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Private offers overview

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The commercial marketplace lets you buy solutions that are negotiated specific to your organization’s needs. Through private offers, you can purchase solutions with custom terms, customized pricing (for up to three years), or test a solution with specialized configurations for proof-of-concepts. You can also bundle up to 10 unique products within a private offer for solutions sold by the same vendor.

To get a private offer, you need to engage your vendor, and ensure they’re a Microsoft partner who sells on the marketplace. You can purchase a private offer directly from an independent software vendor (ISV) partner or engage your channel partner to procure a solution on your behalf with a multiparty private offer.

To purchase private offers, you need to complete these steps:

See private offers troubleshooting to resolve any issues in the process.

Private offer benefits

Benefits of a private offer include:

  • Azure benefit eligible: 100% of purchases that are Azure benefit eligible count toward your Azure cloud consumption commitment. This commitment helps your organization maximize the value of your cloud investments.
  • Negotiated pricing: Get extended discounts and off-list pricing from publicly available offers.
  • Time-bound discounts: Enjoy time-sensitive discounts with clearly defined start and end dates for up to three years.
  • Customized terms: Receive tailor-made terms that are privately attached to the offer as a PDF.
  • Rapid access: Accept and make purchases within 15 minutes after the partner creates the private offer.
  • Multiple product selection: Choose up to 10 products and plans to receive bundled discounts, allowing you to streamline procurement and save time.
  • Trusted relationships: Your preferred Microsoft channel partner can source solutions on your behalf with multiparty private offers (MPO). MPOs help you keep the trusted relationships you built with your partners while transacting seamlessly through the marketplace.

Private offer: Sample scenario

To help understand common private offer use cases, see this scenario with Adatum Corporation and the ISV, Contoso.

Mario is the procurement officer at Adatum Corporation. Adatum has a Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) that expires in a few months. If they can fulfill the contract, they earn cloud infrastructure discounts.

Mario knows that any eligible purchases in the marketplace count toward Adatum’s MACC. To help his organization get the most value for their investments, Mario partners with Sandra from IT to find the right solution using the private offer eligibility report.

Together, they find a well-known SaaS solution from Contoso. Mario reaches out to Contoso to negotiate a private offer. They decide to buy a one-year subscription upfront to fulfill Adatum’s MACC—and Contoso agreed to a 10% discount!

Contoso asks for Adatum’s Azure billing account ID and then prepares the private offer. Before sending the private offer, Contoso checks with Mario to find out who has owner permissions to accept the private offer. It turns out that Sandra from IT has the correct permissions. These permissions are in place so Adatum’s IT team doesn’t accidentally buy unapproved solutions.

Contoso completes the private offer and sends Sandra an email letting her know it’s ready. This prompts Sandra to visit the Private Offer Management dashboard in the Azure portal. Here, Sandra reviews the offer details, ensures the offer aligns with Mario’s billing requirements, and accepts the offer.

After accepting, Adatum still needs to purchase the offer. Because Sandra has permissions to both Accept and Purchase, she can purchase right after acceptance—she just needs to refresh her browser on the Private Offer Management dashboard.

For a SaaS purchase, Sandra still needs to activate the subscription. She chooses the relevant resource group, provides required data, and subscribes. From there, Sandra waits for enablement until the Configure your account button is available. Once the Configure your account button is enabled, Sandra selects it and goes to Contos’s website to complete the SaaS activation.

The private offer purchase is now complete! Mario helped Adatum earn discounts on their Azure infrastructure due to the private offer purchase with Contoso, it’s a win-win.

Private offers help you negotiate exactly what you need. They help align your procurement and IT teams’ goals to your overall cloud investment objectives. The roles and permissions needed when accepting and purchasing private offers ensure a separation of duties:

  • For customers with a Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA), the billing account owner or contributor is required to accept a private offer.

  • For customers with an Enterprise Agreement (EA), the Enterprise Administrator is required to accept a private offer.

Make sure private offer terms, conditions, and pricing are accepted only by those individuals with permissions to manage your billing account.

Subscription owner or contributor roles are needed to subscribe and complete the private offer purchase, for both MCA and EA contracts. Except the purchase for virtual machine software reservations (VMSRs), in which case, either the owner or reservation purchaser role is required. These precautions ensure the resources provisioned through the private offer purchase align to your organization’s IT policy.

In some cases, your organization might need a private plan. Private plans are like private offers but can offer special technical configurations. They're tied to the subscription level but don't support some important private offer capabilities. In general, private offers give a more holistic picture of your cloud investments and are easier to adjust to your needs as they change.

Learn more about private offers and private plans:

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