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The Azure Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) 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 discounts and SKUs directly in Vantage, as well as delegate these costs to Vantage Managed Accounts for their customers to consume.
This integration is only available to Vantage for MSPs customers who are in the Azure CSP program.
Partners authenticate via OAuth with secure Azure Service Principals to grant Vantage access to three different sets of APIs used for aggregating and reconciling costs: Azure Partner Center APIs, Azure Graph APIs, and Azure Partner APIs. After authorization, Vantage ingests data from these APIs and reads multiple data sources to reconcile un-billed, billed, and invoiced costs, as well as joins SKUs on public rate card costs. Vantage performs necessary reconciliation to switch between billed and unbilled costs as invoicing periods switch over, enabling you to view correct current and future period costs in both discounted costs and public price. Once imported, MSPs can delegate these costs to managed accounts, create billing rules for re-rating, and create customer-specific Cost Reports and Dashboards using Azure CSP data.
When you configure this integration, Vantage requests access to your Azure Partner Center billing data through OAuth. Vantage does not have permissions, nor will it ever attempt, to make any changes to your infrastructure or customer accounts.

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Connect Your Azure CSP Account

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Prerequisites

  • You must be an admin who can grant consent for your organization. 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
  • You must be a Vantage for MSPs customer

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Create a Connection

To integrate your Azure CSP account with Vantage, follow the below steps:

Connect via OAuth

Grant additional authorization

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Step 1 - Connect via OAuth

1
From the top navigation in Vantage, click Settings.
2
On the left navigation, select Integrations > Azure CSP.
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The Azure CSP integrations page is displayed. Ensure you are on the Connect tab.
4
Click Connect Azure CSP Account.
5
You will be redirected to Microsoft to authenticate. Sign in with your Azure Partner Center account credentials.
6
Review and accept the permissions requested by Vantage. These permissions allow Vantage to read billing and cost data from your Partner Center.
7
After successful authentication, you will be redirected back to Vantage and taken to the Manage Connection page for your Azure CSP integration.

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Step 2 - Grant Additional Authorization

After the initial OAuth connection, Vantage requires additional authorization to access all necessary billing data.
1
At the top of the Manage Connection page, the Complete Setup section is displayed. A green checkmark is displayed next to the first step, indicating you have completed the initial account connection.
2
Two additional authorizations are required. Click Authorize next to the Grant additional authorization for Vantage to start ingesting costs step.You will be redirected to Microsoft to grant the additional permissions via OAuth. After granting the first authorization, you will be returned to the Manage Connection page.
3
Click Authorize next to the remaining Grant additional authorization to accurately reflect all Azure CSP costs step. You will be redirected to Microsoft again to grant this final permission via OAuth.
4
After granting all required authorizations, you will be redirected back to the Manage Connection page. The Complete Setup section will disappear, indicating that your integration is fully configured.
After completing all required authorizations, you will see the status of your integration change to Importing within the Vantage console. This status indicates that Vantage is actively importing your Azure CSP cost data. Vantage will begin importing your Azure CSP costs. Upon initial connection, Vantage will ingest historical data up to your account’s configured retention period. Note that Public Rate Cards are not available more than six months historically, so Vantage will fall back to what data is returned within the Graph and Partner APIs. See the Integration Status documentation for details on integration statuses.

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Next Steps - Workspace Access

Once the import is complete and the integration status changes to Stable, you can select which workspaces this integration is associated with. See the Workspaces documentation for information.

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Azure CSP Reporting Dimensions

On Azure CSP Cost Reports, you can filter and group costs by the following dimensions:
  • Billing Account (i.e., Azure Customer ID/Tenant ID)
  • Account (i.e., Subscription ID/Entitlement ID)
  • Service (i.e., Product Name)
  • Category (i.e., Meter Category)
  • Subcategory (i.e., Meter Name)
  • Region
  • Resource ID
  • Tags (Resource Groups, Cost Centers, and virtual tags created in Vantage for this provider). In addition, the following provider tags are automatically created by Vantage from Azure data and are available for filtering and grouping:
    • azure:costCenter: The cost center value from Azure billing data, allowing you to filter and group costs by cost center.
    • azure:resourceGroup: The resource group name associated with the cost, allowing you to filter and group costs by resource group.
    • azure:InvoiceSectionId: The invoice section ID when present in the source data, allowing you to filter and group costs by invoice section.
    • azure:InvoiceSectionName: The invoice section name when present in the source data, allowing you to filter and group costs by invoice section.

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Usage Data

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

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Data Refresh

Azure CSP data refreshes daily in the Vantage console. See the provider data refresh documentation for information on when data for each provider refreshes in Vantage.

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Partner Earned Credits and Discounts

While partner credits and discounts are 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.

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Integration Limitations

  • Cost Recommendations: Cost recommendations are not available for Azure CSP integrations via the Partner Settings APIs.
  • Active Resources: Azure does not expose any list or describe resource APIs through Partner Center to provide resource metadata.
  • Amortization of Purchases: Due to data limitations, one-time purchases (such as Commitments or Marketplace purchases) are not amortized for the Azure CSP integration.

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Migrate from Standard Azure Integration

If you currently have a standard Azure integration but are part of the Microsoft Partner program with a CSP account, it is recommended that you migrate to the Azure CSP integration for more accurate costs. The Azure CSP integration provides access to CSP-specific discounts and SKUs, such as Partner Earned Credits and New Commerce Experience (NCE) Licenses, which are not available in the standard Azure integration.
1
Add the Azure CSP integration following the steps in this documentation.
2
Once costs are ingested, analyze the integration costs to ensure they match your current invoices.
3
After confirming the costs are accurate, you can delete your previous Azure integration.