MSP designed portal environment is essential to simplify your Microsoft Cloud experience.
The goal of Microsoft NCE is to give customers greater choice and flexibility in how and where they purchase Microsoft Cloud products by reducing complexity and providing cost savings for long-term commitments. It was introduced with the release of Azure Plan in November 2019, and is now being expanded to include license-based and perpetual software transactions, available via a CSP.
It doesn’t replace CSP, but it enhances it to be in line with other billing models that are part of the Microsoft ecosystem. It also introduces additional features to make engaging Exponential-e as your CSP a more cost-effective alternative to Enterprise Agreements (EA) for customers of up to 2,400 users. At a high level, it provides revenue predictability, operational efficiency, and more choice for customers to manage their license-based subscriptions.
There are a number of changes introduced for license-based products with NCE, and it can be a somewhat complex journey for many organisations who have to manage it internally. As your CSP, we will assign our Microsoft CSP Cloud specialists to help you with this journey.
Their core aims are to:
Simplify the overall process to effectively manage NCE and reduce the activities you have to complete
Review the available licensing options for you under NCE and choose the right ones for your organisation
Help you save money, where possible, by leveraging the purchasing options correctly,
Make use of the promotional offers currently available from Microsoft
The following promotions and changes are made to NCE subscriptions and license-based products:
Annual subscriptions lock the purchase price in for a period of one year. Seats added midterm to these subscriptions are priced at the original order price.
From now until 31 March * There are incentives available for all NCE annual subscriptions. This period may be extended by Microsoft until 30 June.
From now until 30 June * There is no cost increase for Monthly licenses
* These promotions are not available for Windows 365 services
Price increases for annual and 3 year subscriptions are made to several Modern Workplace products on 1 March for commercial customers. Education and consumer pricing is not affected by this.
Microsoft 365 E3
Office 365 E1, E3, and E5
Microsoft 365 Business Basic and Business Premium
Monthly licensing is also increased by 20% for annual and 3 year commitments (after the promotion ends) and is subject to change each month.
Annual NCE subscriptions signed before 1 March will not increase in price for 1 year.
Teams Audio Conferencing is now included with some subscription plans:
Microsoft 365 F1, F3, E3
Office 365 F3, E1, E3
Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, and Business Premium
This includes the ability to join Teams meetings by phone number and set up Teams meetings with audio conferencing, with unlimited dial-in capabilities.
The following provides an overview of the timeline of pricing for new orders, as well as renewals on NCE.
The following details the process that we will follow with you to make the changes for NCE:
You want to keep your current licensing in place
You want to move to NCE for some or all of your licenses
We will reach out to you to discuss NCE and gauge your intentions to stay with the current legacy platform, or move to NCE
Determine whether you want to keep your current licensing timelines in place, or whether you want to go onto a new annual subscription on the legacy platform for all subscriptions
We will discuss your licensing requirements moving forward, with specific attention spent on license retention periods
Current timelines
New timelines for all subscriptions
We will review the requirements for monthly, annual, and 3 year licensing periods and determine the correct quantities for each. A quote will be provided for the license renewal
No changes needed
We provide you with a quote for the license renewal
Existing contracts are cancelled and a new one is signed by 18 February
We add new licenses on a non-NCE subscription and cancel the old ones on the same day before 28 February
We add new licenses on an NCE subscription and cancel the old ones on the same day before 28 February
Monthly licenses will migrate to NCE and receive promo pricing until 1 July
Annual licenses will be added by 1 March before the price increases
3 year licenses will be added in March once they have been made available for purchase
NCE early adopters promotion period.
Open License program ends. All perpetual and software subscriptions now available via CSP
1 February 2022
The price of the legacy Azure offer in CSP will equal the estimated retail price for Azure (all CSP customers will be charged RRP if they do not move over to Azure Plan, regardless of discounts provided by Exponential-e)
28 February 2022
Last day to place orders on current CSP model for subscription renewals of D365, M365, O365, and Power Platform
1 March 2022
Pricing increases are in effect, and 3 year licenses are available for purchase on NCE subscriptions
10 March 2022
New subscriptions ordered will only be available as NCE
1 April 2022
Incentive from Microsoft ends for new NCE subscriptions*
1 July 2022
Pricing for monthly NCE licenses are increased by 20%
28 February 2023
Renewals on legacy CSP is stopped and forced to transition to NCE
There is a new cancellation window of 72 hours for annual and 3-year licenses. After this period, there is no prorated refund provided for the remainder of the subscription upon cancellation.
There is a 20% additional charge for monthly terms to encourage longer commitments by customers*.
You can schedule your desired seat quantity changes, upgrades, downgrades, term changes, billing frequency changes, etc. in advance, to reduce admin overhead.
You can upgrade Enterprise SKUs midterm, such as upgrading Microsoft E3 licenses to E5. This is already available for SMB SKUs. Trials can automatically convert to paid subscriptions.
Annual and 3 year commitments cannot be cancelled. Suspend and resume functionality will remain available to use, but payments will continue until the end of the subscription term.
Once the 72 hour cancellation window has passed, any annualised offers can only have their seat quantities increased until the subscription renewal date is reached.
The maximum allowed seats that a tenant account may receive discounts for is 2,400 users. Above this number, Microsoft does not provide any further discounts, but Exponential-e may be able to.
A 3-year billing term will be available from March 2022. During this term the pricing is fixed and no increases are due if Microsoft increases their pricing. Payments can be made monthly, annually, or upfront.
Microsoft’s invoicing for subscriptions will occur on the 8th of each calendar month, in line with Azure NCE. The billing term will be per calendar month for NCE and each month will be billed for retrospectively.
Promotional offers that are purchased will now be detailed to you via email, and promotions will be more uniformed across its licensing programs for consistency.
Communication credits were not available on legacy CSP, and customers had to bill this via a credit card for additional calling consumption (pay per minute). This will be available for purchase on NCE.
Multi-geo capability is included as part of NCE for customers whose data is stored in different regions. Previously this was only available to Enterprise Agreements.
A standardised cancellation policy, in line with other Microsoft programs and subscription models
Microsoft competitors are following a similar motion in policy
Some features coming to NCE isn’t possible in the current platform
Further licensing offers and new promotions will in future only be made available on NCE
Customers have requested more options for committing to agreements, including longer terms, like Enterprise Agreements
Azure has already moved to NCE in 2019, with consolidated billing dates etc.
Place an order of subscriptions via new NCE SKUs and cancel the current legacy CSP subscriptions
Cancel and reorder all CSP legacy subscriptions as NCE to make use of the promotional offers. Annual or 3-year subscriptions will benefit from these changes.
For customers not wishing to change anything at this time, we will place orders on NCE when their current legacy subscriptions come to an end.
This is a forced cancellation of current license-based legacy subscriptions by Microsoft. They will not auto renew.
No. Microsoft will not communicate this to customers. However, we communicate this information to you as our CSP customer as part of our subscription management.
Yes. You will be able to continue CSP legacy agreements until their subscription renewal period, or until 28 February 2023, whatever comes first. This includes increasing and decreasing license counts. New subscriptions will however be on NCE from 10 March 2022.
Yes. Exponential-e will conduct a license review of your tenancies to determine the best commitments for your licenses. For example, we may split your commitments to 80% annual and 20% monthly billing to still allow for decreasing seat counts within a specific threshold. This is also available for 3-year commitments, so you can lock in your pricing.
No. The subscription can be suspended, and you will lose functionality for the service. However, you will continue to be billed for the services until their termination.
Yes. If we move your licensing to NCE before 1 March, when the price rise occurs, the current pricing will remain the same for annual commitments until their anniversary date.
Yes. We will be able to continue CSP legacy until the customers subscription renewal period or 28 February 2023, whatever comes first, including increasing and decreasing license counts. New subscriptions will however be on NCE from 1 October this year.
10 January – NCE launches and Microsoft releases the introductory promotions. It’s advised that you look at committing to the new subscriptions to leverage the discounts available.
1 March – The price increases across Microsoft 365 licenses come in place and the 3 year purchasing options become available. From 10 March all new and renewing subscriptions will be purchased through NCE. 1 October – You will now have to purchase through NCE.
Renew to a higher SKU, renew to a lower SKU, renew lower quantity, renew higher quantity, renew to different billing frequency, renew to different term, view, edit and delete scheduled changes.
All billing rates are the same across the world, meaning that there are no cost implications based on where the tenancies reside
Subscription billing is timed from the first day till the last day of the month (legacy subscription billing period starts when the tenancy is created)
Billing will be made available by Microsoft on the 8th of each month
Communication credits are now available via NCE CSP subscriptions. Previously, customers had to pay for these via credit cards on their tenant account and they were not available via CSP
Multi-geo capability is introduced, which allows customers with multiple locations to have their data located close to where the users are located, while they can be billed in one location. This enables multi-national organisations to be serviced by us, as long as we bill them in the UK or the EU
Customers and CSPs can pre-order subscription changes in advance of their subscriptions ending. These changes are made at the start of the new term
CSP discounts are provided for up to 2,400 users, as they are currently are provided for CSP subscriptions. User licenses in excess of 2,400 users are priced at Microsoft RRP rates, although Exponential-e can provide some discounts for subscriptions with over 2,400 users
EA agreement pricing is also adjusted so that no discounts are provided up to 2,400 users, and EA customers pay RRP for the first 2,400 user licenses. This means that Exponential-e will provide cheaper pricing for customers with 2,400 or fewer users, due to its pricing discounts
Annual and 36-month subscriptions cannot be transferred from one CSP to another
Subscription licenses across CSPs are combined in order to keep to Microsoft's quantity discounts and rules. Microsoft 365 Business licenses will be limited to 300 users across all subscriptions
Pricing is increased for a variety of license-based products with NCE, including Microsoft 365 and Office 365 products. This pricing will be made available to CSPs on 1 February 2022
Monthly pricing is still available under NCE, at a cost increase of 20% over annual subscriptions after the promotion period ends
Incentives are scheduled to run until March 2022 (but may be extended), and the monthly term does not increase until June 2022
36-month agreements are being made available in 2022 with pricing expected to be made available on 1 February 2022
License cancellations are only allowed for the first 72 hours after buying the licenses. After this period, the customer is still responsible for paying Exponential-e for these licenses, and Exponential-e will have to pay Microsoft for the remainder of the subscription
Suspend and resume functionality is still supported for CSP subscriptions, but customers and Exponential-e will be required to pay their subscriptions until the end of the original subscription term
Licenses may be upgraded by the customer midterm, i.e. from E3 to E5, but downgrading is no longer supported. License types may also be upgraded by the customer i.e. from Business Premium to E5
Customers receive promotion updates directly from Microsoft, although these will also be communicated to customers by Exponential-e
Trial subscriptions can be set to automatically update to full licenses by Exponential-e if the customer wishes
Subscriptions can be set to automatically renew when they expire