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      It’s important you understand the ramifications of removing the spending limit. If you accidentally start a lot of virtual machines and leave them running, you may end up with a large bill at the end of the month. So, if you do remove the spending limit, ensure that you keep a close eye on your Azure spend.

      Azure Open Licensing

      Another option for organizations that don’t want to use the Pay-as-You-Go via a credit card but are not ready for an Enterprise Agreement Azure commitment is to purchase Azure Open Licensing credits from a distributor or reseller. The Azure Open Licensing credits model is similar to that of a prepaid phone. You buy credits and add minutes or services to your phone. Then, you add more credits when you get low. Azure Open Licensing has the same credit model. Units of Azure credits are purchased in blocks equivalent to $100 USD. At purchase, an Online Service Activation (OSA) key is provided; the code is valid for up to 12 months. This means that the $100 of Azure credit associated with the OSA must be used within 12 months. By default, when the amount of credit left reaches 30 percent of the initial purchase, you will be alerted via an email and through the Azure Management Portal. Additional credits can be purchased and applied to the account when you receive a notification – or at any other time you wish. It works a lot like my son’s school lunch card. I deposit funds in a lunch account, and he buys lunches using his lunch card. I get reminders from the school when the account runs low, but I can add additional credit at any time. Details on the Azure Open Licensing can be found here:

      http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/offers/ms-azr-0111p/

      Note that if a customer using Azure Open Licensing chooses to move to an Enterprise Agreement (EA), it is possible to move the unused Azure credit associated with Open Licensing to the EA by making a support request.

      Enterprise Enrollments for Azure

      For larger organizations wanting to adopt Azure, the idea of using a credit card to pay for monthly services is not ideal. Although it is possible to be invoiced by Microsoft, enterprises typically want more granular control of their expenditures. For example, they may wish to have high-level enterprise administrators who administer the entire Azure service for the organization. Those enterprise administrators can then create separate accounts and delegate account owners, who can group like services or groups together into subscriptions. The subscriptions can be used by service administrators and co-administrators. Azure Enterprise Enrollment allows exactly that. Organizations can add Azure services as part of their Microsoft Enterprise Agreements based on a certain amount of Azure spend. For example, an organization might make a commitment to spend $50,000 a year and with that agreement comes special pricing and possibly other benefits. There have been offers from Microsoft that a certain Azure commitment spend enables the organization to receive a free StorSimple storage appliance.

      Beyond just the purchasing options, a key benefit for enterprise enrollment is the account and subscription flexibility and control. Typically, when an individual or small organization purchases Azure services, that user receives an individual Azure subscription with a specific subscription ID. That user is the service administrator for that subscription. Additional people can be made co-administrators. As of this writing, there is a limit of 200 or fewer co-administrators depending on the subscription type. Co-administrators can use the services within the subscription.

An enterprise enrollment via an Enterprise Agreement enables more flexibility in the administration and separation of services by providing three layers, as shown in Figure 1.12. Within the enterprise’s enrollment, one or more accounts and subscriptions can be authorized.

Figure 1.12 Hierarchy when using an enterprise enrollment

      At the top of the enterprise enrollment is the enterprise administrator for the entire enterprise Azure enrollment. Nominate someone from your organization to receive an email and hold a Microsoft account. The work email address associated with the Microsoft account must be someone who will be able to activate the service. Once the service is activated, additional people from the organization can be made enterprise administrators. The enterprise administrators can in turn create separate accounts within the enrollment. Each account can have one or more account administrators assigned. Once again, each administrator needs a Microsoft account unless integration with your organization’s AD has been implemented through the use of synchronization to Azure AD. If your AD and Azure AD are synched, organizational accounts in Azure can be used. (Active Directory is covered in detail in Chapter 7, “Extending AD to Azure and Azure AD.”) The organizational account owners can create one or more subscriptions within the account. Each subscription has a single service administrator who manages the subscription and can add additional co-administrators who can use the services.

      A key benefit is that the enterprise administrators at the top of the hierarchy have visibility into Azure usage across all accounts, whereas account owners have visibility into Azure usage for all subscriptions within the account. Billing reports are broken down at a subscription and account level for easy accounting. The hierarchical nature of an enterprise enrollment opens up a number of methodologies for setting up accounts and subscriptions, some of which are shown in Figure 1.13. Notice that in a functional methodology, the accounts are based on the functions of different groups. When using a geographical methodology, the accounts are based on physical locations. Business group methodologies often give each group their own account. Your organization may need a hybrid methodology. Ultimately, the right methodology depends on how you want to delegate the creation of subscriptions and how billing information and even chargebacks will be used within the organization. Once the account methodology is decided, how subscriptions are used must also be decided. This can be broken down by group, task, location, deployment life-cycle stage (such as a subscription for development and one for testing), and so on, ideally complementing the methodology picked for the accounts.

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