Forum Discussion
Visual Studio Lite benefits - without Azure Credits and Keys
As communicated earlier, the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program benefit offerings—including partner benefits packages, Solutions Partner designations, and specializations—will be updated later this month to support how you build, differentiate, and grow your business.
The per-user monthly Azure credits associated with this benefit will no longer be available. You can still access organization-level Azure bulk credits that come with your benefits offering. This may require an Azure subscription migration for users to continue accessing credits, and we strongly recommend a change management plan for this transition. In addition, product keys will no longer be accessible within Visual Studio. Keys will instead be available as part of the benefits package(s) your organization holds and can be securely assigned to users directly from Partner Center.
Please note that these changes will not be retroactively applied. They will go into effect when your organization renews its affected benefits offering(s) or if you activate a new offering on or after the February update.
We have been partners for 20 years and using Partner benefits.
Again, Microsoft tries to lower benefits, and in parallel benefit package price will increase (due to different reasons).
This discussion and community of partners, should unit and tell to Microsoft Partner Benefits program that:
- Partners have employees/users, that use current Visual Studio benefit, that is (like MSDN), having the user access to keys and Azure credits, for specific user / employee need of test, dev, demo etc.
- Azure Bulk credit was never the same and cannot be used as a same
- Azure Bulk credit / Azure sponsorship, does not have cost control, Azure budgets and other methods. (This is in plan to change for several years, no progress) on Azure technical side.
- Will Microsoft increase Azure Bulk credits to compensate te amount of included benefit usage?
Dear, Microsoft, please leave current Partner Benefits, with full Visual Studio, including Azure credits, and Keys for assigned users, without moving to lower benefit - Visual Studio Lite.
Thank you for understanding, and hope this will not be active in production after partner renewals.
4 Replies
So they finally updated the partner benefits guide at the end to include the upcoming changes and hard numbers. While the keys are going away, for the Partner Success Benefits Expanded (Core gets boned, sorry) and Solution Competencies, they are increasing the amount of annual azure credits you get. It's not an equivalence to the total value of the VSE (in most cases it's like 1/3 of the value) but it is at least an increase.
Definitely doesn't justify the price increase either.I will add that a part of the work of some Partners is around Modernization or move to cloud (Azure!!) of legacy customer software so then can be deployed on newest Microsoft Platforms. To be able to do so we need keys to 'OBSOLETE" software versions for testing and developing (even old visual studios...). These are not included in the common software benefits. How Microsoft thinks we will be able to modernize applications if they remove these per user old keys from the App Innovation program ?
I agree, this is a severe downgrade in test/dev ability and benefits.
Microsoft is punishing the MS community for it's bad company results.
There are more benefits on individual credits than a collective one. On the upcoming crisis more Azure Engineers will become unemployed and this could be the lifeboat for them to keep up to date with Azure know how. Now, they will have additionally to bleed their savings.
What's next on this 'Vmware strategy' ? Paying for Visual Studio Code ?
Bill Gates: come back please!
