Are you concerned about the impact that Microsoft New Commerce Experience will have on the way you purchase Microsoft licences moving forward? Don’t worry, we’ve got everything you need to know about the NCE and Microsoft’s price increase right here.

What’s changing?

Late last year, Microsoft announced the cost of a Microsoft 365 licence subscription would be rising. Microsoft introduced NCE as a new model in January 2022 to simplify their licensing offerings and streamline processes. As part of this new model, long-term licence commitments under Microsoft NCE are more cost-effective than the current CSP model.

On 15 March, six SKUs will be affected by the planned price increase:

• Business Basic
• Business Premium
• Office 365 E1
• Office 365 E3
• Office 365 E5
• Microsoft 365 E3

On average, customers can expect to see a price increase of 15-20% across the board for all Microsoft 365 and Office 365 packages.

After committing to a new licensing agreement, customers will no longer be able to move suppliers or cancel their contract mid-agreement. However, there will be a 72 hour cooling off period to give businesses the chance to amend or cancel their subscription should they change their mind.

The changes to the Microsoft licensing model means businesses will need to choose their ideal Cloud Solution Provider carefully.

The NCE timeline

There’s still some time to adjust to Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience.

From 30 June 2022, users will not be able to make licence adjustments on the old platform.

And in February 2023, the CSP licensing platform will be discontinued. New and existing customers must move to the new NCE model.

But why wait? Now is the best time to move to the NCE and save on your licence subscriptions for another 12 months.

Our Gold Partner recommendation

As a Microsoft Gold Partner and Cloud Solution Provider, we recommend booking a licence consultancy review before the 15 March price increase. If you buy or renew your Microsoft licence subscription before 15 March, you can push back the price increase for another 12 months.

Update (28 February): Microsoft has granted customers an additional 2 week transitional period to ease into the new pricing model. Therefore, all CSP new commerce transactions for the six commercial Modern Work SKUs listed above that are submitted into the system no later than March 14, 2022, 5 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), or 12 a.m. UTC on March 15, 2022, will be invoiced at the February 2022 pricing. Find more details here.