Microsoft New Commerce Experience Simplified

Before you read: Information contained on this page comes from various searches online, is subject to change depending on Microsoft Policies, in case of doubts consult the official Microsoft pages (below).

If you don't understand the new plans, if you never used CSP, feel free to schedule a call with me, I have been working with Microsoft Ecosystem since 2017, even if I don't know the answers to your questions, I know for sure somebody who does!

Microsoft Announcements: 

– Partner Center — Microsoft Docs | November 2021 announcements: Promotional discounts announced and migration period extended in CSP new commerce experience

– Microsoft Partner Center Blog | Coming to the Cloud Solution Provider program: seat-based offers in new commerce

– Microsoft NCE Readiness Gallery | New commerce experience for CSP seat-based offers  

– Partner Network |  What you need to know from Microsoft

What is NCE?

The New Commerce Experience (NCE) ‘per seat’ model for Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Windows 365, and Power Platform subscriptions is the latest in the evolution of their CSP program. It provides re-sellers with new tools to simplify and manage subscriptions.

Future Calls Resource Calendar

Microsoft is providing additional insights during these events to provide further details on NCE. There is a CSP Spotlight Session and a Licensing Update Information Session, please refer to the link to register for these sessions. 

Microsoft New Commerce Experience Webinar

 Dates and Deadlines

– January 10, 2022: Microsoft will offer two time-bound promotions to incentivize partners to migrate from CSP legacy to NCE. These promos are:

• 5% off annual subscriptions January through March 2022

• Monthly subscriptions will be available at annual pricing from January through June 2022.   

– February 1, 2022: Margin and Incentives will be removed from Azure Program.

In order to retain margin and earn incentives, all Azure Program Subscriptions must be upgraded to Azure Plans by January 31st. As of February 24th.

– March 1, 2022: There will be a price increase for the following products: 

Enterprise:  

• Office 365 E1: $10 (from $8)
• Office 365 E3: $23 (from $20) 
• Office 365 E5: $38 (from $35) 
• Microsoft 365 E3: $36 (from $32) 

SMB: 

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $6 (from $5) 
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium: $22 (from$20). 

– March 10, 2022: All new subscriptions for Modern Work and Dynamics will be required to be procured through the NCE Platform. Distributors will no longer offer new subscriptions for CSP legacy. 

– July 1, 2022:  All renewal subscriptions for Modern Work and Dynamics will be required to be procured through NCE Platform. Distributors will no longer allow partners to renew customer subscriptions on CSP legacy. 

– January 1, 2023:  Incentives only available for NCE transactions (through MCI). 

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

What Does This Mean for You?

Moving to the New Commerce Experience will help you prepare for future growth thanks to improved revenue predictability, reduced licensing complexity, multiple term options, and features that enable new sales capabilities and operational efficiencies. You can expect: 

Term Options 

– Monthly term options at 20% premium 

– Annual term options; upfront or monthly payments 

– Tri-annual term options; upfront, annual, or monthly payments ( not avaialble yet)

**Please note that not all SKUs will have a monthly term option. Tri-annuals will only be available starting January 10, 2022 for some Dynamics SKUs.

Additionally, to encourage partners to migrate to the New Commerce Experience Microsoft will offer two time-bound promotions to coincide with the January general availability launch; annual subscriptions will be discounted 5% from January – March, and monthly subscriptions will be discounted at the regular annual price from January – June. These two promotions will apply to all new commerce seat-based commercial offers for subscriptions of up to 2,400 seats. Windows 365 subscriptions will not be eligible for these two promotions.  

Windows 365: Windows 365 subscriptions will only be available via the monthly term offer on NCE. Windows 365 subscriptions will not be subject to the 20% premium for monthly terms at this time.  

Nonprofit, Education and Government: Nonprofit, Education and Government licenses will not be offered on NCE at this time. Nonprofit and Education products will not be affected by the price increases in March.  

Cancelations: The cancellation period is 3 UTC days, including day of purchase. There will be a full refund issued if canceled on day 1, and a pro-rated refund if cancelled on days 2 and 3.

Add-Ons: Add-ons are purchased as individual Subscriptions, distinct from the base product Subscriptions. Thus, the end dates may not be the same. Add-ons cannot be migrated to NCE using the API Upgrade tool. Add-ons need to be removed from legacy prior to migration and then re-purchased on NCE. Partners will see errors when attempting to purchase an NCE add-on product when the customer does not have any of the prerequisites.

Upgrades: For NCE, upgrading means going from one paid subscription to another paid subscription, but you cannot go from a higher paid SKU to a lower paid SKU. In your subscription, you will be able to see eligible upgrade options. You can process an upgrade at any time and can choose to either do a full upgrade where all seats in a subscription are upgraded, or a partial upgrade where only a select number of seats you choose are upgraded.

Promotions: Many promotions have a maximum of 2,400 seats per subscription. In these cases, a transaction including more than 2,400 will be submitted at the non-promotion prices. The seat limits from promotions are enforced across partners. Promotion eligibility is enforced at the subscription level that the partner is transacting.

Trials: Trials on NCE will provision 25 licenses that are valid for 30 days and cannot be canceled. Trials will automatically convert to paid offer and will not have trial alerts from Microsoft in partner center. 

Automatic trial conversion

• All 25 seats convert to a paid offer after 30 days

• Paid Subscription starts on the next day

Change of Channel: As NCE stands today, change of channels will not be permitted outside of the subscription term renewal. Change of channel is only possible at the term renewal, within the 3 day window.

This includes:

• Customer wanting to purchase through a different partner

• Partner wanting to purchase through a different distributor

• A partner going from direct to indirect

For mergers and acquisitions, Microsoft will in the future allow these to be exempt from the change of channel policy but as it stands today, the licenses must remain with the partner and provider they have been purchased from.

Telco Pay-As-you-Go-Over-on-Azure: Some license-based products include services with allocated calling plans. These typically come with per-license allocations for minutes per month. Previously, on the legacy offer there was no way to enable service usage beyond the monthly limits, which resulted in customers needing to purchase communication credits. On NCE, if a telco offer is initiated, the customer has the option to enable overages via consumption pay-as-you-go-over. To enable overages, a customer must have an Azure Plan tied to the tenant. If the customer does not have an Azure Plan, the partner will have to check out one prior to purchasing the Telco offer.

New Incentives and Rebates

In October, 2021, Microsoft launched incentives for Azure Plan on NCE under the Microsoft Commerce Incentive program (MCI) for direct bill partners, indirect providers, and indirect resellers and starting January 2022, will expand their Microsoft Commerce Incentive program for direct bill partners, indirect providers, and indirect resellers for Modern Work and Dynamics solutions. To ensure partners earn incentives and rebates on NCE transactions, partners will need to register for the Microsoft Commerce Incentives (MCI) program through their Microsoft Partner Center. To learn more about registering for MCI, partner can visit this link.

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