Here is the full statement from Microsoft's spokesperson, issued to ZDNet:
“Our goal is to provide modern licensing choices that enable customers to digitally transform their organizations. We want to accelerate and streamline how we get there. After careful evaluation we decided introducing Enterprise Advantage on MPSA would add more steps for our customers and partners than was necessary,” the statement says.
“By investing further to enhance all the ways customers want to buy, Microsoft assisted, self-service, and through value-added partner services, we can modernize more quickly and with less change.”
Microsoft Licensing on Twitter first noticed the change regarding the program.
References to "Enterprise Advantage on MPSA" removed from https://t.co/q8IXt0sqOV; widely promoted integration of EA with MPSA canceled
— Microsoft Licensing (@On_MS_Licensing) December 5, 2016
Announced in July, Enterprise Advantage was meant to allow customers and business partners to buy organization-wide via the Microsoft Products and Services Agreement (MPSA). The plan was to make it available in early 2017 to commercial customers in markets where the MPSA is available.
It was expected to be of a particular interest to customers with up to 2,400 users or devices. However, Microsoft now dropped the whole program as the company considers it more of a complex feature.
All-in-one solution for organizations
MPSA is Microsoft's licensing agreement that enables users to consolidate various licensing contracts into a single agreement for all organizations. The company designed it to replace software-centric licensing and purchasing agreements with something simpler. As a result, it would appeal to customers using a mix of Microsoft's software and services.
The company recommends the MPSA for midsize to large organizations due to its flexibility and optimization. These include commercial, government, healthcare, as well as academic organizations that want to buy cloud services or software without a requirement to buy licenses for everyone in the organization.
