project Online, etc.) in a Service Provider’s multi-tenant hosted environment. If you’re looking for guidance on other Microsoft products, feel free to reach out to through our “Contact” page and one of our licensing experts would be happy to assist.

First off we want to reiterate that the guidelines we’ll discuss here only apply when the Microsoft software in question is running on shared hardware. If customer licensed software is running on a dedicated stand alone physical server or on VMs that run on hardware dedicated to one customer, then these rules won’t apply. When hardware is fully dedicated, a customer can assign their own licenses for any Microsoft Volume Licensed product according to the standard Volume Licensing “Product Terms” without additional considerations for the Service Provider or end-customer. Service Providers that want to host customer licensed Microsoft “Online” software in shared environments have a couple additional rules to abide by..

First, the only Microsoft “Online” Products that are eligible to be hosted on a Service Provider’s shared hardware are O365 (Pro Plus editions only), Project Online Professional, Visio Pro for O365, and Windows 10 Enterprise E3 and E5. That is it. Exchange/Skype/SharePoint/etc. “Online” licenses cannot be assigned in a Service Provider’s datacenter.

The second requirement is that Service Providers can only host Microsoft Online software on shared hardware if they are a QMTH partner (Qualified Multitenant Hoster Program). This program was formerly known as the “SCA Program” until 2018 when Microsoft rebranded [and expanded] it, as they often do. The only major change Microsoft made in the transition was adding the Windows 10 OS to the list of eligible products that can be hosted in a Service Provider’s shared environment.

In order to be a part of the legacy SCA program/current QMTH program, the Service Provider must be a CSP Direct Partner and must add the Services Provider License Agreement Qualified Multitenant Hosting Partner Amendment to their SPLA agreement. It is noteworthy that joining the CSP Direct program comes with sales and 3rd party support obligations, so it won’t usually make sense for a Service Provider to join solely so they can host Microsoft Online products out of their datacenter. For those interested, additional information on CSP enrollment can be found here:

If you’re not a part of the QMTH program, do not let your customers run their Microsoft “Online” software in your shared environment. You may be responsible for paying SPLA licenses for these products during an audit if you do.

These are the basics of the licensing. If you’d like to discuss the intricacies of either the licensing or the technical application, shoot us your question through our Contact page or book an complimentary consultation.

Thanks for reading. Stay SPLAwesome!!

Combining a Cloud Assessments and a Risk Assessment Makes Sense

At Altaris Cloud we work closely with Service Providers across a broad span of industries ranging from EMR hosters, healthcare providers, e-commerce hosters, to infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers who run commercial workloads on behalf of their clients, often known as hosters. While we are known for doing SAM engagements, Risk Assessments or Fully Managing our clients SPLA licensing, we also are experts in doing Public Cloud assessments.

It only makes sense to combine a License Review with a Cloud Assessment. Once we have an agreement in place with our clients and we are reviewing their entire environment to determine if they are right-licensed, why not work into the conversation and engagement a Public Cloud Assessment? We can identify servers that are under utilized, likely end-of-life and ear mark them for public cloud metering while we conduct the rest of our engagement. You can reduce your SPLA spend, ensure your are compliant and accelerate your move to the Cloud.

The output of our Cloud Assessments are the SKUs - specific CSP (Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider) SKUs if you are a partner - and related costs to run the equivalent workload in the Public Cloud. Whether its Azure or AWS, we can get you pricing specific to the region that makes sense for your clients.

Like everything we do, we are tool agnostic. We are Movere Certified, a Certified Turbonomics Partner as well as Certified Octopus Cloud Partner. That said, we will use the best tools depending on the opportunity and are happy to leverage any tools our partners have invested in.

And like everything we do, we are unbiased. We are not a traditional reseller or software vendor so you will get impartial guidance tailored to your business model.

Learn more about our Cloud Assessment Service here or book a complimentary consultation with one of our experts by clicking the button below.

Remember, stay SPLAwesome!

Verified Self Audit vs. a Full SPLA Audit: What's the Difference and How Can I Tell?

It’s audit season! That wonderful time of year when you walk into your office Monday morning and see either a Fedex Overnight letter with Microsoft letterhead informing you that you’ve been selected for an audit or maybe just an email in your inbox (or forwarded to you from whoever is listed as the primary contact on your SPLA agreement) notifying you. Nothing like receiving a message saying you’re going to have lot of unexpected work hitting you over the next few months! Not to mention the actual money itself you may be forced to pay.

A few weeks ago, we made a post about the common Microsoft Audit terms you should be aware of. See here if you missed it (https://splatalk.altariscloud.com/know-your-microsoft-spla-audit-terminology-the-definitive-spla-audit-terms-and-acronym-guide-part-1)

One common question that’s come up a lot since that post was around the difference between a SPLA VSA (SPLA Verified Self Audit) and a SPLA full audit. Not surprising at all considering Microsoft’s audit notification season is ramping up and once you’ve received a notification letter in the mail, it’s not always clear what the implications are. In case you were wondering, there are also One Commercial Partner (hosting sales) compliance motions and Microsoft SAM team compliance motions but we’ll focus on the more common License and Contract Compliance (LCC) initiated audits for this post.

At a high level, VSAs and Full Audits are similar. Both are formal invocations of the audit clause within the MBSA you’ve signed. Both have elements of data collection, both are used to identify compliance gaps in your reporting and both are used as methods to get you to true-up with Microsoft. The method of execution between the two however is very different. Traditionally a VSA was meant to be a more light-weight audit. They are meant to be used on SPLA Service Providers with seemingly less complex environments where Microsoft could avoid using 3rd party audit firms and, instead, rely on their own vendor teams to capture data, analyze it, build a report, and handle the settlement negotiation. The model was something that Microsoft greatly benefited from because they didn’t need to spend the money hiring Deloitte, KPMG, E&Y, or PWC. SPLA Service Providers preferred it too since a full audit with one of the Big Four meant extended engagement time, being stuck with the auditor fee bill if they were found out of compliance, and more wasted resources. Plus, the process is typically just easier with VSAs since there are fewer points of contact, simpler means of data collection via templates and running a few light tools.

Full audits are those where the data collection, analysis, and report creation are done by one of the Big Four firms. They (supposedly) have the expertise in auditing larger or more complex SPLA Service Providers and are (theoretically) more capable of delivering an accurate and complete (depending on whose perspective you take) report. These have a cost associated that Microsoft will pass on to you if you’re found out of compliance. To be clear, these aren’t contingency based engagements for them. They are under fixed fee models and the fee varies based on audit size and complexity. Process wise, there is an “onsite” component to these where the auditors come and visit you for a few days.

Now, how do you know which one you’ve been selected for? Even this isn’t always that obvious. Overall though, you’ll know based on 1.) the notification letter – It often times indicates whether it’s a VSA or full audit 2.) You’ll know based on who reaches out to you to setup a kickoff call. When LCC notifies a SPLA Service Provider to inform them that they have been selected for an audit, a physical letter is sent out and they reach out via email. If they copy E&Y, KPMG, Deloitte, or PWC on it it’s probably a Full Audit.

Regardless of which type of notification you receive, in all cases you need to remember that, no matter how much lipstick they put on it, these audits are conducted to maximize the amount of revenue Microsoft receives. Audits are tricky to navigate on their own, let alone a SPLA audit where there is a historical component. If you have any questions about your SPLA, especially how to ensure that you are protected before that notification even hits your door click here to learn more about our team’s services and if you have any questions on your SPLA at all schedule some time with us below for a free consultation.

Remember, stay SPLAwesome!

Back to SPLA School: This Year You Need to Pay Attention

It’s back to school time you know what that means. Time to start studying your licensing for the coming year and it’s going to be a tricky year with some major tests for your SPLA business. First, some major price changes have been announced that are not only quite large but also hit some of the most highly used products (see chart below).

Then you have the price changes that are slowly being phased in. If you have an active SPLA agreement signed before October 2016, you have benefited from still being able to report Processor licensing for any Windows Server except those running Windows Server 2016. By October 2019 every Service Provider will have to report Cores for Windows Server.

If your SPLA expires earlier, as soon as you renew your SPLA agreement you will have to report Cores for any Windows Server. Depending on the servers you provision, that could double your costs for Windows Server.

Lastly, don’t forget that your SPLA contracts with Microsoft allow them to increase prices once a year, which will be announced October 1st to the SPLA reseller community. During this time frame they can also introduce changes to the Service Provider Use Rights. Both these changes could put an additional burden on your business.

As someone who used to own the SPLA budget at two large Service Providers and worked on the Hosting team at Microsoft for years, I understand first-hand how frustrating it is to manage a cost that isn't predictable.

Myself and the team at Altaris know very specific ways we can lower your SPLA spend. No tricks, just simple things that are either overlooked or not understood.

Behind all these price changes is Microsoft’s clear strategy to get service providers to move workloads to Azure. If you want to explore these options to offset these ballooning SPLA costs, we can help you with Cloud Assessments, identify workloads suitable for migration to the public cloud and provide specific pricing / costs for doing so.

2019 Price Increases

Microsoft announced price increase for the below products. The price increases will take effect January 1st, 2019, so for your February reporting of January usage. Remember, this is just Microsoft’s increase. Your reseller may charge a premium on top of this.

Let us make this school year a success. Book a complementary consultation here to talk about your SPLA needs and let us help you explore your options.

As always, be SPLAWESOME!!

Altaris Cloud Presenting at Microsoft InSpire 2018

If you plan on attending Microsoft InSpire in Las Vegas this year, we hope you'll come and see us present at session MSP10. We will be showcasing our License Management as a Service, leveraging cutting-edge tools and SPLA experts. Managed Service Providers and Hosters will learn the full benefits of outsourcing License Management through an engagement that goes way beyond simple inventory, and covers the ongoing work we do to optimize both software and hardware in the modern datacenter.

Compliance and Risk Management are just a couple of the benefits of License Management as a Service. Under reporting and over reporting almost always lead to incorrect customer billing. At Altaris Cloud, we manage the full life cycle and the benefits pay for the service and beyond.

We hope to see you at InSpire. If you want to schedule a meeting, click here or just email us at info@altariscloud.com.

BE SPLAWESOME!

Microsoft Audit Season: Top 10 SPLA Audit Traps

It's that time of year when Microsoft puts together its list of audit candidates for next fiscal year. Being audited is not a matter of IF, it's a matter of WHEN. It's INEVITABLE and you need to be prepared. Altaris Cloud was formed specifically to solve for this problem. We have seen too many businesses destroyed through SPLA audits. We want to help partners so we've written a white paper detailing what we see as the Top 10 SPLA Audit Traps.

This White Paper represents the collective experience of our staff of former SPLA auditors from the Big 4 audit firms, combined with that of our president, Adam Longacre. Adam ran the SPLA audit program at Microsoft for years and was himself involved in more than 800 audits. You can download this limited distribution White Paper directly from our website.

At Altaris Cloud, we’re pro-Microsoft, but anti-audit. We work on behalf of SPLA Partners to ensure they’re right-licensed. We not only take the burden of license management off a SPLA Partner’s plate, but we also remove the audit threat and huge financial liabilities that often come with it.

If you have questions, we’re happy to set up a complimentary consultation. If you are attending Microsoft Inspire in Las Vegas, we’d love to book a table to meet.

As Always,

Be SPLAWESOME!

BIG CHANGES COMING FOR CSP DIRECT PARTNERS

Our sources at Microsoft have told us there will be new requirements for CSP Direct partners (formally referred to as Tier 1). Apparently, by either the partner's annual re-enrollment date or August 31st, 2018, (whichever is later), Direct partners must either purchase cloud support from an advanced partner or leverage direct Microsoft Premiere Support. Both come at a hefty cost and dig further into CSP margins.

Microsoft has moved away from Premiere support to the new Unified Support model, under which Gartner says most Enterprises will see a 25% to 30% price increase. For a comparison of partner delivered support vs. Microsoft Unified Support check out our friends at USCloud.

This move does feel like Microsoft may have authorized too many Direct CSP partners and now wants to either make sure they have solid support behind them or go through a CSP Reseller (formally Tier 2). The challenge with that is, the margins aren’t as good as the Direct model.

While many partners signed up for CSP Direct to get the QMTH (Qualified Multi Tenant Hosting) benefits that give use rights for a partner to install a copy of office on a partner hosted server, others truly see a new market opportunity selling CSP solutions.

We’ve also heard that a partner must offer a managed service to qualify to be a Direct CSP partner. This has always been a requirement of the program but not strictly enforced.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft enforces all of this going forward and makes a partner choose either an expensive support option, lower margins or not having their CSP agreement renewed on it’s anniversary (check out the fine print of your CSP agreement, Term and Termination, Section 12 a. and b. - it can be terminated without cause)

If a partner is terminated, what hasn’t been made clear is what will happen to any customers the partner has onboarded to date. If the partner joined the CSP program to leverage QMTH use rights, installs a copy of Office on a server for an end customer, and then has their CSP agreement terminated, are they non-compliant?

Feels like a grey area, which is our specialty.

If you are struggling with compliance related to your CSP, book your free consultation and talk with one of our licensing experts.

As Always,

Be SPLAWESOME!