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Our partners and customers are constantly innovating to keep pace with rapid market shifts and technological advancements. As part of this accelerated journey, they often face challenges such as sprawling systems, siloed teams, and technical debt. To address these issues, a unified platform is essential.
With Microsoft’s investment in Azure Arc, we believe Azure is the solution. Azure Arc crosses the boundaries of hybrid, multicloud, edge, and IoT, offering the next level of modularity, integration, and simplicity through the adaptive cloud approach.
The adaptive cloud approach
The adaptive cloud approach unifies siloed teams, distributed sites, and sprawling systems into a single operations, security, application, and data model. This enables organizations to leverage cloud-native and AI technologies across hybrid, multicloud, edge, and IoT environments. By shifting from a reactive posture to proactive evolution, businesses can anticipate and act upon changes in market trends, customer needs, and technological advancements ahead of time, optimizing resource usage and mitigating risks before they manifest.
The momentum we have with Azure Arc is building, with hundreds of partners and thousands of customers in the Americas leveraging it as a profitable path from SPLA. For example, Microsoft partner Rackspace has successfully implemented the adaptive cloud approach, resulting in significant savings of $40 million in total cost of ownership. Read more about the Rackspace success story.
Why now—upcoming SPLA price increase
Microsoft has released price changes for the Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA) program. As part of the announcement, licensing prices are changing for the following products, effective January 1, 2025.
| Product | Price increase |
|---|---|
| Windows Server Active Directory Rights Management Services (SAL) | 10% |
| Windows Server Datacenter | 10% |
| Windows Server Standard | 10% |
| System Center | 10% |
| Core Infrastructure Server (CIS) Suite | 10% |
| Office Suites and Multi Language Pack | 10% |
| Dynamics 365 (i.e., Customer Service, Sales) except Team Members | 11% |
| Dynamics 365 Team Members | No change |
| Dynamics GP, Dynamics NAV, Dynamics SL | 11% |
| Dynamics AX | 17% |
Get started—explore modernization paths from SPLA with the adaptive cloud
We’re here to help you maximize the value of your investment and continue to be the bridge to secure AI innovation for your customers.
We encourage you to reach out to the Microsoft Datacenter Optimization (DCO) team to explore how the adaptive cloud can benefit your organization. The DCO team is ready to assist you in navigating this transition from SPLA and exploring paths as a Cloud Solution Provider or Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA). Here is a summary of the paths you can consider:
| CSP | MCA-E | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pathways forward | Windows Server | SQL Server | Remote Desktop | MSP | ISV |
| Azure Arc-enabled PAYG Licensing | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Azure Stack HCI | ✔ | AVD | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Software Subscription I SA: Self-Hosting Benefit | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Software Subscription I SA: Virtualization Benefit | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
We appreciate your continued partnership and look forward to helping you achieve new heights with the adaptive cloud.
Additional resources
- Tune in to the Hybrid Cloud Partners podcast.
- Learn more about how to innovate on an adaptive cloud.
- Visit Arc Jumpstart to try Azure Arc.
- Read the blog Advancing hybrid cloud to adaptive cloud with Azure.
Join the conversation
Want to explore this and other topics you care about with Microsoft and other US partners? Head over to the Microsoft Americas Partner Community on LinkedIn.
