Heads Up! 3 reasons why you need to review your Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 licensing right now

Currently you can dial your subscriptions up and down as you see fit, reducing user counts or moving them between product bundles.  Under NCE, you will have considerably less flexibility to do your thinking on the hoof, so clarity and planning are key.

As you will agree, closer management of subscriptions will be important. Currently, a blunder in ordering can be reversed at any time with only the usage between order and correction being charged; with NCE, you have only 72 hours to realise and reverse a mistake! After 72 hours, you’re locked for the remaining term of your subscription.

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Here's what you need to know

The key points are:

• Subscriptions will be for 12 months.
• Some subscriptions will also be offered for 1-month and/or 36 months.
• The same products can be consumed across multiple terms where available.
• Once subscriptions are ordered, you have 72 hours to change your mind, and then they are locked in until the end of the commitment term. Subscriptions can be increased but not decreased (apart from a 72 hour “oops” grace period).
• Partial and full upgrades to some license families are available.
• 1-month subscriptions are priced at a premium of 20% over 12 and 36 months.
• Billing will continue through the original Cloud Solutions Provider until the end of the term; you cannot move your subscription from one CSP to another part way through.
• A bunch of popular products and bundles are increasing in price in the new year.
• There are some special pricing offers available around the time of the transition to the NCE.

This is a big change from your current experience.

When it’s all happening

Please take note of these timeframes:

• The change to the NCE will happen to all new subscriptions from 10 March 2022 and come into force from the expiry of your current subscriptions from 1 July 2022. For example, if your current subscription has its anniversary on 10 July 2022, you will be able to increase or decrease quantities and change between software bundles until then.  
• Legacy style subscriptions can be created up to 9 March 2022.
• From 1 July 2022, legacy subscriptions will be renewed to NCE.
• For now, NCE only impacts corporate and government customers. Education and charity/non-profit will move to the NCE model, but Microsoft has not yet committed to a timeframe.

What to do

Time is of the essence! Now is the time to get the right advice and prepare your strategy.

Here is what we're doing at Theta:

• In early Feb 2022, we'll run a “What you need to know about Microsoft's NCE” webinar. Learn more and register here to join us.
• We have just released the Theta Agora: an online portal for ordering and managing subscriptions. This has security settings that allow you to control who can order and change CSP subscriptions, as well as view usage and invoices. If you have Theta as your CSP, your Relationship Manager will be reaching out to you about this before 1 March 2022.
• We have a programmed CSP advisory service called Pathfinder. This has principally been focussed on large subscriptions to date, but it may be just what you need to help you manage your transition to the NCE. We will cover this in the webinar, but get in touch if you want to discuss sooner.
• We will share more communications on the NCE as the time draws near.
• As always, you can reach out to your Theta Relationship Manager with any queries or contact us if you're a new customer who wants help with any of the above.  

We look forward to helping you manage your transition to the New Commerce Experience.