[OSS] Linux in Azure Monetary Commitment

As many of you may know… there is not just Microsoft in Microsoft Azure. We have quite a lot of offerings in the marketplace that are covering 3rd party and open-source software.

But how is this purchased and is it billed against my Monetary Commitment?

What is Azure Monetary Commitment?

When signing an Azure Enterprise Agreement or SCE contract yo has to commit to a minimum usage of this contract. You were also able to commit to an higher amount to bring you into a position for better rebates or to have a cost that is more comparable to an „invest“

This commitment, let’s say 20.000 $ a year, was payed upfront and then available in your contract for consuming Resources.

With the new contracts like the Microsoft Customer Agreement there are no Monetary Commitments any more. But also no rebates

In a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) scenario you can still have a commit, when it is handled by your partner.

Anyway for those of you, who have a monetary commitment: As long as you have commitment left, your Microsoft services will be charged against this. As soon as your commit is gone, you are charged for the so called „overage“:

Marketplace items and Monetary Commitment

Initially the monetary commit was only used for Microsoft Services. So all the native platform services, like Compute, Storage, Network, etc. was charged against the Monetary Commit first.

Everytime you purchased something through the marketplace, that was placed by a 3rd Party, there were two options:

• PAYG – the service is charged directly via Azure and contains all required cost. It shows up as Marketplace cost
• BYOL – the service itself is free (besides the Compute cost, etc.) and you have to Bring Your Own License. That license must have been purchased outside of Azure.

For most marketplace items you are charged separately, and they are not billed against the monetary commitment.

Linux charged against Monetary Commitment

Since early 2018 Microsoft has added some services from the Marketplace to be charged against the monetary commitment. Many customer did miss that announcement, which led to some confusions and frustration.

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Business Apps
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (Premium) versions – Support Plans
• Autodesk VMs

The full list can be found in the announcement