Using Software Assurance Benefits for Premier Support

Organizations that cover for on-premises licenses with Software Assurance (SA) can use the associated SA benefit credits to obtain Premier Support and implementation assistance from Microsoft. Although not widely understood, the value of these credits could reach the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for large organizations. However, fully exploiting these benefits requires a Premier Support agreement.

What Are Software Assurance Benefits?

SA is a subscription add-on to an on-premises software license that entitles customers to the following:

• New versions of the licensed software released during the SA coverage period
• Assorted indispensable use rights, many related to virtualization, that might justify SA on their own
• “Sweetener” benefits, which have a small but discernable market value compared to the overall SA spend.

The sweeteners, sometimes known as Software Assurance Benefits (SAB), include credits for Training Services, infrastructure Planning Services, and phone-based 24X7 Problem Resolution support. Customers receive one phone support incident for each US$20,000 spent on server products and one per US$200,000 spent on other products; since each credit’s value is over US$1,000, their value can exceed 5% of SA spend.