Today, Vantage is announcing support for Azure Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) costs. This new integration allows Vantage Managed Service Providers (MSPs) using the Microsoft CSP Partner Program to ingest and visualize their customers’ Azure costs, inclusive of CSP-specific discount and SKUs, directly in Vantage, as well as delegate these costs to Vantage Managed Accounts for their customers to consume.

Azure does not provide a unified solution for accessing cost and usage across their customer base. Vantage has previously built bespoke integrations for both Azure MCA accounts and Azure EA accounts, separate from our standard Azure integration, which have different billing account types based on an organization’s setup. Azure CSPs that are a part of the Partner Program are subject to discounts and CSP-specific SKUs, such as Partner Earned Credits and New Commerce Experience (NCE) Licenses, that are not included in traditional billing accounts, and are only accessible via Partner APIs. When using traditional Azure integration methods, MSPs could attempt to get more accurate costs through Vantage Billing Rules and Custom Providers, but this process was extremely time intensive, error-prone, and difficult to automate. Partners struggled to get a unified view of their customers’ Azure spend, making forecasting, cost allocation, and optimization more difficult.

Now, Microsoft Partners can authenticate with Azure using secure Service Principals, and Vantage will ingest cost and usage data across all of their customers for reporting. Vantage will read in multiple data sources to reconcile un-billed, billed, and invoiced costs, as well as join SKUs on public rate card costs so that users can view correct current and future period costs in both discounted costs and public price. Costs can be filtered and grouped by attributes such as customer, subscription, resource type, and tags. MSPs can then delegate these costs to managed accounts, create billing rules for re-rating, and create customer-specific Cost Reports and Dashboards using Azure CSP data.

Support for the Azure CSP is now available to all Vantage MSP customers. To get started, visit the Integrations page in the Vantage console or read the Azure CSP integration documentation.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is being launched today?

Vantage is launching support for Azure CSP costs, enabling Microsoft Partners to automatically ingest their partner-specific Azure billing data for visibility and reporting.

2. Who is the customer?

This is designed for Vantage MSP customers, who are also Microsoft Cloud Solution Providers (CSPs), who manage multiple customer tenants and receive special pricing through Microsoft.

3. How much does this cost?

There is no additional cost for using the Azure CSP integration. However, Azure CSP costs will be included in quota tier enforcement. In the event that your Azure CSP costs push you over your current tier limit, you may be prompted to upgrade. To see more details on pricing, please refer to the Pricing page.

4. How does the integration work?

Partners will authenticate three times via OAuth with secure Azure Service Principals for different sets of APIs used for aggregating and reconciling costs: Azure Partner Center APIs, Azure Graph APIs, and Azure Partner APIs. After authorizing Vantage access to your Azure account, Vantage will begin ingesting data from the various APIs, and will perform necessary reconciliation to switch between billed and unbilled costs as invoicing periods switch over.

5. What permissions are required on the Azure side?

First, your organization must be a part of the Cloud Solution Provider program in order to access the APIs. In order to complete the integration, you must be an admin who can grant consent for your organization.

6. What permissions are needed within Vantage?

You must have a Vantage Owner or Integration Owner role to add or remove the Azure CSP integration.

7. What permissions does Vantage have in my Azure account?

Vantage will assume delegated access to the following APIs:

• Azure Service Management
  • user_impersonation
• Microsoft Graph
  • DelegatedAdminRelationship
  • email
  • openid
  • PartnerBill.Read_all
  • profile
  • User.Read
• Microsoft Partner
  • user_impersonation
• Microsoft Partner Center
  • user_impersonation

8. What dimensions can I use to filter and group costs?

Customers can filter and group costs by:

• Azure Customer ID/Tenant ID (Billing Account)
• Subscription ID/Entitlement ID (Account)
• Product Name (Service)
• Meter Category (Category)
• Meter Name (Subcategory)
• Resource ID
• Resource Groups, Cost Centers (Tags)
• Region
• Tags (including Virtual Tags from Vantage)

9. Are there Active Resources for the Azure CSP integration?

No, Azure does not expose any list or describe resource APIs through Partner Center to provide resource metadata.

10. Does this include Partner credits and discounts?

While this data is not made available directly in the cost dataset, Vantage will perform calculations to add Partner Earned Credit-specific cost rows to your dataset to toggle on and off Credits, as well as discounts where the Unit Cost and Effective Unit Cost are misaligned. Where necessary, Vantage will also join on Public Rate Cards to ensure proper public pricing and discounts are calculated.

11. Can I view usage details?

Yes. Usage data is available per meter and resource, based on the granularity provided by Azure.

12. Will Vantage support historical data?

Vantage will fetch historical data up to your account’s configured retention period. Note that Public Rate Cards are not available more than 6 months historically, so Vantage will fall back to what data is returned within the Graph and Partner APIs.

13. Will I receive Cost Recommendations for Azure CSP integrations?

No, there are not cost recommendations available via the Partner Settings APIs.

14. How often does Azure CSP data refresh in the Vantage console?

Azure CSP data refreshes daily in the Vantage console.

15. Can I fetch Azure CSP costs from the Vantage MCP?

You are able to retrieve Azure CSP costs related to the account you are authenticated into via the Vantage MCP. The MCP cannot perform any queries on child MSP accounts when calling from the parent account.

16. If I have an Azure Integration but have a CSP account, should I migrate my Azure integration?

If you are an Azure CSP and part of the Microsoft Partner program, it is recommended that you use the Azure CSP integration for more accurate costs. Vantage recommends adding the Azure CSP integration, and analyzing the integration costs once ingested to ensure that it matches your current invoices. If you confirm that this looks correct, you may delete your previous Azure integration.