Microsoft Azure Plan

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centers. The interworks.cloud platform supports the automatic provisioning of Microsoft Azure Plan product as part of the MS Cloud Services Service Manager we offer. In our platform, the Azure Plan product replaces the older Azure products. It is a pay-per-use product with consumption-based billing. For every active Azure Plan subscription, we collect on a daily basis the usage data from Microsoft and we bill them at the end of each monthly billing cycle. The invoice is produced usually during the first eight days of the following month.

Understanding Azure Plans

In the interworks.cloud platform, since the introduction of the "New Azure Experience", our customers will be able to order an Azure Plan instead of a legacy Azure product (however, our customers are still able to order legacy Azure products via our BSS and Storefront for a limited amount of time).
In simple terms, the Azure Plan is an accommodation structure for multiple Azure subscriptions(entitlements) to exist under it, for order and billing simplification reasons. For that purpose, the Azure Plan is defined in our BSS platform as a pay-per-use product with consumption-based billing. Additionally, the Azure Plan billing cycle is now calculated from the beginning of a month until its end and the CSP billing date on the Azure Plan will be usually within the first until the eighth day of each following month.

Billing an Azure Plan

Azure Plans, containing Azure subscriptions(entitlements), are charged at the end of each billing period (monthly) since they are billed based on consumption. Through the interwoks.cloud platform you will get all the details of each subscription's consumption.

Ordering an Azure Plan

The ordering process for the Azure Plan is similar to the process the customers follow for the legacy Azure products. However, there are three important differences.

The Azure Plan it is a predefined plan (in the form of an accommodating structure) for the customer's Azure pay-per-use subscriptions(entitlements) to be placed when created via the Azure Portal.
The billing period for the Azure Plan, is determined by Microsoft to be monthly, meaning that it starts at the beginning of a month until its end.
The billing day for the Azure Plan, is determined by Microsoft to be issued usually during the first eight days of each following month.

Transitioning from Legacy Azure to Azure Plans

For customers that already have legacy Azure subscriptions and you want to transition them to Azure plan, you should do the following:

Cancelling an Azure Plan

This page describes how your customers or your operations team can cancel or suspend an Azure plan subscription.

Setting Azure Plan Budget Alerts

A budget will give the ability to your resellers and direct customers to setup a threshold for the consumption of each of their Azure Plan subscription(s). With budgets, they can view If the current cost of their Azure Plan subscription is reaching close to the cost budget they defined. This functionality is available only to your customers and resellers via your Storefront.

Viewing the Consumption of an Azure Plan Subscription

Our platform collects the Azure Plan subscription consumption on a daily basis using the "Partner Center" API, whereas the usage records of the Azure Plan subscription are updated ad-hoc. All these data are accessible from the customer inside the subscription details page in Storefront.

Azure Plan Cost Management Dashboard

Current and historical data can help manage costs when analyzing usage and costs over time to identify trends. Trends are then used to forecast future spendings. For that reason, we have introduced a new section named "Cost Management" inside the Azure Plan Subscription-View page in the Storefront where we display all the Azure Plan's usages (current and previous consumption) as well as forecasts, by utilizing filters and groups.

Activation of MS Foreign Exchange Rates Collection via Microsoft Partner API

As you may already know, the invoicing procedure on BSS for the Azure Plan subscriptions requires the obtained Microsoft charges (always in USD) for that subscription, the conversion of currency via the Microsoft Foreign Exchange Rates (with which you invoice your customers or indirect reseller), and lastly the margin or markup percentage from the corresponding price-list. Therefore, in order to activate and obtain automatically the latest Microsoft Foreign Exchange Rates, there are three steps that need to be followed in order to allow the Microsoft Partner API to automatically collect the Microsoft Foreign Exchange (FX) rates, for the Azure Plan subscription.

Azure Plan Schedulers for Usage & Billing

Three important schedulers/jobs are utilized in order to support the Azure Plan subscription invoicing process in our BSS.