Your full Microsoft New Commerce Experience (NCE) guide - by BLACKBELT XP

NEW COMMERCE EXPERIENCE (NCE) - What is it?

To better understand the NCE we need to take a look at the Microsoft Vision:

"Help customers digitally transform by making it easier for them to buy and manage cloud services through a streamlined digital customer agreement, consolidated management portal, and enhanced invoicing and cost-management capabilities"

NCE was initially announced back in 2019 with Azure as a simplified journey for both the customer and the partner to transact a consistent and standardized purchase motion.

Starting January, 2022, New Commerce Experience will transition subscriptions like Office 365, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Windows 365, Power Platform and more to the same purchase motion.

Open License Program is being retired from January 1, 2022.

NCE for Modern Work and Dynamics - Timeline:

January, 2022 - General availability of NCE platform

March 10, 2022 - All new subscriptions for Modern Work and Dynamics will be required to be procured through the NCE Platform.?

July?1,?2022 - All renewal subscriptions for Modern Work and Dynamics will be required to be procured through NCE Platform.?

October 1, 2022 - Incentives only available for NCE transactions.?

July 2023 - All remaining subscriptions on?CSP legacy?must be moved to the New Commerce Experience.??

Nonprofit and Education licenses will not be offered on NCE at this time. Non- Profit and Education products will not be affected by the price increases in March.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU AS A CSP CUSTOMER:

• Microsoft is no longer allowing you to downscale licenses within their term. That means you cannot buy 5 licenses for 1 year, and cancel 1 license half-way through the year.
• Microsoft is?increasing?the price on?all new?month-to-month contracts by 20%, on-top of the price increase coming in March
• Prorating contracts (e.g cancel halfway through the month) is also going away, if you are canceling the license after 72 hours.

SUBSCRIPTION TERMS WITHIN NCE:

1-month Subscription

• Enables a customer to change number of licenses month to month
• 20% more expensive than an annual Subscription

12-month Subscription

• Regular commitment
• Billing options, Monthly, Upfront

36-month Subscription:

• Enables a customer to lock pricing for a full 36 months
• Billing options, Monthly, Annual, Upfront

Microsoft will offer two promotions to all new commerce seat-based commercial offers for subscriptions of up to 2,400 seats:?

• ?5% off annual subscriptions January through March 2022
• Monthly subscriptions will be available at annual pricing from January through June 2022

MICROSOFT CSP PRICE INCREASES:

• Office 365 Plan E1 ?+25%
• Office 365 Plan E3 ?+15%
• Office 365 Plan E5 ?+9 %
• M365 Business Basic ?+20%
• M365 Business Premium ?+10%
• M365 Plan E3 ?+13%
• M365 Plan E5 ?0%

YOUR OPTIONS AS CSP CUSTOMER:

• Continuation of monthly option to upscale and downscale, this results in +20% higher prices
• Avoid price increase for certain products +10% or more
• Fixing licenses for at least 1 year where required, fixing 'uncertain' numbers per month, or move to EA/EAS (if you meet the minimum number of licenses)