Microsoft is accelerating EA changes. Are you ready to act?

For customers on a Microsoft EA contract, the decision whether to transition to a CSP just got more urgent. Recently announced changes represent an acceleration away from the traditional EA toward the Microsoft Customer Agreement for Enterprise (MCA-E) as the primary licensing vehicle for cloud services, introducing new billing structures, eliminating price protection, and changing consumption policies. For two years, Microsoft customers have been asking: Is EA or CSP better for our business? In light of these changes, the time to find the right answer is now.

While no deadline for determining future contract requirements has been officially announced, reports are rolling in that Microsoft will begin moving EA customers on MACC plans to MCA-E as early as March 1, 2026. That means you may no longer have time to wait until renewal to make a choice. If you’re on an EA with an MACC plan, the wait is over. We want to make sure you wind up on a plan you’ve chosen to suit your business, rather than one that has been chosen for you.

How do I choose between EA and CSP?

While the MCA-E may suit the needs of some businesses, we see a long list of advantages for customers who choose CSP, including:

• The ability to lock in current rates for up to three years, avoiding upcoming price increases.
• The option to transact through partners like SoftwareOne, where you can access partner discounts, credits, and bundles, and get support when it’s time to negotiate a renewal.
• No consumption commitments or penalties, whereas the MCA-E carries both, and automatically bills those penalties periodically.
• No loss of the annual true-up mechanism that helps you easily reconcile deployed licenses and manage compliance.
• Unlimited 24/7 level 1 support at no extra cost, with escalation to Microsoft.
• Consolidated billing and cost optimization tools instead of MCA-E’s difficult-to navigate, hierarchical billing accounts, profiles, and sections.

For all but the largest enterprises (and maybe for those, as well), we see a CSP providing more support, more value, and more flexibility with fewer penalties along the way, particularly when you partner with an organization with a strong cost optimization focus and FinOps practice.

What happens next?

Both moving to CSP and being moved to MCA-E involve migration, but one of those is a migration you choose and you control. When you choose to shift to CSP with a partner, you get a trusted advisor who can support you by assessing your current position, mapping your anticipated Azure usage, providing managed services, maintaining cost optimization processes and ongoing visibility, and helping you determine which outcome will serve your needs best based on real data and expert insight.

Not ready to choose CSP?

If you’re not ready to fully commit to a CSP migration, we recommend initiating a single workload CSP to establish your account and billing structure and pin down current pricing for the long haul. You can always increase consumption and add workloads later.