MicrosoftMicrosoftAnders_Larsen_EOC Reserved Instance purchases definitely come off Azure Commit on Enterprise Agreement, also counts against ACR for Microsoft internal scorecards. The Reservation can be paid for upfront (e.g. the customer chooses to pay for 12 months reservation once off) or monthly (e.g. the customer has a 1 year reservation but 1/12 of the total is deducted from their Commit every month). So if they buy a $120,000 1-year Reservation, they can either pay $120,000 in month one, or $10,000 per month for 12 months.
Pre-payment can be useful if the customer has a large amount of unspent Azure committed funds at the end of an EA year. As you probably know, Azure commit funds are allocated for a year from the anniversary of the EA; the commit "resets" on that date; if you haven't spent the allocated Commit funds, they "expire". Example a customer with a $360,000 Azure Commit on a 3-year EA will have $120,000 Azure Commit per year over the three years; if they have only spent $70,000 Azure consumption by the end of year 1 (maybe their initial Azure implementation project had delays), they stand to lose the remaining $50,000. I have often helped customers who had an EA commit where they haven't been able to spend all their commit funds by the end of the year. If they take the unspent Commit and buy a Reservation upfront, it allows them 1 or 3 years to spend those funds in subsequent years.
ACR is always only allocated based on actual consumption; e.g. if you have a 3 year commit for a resource, then 1/36th of the value is allocated to the ACR every month for 36 months.
