For the partners in the U.S. and Canada, you may recall when we first launched the Big Easy Offer: The Big Easy Offer is now live on Microsoft Incentives and since that day, the Big Easy Offer has continued to be a favorite among customers and partners.  The Big Easy provides a way for customers to earn money from Microsoft to use towards partner deployment services or future purchases.  It is a great win-win for customers and partners and is designed to help make it even easier for customers and partners to do business with each other and Microsoft!

Well, I am happy to say that the Big Easy Offer 5.0 is currently live and runs through December 31, 2010.  As always with the Big Easy Offer, we have a list of included products that qualify for the offer and you have ways of increasing your subsidy based on what you purchase and through which program you purchase through.  For instance:

• To qualify for the Big Easy Offer, your purchases must be made through the Open License, Open Value, or Open Value Subscription licensing programs
• By purchasing Licenses with Software Assurance (through the Open Value or Open Value Subscription programs), your subsidy amounts are higher than if you were to purchase licenses without Software Assurance through the Open License program
  • Not familiar with the different licensing programs?  No worries.  Take a look at my: Microsoft Open License Basics – What are the different Open License Programs? post for an overview
  • Also, remember that you only need 2 computers to qualify for Volume Licensing
• By purchasing Advanced or Enterprise versions of qualifying products, your subsidy is higher than if you purchase Standard or non-Advanced/Enterprise versions of the qualifying products
• By purchasing products from multiple qualifying product groups vs. just one qualifying product group, your subsidy per qualifying item can go up as well

As always, the Big Easy team has put up a site to make understanding and using the Big Easy Offer very easy, including:

• Information about the offer
• A subsidy estimator so you can see the effects of different purchases on the subsidy amount
• A list of included products for the offer
• A video showing how it works
• The link to redeem you Big Easy subsidy
• and the Terms & Conditions of the offer

You can find the Big Easy Offer site online and check out all of the information listed above there.

Thank you and have a wonderful day,

Eric Ligman – Follow me on TWITTER, LinkedIn, and RSS and see “What I’m thinking”
Global Partner Experience Lead
Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights