The 4 day conference kicked off with a corenote livestream from Gavriella Schuster, Corporate VP of Microsoft’s One Commercial Partner Organization, and Judson Althoff, executive VP of Microsoft’s Worldwide Commercial Business. Microsoft’s dedication to their mission of empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more is evident. Big Dynamics 365 Pricing changes were announced at the conference. 

Dynamics 365 Pricing Changes

Microsoft revealed at the conference that as of October 1, 2019, Dynamics plan style licenses will no longer be available to subscribers. Instead customers will choose from an ala carte licensing plan. A “base license” will be sold with “attach licenses” available. These “attach licenses” will be heavily discounted. Microsoft feels that this move from “one-size-fits-all” Dynamics 365 licensing plans will focus on better providing customers with the specific Dynamics 365 applications that meet their organization’s unique needs.

• A base license must first be purchased. Attach licenses may then be purchased. 
• Base and Attach licenses are identical in their core capabilities. The only differentiation is in price.
• Each user may only have one Base license, but they may have as many Attach licenses as needed.
• Attach licenses may only be assigned to a user with a prerequisite Base license.
• When multiple Business Applications are purchases, the Base license must be the higher priced license.

For example, a customer could buy a Sales Customer Engagement license, and add additional functions such as Field Service for an additional fee. The image above indicates that the pricing would be $95 for the base license, plus $20 for each attach license.

Customers will now be able to buy the apps they need as opposed to buying the whole plan. This way, customers don’t get stuck paying for capabilities they don’t need or use. Although the new pricing model is on a per-app basis, the plan still allows for bundling multiple apps. Deals that close prior to October 1, 2019, however, should use the existing “plans and apps” model.

PowerApps and Flow will be included for Dynamics 365 users through “seeded” licenses.

Although customers will not have to pay for capabilities they don’t need, Microsoft anticipates that most users will experience a ten percent price increase. A major downfall of this new pricing model is that it will be more difficult to estimate and calculate licensing costs.

Microsoft has not released specifics on the pricing details and has stated that a licensing guide will be published as “soon as they can.” Due to partner feedback regarding the complexity of the new pricing plan, Microsoft may be making some adjustments.

Microsoft has been fielding many concerns from existing customers and prospects about what this change will mean to their software investments. Many partners have also expressed concerns about managing this quickly approaching transition.

Upcoming planned updates from Microsoft will be:

• August 20 – Partner Alert
• September 1 – Pricelist Preview
• September 5 to October 10 – Office Hours
• October 1 – Licensing Guide and another Partner Alert

Microsoft has confirmed the pricing and licensing updates coming to Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform in October. There will be further details to come from Microsoft.

Microsoft Teams announces new features, greater user base than Slack

Teams is Microsoft’s digital collaboration platform that brings people and data into one place. For the first time ever, Microsoft released daily and weekly active usage metrics for Teams. With only two years in market, Teams now has over 13 million daily active users (DAUs) and 19 million weekly active users (WAUs). With the workforce constantly changing, teamwork is more essential now than ever before. These usage numbers exceed the current usage of its main competitor, Slack.

Four new features were announced and will be available shortly. The new features will allow users to prioritize time sensitive communications through setting priority notifications for chat messages as well as Read Receipts to indicate when a message sent has been read by the recipient. These features have already begun to roll out to users this month.

Other new features included capabilities to publish Announcements within channels, to publish messages to several channels at once and to moderate comments in channels. Finally, Shift workers can clock in and out directly from within Teams.

Innovation – a constant theme with Microsoft

Through Microsoft’s ongoing innovation, their dedication to their mission is evident. To learn more, visit Microsoft’s Book of News from Inspire 2019.

To learn more about how enCloud9 can help you get the most out of Dynamics 365, PowerApps, Teams, Business Central or any other component of the Microsoft Productivity family, contact us today.