Important announcement

Microsoft has recently announced the introduction of its New Commerce Experience (NCE). This is part of a transformational journey that will change the way that customers transact with Microsoft.

The New Commerce Experience is a multi-phase, long-term investment in the CSP program aimed at helping partners to accelerate growth through predictability of revenue, simplify licensing, and address how customers prefer to purchase. The NCE will be available in early January 2022 and will include seat based offers in CSP for Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Windows 365 and Power Platform.

How does this affect my business?

Subscription Terms

Subscriptions are changing in the NCE and will be available on three different term options: Monthly, Annually and Multi-Year with different pricing depending on the customers’ commitment. For customers who only commit to short-term monthly contracts, there will be a premium of 20%, but for those who commit long-term, there will be a price break.

Licences can be mixed and matched per client so you can have both annual commitment and monthly for the same subscription. For licences on an annual commitment, you also have the option to pay monthly.

Please note: with the NCE, the previous arrangement where Microsoft allowed you to suspend annual licences mid-term without penalty, will no longer be available.

Increasing/decreasing seats and license types

In the NCE, you can increase your seat count or SKUs for both SMB and Enterprise SKUs at any time. However, you only have 72 hours from time of purchase to cancel a subscription. After that period, no refunds will be granted and you will be required to pay until the end of the commitment term, typically 1 year.

In the New Commerce Experience, Partners can pause customer subscriptions, but the Partner will continue to be billed. Pausing a subscription will immediately mean it enters a “disabled” status where users cannot access files or services. Admins will still be able to access data until the end of the subscription term.

Switchover date

Both the legacy and New Commence Experience will run concurrently as of early January 2022, however, all new subscriptions will be required to be procured on the New Commerce Experience from March 2022.

Price Protection

Whilst there are no price changes to SKUs included in the NCE, Microsoft has announced price increases to the following SKUs to start on 1st March 2022.

● Microsoft 365 E3 (12.5% increase)
● Office 365 E5 (9% increase)
● Office 365 E3 (15% increase)
● Office 365 E1 (25% increase)
● Microsoft 365 Business Basic (20% increase)
● Microsoft 365 Business Premium (10% increase)

UK pricing has not yet been announced but we are assuming that the increases will be the same %.

Please note: you can lock in price protection before this price increase by purchasing an annual commitment on the New Commerce Experience.

What do I have to do?

We will send an email to you to let you know when your subscription start and ends and whether this affects you. If you have Basic licenses then if a year subscription is taken then this years price is locked in and the price increase will not affect you until 2023.

Standard licenses are currently not affected.

We will email you individually to let you know how this affects your business.

If you have standard licenses and in the past have reduced and then increased them as and when they are needed, you will no longer be able to do this as a subscription is now set for a 12 month period and will only expire at the end of a 12-month commitment. You can still move licenses between staff on the same license, such as if a member of staff leaves and a new member starts. This scenario is effectively one license.