Here’s What You Need to Know About the Microsoft NCE
In the Microsoft world, NCE stands for New Commerce Experience. In short, the NCE changes how businesses manage and pay for licensing for certain Microsoft products, including 365 subscriptions.
You can read the Microsoft NCE announcement here, where they break down some of the major NCE changes; however, it’s still pretty technical from Microsoft’s standpoint. As a technology partner, we’ll help you understand what Microsoft’s NCE changes mean and how they’ll affect your business’s bottom line when it comes to the cost of licensing and contracts.
How Will the Microsoft NCE Affect Your Business?
Microsoft’s NCE will be delivered nationwide — managed services providers like High Touch are obligated to pass on these changes. If you work with a Microsoft partner and reseller to manage your licensing, be sure to contact them to ensure your licensing needs will be met.
Annual Contract Model
With the NCE, Microsoft is moving to an annual contract model. Partners can bill customers monthly; however, you’ll be committed to a one-year contract term. Billing occurs for the entire 12-month term.
Making Licensing Changes
Your annual contracts will be based on specific license type and company. Each individual license type that your company has will have a separate annual contract.
During your contract term with Microsoft, you’ll be able to add new licenses to your contract anytime, but you won’t be able to remove licenses until the contract’s end date. If you add any like-type licenses during your contract term, those licenses will co-terminate with the existing contract end date.
For example, if you have 50 O365 E3 licenses with a contract that expires on June 1, 2023, and you add five additional E3 licenses throughout the year, the added licenses will also expire on June 1, 2023. Conversely, if you added five new O365 E5 licenses, those licenses will expire one year from their respective (or individual) start date.
Monthly contracts are available for certain license types. Microsoft has allowed select subscription license types to be offered as a month-to-month contract—prices for those contracts are significantly higher and only allowed on certain license types. This would typically only be advisable for seasonal employees or clients that have considerable fluctuation in employee count.
High Touch is happy to consult with you on the best approach for your business.
Transferring Licenses
- Between employees. You will no longer be able to transfer licenses between employees; however, your licensing partner can unassign and reassign a license of the same type, which is beneficial if you have staff changes.
- Between partners or domains. License contracts cannot be transferred between Microsoft partners mid-contract or transferred between domains. All partner changes must occur at the time of contract expiration and must occur within seven days of expiration. Be aware that this is based on any day of the week, not just business days!
How Can You Prepare for the Microsoft NCE?
This Microsoft-implemented change is a perfect time to standardize your license types for ease of management. As a reminder, all individual license types will be considered separate agreements; similar license types co-terminate when you add new ones during the annual contract period.
As a technology partner, High Touch can help you manage your Microsoft licensing more efficiently (or do all the work so you don’t have to). Learn more about our Managed Office 365 services.