3 Best Practices to Leverage Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) as an ISV

If you are an ISV planning to sell your solutions in the Azure marketplace or have already established a presence there, Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment or MACC is something you should definitely know about. Chances are you might have moved to the Azure marketplace to enable your customers to utilize the same. This article will help you understand everything you need to know about Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment and how you can leverage the same to boost your revenue and business.

Let’s get the basics in place before moving on. Many organizations, that could potentially be your customers, make a contractual commitment to Microsoft about a specific amount of Azure spend over time. It can be seen as a commitment to utilize at least that amount of Azure spend to leverage certain benefits over time. Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment can be used by the customers to transact with various publishers, both Microsoft and others, for their products and services sold through the Azure marketplace. In a way, it becomes a currency for transactions with ISVs and other partners where teams do not have to go back again and again for budget approvals.

As an ISV, there are several reasons why you should know about Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment and how it can help you accelerate your business growth.

Better deal close rate

As you know Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment is a contractual commitment, i.e. Azure spends that an organization has already committed to and , hence, has to use, else it becomes a monetary liability for them. Therefore, if you sell your solution through the Azure marketplace, chances are that you will be able to attract the customers with committed spends more than your competitors who may not have a cloud presence. This suggests that MACC is an effective program or means for you to augment your rate of closing deals and capture a greater market share.

Shorter sales cycle

The second major reason that you should be interested in Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment as an ISV is the length of your sales cycle. Under the conventional sales cycle, there are several steps along the way. One of the most time consuming tasks is when your customer goes back to their team for budgetary allocations and there is a disconnect for their team. However, when the Azure spends are already committed, the budgetary allocations become a smooth process as no extra amount or part of the budget is sought. In a way, they will be using the budget they already have approvals to spend, making your sales cycle considerably shorter, enabling you to close deals faster, and thus, focus on newer deals.

Quicker revenue realization

Finally, taking cue from the second point, because you will be capitalizing on the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment of your customers, you will also be able to realize revenue faster. There are a few reasons for that. One, the customer doesn’t have to provide an extra budget whose disbursal can be time consuming. Second, as a verified Microsoft partner, you will be subject to little less due diligence, making payments faster. Furthermore, since payments will be routed through Azure, you can expect a seamless and hassle free experience for selling your SaaS solution.

As an ISV, your offers need to be eligible for the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment program to leverage the benefits mentioned above. Not all offers can be enrolled in MACC and following is the list of requirements to ensure your offer can be.

1. The offer must be transactable and should be priced above $0.00, free and BYOL offers do not fall under the transactable category and, hence, are not eligible for MACC
2. It should be Azure IP co-sell incentivized.
3. The offer must be published live in the Azure marketplace.

As an ISV, you can easily check whether or not your offer is enrolled in MACC. Simply sign in to the Partner Center and under marketplace offers, select the offer you wish to check and you can see the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment status as enrolled or not enrolled.

Based on the requirements for an offer to be enrolled for MACC, there are several ways you can prepare your solution and team to leverage the benefits.

Publish offer (s) in the Azure marketplace

The first and the most obvious step is to take your SaaS solution to Azure marketplace. For the same, you need to register yourself on the Microsoft Partner Center and comply with all the legal and technical requirements. Next step is to prepare your solution for the Azure marketplace. This generally requires some API integrations which can need engineering efforts if you do it on your own, taking almost 2-3 weeks. Fortunately, with SaaSify’s zero engineering platform, you can publish your offers within a week. As a white labeled solution, SaaSify enables you to create an exemplary brand experience for your customers with customizable offers and a lot more. With that you will be one step closer to utilizing Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment of your customers.

Ensure that your offers are transactable

As mentioned before, you need to ensure that your offer is transactable. Essentially, a transactable offer is one in which Microsoft facilitates the exchange of money for a software license on the publisher’s behalf. Offers based on Contact Me and other components cannot be leveraged to utilize MACC. It is only through transactable offers that you can use MACC because it is the only way to enable the customer to transact with you through Microsoft where the latter acts on your behalf.Thus, to effectively utilize Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment, you can either create new offers which are transactable or convert your existing ones to transact offers.

Gain Azure IP co-sell status

To effectively utilize Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment, you need to gain the Azure IP co-sell status. However, this is not something you can simply buy from Microsoft. Rather, your consistency in the Azure marketplace will enable you to get the same. The requirements include that:

• You must have a billed revenue threshold of $100k with your transactable offer over the trailing 12-month period.
• You should pass the Microsoft technical validation process for Azure-based solution; the solution must be built with >50% repeatable IP code on Azure. The transactable Azure VMs and Azure Application solutions on the commercial marketplace will meet this requirement by default.
• Upload a reference architecture diagram with your Co-sell documents in Partner Center for review. For guidance on creating this diagram, see Reference architecture diagram. For information about uploading the diagram, see Configure Co-sell for a commercial marketplace offer.

Once you achieve the Azure IP co-sell status, you will not only be able to leverage MACC benefits for your SaaS solution, you will also have the opportunity to count 3rd party software toward a customer’s MACC.

As we conclude, it is quite evident that if you start selling your solution in the Azure marketplace, there are several ways in which you can capture and capitalize on the existing Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment of your customers and even acquire new ones with the same requirement. However, taking your solution to Azure marketplace can be overwhelming at the first look, but SaaSify is here to help you out. With SaaSify, you can:

• Go to market within days without having to make any significant engineering changes to your software
• Access integrations to simplify selling on marketplaces and drive business growth
• Create your brand experience with custom domain name, brand logo and user experience to boost your brand visibility.
• Manage all your potential and existing customers from one dashboard
• Integrate custom subscription offers across different usage meters

Book a demo today to learn more about utilizing Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment effectively with SaaSify.