Understanding the New Commerce Experience for Seat-Based Licencing

The Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program is designed as an evolving system that allows for technology to develop and partners to grow through intelligently leveraging licencing and packaging managed services that deliver impactful solutions.

“Microsoft is investing in product innovations, better tooling, and access to new business opportunities that enable partners to grow their CSP revenue and provide more options to customers,” explains Dan Truax, General Manager, Global Partner Solutions, Microsoft.

As such, off the back of the New Commerce Experience for Azure, Microsoft is evolving the commerce platform for seat based licensing as well. This will streamline the ordering and subscription management processes as the vendor retires other licencing models.

What is the New Commerce Experience?

The new commerce experience consists of a series of changes and additional features to the Microsoft CSP program. The changes are designed to create greater standardisation and aim to: 

• Offer customers greater choice and flexibility in how/where they buy

• Offer partners greater opportunity to sell/upsell to a larger set of existing and new customers

• Encourage longer term business with a focus on value adding through managed services

Who does this affect?

Partners transacting seat based CSP i.e., Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform SKUs.

What are the top line changes that partners will experience?

Partners will experience feature changes to areas including cancellation options and enforcement, new monthly-term subscriptions, ability to suspend/resume subscriptions to name a few. This may impact business-as-usual to start with, however the aim of the new commerce experience is to offer partners:

1. Greater sales agility and customer commitment

2. Operational efficiency and costs savings

3. More choices for customers

To hear from Phil Meyer, Partner Technology Strategist, Microsoft Australia on this evolution of Microsoft licensing you can watch this video. 

When does New Commerce come into effect?

The New Commerce Experience will be generally available from January 2022 and partners will need to transition to this platform by March 2022. 

“Though you can take a phased adoption approach, keep in mind that new subscription orders, offers, and renewals for seat-based offers in the CSP program will be exclusive to the new commerce experience beginning in March 2022—so it’s critical to plan accordingly,” says Dan Truax, General Manager, Global Partner Solutions, Microsoft.

What is the benefit in moving to New Commerce sooner than March 2022?

Working with Dicker Data, the benefit in moving to the new platform means you can ensure your business is set up for the change and is optimising all the new benefits.

Incentives and earning opportunities for CSP partners will all be available for new commerce transactions in the CSP program under the Microsoft Commerce Incentive program (MCI). Chat to your Dicker Data partner enablement specialist about your specific eligibility.

In addition, Dicker Data have launched a series of webinars over the last few months dedicated to answering questions and helping partners navigate the change. You can access a summary FAQ document from past sessions here, or register to our New Commerce Experience Ascend Program, providing useful resources on how to make NCE work for you.