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Overview

The CMS for Azure Stack Hub is a management and billing platform for Azure Stack Hub that connects technical service delivery with commercial operations. It is designed for service providers, enterprises, and partners who need to operate Azure Stack Hub as a structured, multi-tenant cloud service.

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At its core, the CMS provides a layered model that reflects how services are delivered and monetized:

  • Platform Administrators operate and configure the system. They publish pricing, manage global settings, and oversee usage processing across regions.

  • Distributors represent the top commercial tier beneath the platform. They manage multiple partners and have visibility into aggregated usage, billing, and commissions.

  • Partners act as the customer-facing organizations. They onboard tenants, manage subscriptions, and handle tenant-level billing and support.

  • Tenants are the consuming organizations. They manage their own subscriptions and users, while billing and usage flow upward to the partner and distributor.

  • Subscriptions are the unit of consumption within a tenant. They tie workloads to plans and quotas, generate usage records, and form the basis for billing and invoicing.

This hierarchy ensures that both technical and commercial responsibilities are aligned. Usage flows upward from subscriptions to tenants, partners, and distributors, while pricing, commissions, and governance flow downward from the platform.

Key capabilities include:

  • Unified Multi-Tier Management – Administrators, distributors, partners, and tenants are modeled consistently in the system.

  • Automated Billing – Usage data is collected, rated, and reconciled into invoices at the subscription and tenant level.

  • Flexible Pricing and Discounts – Flat and tiered rates, credits, and overrides can be applied at multiple scopes.

  • Commission Frameworks – Built-in logic for calculating and attributing commissions to partners and distributors.

  • API-Driven Operations – All functions are exposed through a standards-based REST API for automation and integration.

  • Branding and Delegation – Each level of the hierarchy can be branded appropriately, with role-based access control ensuring least-privilege delegation.

The CMS provides the foundation to operate Azure Stack Hub as a commercial service, supporting both external service providers and internal enterprise IT. By unifying consumption data, pricing models, billing, and commissions under a single platform, it enables organizations to deliver cloud services with transparency, accountability, and commercial accuracy.

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