Enterprise Purchase Process
Essential
The purchase shall comply with Online Service Premier Agreement (OSPA). Standard OSPA Contract is having Three-Year’s terms, start with minimum initial annual commitment. This contract is only for enterprise customers purchasing Azure service through contractual procedure.
In OSPA contractual agreement, Enterprise customers required to commit and prepaid minimal amount of 50,000 RMB as initial annual commitment, prior to each annual term end, they have the option to true up or true down their next year commitment.
The below 6 elements about OSPA that customers shall be aware of:
Indirect OSPA has similar agreement package, except pricing and order form will be provided and assist to submit by indirect partners.
1. Contract Structure
Standard OSPA Contract is having Three-Year’s terms, start with minimum RMB 50,000 (without tax) initial annual commitment. This contract is only for Microsoft Azure service. The Contract Package including Standard OSPA Agreement T&C, Order Form, Contact Information Sheet and Signature Form. Customers must sign all four contract materials.
2. Ordering
Customers need to place their Monetary Commitment order annually. The initial Y1 Monetary Commitment order have the minimum RMB 50,000 (without tax) requirement for all new customers. For the Y2 and Y3 annual order, customers have the options to true up or true down prior their current term end. Moreover, when customers’ monetary commitment is running low, they can place additional order at any time.
3. Payment
All the OSPA payment must pay through company wire transfer or check. Customer have 30 days standard payment term. 21Vianet will issue VAT invoice to customers once payment is completed.
Indirect OSPA customers pay directly to partners, all terms and payment methods will be suggested by partner. Partner will issue VAT invoice to customer once payment is completed.
4. Pricing
The Azure New Pricing was effective on 1st February 2017, the new OSPA enjoys the same price as OSSA customers and they can check the price details on our website. However, we still have some customized pricing benefit only provide to OSPA customers. they can contact their Microsoft Account Team to get more details for these benefits.
For Indirect OSPA, all pricing will be suggested by Indirect partner. 21 Vianet and Microsoft will not provide or engage in customer pricing or billing.
5. Overage
The customer utilized usage charges will be deducted from their Monetary Commitment term’s balance at their commitment rates until the commitment balance has been exhausted. At that point, customer will be charged as overage. Prior to overage occurred, customers will receive the usage notification sent from system automatically at 50%, 75%, 90% and 100% respectively. Once customers receive those email notifications, they can have the prediction and get ready to overage.
The services rates charged during Overage Period is as the same as the rates charged in the commitment period, Azure system will automatically calculate and dispatch Overage statement to billing contacts. Customer is required to make payment within 30 days from billing date (or payment term). Customer will receive the VAT invoice in next month sent from 21Vianet. If customers don’t want to pay overage monthly, they can place an additional order to top up their Monetary Commitment balance.
In Indirect OSPA, Customers’ overage will be informed and charged by partner. VAT invoice will be provided by partner after customer paid. The overage service unit price will be the same as the commitment service unit price. Please consult your partners for payment terms, frequency, and methods.
6. End of Contract Term
If customers want to continue using the services once the Three-year contract term end, they need to sign a new Three-year OSPA agreement or choosing the option to terminate. Although customer signs the new contract, their services can transfer seamless to their new agreement to continue using the service without any impact or re-rebuild efforts.
Agreement Package
Customer can contact their Microsoft Account Team for contract details, and please refer to Azure Legal Terms References for regulations and law related issues.
In Indirect OSPA, indirect partners will assist customer throughout the contract signing process. Customers should always confirm with indirect partners for any customer related information and Azure services in case they intent to purchase.
Purchase Process
Microsoft Account Team will kick off the enterprise contractual purchase process.
The key elements in the buying process are illustrated below:
Credit Check
Before 21Vianet sends out the contract package to customers, credit check is the prerequisite to all enterprise customers to complete.
Microsoft Account teams will help customer submit the required materials to 21V credit check team and go through the process, the standard credit check period is two working days.
The materials customer should provide includes:
- Business license with registered capital
- Tax register certification
- Recent 2 years’ financial report
- Contract details with commitment, payment terms and Microsoft related contact persons (Microsoft team will help to consolidate)
Please notice: if the next year annual commitment amount is greater than 150% of previous year, customer need to follow the same process for credit check one more time.
Create Org ID
Org ID is Organization ID goes with format of ***@***.partner.omschina.cn. OrgID works as a unique user name to enable customer sign in portal, to create subscription and deploy azure services to use. Different from global where Windows Live ID is used as User Name for sign in due to China regulatory related reason. Customer OrgID is requested when signing the contract and this OrgID will be provisioned in the system as primary Enterprise Administrator for customer.
Initial Org ID registration
Registration link https://account.windowsazure.cn/organization
Registration requirement: A domain is needed when create OrgID, System will check the domain availability when submit the domain name. Besides, SMS verification via the phone is also required.
Create more Org IDs under the same domain
OSPA customers have the flexibility to create more additional OrgID which can be assigned to other users for co-manage purpose. There are two ways for them to create more additional OrgID under the same domain:
- Create via Office365 platform O365 Platform
- Create via AD service in Azure Management Portal AD on Management Portal
Contract Effective
Once all the contract details are finalized, 21Vianet will send the contract package to customer to sign and chop. When 21Vianet receives the signed and chopped contract package from customer, customers’ OrgID will be provisioned in the system immediately. Customer can sign in with their OrgID and start using Azure services.
Payment
Customer will have 30 days as standard payment term, they can use the services first. The payment method is company wire transfer or check, when 21Vianet receives the commitment payment within 30 days, they will issue the VAT invoice to customers. However, please also notice that if customer fail to make payment on their Monetary commitment purchase and submission of annual order, their services will be suspended (more detailed information can refer to the Suspend session in below)
For the Y2 and Y3 order commitment, customer need to follow the same payment method and payment term to continue finish their payment. System will send notification in 105 days, 60 days and 7 days prior to the agreement anniversary about the upcoming due of annual order.
For indirect OSPA, your Partner will assist you along the purchase journey. Please consult your partner for details.
Special Notes for Overseas Customer Purchase China Azure
For the overseas customer who want to purchase Microsoft Azure thru enterprise contractual process, given the regulation requirement as forth mentioned - this is only eligible for legal entity registered in mainland China, overseas customers can sign the agreement through their China mainland local entities with 21Vianet and follow the standard process to purchase Azure forth described;
When customers already have Azure Global subscriptions, and like to purchase China Azure subscription, it is especially important to understand that the services between global Azure and China Azure cannot be migrated automatedly due to services are deployed in two separate instances. Customer can look for migration related supports through submitting support ticket or refer to the guidance on Azure Migration Center.
Benefit
As enterprise customers, we provide several exclusive benefits and deliver a great Azure purchasing experience to customer, including the following benefits.
Price Protection
If there is any price change, either up or down, customers get the best of both worlds. If Azure prices go up for a specific service, customer’s pricing will not change. If Azure prices go down, our system will automatically pass on the applicable pricing levels and adjustments to customers. We will inform customers of upcoming price changes by emailing the contact within the customer identified in the portal and enrollment.
Purchasing & Payment Options
As we mentioned above, enterprise customers can utilize upfront billing through monetary commitment. They also have additional payment flexibility such as monthly payment for overage. The standard billing cycle for overage is 30 days. Please refer to “Renew and Suspension” section.
Azure Support
Customer can purchase premier support directly if they have mission-critical deployment. The premier support is directly provided by Microsoft team.
Azure Plans
Enterprise customers are also entitled to additional offers such Azure HUB and other Azure plan SKUs release in future.
Azure Hybrid Use Benefit: Customers can now use existing on-premises Windows Server licenses to save as they move to the cloud. If the customer has an existing on-premises Windows Server license with Software Assurance (SA), the Hybrid Use Benefit (HUB) offer provides them the ability to run Windows virtual machines in Azure while only paying base (Linux) compute rates.
Azure Enterprise Portal
Enterprise customers have access to the Enterprise Portal, which allows customers to manage their usage, accounts and pricing. It includes the following features:
- Displays customer purchased Monetary Commitment
- Provides summary-level visibility of service usage and costs across all accounts and subscriptions
- Sends periodic usage notifications (daily, weekly, or monthly) to inform the customer of their remaining monetary commitment or their monthly overage
- Provides ability to download detailed usage records and view costs at the account and subscription levels
Enterprise Portal Introduction
What is Enterprise Portal
Enterprise portal is used by Enterprise Customer only, it is a portal as platform to manage Azure service usage and report under their enrollment.
When customers have completed their contract process, they can use their OrgID to sign in Enterprise Portal (EA Portal) to manage their services, billings and usage, notification as well as able to set multiple roles per their organization structure required. Those comprehensive customers-facing settings are another favorable benefit to enterprise customers.
The current EA portal in China support 2 business models – OSPA and Indirect OSPA
How to Sign In
As starter, a welcome letter will be sent to notify customers that the enrollment is ready to use. Customers can click the link in welcome email or log in to EA portal https://ea.azure.cn to start Microsoft Azure journey.
Onboarding Experiences
Definitions
As enterprise customer, they can set up multiple roles per their organization structure requirement, project requirement, geography requirement or functionality requirement. Meanwhile, one customer can create multiple account and up to 199 subscriptions under each account, account owners also can cross-manage services in subscriptions. Therefore, it is essential to understand these terms, it is extremely helpful for customer to build their services.
- Enterprise Agreement Enrollment - An enrollment in the China Online Service Premium Agreement providing Azure services
- Enrollment Number - A unique identifier to identify the specific enrollment associated with the OSPA Agreement, start with V570
- Commitment - An annual monetary amount for Azure services
- Enterprise Administrator - The person(s) identified to manage departments and department owners and accounts and account owners on Azure. They also can manage enterprise administrators and view usage data, billed quantities and unbilled charges across all accounts and subscriptions associated with the enterprise enrollment
- Department Administrator —the person(s) identified to manage departments, create new accounts and account owners, view usage details for the departments they manage, and view costs when granted permissions.
- Account - An organizational unit on the Azure Enterprise Portal used to administer subscriptions and utilized for reporting
- Account Owner - The person identified to manage subscriptions and service administrators on Microsoft Azure. They also can view usage data on this account and its associated subscriptions
- Service Administrator - The person identified to access and manage subscriptions and development projects on the Microsoft Azure
- Subscription - A container of Azure services managed by the same Service Administrator.
Based on the current system designs, there is no limitation for customers to create account and each account can create up to 199 subscriptions. As the Account Owner, they can add other Account Owners as Co-Admin to manage the services together. The relationship of each role is summarized in below chart.
Once customer set up their role and created the subs on EA portal, there are another two portals they can also use: Account Portal and Management Portal.
Account Portal is found at https://account.windowsazure.cn
- This is where subscriptions are created, renamed and cancelled
- This is where customer can add more subscriptions
- This is where customer can edit their contact information
Management Portal is found at https://portal.azure.cn
- This is where all Azure services are added and deployed to subscriptions
- This is where Co-Admins are added and managed
For each new onboarding enterprise customer, once their account provisioned in the system, either Microsoft Account Team or 21Vianet support team can contact Microsoft Business Operation team to deliver the onboarding training to the new customers, and to give them comprehensive training regarding on this end to end workflow and how to use Enterprise portal to better manage their services as well as billing.
Besides the end to end onboarding guidance, frequently asked questions around the support ticket summary, we had prepared a series of hands-on videos which can guide the users to solve most of the commonly known issues. The videos series are uploaded on our website at “Media Center” and please select Enterprise Portal to check more details: EA portal videos
Subscription Conversion
Subscription conversion means to upgrade non-OSPA subscriptions (Such as Online Purchase) to OSPA subscriptions. This is a billing logic change action, thus will not impact the service and deployments under the existing subscription at all. Customers could associate trial subscriptions or Online Purchase subscriptions to their enrollment and the subscriptions will bill against this enrollment. Currently the conversion is one-way only meaning once the subscription is converted to enterprise subscription, it cannot be converted back to Online Purchase or trial subscription.
How to Convert
To associate an existing offer with the enrollment, it requires confirmation of account ownership.
- Step 1. Enterprise admin add the Org ID as an account owner in the enterprise portal
- Step 2. The owner of step #1 will receive a notification that they have been invited to activate their account in the Enrollment.
- Step 3. Confirm Account Ownership by signing into the Enterprise Portal with the Account Owner organization ID provided. Receipt of email notification is not required for login. Account Owners can log in by going to Enterprise Portal.
Renew and Suspension
Renewal
Annual Renewal
As introduced earlier, customers who signed three-year OSPA agreement, and in the 2nd Year and 3rd Year, customer has the right to continue use the services through true-up or true-down their next annual commitment.
Systems will send Annual Order reminder to Customer at 105, 60, 7 days before the next Agreement Anniversary for them to submit their Annual Order. Annual Order must be submitted between 60 days to 30 days prior to the Agreement Anniversary.
In parallel, Microsoft Account Team will assist customer with their next year annual order preparation prior to 90 days before Agreement Anniversary.
If customer wants to place an annual order, Microsoft AM will negotiate about contract content with customer. Once annual order finalized, 21Vianet will prepare and pass on to Microsoft AM who will then send contract to customer. If there are no further issues and after the contract is signed, and clients completed payment, 21Vianet will process the Annual Order after receiving all needed materials. Once this is done, Customer will receive Order Confirmation notification and able to view the Annual Order amount in EA Portal.
New 3-Year OSPA Renew
90 days prior to 3-year contract expire, system will send Agreement Renewal reminder notification to customer. If customer wants to continue using their services in the enrollment, they should follow the standard agreement process mentioned above to sign a new 3-Year OSPA agreement.
For this new 3-Year’s agreement, the new enrollment Start Date should be 1 day after the prior enrollment expires All EA Administrators, accounts, departments, subscriptions etc. from the prior enrollment may be auto transferred to the new renewal enrollment which will not impact customer deployment and service.
Suspension
There are three scenarios which enrollments will be suspended. Once enrollments suspended, all services will be disabled. If customers request to re-active enrollments, customers can follow below reactivation process
Customer does not respond back with their overage order request on agreed time
Azure system will automatically calculate and dispatch Overage statement to billing contacts. Customer will receive system generated Overage Statement by 6th of month following overage. Customer will receive 21V manual Overage Notification by 8th of month following overage to inform on Overage statement, and request for settlement option. Customer will need to respond via email by 15th of month following overage to on settlement option. For the overage paying, customers can pay overage directly and can also submit annual order or additional order to offset overage.
If customer do not respond to overage notification by the 15th of the month, 21Vianet will proceed to issue Payment Advice (i.e. 付款通知书) to start suspension process, which will indicate the Payment terms and due date for the incurred overage. The payment advice is also the first customer communication that all Azure services will be suspended upon payment due, and is to fulfill the 30 days in advance notification per OSPA contractual term.
If Customer doesn’t make payment to 21Vianet after receiving payment advice, 21Vianet is to send the following reminder emails as per below schedule.
- Payment due date -3 weeks notification (i.e. on 24th of the payment notification month)
- Payment due date -1week notification (i.e. on 8th of the following month after payment notice)
If by payment due date (i.e. 16th of following month) and Customer still do not make payment or submit any Order Form, both the account and the agreement will be suspended.
Customers Submit a True Down to Zero Amendment
If customer decides no longer to use Azure services, they can sign 'true down to zero amendment' for Zero Monetary Commitment through Revised Annual order under the precondition of getting special approval. Signing true down to zero amendment keep the agreement active and ease the process if customers later decide to use Azure Services again during the Agreement Term. This zero amendment can be reactivated after special approval. However, customer account will be terminated with no obligation for 21Vianet to retain customer data.
Customer non-submission of their annual order on agreed time
90 days prior to coverage end date, Microsoft account team to assist customer with their annual purchase order preparation. When customer still doesn’t response with their Annual Order submission / (or sign the true down to zero amendment) by its deadline (i.e. 30 days before Agreement Anniversary coverage end date), 21V will send the Payment Advice (i.e. Notice of Payment) to start suspension process, which lists the payment term and due date for the Order Form to be signed back. The payment advice is also the first customer communication that all Cloud services will be suspended upon payment due, and is to fulfill the 30 days in advance notification per OSPA contractual term. If customer signed the Order Form back before payment due date, process the Annual Order as per normal. If customer doesn’t sign back the order form, 21V is to send the following reminder emails as per below schedule.
- Payment due date -3 weeks notification (i.e. on 10th of the payment notification month)
- Payment due date -1 week notification (i.e. on 24th of the payment notification month)
If by payment due date and Customer still had not made payment or submit additional Order Form, account and enrollment will be suspended. (i.e. on or after 1st of every month, minimum 30 days after sending out the payment advice)
Expiration
Termination due to 3-Year OSPA not renewed
Azure services will be terminated upon Enrollment expires for Customer whom signs Enrollment without Extended Term clause or 90days after Enrollment expires for Customer whom signs Enrollment with Extended Term clause.
For Customer whom signs Enrollment with Extended Term clause can continue to use Azure services up to 90 days and charged as overage at the current price when their Enrollment expires
Termination due to Dunning due to non-payment.
If payment is not received before the term date ends, 21Vianet will start the dunning process to terminate enrollment. 21Vianet will send dunning termination reminder to Customer, then if Customer still fails to make payment after dunning termination reminder, 21Vianet will send Agreement and Subscription Termination notification to Customer. Once agreement termination notification is sent out, 21Vianet will proceed with the Agreement or/and Subscription Termination.
Please notice that for both “Suspension” and “Termination” Scenarios, once customers’ subscription suspend or terminated, their data will be kept for 90 days, during these 90 days’ period, customer can retrieve their data once they choose to reactivate the subscription; however, once exceed 90 days’ period, all the data will be de-provisioned, which meaning customer cannot retrieve their data anymore even with reactivation afterwards.
Reactivate
As mentioned in the “Suspension” and “Termination” Scenarios, if customer submit the annual order or pay overage, they can request to reactivate their services for continuous use.
Submit annual order
When Customers fail to response with their Annual Order submission, 21Vianet will follow suspension process to suspend the agreement. If customer wants to re-active agreement, customers should submit annual purchase order (refer to above renew process).
Pay overage
If customer did not respond to overage notification by the 15th of the month, 21V will proceed to issue Payment Advice to start suspension process. If customer requests to re-active agreement, overage should be paid. There are three methods to pay overage.
- Pay overage directly
- Submit additional or annual order to offset the overage
Please notice that the Re-active request will be completed by 21V support team, customers have no right do the re-active by themselves.
For Indirect OSPA, your partner will assist customer in Renew, Suspension, Termination, and reactivation. Please consult partner for more information.
Other Useful Resources
- China Azure website: www.azure.cn
- Microsoft Cloud Tech WeChat Account: MS_CEChina