From a single seat to a thousand: the right licence at the right price

Every business runs on the same handful of things: mail, files, meetings, the apps people use every day, and the devices they use them on. Behind all of it sits a licence bill that most owners never look at twice, and a provider who may or may not be looking at it on their behalf. We are a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP). This is what that means in practice, told through four of our customers, from a single seat to more than a thousand. No names, real decisions.

The foundation that was paying the commercial price

A foundation came to us with its Microsoft 365 licences bought through its previous provider: Business Premium and Business Basic for its staff, advanced e-mail protection and identity management, all at the standard commercial price. Microsoft offers non-profit versions of these licences at a fraction of the cost, and as a foundation the customer had qualified for them all along. Nobody had pointed it out.

One thing stood in the way, and it only came to light when we took the licences over. The foundation was invoiced month by month, so nothing on the invoice suggested otherwise, but the provider had bought every licence on an annual term. A monthly price for a licence bought by the year is often the secret recipe behind a discount that looks too generous to be true. The surprise comes when you want to leave.

We mapped every renewal and switched each licence to its non-profit version on the first day that was possible. The result is a saving of several hundred euros a month for the same products and the same features, with nothing for the people using them to notice. For a foundation, money does not grow on trees. These monthly savings pay for other improvements the foundation needs to achieve its goals.

The group with more than a thousand seats

At the other end of the scale, an international group with more than a thousand seats. Knowledge workers on Microsoft 365 E3, frontline staff on a lighter plan, Teams licensed separately as the European Economic Area (EEA) rules require, identities managed in Microsoft Entra ID and every device configured and kept in line through Microsoft Intune, cloud PCs, and a sizeable Azure bill for the platforms behind the business.

Here the work is consolidation: one licensing line instead of a dozen, the right plan for each kind of user instead of the biggest plan for everyone, and reservations on the expensive Azure resource types so the predictable part of the bill is bought at the committed price. Where required, their hardware runs as a service through TruScale: devices and servers for a cost-effective monthly fee instead of a capital purchase.

The smallest customer

A design studio with a handful of people. Four full workplaces on Business Standard, and two mailboxes on a plain Exchange Online plan for the roles that only need e-mail. No more licences than needed, each matched to how the person actually works, on one monthly invoice, the term they chose. A studio of six people gets the same attention as a group of a thousand: we set it up, keep it current, and we are there when something comes up.

The newest customer

Our newest customer, a consultancy, joined us starting from scratch: Microsoft 365 Business and Microsoft 365 Copilot Business from day one. Copilot Business is Microsoft’s AI assistant for organisations of up to 300 people, added to the Business plans. For a new company that is the best moment to adopt it: no migration, no habits to unlearn, and every document, mail and meeting within the assistant’s reach from the first week.

What a Cloud Solution Provider actually does

• We buy at partner prices and pass them on with a low margin. The benefit stays with you.
• We match plans to people. Not every seat needs the biggest licence, and some only need a mailbox.
• We check what you are entitled to: non-profit, education and regional variants that a generic provider never offers.
• Monthly terms where flexibility matters, annual terms where they save money. We tell you which is which, and the price you pay matches the term you are on.
• A customer portal where you select and buy software and licences yourself, through us, at our prices. Or you delegate it to us, as most of our customers do.
• One invoice for software, subscriptions and the devices themselves, bought or leased, with their settings managed through Microsoft Intune so a new laptop is ready the moment it is switched on.
• Consolidation and reservations once the bill is big enough for them to matter.

The rule we work by

Low margin, maximum benefit for the customer. A licence is not a product we sell you; it is a cost we manage for you. That is how the foundation ended up on non-profit licences, and it is what we mean by worry-free IT: the right licence at the right price, looked after for you.

See what we offer in modern workplace, licences and devices and managed services.