Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience (NCE) 2024: More Flexibility and Capabilities for License-Based Services
Microsoft has recently introduced the New Commerce Experience (NCE) for license-based services, which offers more flexibility and capabilities when purchasing and managing products like Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Intune, and all other services that has been available in Partner Center for years. The new commerce experience is less about what partners are purchasing and more about how they’re purchasing and managing. Many of the basics remain the same between traditional and new commerce, but new commerce has new capabilities such as more flexibility for managing services, new pricing, and add-on options, and simplified and enhanced billing.
Partners can continue to purchase license-based services in the traditional way if they want, but they’ll also see new commerce indicators for offers in the catalog. The new commerce experience offers partners more flexibility for managing services, including the ability to control subscription renewals, upgrade partial seats when moving to new SKUs, and schedule changes to subscriptions that take effect when their terms expire.
New pricing and add-on options in the new commerce experience include the ability to get pricing for services programmatically through APIs, more flexibility to acquire add-on services because purchases are no longer dependent on base-offer transactions, and new monthly term options that give partners more flexibility for their businesses. The billing has been simplified and improved by consolidating billing and invoicing using the partner’s currency, making billing dates consistent based on months rather than mid-month dates that can vary across partner tenants, and providing monthly, annual, or up-front billing for many subscriptions.
Partners who decide to transact with the new commerce services should familiarize themselves with how the new commerce license-based services work. Microsoft Learn provides a detailed overview of the new commerce license-based services, including new capabilities, what isn’t changing, and key differences between traditional and new commerce.
Microsoft now has three options to collect their money from all their business clients around the world:
1. Flexible, Month-to-month licenses (add/remove licenses as you see fit, as often as monthly. No commitment of any kind besides one month at a time for each license.
2. Annual commitment with upfront pre-payment for the whole year. This option includes a discounted rate since it’s an annual commitment.
3. Annual commitment with MONTHLY payment (as opposed to paying all up front) but you still commit to a full year of paying for the license. You legally commit to pay Microsoft for the full year and you can’t cancel before the 12-month commitment ends.
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References: https://learn.microsoft.com
