Starting October 2019, key licensing changes are going into effect to both Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.

Today the Dynamics 365 business model covers plans for full users and this will change in October 2019. Starting October 1, Dynamics is moving away from plans. In other words, the Customer Engagement Plan, Unified Operations Plan and Dynamics 365 Plan will be retired.

While Plan licensing was promoted as the cost-effective way to use the possibilities given in Customer Engagement apps, customers are often obliged to pay for the full license, even if they do not use the plan’s full capabilities.

New licensing is based on Customer Engagement and Unified Operations plan apps:

New licensing is described in details here:
http://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/licensing/update

In the new licensing, described as mix&match, prices will be calculated on app consumption basis with a base app for every user and “attach” price for each additional app.

Therefore the focus on one application (as a base one) will be easier due to the changes made to the licenses over the last few years, in particular:

• Possibility to create cases in the Sales licenses
• Possibility to create leads in Customer Service licenses

“This change is particularly important for the customers who have not exploited the all capabilities of licenses and who had to bear the higher costs, even if the licenses were purchased at seemingly attractive prices. However, it is important that the changes that will be introduced in the functional scope by Microsoft for individual applications will be easy to successfully implement in real business scenarios.

While designing and implementing the new Dynamics system, we should consider what possibilities arise from the license and implementation in a given architecture, so that the costs are optimal. What is as important as the costs is further development of architecture and meeting new business requirements. Hence the license driven development – designing the system for real use and not for too much.” comments Krystian Hatała, VP Netwise.

To sum up, the current customers Microsoft obliges to keep the current price plan for at least one year. But if your company needs to meet the challenges of mapping old licenses to new ones, please contact us to learn more about the approach.