O365: differences between direct purchase and via a partner
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They don't get paid twice as @thecreativeone91 said earlier and I've since confirmed. Vendor lock in is a concern, though it is only for 12 months.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
They don't get paid twice as @thecreativeone91 said earlier and I've since confirmed. Vendor lock in is a concern, though it is only for 12 months.
Yup, and presumably you get a lower price to make up for the 12 month lock in.
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No. I think I should though.
Having slept on this I can no longer see any reason I would want to go down the Open Licence route. Mainly because of @thecreativeone91 letting me know that advisors don't get paid by Microsoft under it (thanks for that @thecreativeone91).
A small business may prefer Open Licence for no other reason than Microsoft will not invoice on account below a set monthly spend which I believe is around $500. So if you spend less than $500 a month you are forced to pay by credit card. But above that level I don't see a massive difference between receiving a Microsoft invoice versus a reseller invoice.
By using Open Licence you are adding an additional overhead as you have to manage your licences through the Volume Licensing Service Center - always a joy! Then you still have to additionally manage everything through the O365 portal. So you have two portals. I'm not clear on how flexible open licenses are either. One of the main benefits of O365 is it's flexibility and I wouldn't want to hamper that by introducing old skool licencing concepts like Open Licences.
My suspicion is that this is just a massive compromise Microsoft has agreed with it's distributors, who I presume have been severely out of pocket under O365, with no real thought as to how this might benefit end users.
For that reason, I'm out.
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Another key point is that whilst many resellers may also be advisors, so you get support through them regardless of the model, not all are. If, for example, I wanted to use NTG as an advisor I couldn't, since they are not a reseller, so there is no Open Licence model where they can get paid for advising me. I would be limiting my choice of advisor to those that also act as resellers, which not all do.
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OK. Next question:
What does a partner of record do exactly? What should be my expectations of a good partner?
My MSP says they would charge us for all support regardless, so it makes no difference whether we use them as a reseller or as an advisor. I'm paying them for support under both models. Am I right in thinking a partner advisor is really only there to advise on what subscriptions to purchase? Or do some partners provide a certain level of "free" support above and beyond that, and only charge consultancy fees for work that is above a certain level - e.g. migrations.
Do you only have a partner of record so that your consultant can access your portal to carry out work that you are paying them for separately? It seems to me that they are getting paid twice under that arrangement - once by me and once by Microsoft. Or have I misunderstood?
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What an MSP charges or doesn't charge if you are buying through their partner ID for O365 is up to them. Say you come to NTG you want 20 licenses of E3. NTG does get a little kick back, as it were, from MS on that which is a bit less than 10%. So we really do not make money on setting you up with all of this. But we are able to build our reputation with MS and get better and better points of contact to better serve our customers. You also will never pay NTG for your licenses the invoicing is done directly by MS themselves.
Do you want NTG to help you setup the accounts and do the email migration from your current model to O365? Well we would charge for that. Do you want someone to ask a couple quick questions of on using the admin panel. NO we do not charge for that. Can we help you find a discount on getting some money back on migration services (when/if they are available) yes. Are we always here to be the buffer between you and MS support, yes. Do we have direct access to someone in the USA for account management and technical support, yes. Are we generally faster than using MS support, YES and yes we know lots because we use the product ourselves and have done 100's of massive migrations in the last year.
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@Minion-Queen said:
What an MSP charges or doesn't charge if you are buying through their partner ID for O365 is up to them.
Sure. I'm just after real world examples, so I can set my expectations. I imagine we'll be paying around $10k a year, so that's around $1k to the partner. Not a massive amount, but enough to expect a bit of help here and there, I'd have thought.
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I agree. Lots of MSP's forget that a client needs to be treated more like a Partner and less like a cash cow. Of course we are doing business so some money needs to be made but it's not just about the $$ coming from the client. Being able to add licenses to your over all Microsoft Partner ID makes what MS gives back to the MSP better and better as you grow. The more you are doing and getting from your own clients the better and better benefits you get from your MS Partnership.
Hint hint hint we wont charge you for here and there support (unless its HOURS of work).
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I can attest to what Danielle is saying. I bought my O365 account through NTG and they have helped me with the few issues I've run into along the way. 5 mins here, 10 there no big deal!
