Is the Microsoft Products and Services Agreement (MPSA) right for you?

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Dan Whitefield, Consultant, Certero
Originally posted in February 2017, revised in December 2019.

The Microsoft Product and Services Agreement (MPSA) is available virtually worldwide and has also introduced the concept of Purchasing Accounts – a buying entity within your organization that you setup to order and manage products and services by registering them to an MPSA.

What is MPSA?

The Microsoft Products and Services Agreement (MPSA) is a transactional licensing agreement for commercial, academic and government organizations. It is an evergreen agreement signed by a legal entity, designed for organizations with 250 or more users/devices, consolidating Microsoft cloud services, software and Microsoft Software Assurance.

MPSA works best for organizations that want to license Microsoft on-premises software, cloud services, or both as required, with no organization-wide commitment under a single, non-expiring agreement.

If an organization reaches 500 users, the Enterprise Agreement (EA) offers some benefits that the MPSA doesn’t, however the MPSA also offers some flexibility that the EA agreement doesn’t, so at this level you will need to decide which is best for you.

Purchasing Accounts Provide New Flexibility

Key to the flexibility of the MPSA is how you setup your Purchasing Accounts, which fall under the agreement, and is signed by a legal entity. These allow you to effectively sub-divide your organization by department, region or country in any way you want. Every time you buy a license or service you get points. You must purchase a minimum of 500 points for at least 250 users within each product pool by one year after you first sign your MPSA.

You can pool points from each of your pools across your organization and the more points you have, the better your pricing will be. There are annual point minimums for each price level (A- D) and as soon as you have hit these, your price changes accordingly.

This flexibility allows you to cover your entire organization under one agreement as long as you reach the purchase minimum level within one year.

Benefit from Price Comparison

When you set up a purchasing account, as a customer you can choose multiple purchasing partners. Every license or subscription purchased under the agreement will go towards your
Total points allocation, regardless of the purchasing partner. This gives the customer the ability to compare pricing across partners.

The MPSA has been designed to involve less paperwork and be a much quicker process than before. All aimed at simplifying your capability to buy and consume Microsoft services.

If you are looking to move to an MPSA, and would like to discuss if this is the right choice for you, our experienced Microsoft licensing consultants will be happy to help.

Gain Control of your Microsoft Licensing

With many options available, Microsoft licensing can be hard and complex to understand. There are a number of different licensing metrics including Per Core, Per Server, Per Device, Per User, Subscriptions and Management Licenses. In order to gain an accurate understanding of your licensing and make the necessary steps to achieve licensing optimization, working with a Microsoft licensing expert for your SAM can be incredibly beneficial.

To find out how Certero can help gain control of your Microsoft licensing please get in touch.