There are several key differences between Premier and Unified.
• Unified costs are calculated as a percentage of annual expenditures of ALL Microsoft products in use, including Microsoft Office and Azure.
• Unified does away with buying reactive support hours, instead offering an “all you can eat” approach to break-fix support.
• Premier Support response time SLA’s were replaced with slower “targets” or soft goals that are rarely met and have no consequences if missed.
Below is a summary comparison between the two:
Unified costs are calculated as a percentage of annual expenditures of ALL Microsoft products in use, including Microsoft Office and Azure. For organizations moving on-premise applications to the cloud, infrastructure savings are often used to justify the migration. What is often overlooked, however, is how that increase in Azure or M365 spend affects Unified Support costs. In many cases, IT leaders are blindsided when big support price hikes triggered by additional MSFT spend lessens or even negates expected savings.
Here is an example from Gartner on how Unified Support costs would be calculated for a 10,000-user organization:
Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of confusion amongst clients making the switch from Premier to Unified Support. Here are a few points to be aware of as you enter resubscription negotiations: