EA-to-CSP for Azure Tool Expanded — New Access for Solutions Partner Designations
Microsoft has expanded access to the EA-to-CSP for Azure transition tool, making it available to partners with any of the three Solutions Partner designations for Cloud & AI and an active CSP direct bill authorisation — not only Azure Expert MSPs. The change creates a structured path for more indirect providers and direct resellers to convert Enterprise Agreement customers into recurring CSP subscriptions.
What changed
Announced 7 July 2026, Microsoft's updated policy now grants access to the EA-to-CSP for Azure tool to any partner holding one of the three Solutions Partner designations for Cloud & AI:
- Data & AI (Azure)
- Digital & App Innovation (Azure)
- Infrastructure (Azure)
Partners must also hold an active CSP direct bill authorisation. To obtain tool access, these partners must set up a personalised advisory engagement with a Partner Technical Consultant (PTC) via their Technical Presales and Deployment (TPD) benefits. Existing Azure Expert MSPs and Frontier Distributor-designated partners retain unaltered access — no additional steps required.
The tool itself enables a seamless Azure subscription transfer from Enterprise Agreement (EA) to CSP without service disruption — no downtime, no redeployment, no customer-side changes.
Why CSP partners should care
For indirect providers and direct resellers operating a CSP practice, the EA install base has historically been a difficult addressable market. Migrating customers from EA to CSP required manual coordination, complex onboarding, and frequently a separate Azure Expert MSP relationship. This expansion removes that bottleneck:
- Recurring revenue conversion — Every EA customer migrated becomes a CSP customer with predictable monthly billing, managed services attachment, and a retained relationship.
- Expanded addressable market — Partners with Solutions Partner designations who were previously locked out of EA migration can now target EA customers directly.
- Service-led growth — CSP enables ongoing adoption management, upsell of Copilot and AI workloads, and managed service contracts that EA's upfront payment model does not support.
- PTC advisory engagement as a gating step — The requirement to engage a Partner Technical Consultant through TPD benefits means Microsoft provides structured guidance during the first migration. Partners should treat this as enablement, not a barrier.
Operational checklist
- Confirm your eligibility — Verify that your organisation holds at least one of the three Solutions Partner designations for Azure (Data & AI, Digital & App Innovation, or Infrastructure) and an active CSP direct bill authorisation. Check both in Partner Center under Membership → Solutions Partner.
- Verify your TPD benefit availability — Log in to Partner Center, navigate to Benefits → Technical Presales and Deployment, and confirm you have available advisory engagements. No remaining TPD engagements means no PTC pathway to tool access until the benefit refreshes.
- Schedule the PTC advisory engagement — Request a personalised advisory engagement focused on EA-to-CSP for Azure. Your PTC will provision access to the tool and guide the first transition.
- Identify EA target customers — Work with your sales team to build a priority list of EA customers approaching renewal or showing interest in subscription-based Azure billing. Use the EA-to-CSP transition as a retention and expansion conversation.
- Prepare your CSP operations — Ensure your CSP ordering, provisioning, and billing workflows are ready for Azure plan subscriptions. If you run a reseller portal (Tagydes or otherwise), confirm Azure plan SKUs are mapped in your catalog, and that reconciliation processes handle Azure consumption line items.
- Build the services conversation — EA-to-CSP is not just a billing migration. Use the transition to attach managed services, Azure cost governance, and Copilot/AI workload enablement as upsell motions from day one.
- Validate no service disruption — The tool guarantees zero-downtime migration, but validate that your customer's existing Azure resources, RBAC assignments, reservations, and support plans carry over correctly after the transfer.
How Tagydes helps
Tagydes automates the CSP side of the EA-to-CSP lifecycle so providers can focus on customer acquisition rather than manual provisioning and reconciliation:
- Automated Azure plan provisioning — Tagydes creates Azure plan subscriptions in Partner Center with a single API call, mapped to the correct reseller or end customer.
- Reseller margin assignment — Configure margin rules per reseller or per customer so migrated EA customers inherit the correct pricing structure immediately.
- Consumption cost visibility — Azure cost data flows into Tagydes analytics so you and your customers can track consumption, set budgets, and avoid bill shock after migration.
- Reconciliation — Tagydes ingests Partner Center reconciliation files and matches Azure consumption line items against your margin rules, producing clean per-reseller and per-customer invoices.
- Customer portal — Migrated EA customers log into their white-label Tagydes portal to view Azure costs, download invoices, and manage subscriptions — no Partner Center access required.
Source
Microsoft Partner Center Announcements — July 2026: New access to move customers from EA to CSP
Published 7 July 2026 on Microsoft Learn. Accessed 13 July 2026.