Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central - From dropping the ball to dropping the mic

There are some important changes coming from Microsoft around the way they supply subscription licences. These changes will impact everyone that has a subscription for Office, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central or Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM.

The main change is that you will now be able to have different lengths of terms that you sign up for: 30 days, 12 months or 36 months (the latter coming soon). Microsoft will fix the pricing of the subscription for that term period, however, they will be bringing some changes to the flexibility of the subscription during the term as well - see below:

• You won’t be able to cancel the subscription until the end of the term
• You won’t be able to reduce the user count on the subscription until the end of the term
• Users can be added but that will become your new minimum user count until the end of the term
• You won't be able to change an Essentials licence to a Premium licence for Dynamics 365 Business Central until the end of the term
• The partner you sign up with will have to transact those licences for you until the end of the term

In the longer term, you will have less flexibility than you have been used to with the legacy CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) agreements that we have all been using for the last 14 years.

So why don’t we put everyone on the 30-day term, allowing cancellation and a reduction to users every 30 days? Well, Microsoft has added a 20% premium to the 30-day agreements so the flexibility is still there, but there will be a cost associated with it.

We can offer both terms on the same product so if you know you will always need 50 subscriptions on Dynamics 365 Business Central but you have a small number of users that you may want the flexibility to remove quickly, we could put 50 subscriptions on the annual term and 5 users on a 30-day term at the higher price. This will allow you to remove up to 5 users if needed.

Some customers current agreements expire at the end of July. Unless agreed otherwise, customers will be moved to a 30-day term so they don’t find themselves locked into a 12-month agreement, however, there will be that uplift in price for the shorter term.

Please contact your Account Manager so we can look to help you to transition to the right type of NCE (New Commerce Experience) licence as soon, and as smoothly, as possible.