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Here is something most EA customers never use, and it is the strongest single lever in the whole negotiation. Microsoft's commercial priority is consumption, and its field is compensated accordingly. Which means Microsoft will move on Microsoft 365 and Copilot pricing in order to land a larger Azure commitment. Read that again, because it is the trade almost nobody makes deliberately.
I am Tom, Daniel is with me, and this briefing is how to use the Azure commitment as leverage rather than signing whichever number appears in the proposal.
The Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment is a promise to spend a stated amount on Azure over your term, in exchange for better rates and access to certain programmes. It is important to be precise about what it is not. It is not a discount on the services you use, and it is not a budget. It is a floor.
If you commit and you do not consume, you have still promised the money, and the shortfall is generally payable. That asymmetry is the entire reason sizing matters more here than in any other line of your agreement, and it is why the number should come from your data rather than their enthusiasm.
Now the specific trap. Commitments sized on Microsoft's forward forecast have overrun actual trailing twelve month consumption by twenty two to thirty eight percent. That is not an accusation of bad faith, it is what optimistic modelling does: the migration lands on time, the workloads all move, the new platform gets adopted at the rate the business case promised. Your real consumption curve is flatter, because projects slip.
So size the commit on your trailing twelve months plus growth you can actually evidence, then let Microsoft argue upward from your number rather than negotiating downward from theirs.
Then put protections around it, because on a commitment the terms outweigh the rate. Six to ask for. Annual carry forward, so unused commit rolls into the next year rather than evaporating. Shortfall forgiveness, a stated percentage forgiven on hardship grounds.
A pause clause, letting you suspend an annual commit on a merger or divestiture. Conversion at term end, turning unused commit into reserved instances or a savings plan instead of losing it. A price cap on the committed services, so the rates cannot climb underneath you. And a currency lock, fixing the rate at signature, which matters more than most buyers think on a multi year multinational deal.
Now trade it deliberately. If your Azure consumption is genuinely growing, that growth is going to happen whether or not you commit to it, so the commitment costs you nothing in cash and is worth a great deal to them. That is the definition of good currency. So do not volunteer it early and do not let it be negotiated as a separate workstream by your cloud team while procurement handles licensing.
One negotiation, one table. The commit is what you pay with, and what you buy with it is the price on the seats and the terms on everything else.
One warning, because this is where these deals are lost inside your own organisation. Azure is usually owned by engineering and the EA by procurement, and Microsoft talks to both. If your cloud architects have told an account team about next year's migration programme while procurement is arguing the renewal is flat, you have already lost the sizing argument and you will not know why the commit number came back high. Align internally before anyone talks externally, agree what may be discussed with whom, and make sure the migration roadmap is not being shared as free forecasting for the other side.
The move from this briefing: pull your actual Azure spend for the last twelve months, month by month, and put your evidenced growth on top of it. That page is your commitment number, and it is the one you defend. Then decide, before the first meeting, what you want in exchange for it. Next session: Unified Support, the line that quietly multiplies every increase in this series.
See you there.
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