I recently found myself in a situation where I tried to log a support request on my customer’s Microsoft Azure subscription, only to find that they didn’t have any eligible support agreements in place.

That seemed strange, as from 1 May 2016, Microsoft is offering a 12-month support upgrade to all customers that have or intend to buy Microsoft Azure services on an Enterprise Agreement (EA), except those customers with a Premier support contract.

Digging a little deeper, I found that:

“Microsoft will begin upgrade for existing Azure customers on Enterprise Agreement on May 1, 2016, and plans to complete the upgrades by September 30, 2016. New customers will be upgraded within 30 days of account activation. Customers will be notified by email upon being upgraded. For more information, please talk with your account manager or contact EA Azure Support through the Enterprise Portal”

But, the Enterprise Agreement Support Offer page that contains this information is subtitled: “to activate, contact your Microsoft account team”, so I contacted my customer’s account team.  Initially, they said that the customer needed to contact their Microsoft Licensing Solution Provider (LSP), who were equally confused, but I pushed a little harder and the account team investigated further, before arranging the necessary support.

So, if you’re an EA customer and you can’t wait until September to get an upgrade to your Azure support agreements, it may just be worth a chat with your Microsoft account team.