Background
The customer operates hundreds of retail locations that serve millions of customers each year. They rely heavily on Azure to support mission-critical systems, including point-of-sale operations, fuel distribution and logistics, store level inventory management, and enterprise applications powering a distributed retail footprint.
Business Challenges
With its Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) approaching expiration, the customer evaluated alternatives that could deliver a stronger, more dependable support and advisory model for its Azure environment.
Recognizing the need for both improved visibility and a more dependable support model, the customer engaged ePlus to transition from its existing EA to Azure CSP+ and to implement Azure Optimize, the ePlus FinOps-driven advisory service embedded within CSP+.
Solution
ePlus Azure CSP+ provides a modern, flexible way to procure and support Azure services, while ePlus Azure Optimize (an offering of ePlus Cloud Managed Services) adds ongoing cost optimization insights delivered through ePlus proprietary tooling and FinOps expertise.
THE STRATEGIC VALUE DELIVERED INCLUDES:
- Better control of cloud spend through continuous analysis, automated recommendations, and FinOps monitoring
- Confidence in workload alignment through rightsizing and usage-based optimization
- Improved operational agility enabled by CSP flexibility and enhanced technical support
- Focus on innovation instead of cloud cost management and troubleshooting
Cloud optimization is not a one-time project; it's an ongoing discipline. The example ePlus Azure Optimize dashboard included below demonstrates how consistent, incremental improvements result in large and compounding financial impact.
Business Outcomes
Proof Points:
- 16% initial Azure cost savings identified through rightsizing, reserved instance recommendations, and architecture optimization, with > $60K in projected annual benefit
- The ePlus team handles 98% of support requests end‑to‑end, eliminating escalation delays and ensuring rapid, high‑quality Azure issue resolution
- Anticipation, mitigation, and escalation to address compute SKU quota increases during CSP migration
- Seamless EA → CSP migration with minimal disruption
- 12-month ePlus Azure Optimize engagement ensuring sustained cost governance
The organization benefits from the CSP+ customer-friendly commercial structure with:
- Monthly Azure billing for improved cash flow predictability
- No minimum spend commitments, unlike traditional Enterprise Agreements
- The ability to scale Azure usage up or down as business needs evolve
This flexibility removes long-term constraints and aligns cloud consumption directly to operational demand.
ePlus Azure Optimize, built directly into CSP+, provides continuous cost governance powered by ePlus-developed dashboards and FinOps expertise. This ensures they maintain a well optimized, financially efficient Azure environment over time with:
- Actionable optimization insights across compute, storage, and PaaS
- Rightsizing, Azure Hybrid Benefit, and Savings Plan guidance
- Visibility into savings trends, optimization categories, and cost allocation
- Expert recommendations from certified FinOps practitioners
