The evergreen contract deleted the one date that forced a negotiation
The Microsoft Customer Agreement is the contract replacing the EA for many buyers: single, digital, and with no fixed end. That last feature is sold as simplicity, and it removes the renewal date that used to make Microsoft negotiate on a schedule. In the EA to MCA transitions we advised, the buyers who noticed too late absorbed 5 to 15 percent annual price drift.
Prepared by Redress Compliance · August 15, 2026 · Microsoft advisory. 16 to 22 EA to MCA transitions advised, 2024 to 2026.
Executive summary
The MCA is a single evergreen agreement with no fixed end date, spanning products and clouds, accepted and managed digitally. It comes in three forms, Enterprise, Online, and Partner, and it is Microsoft's preferred destination for most commercial buyers.
Evergreen removes the natural negotiation moment. With no renewal date, no event ever forces a price conversation, and in the transitions we advised the buyers who treated the move as administrative saw 5 to 15 percent annual drift creep in unchallenged.
Nothing carries forward by default: negotiated EA discount levels did not restate themselves, the fixed term price hold vanished with the term, and route confusion between the three forms complicated billing in estates that mixed them without a map.
The protections have to be engineered: price caps despite the evergreen term, Azure commitments timed as leverage events, and self imposed annual checkpoints with a real option to retender.
The discipline that the EA's calendar used to supply now has to come from you. That is the whole trade, and it is negotiable at the transition, which is the one moment you still hold EA leverage.
The agreement, on one page
| Form | Route | Best fit | Discount style |
|---|---|---|---|
| MCA Enterprise | Direct, negotiated | Large enterprises | Negotiated |
| MCA Online | Self service | Smaller or fast buys | List or modest |
| MCA Partner | Through a CSP | Partner led estates | Partner set |
What changes at the transition: the protections you negotiated in the EA do not carry forward on their own. Discount levels need restating in writing, the three year price hold ends with the term that created it, and billing re routes, direct under Enterprise, through a CSP under Partner, with Azure consumption enrolling through the Azure plan. The biggest risk in every transition we advised was assumed continuity: the belief that the new paper inherited the old deal. It inherits nothing you do not write into it.
The discipline to engineer
- Restate every discount in writing at the transition, and model your effective MCA price against the EA you are leaving before signing anything.
- Negotiate price caps despite the evergreen term, because the drift is annual, quiet, and unchallenged by any built in event.
- Set your own annual checkpoint, calendared and owned, with a genuine option to retender, so a negotiation moment exists even though the contract no longer supplies one.
- Time Azure commitments as leverage events: a MACC renewal is the closest thing the MCA world has to a renewal date, and the commitment sizing discipline applies in full.
- Pick the form and billing route deliberately, Enterprise, Online, or Partner, matched to scale, speed, and who you want answering support, and stop the forms mixing by accident.
- Use the transition itself as the negotiation, since it is the last moment your EA position prices your MCA terms; the vehicle brief frames the decision.
The Microsoft EA and MCA renewal guide
The transition end to end: what carries, what resets, the caps and checkpoints to write in, and the leverage to spend while you still hold it.
Get the guide →No expiry, no safety net
The Enterprise Agreement, for all its faults, contained a gift buyers rarely recognized as one: an expiry date. Every three years, whether anyone felt like it or not, the contract ended, and ending forced a negotiation. Budgets were re examined, discounts re earned, counts re argued, and Microsoft had to show up and re win the account. The renewal was the buyer's safety net, woven into the paper itself, and it worked even for buyers who prepared badly, because some negotiation beats none.
The Microsoft Customer Agreement removes the net, and it does so under the banner of convenience. No expiry means no renewal project, no procurement cycle, no signature deadline: simpler, in exactly the way a subscription is simpler than a contract. It also means no scheduled moment at which pricing must survive scrutiny, and the drift data shows what fills the vacuum. Five to 15 percent annually, in the transitions we advised, arriving not as an increase anyone announced but as list movements, uplifts, and eroded discounts that no event ever forced anyone to contest.
The transition compounds the exposure, because it is quietly a full renegotiation disguised as paperwork. Nothing carries: not the discount levels, not the price hold, not the terms. A buyer who signs the MCA as an administrative step has re signed their entire Microsoft relationship at whatever the new paper says, and surrendered the one lever they still held, the incumbent EA position, without spending it. The buyers who did this well treated the transition as the negotiation it is: every discount restated in writing, caps written against the evergreen drift, checkpoints calendared with retender rights, and the whole package priced against the EA before anything was signed.
The larger point is about where discipline lives. Under the EA it lived in the contract; under the MCA it has to live in you. An evergreen agreement with engineered caps, owned checkpoints, and commitment events timed as leverage is a perfectly good home for a Microsoft estate, arguably better than a lock. The same agreement, signed and forgotten, is a permission slip for drift, renewed silently every year nobody calls the account team. The paper stopped supplying the calendar; supply your own. The vehicle decision around it sits in the vehicle brief, the renewal mechanics you are leaving behind in the renewals brief, and the practice library in the Microsoft hub.
Watch the briefing · 4:03Running the Microsoft EA Negotiation: Sequence, Counters, and the CloseThe negotiation discipline the evergreen contract no longer schedules for you: sequence, counters, and the close.
- Every risky clause flagged with the exact quote, the page, and the replacement language
- Your effective MCA price modeled against the EA you are leaving
- A negotiation playbook, talking points, and a two page executive brief on day one
What the transitions showed, 2024 to 2026
Across 16 to 22 EA to MCA transitions, the losses clustered around protections nobody knew they were giving up:
Price movement absorbed unchallenged once the fixed term hold disappeared and no renewal date ever arrived to contest it.
Negotiated EA discount levels that restated themselves automatically in the new agreement: none. Everything kept was kept in writing.
The patterns: the lost price hold discovered a year later on the invoice, discount resets treated as clerical errors that were in fact the new baseline, and the three forms mixed by accident into billing nobody could reconcile.
The buyer side move is to spend the EA leverage at the transition, because it expires there. The wider library sits in the Microsoft practice.
Your first five moves
- Model the MCA against your current EA line by line before the transition, and price the difference as the negotiation it is.
- Restate every discount and protection in writing in the new agreement, assuming nothing carries, because nothing does.
- Write price caps against the evergreen drift and calendar an owned annual checkpoint with retender rights.
- Choose the form and billing route deliberately, Enterprise, Online, or Partner, and map which purchases flow through which.
- Time your Azure commitments as the leverage events the contract no longer schedules. The Microsoft practice runs the transition with you.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Microsoft Customer Agreement?
A single, evergreen, digital contract governing Microsoft purchases with no fixed expiry, spanning products and clouds, and accepted online. It is Microsoft's preferred direction for most commercial buyers and underpins most new Azure and a growing share of M365 buying.
What are the MCA's three forms?
MCA Enterprise for large negotiated deals signed direct, MCA Online for self service purchases at list or modest discount, and MCA Partner running through a Cloud Solution Provider with partner set pricing. Scale points to Enterprise, speed to Online, and a managing CSP to Partner. Mixing the forms without a map is how billing gets complicated.
What changes when you move from an EA to an MCA?
The protections you negotiated in the EA do not carry forward on their own. In the transitions we advised, negotiated discount levels did not carry automatically, the fixed term price hold disappeared with the term, and the biggest risk was assuming a continuity the new agreement never promised. Model your effective price under the MCA against the EA you are leaving, and confirm every discount is restated in writing.
What does evergreen pricing drift look like?
Without a fixed term price hold, list movements and quiet uplifts land as they come. In the EA to MCA transitions we advised, buyers who treated the move as administrative saw 5 to 15 percent annual price drift creep in unchallenged, because no renewal date ever arrived to force the conversation.
How does MCA billing work?
Direct from Microsoft under MCA Enterprise, or through a partner under the Partner form, with Azure consumption enrolling through the Azure plan in the partner channel. Direct and partner routes carry different payment terms and support models, so align the route to how finance wants to pay and who you want answering support calls.
What leverage does a buyer keep under an evergreen MCA?
The leverage you engineer. Negotiate price caps despite the evergreen term, time Azure commitments as your leverage events, and set your own annual review checkpoints with the option to retender. The MCA removes the built in negotiation moment; the discipline that replaces it has to be written into the deal.
Is the MCA simpler to negotiate than the EA?
Simpler paper, harder discipline. The standard advice says less to negotiate; in practice the evergreen structure quietly removed the renewal date that used to force a negotiation, and drift filled the vacuum. There is exactly as much to negotiate as under the EA, minus the calendar that used to remind you.
Running the Microsoft EA Negotiation: Sequence, Counters, and the Close
Scope first, always. The one-sheet counter to the Multiple Equivalent Offers, pricing Microsoft's asks as sellable gives, business-desk escalation on evidence toward June 30, and a close that is a document, not a meeting.
