Everything You Need to Know About NCE and Microsoft's 2024 Subscription Changes

In January 2024, Microsoft will start migrating all legacy subscriptions to the new commerce experience (NCE) with annual commitment terms. Your billing cycle and seat counts will remain the same.

You might be wondering, why is this important? IF your organization is on legacy subscriptions, and you allow this change to happen automatically, you will be locked into your subscriptions and license quantities without being able to cancel until your next renewal. You will have 7 days post-transition to make any necessary changes to your subscription term, quantity, or to make any cancellations. This applies to all legacy subscriptions.

If you are a CSP customer, you will need prepare for this migration if you haven't done so. Plan to migrate to NCE subscriptions prior to year-end so that you can choose your path moving forward. Our Microsoft licensing experts can help you transition before your legacy renewal date.

Through Integrato's Microsoft Subscription Review, we normally find that companies are overpaying by 10-30% for licensing on average per year. These recurring fees add up, and if you don't prepare, you'll be locked into overpaying for licensing for the entire year.

What if we don't act now?

• When your current subscriptions expire, Microsoft will automatically move your subscriptions to NCE annual terms.

• If you don’t do a thorough review of your subscriptions, you’ll get locked into your license counts and cannot decrease license quantities.

• You will be locked in for a year unless you choose to buy the monthly subscriptions that are around 20% higher per month vs the annual subscription.

How can Integrato help?

Let’s take a look at your subscriptions and discuss what changes you can expect and if you’re subscriptions are optimized for this transition. Let’s discuss what subscription terms would work best for your company.

If we are not your Microsoft Partner, that’s okay too. Let’s have a conversation to see how we can help plan and find potential savings.

LET'S TALK

What's Changed?

On March 1st, 2022, Microsoft changed their subscription offerings, term offerings and pricing.

All new cloud subscription purchases for Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Windows 365 moved to what Microsoft calls the “New Commerce

Experience or NCE”.

The NCE journey started back in 2019 with Azure related products and Microsoft continues to invest in consolidating their products under this platform to provide customers with more benefits and features

Key Benefits

Ability to schedule changes at subscription renewal.

Autorenewal toggle option.

More simplified billing and renewal dates.

Increased accounting efficiency with annual and multi-year subscriptions with option to pay annually.

Monthly subscriptions without annual commitment pricing will be 20% higher than the

annual subscriptions paid monthly or annually. This type of subscription will

allow companies flexibility to change licenses monthly.

Key Changes

Pricing increased on March 1, 2022.

Annual term subscriptions billed monthly or annually have an annual commitment and cannot be cancelled until the renewal period.

Annual subscriptions cannot decrease license counts based on your fluctuation in staff. You can increase licenses at any time. You will only be able to decrease license counts during the renewal period.

Monthly subscription pricing without annual commitment is 20% higher than the annual terms.

Does this affect our company?

This affects all businesses that have Microsoft cloud subscriptions for business, like Microsoft 365, Office 365, Dynamics 365, or Power Platform subscriptions through Microsoft directly or a Microsoft Partner /Cloud Solutions Provider (CSP) like Integrato.

What does this mean for us?

Schedule a call with our team to review your subscriptions and plan which terms work best for your team.

If your organization is on legacy subscriptions, below are examples of price increases within M365 per user, per month:

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic (from $5 to $6 per user)

• Microsoft 365 Business Premium (from $20 to $24)

• Office 365 E1 (from $8 to $10)

• Office 365 E3 (from $20 to $23)

• Office 365 E5 (from $35 to $38)

• Microsoft 365 E3 (from $32 to $36).

These increases will apply globally with local market adjustments for certain regions. There are no changes to pricing for education and consumer products his time.

Once you have an annual subscription (paid monthly) in the NCE, you will no longer be able to decrease your license counts at any time. You’ll be locked into that license count and can only increase the license count.

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