Everything you wanted to know about the “New Commerce Experience CSP” but were afraid to ask

In “Everything you wanted to know about the ‘New Commerce Experience CSP’ but were afraid to ask” – we are going to try and demystify what can be a complicated topic for our customers.  My name is Esther Matshego and I am a Licensing Advisor at Altron Karabina. My role is to help customers understand which Microsoft Licensing programs and models are right for their business – so that they don’t need to.

With that said – let me get into this topic, which is why you are here.

Microsoft has released the next major update to the CSP program as part of the New Commerce Experience (NCE) which they have called seat-based offers.

As one of Altron Karabina’s CSP customers we want to ensure that you are aware of the changes that are coming and how this could impact you.

So what are the changes?

In a nutshell, Microsoft has released a set of updates to the commitment terms aligning it to the well known Enterprise Agreement or EA as its commonly called. The new release is focused on the M365, D365, Power Platform and Windows 365 SKU’s, and will roll out in the future to more of the Microsoft offerings.

This change took effect in January 2022 and is available for new purchases.  All renewals of CSP subscriptions after 30 June 2022 will have to be done on the seat-based offers in NCE.

So let’s dive a little deeper into the changes that the seat based offers have brought about and we will try and simplify it.

You now have commitment term options which include monthly, annually, and 36-month commitments. These commitment terms all have the option to pay monthly and the ‘Annual’ and ‘36-month’ term options have the option to pay annually as well.

The big difference comes in the “Quantity Adjustments” and specifically in the decreasing of subscription quantities. Below is a table which summarises the three subscriptions / commitment terms and what each of them allows.

Below is a timeline of the changes taking affect over the next few months:

These are not the last of the offers to come out for CSP, you can expect to see further announcements in 2022 including:

• More 36-month commitment offers across other products in addition to the current D365 offer
• Home Use Program allowing you to receive discounts on M365 consumer offers
• Multi-geo add-ons for M365 which will allow users to be able to connect to a datacentre nearest to them

For those looking to move to the new commerce model early, there are some promotions available from Microsoft

• The annual term promo gives a 5% discount off the CSP price list amount. This promotional pricing is currently scheduled to run through March 2022 but may be extended.
• The monthly term promo applies the regular annual term price instead of the usual 20% higher price point; this promo will run through June 2022.

If you would like to discuss this more in-depth and get a better understanding of the changes, please reach out to your account manager or request a call with me, Esther Matshego, via the following email address softwareservices-ak@altron.com.  Further information about our Software Services can be found here: Altron Karabina – CSP

We hope we have helped you understand “Everything you wanted to know about the ‘New Commerce Experience CSP’ but were afraid to ask“.