For years, Microsoft’s Enterprise Agreement (EA) rewarded larger organizations with volume-based discounts. The more seats you bought, the lower your cost per license. But starting November 1, 2025, those breaks are going away.
Microsoft is eliminating volume discounts for Online Services across EA and MPSA agreements. Whether you have 200 seats or 20,000, you’ll pay the same list price for services like Microsoft 365, Dynamics, Windows 365, and Microsoft security and compliance tools.
For companies in the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), the impact depends on how you’re currently buying your Microsoft licenses.
Microsoft has been simplifying its licensing models for years, moving away from complex tiering and toward consistent, global pricing.
With EA, there used to be multiple “levels” (A through D) that tied price breaks to seat counts:
The higher the level, the steeper the discount. Come November 2025, those discounts go away. Everyone pays the same Level A list price.
For commercial enterprises, the logic is straightforward: consistency. But in the DIB, the implications are more nuanced.
If you’re in GCC High on an EA, your volume-based discounts will disappear at renewal. Larger organizations will see increases in the range of 6–12%, depending on your prior tier.
If you’re in GCC High on AOS-G (Agreement for Online Services – Government), you won’t be impacted at all. AOS-G isn’t part of this change, meaning your pricing structure stays intact.
This is important because one of the only reasons a larger DIB organization might have chosen EA over AOS-G was the promise of discounts. With those gone, that incentive disappears, and AOS-G becomes the steadier, more cost-effective path forward.
The DIB already carries unique burdens with compliance requirements, strict security standards, and the need to balance IT budgets against regulatory obligations. Losing EA discounts adds another layer of unpredictability for organizations still tied to that model.
For those on AOS-G, this change actually strengthens your position. You avoid the price hikes, remain aligned with government licensing models, and keep the flexibility and compliance benefits of AOS-G.
The differences between the licensing agreements go beyond discounts:
Under an EA, you commit to minimum spend levels up front, and you’re obligated to pay whether or not your usage shifts. Azure spending, for discounts, is locked into specific commitments in an EA.
AOS-G is more flexible. Licensing can float up or down on a yearly basis, depending on your needs. For defense contractors dealing with fluctuating programs and budgets, that flexibility matters.
This is why AOS-G continues to be a better fit for most DIB organizations. It was built for public sector realities: compliance, sovereignty, and the ability to adapt as contracts and funding cycles change.
AOS-G was created to help government and commercial organizations purchase Microsoft GCC High licenses through an authorized Microsoft partner. The program is designed to scale supporting everything from small deployments to thousands of seats specifically within Microsoft’s Government Cloud.
Previously, contractors had to sign an EA to access the GCC High environment. AOS-G created a far more accessible and compliant path even for larger organizations.
AOS-G’s advantages are:
In contrast, EA brought the allure of discounts but at the cost of rigid terms and added complexity in compliance reviews.
Our role is to help DIB organizations navigate these shifts without surprises — from running cost scenarios and advising on agreement structures to ensuring your licensing strategy aligns with compliance needs and budget realities. Backed by the largest bench of GCC High support through our MSP, Guardian, Summit 7 manages more than 1,200 GCC High tenants, giving you proven expertise at scale.
EA discounts are going away, but AOS-G remains steady. If you’re still on EA, now is the time to evaluate whether it makes sense to stay or whether moving to AOS-G will put you in a stronger position before the November 2025 cutoff.