Updated: January 2022
As your Microsoft Gold Partner and Tier-1 Cloud Solution Provider, we are keeping you in the loop with the latest updates with Microsoft 365 price increases and Microsoft’s launch of their New Commerce Experience (NCE) Platform.
What is the New Commerce Experience (NCE)?
It’s the new invoicing platform Microsoft is shifting all Partners and Customers too in order to reduce subscription licensing complexity.
In November 2021, we summarized the NCE model transition with some highlights being:
- When you purchase a license after March 1st 2022, you will be using the NCE platform, unless you already have a previous subscription of the same license
- NCE provides Monthly or Annual commitments
- NCE is a commitment, so you are unable to reduce licenses before your commitment is over
- Monthly commitments are priced higher than Annual commitments
Frequently Asked Questions about the Microsoft New Commerce Experience:
If you are a 360 Visibility customer and curious to know your license anniversary date, login to our 360 Visibility Customer Licensing Portal and under your license subscriptions there is a column to the right that has the anniversary date listed.
For all others, you can contact the Tier 1 Microsoft Gold Partners at 360 Visibility to receive assistance with your licensing questions.
You will receive 1 invoice for July 10th and another on July 15th.
When you order a license under NCE, you are committing to keep that license until the end of the commitment period so reducing the license count is no longer available.
This will largely depend on how you need to use the license. If you have seasonal workers, you should now have them on a month-to-month term. If you believe other licenses are ok to have for a longer period, committing to an annual term would be a better option.
Many licenses will still offer monthly payments however, there are some that will only be available to pay up-front for the year.
No. Some licenses must have a one-year commitment.
A commitment guarantees that you will not pay more for that license before the commitment is over. Monthly commitments do not protect you from price increases.
Promotions may provide a certain discount for a certain period. An example would be that Microsoft is offering Monthly commitments the same price as they pay today for annual, however the promotion ends at the end of June and you will automatically pay more in July since you are on a monthly commitment.
Annual promotions are also currently offered where you are able to save 5% off the regular price however, the same promotion may not be available next year.
Since there will be a mix of NCE licenses and other services such as Azure or 3rd party licensing, we will be transitioning all customers to calendar month billing invoiced between the 6th and 8th of each month. NCE licenses however will be billed based on the anniversary date and each transaction will be invoiced separately.
We realize you will have many questions. Explore our Microsoft License Optimization service to discuss how you can take advantage of annual pricing in the coming months based on your license subscription anniversary date.