A programme in which a Microsoft partner, not Microsoft, holds the customer relationship: it decides pricing, invoices the customer and handles first-line support. Azure reaches customers through it as an Azure plan.
Also called CSP.
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In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Cloud Solution Provider in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Azure plan
The form Azure takes when bought through a Cloud Solution Provider. Only the partner can set one up, under its Microsoft Partner Agreement, and the resulting subscriptions live in the customer's own tenant.
Related terms
- Billing offer
Whether you buy through EA, MCA or CSP. Together with the Entra tenant tied to it, the Cloud Adoption Framework sees this agreement as the top level everything in Azure lines up under.
- DAP
The older CSP model for partner access, which handed partners permanent, wide-ranging administrator rights in customer tenants, Global Administrator included. It is being phased out and replaced by granular delegated admin privileges (GDAP).
- Group Policy analytics
Takes backups of GPOs, works out which of their settings MDM supports through a CSP, and moves the supported ones into a settings catalog policy in Intune.
- Local user group membership
A Windows profile under Endpoint security > Account protection. Through the LocalUsersAndGroups CSP it can put people into, take them out of, or completely replace the membership of local groups like Administrators.
- MDM
Mobile device management: a service such as Microsoft Intune controlling the settings, security and apps of enrolled devices. Intune can push Defender configuration this way using Policy CSP and OMA-URI.
- MDMWinsOverGP
Set through ControlPolicyConflict in the Policy CSP, this gives MDM priority whenever Group Policy also sets one of the same Policy CSP settings. It has no effect on separate CSPs, for example Defender or PassportForWork.
- Microsoft Partner Agreement
The agreement Cloud Solution Provider partners use to manage Azure plan subscriptions for their customers, with one billing profile for each currency. Subscriptions can be created through code under it, but the DevTest offer is not available.
- PKID
Device makers and CSP partners may register machines for Autopilot using this ID, which stands in for the hardware hash.