I previously covered Microsoft’s announcement of changes to pricing for most Microsoft 365 SKUs on March 1, 2022. The effort is called “New Commerce Experience”, or NCE. Within that announcement, there is an additional 20% premium for those on a monthly billing status rather than a yearly cost. NCE will impact Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Windows 365. Quantities cannot be downgraded during a term, and if sold via partners, they would be committed if the end customer doesn’t pay or goes out of business.
The company announced on Tuesday that they are adding more time to the transition, and has added some incentives.
There is a petition online to change this – almost 900 signatures are associated with that.
Why do we care?
Changes to the billing of these subscription Microsoft products makes a difference – and a 20% additional premium to be month to month seems pretty steep to me. I’m not going to necessarily buy into theories that this is to force partners out of the way. I’ll offer that this could be a space for distribution – as we saw in the pandemic, distribution’s superpower is the ability to leverage financial resources to help providers.
I’ll leave it to individual listeners to decide their approach – push back on the Microsoft, find a solution with distribution, accept the change, or something else entirely.
Petition: https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-petition-for-microsoft-to-revoke-the-20-price-increase-on-monthly-microsoft-365-products?redirect=false