Microsoft Azure Plan Reservations

Availability of "Monthly Payments" for Azure Plan Reserved Instances
We would like to inform you that for now and until the version 3.27.12, the only available Billing Frequency is the "One-Off" for Azure Plan Reserved Instances. The "Monthly" Billing Frequency will follow on a future release.

Activating the Azure Plan Reservations

The Azure Plan Reservations are managed by the same service manager we have implemented for the rest Microsoft cloud services. So, you must run the Updating the Microsoft Cloud Services Catalogue process for activating the Azure Reservations in your BSS. This process will create the "Azure Plan Reserved Instances" product type, a single product that will be used for the ordering process and any other configurations setting necessary for the management of the Azure Plan Reservations.

Billing an Azure Plan Reservation

Azure Plan Reserved Instances are charged once (for now) on purchase date. The pricing information we are collecting from Microsoft via the pricing API is the cost price (i.e what Microsoft charges you as a CSP). For billing your resellers and your customers, you will need to define the margin you want for your RIs by adding in your price lists the "Azure Plan Reserved Instances" product. The system will automatically apply the margin you defined in the customer's price list every time he purchases a RI.

Ordering an Azure Plan Reservation from Storefront

For a customer or reseller to purchase an Azure Plan Reservation he will need first to have an active Azure Plan Subscription. The purchase process is initiated from the available action in Azure Plan subscription details page.

Invoicing an Azure Plan Reservation

With the completion of the order execution, our system will generate an invoice for charging in advance the Reserved Instance for one or three years. The reseller/direct customer will know exactly what he pays for his Azure Plan Reservation(s) as there will be separate invoices for his Azure Plan Reservation(s) and his pay-as-you-go Azure Plan subscription. In the following example you can find the analysis of One-Time Billing Frequency type.

Azure Plan Reservations Assets

The Azure Plan Reservations are represented in our system as assets. The assets are part of our Billing module and when your resellers or your customers place an order for an Azure Plan Reservation, a new asset record is created in our platform for managing and invoicing purposes. 
In this page we explain what information we keep in the asset record for each Azure Plan Reservation, what actions you can do for your Azure Plan Reservations and how you or your customers can manage them.

Azure Plan Reservations Reports

A report for your Azure Plan Reservation(s) can be constructed either including in your report the asset records that are created for each Azure Plan Reservation or the invoice items that were used for billing them.