I designed Microsoft's $5B EA channel architecture in 2001. The 2026 transition is missing what made it work
The Register's reporting on the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) commission collapse has been the most data-rigorous coverage in the trade press. And the trajectory it documented ($2.5 billion in LSP commissions in 2023, $1.67 billion in 2024, $583 million in 2025, zero in 2026) is the financial signature of a structural transition I have seen before, because I designed the original architecture that is now being retired.
Between 1998 and 2001, I was the sole designer of the Enterprise Software Advisor (ESA) channel architecture at Microsoft. Working within Worldwide Licensing and Pricing, I built the direct-billing model that converted the EA channel from an indirect, margin-based reseller structure to a direct-billing, advisory-fee structure. The compensation model, fee schedule, three-tier segmentation covering 75,000 accounts across 24 countries, and the geographic rollout sequence were my design. The ESA designation remains named verbatim in Microsoft's FY2025 10-K, twenty-four years after it launched.
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