Recently, Microsoft announced that ISV partners can now create private offers for SaaS and VM (virtual machine) products with customized attributes.
See Partner Center announcement (currently in public preview). Let's take a moment to unpack what this announcement means.
Further SaaS plan customization
Build upon your public plan to further customize the unique plan needs for a specific customer in a private offer. As you craft your private offer, you’ll be able to modify more than just the price of the plan. For SaaS offers you can now define:
- The SaaS billing term & payment schedule that applies to this private offer. Note that you still must provide the desired option as part of your public plan in order to apply it to your private offer.
- Modify the user range available for per user plans, or
- Customize base quantities included for metered billing dimensions.
One-click VM software reservations
For VM software reservations you are now in full control to define the vCPU size, quantity of instances, term duration and payment schedule from available options* in addition to custom flat rate pricing. Customers benefit from a simplified one-click purchase of all reservations included as part of the private offer. Customers have been able to purchase VM software reservations from ISVs since 2022, however, this latest enhancement gives sellers more options to customize a private offer.
*Note VM reservations may be 1 or 3 years in duration and require the desired option to be available on your public plan prior to creating a private offer. While creating the private offer, you set the commitment duration and whether to invoice the customer either upfront in full or equal monthly amounts. **Annual invoicing for 3-year reservations is not currently available for VM offers.
Streamlined customer purchase
Microsoft is streamlining the experience for your customers to purchase products included in private offers on Azure marketplace. Customers can precheck their account prior to receiving your private offer to ensure they have the proper setup and user permissions to complete the purchase. After a private offer is accepted, customers will be automatically redirected to the purchase page which will list all included products. No longer will your customers spend extra time searching Azure Portal for the correct products and plans to purchase.
- Once subscriptions are established, the customer will be guided to your SaaS landing page to provide details for configuration so you may activate the customers purchased subscription.
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For VMs, customers can deploy resources. Note that VM software reservations may be applied to already deployed VMs in which case the customer does not need to redeploy those resources.
Only after these steps are complete does billing initiate. Watch the latest demo video for customers from Mastering the Marketplace
