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Academic and NFP customers can access NCE offers from Microsoft starting from March 1st, 2024, in stages. From September 1, 2024, Microsoft will begin the automatic migration of renewing academic and NFP subscriptions to NCE.

Microsoft is moving forward with a major step to phase out the legacy CSP commerce platform. These entail important implications and changes for our CSP reseller partners, who will need to manage their customers’ subscriptions and updates as well.

Dates for the transition stages have recently been updated. Partners are encouraged to review the details below and get in touch with your Crayon account rep to discuss how we can help you and your customers get ready for these changes.

Let’s look at the key steps that Microsoft is taking:

  • January 11, 2024: Microsoft began the automatic Migration of all renewing Legacy Commercial seat-based subscriptions to NCE, on the date of subscription renewal. This applies for legacy Commercial subscriptions only.
  • March 1, 2024: Microsoft launched CSP public sector offers, including those for Academic and Not-for-profit (NFP) customers, in the new commerce system. Microsoft launch of CSP education and nonprofit offers in four waves, with more details available in later section of this blog.
  • August 1, 2024: New legacy purchases for nonprofit and education offers no longer available.
  • September 1, 2024: Microsoft-led automatic migration of public sector offers will begin on the date of subscription renewal.
  • March 31, 2025: Legacy CSP incentives end for eligible partners, and we will begin charging CSP admin fee for all Nonprofit and Academic legacy CSP subscriptions not migrated to NCE.

Here are the key dates for each migration:

CSP offers Available in new commerce Microsoft-led migration begins for offers renewing on this date
Commercial SKUs
 Now January 11, 2024
Education, nonprofit, US GCC SKUs
 Starting March 1, 2024 September 1, 2024

 

Some partners who were not approved for the NCE annual commitment monthly payment option yet, may qualify automatically based on their payment history. Partners who do not qualify need to change to either NCE monthly commitment monthly payment or NCE annual commitment annual payment subscriptions before the 2024 subscription renewal dates.

Read the latest Microsoft announcement here.

 

Automatic Migration of legacy CSP to NCE

Starting January 11, 2024, Microsoft will migrate renewing legacy CSP commercial subscriptions to NCE, where NCE offers are available for the legacy SKUs. Migration will occur on the renewal date of active legacy subscriptions and the migrated subscriptions will be set to the Annual term.

For Academic and Not-for-profit subscriptions, starting September, 2024 Microsoft will migrate renewing legacy CSP academic and Not-for-profit subscriptions to NCE. Migration will occur on the renewal date of active legacy subscriptions and the migrated subscriptions will be set to the Annual term.

Microsoft’s CSP legacy migration plan

Microsoft’s CSP legacy migration plan

 

Legacy offers targeted for new commerce When partners can begin migrating the legacy offers on their own When Microsoft will migrate the legacy offers
Commercial offers
(Microsoft 365, Security, Office 365, Dynamics 365)
 Now On the subscription renewal date in 2024, starting with January 11, 2024, renewals
Public sector:
Academic, NFP
 Now On the subscription renewal date, starting with September, 2024
renewals
Multiyear offers
(for example, six-year education SKUs)
 When Academic and NFP NCE offers become available under NCE To be confirmed, on the subscription renewal date in 2024, 2025, and onward

 

NB: Not all subscriptions can be migrated automatically by Microsoft. The following subscriptions cannot be migrated automatically to NCE:

  • Special Promo product
  • Retired or deprecated products
  • Subscriptions without a corresponding offer available in New Commerce
  • Migratable base subscriptions with ineligible add-ons won’t be migrated. For example, base is commercial but has an education addon.
Options for Partners

Options for Partners

Preferred Approach: Manual migration before renewal

Partners with approval for the NCE annual commitment monthly payment option: You can manually migrate subscriptions before the 2024 renewal date if you prefer a want a more planned approach. This is also the recommended approach for partners and customers to have greater control in best aligning the transition to their preferences. By doing manual migration, you can also align the subscription end date of your new subscriptions with your customers’ existing NCE subscriptions.

Partners without approval for the NCE annual commitment monthly payment option: Depending on your payment history, you would be whitelisted automatically. This means that your customers’ legacy CSP subscriptions would be migrated to NCE annual commit monthly payment subscription. You should still migrate to either NCE monthly commitment monthly payment or NCE annual commitment annual payment subscriptions before the 2024 subscription renewal dates.

NB: Our PRISM portal supports both individual and bulk migrations per tenant. The subscription reports available within the portal can be utilised to plan ahead and initiate discussions with customers.

Microsoft’s Auto-Migration

For subscriptions that Microsoft auto-migrates at their 2024 renewal date, partners will have a 7-day window for adjustments or cancellations if necessary. The migrated subscriptions will retain the seat count. If partners wish to retain a monthly term from CSP Legacy, manual migration is necessary – noting that a monthly term in NCE entails a 20% premium compared to the legacy and Annual term NCE price.

For partners who are not whitelisted due to your past payment history, Crayon reserves the right to cancel your customers’ NCE annual commit, monthly payment subscriptions migrated from legacy CSP during the 7-day cancellation window, after the subscriptions are migrated to NCE.

Availability of Academic and Not-For-Profit SKUs in NCE

Availability of Academic and Not-For-Profit SKUs in NCE

The public sector NCE offers (including those that of Academic and NFP) for new and renewing customers will be available from March 1, 2024, in four waves.

Microsoft will launch the CSP education, nonprofit, and US GCC offers in four waves, as shown in the following table. Wave 1 will include the offers with the highest customer volume. The remaining offers will be launched in the subsequent waves.

Education, nonprofit offers Price list preview Available in new commerce
Wave 1 February 1, 2024 March 1, 2024
Wave 2 February 1, 2024 March 1, 2024
Wave 3 March 1, 2024 April 1, 2024
Wave 4 April 1, 2024 May 1, 2024

 

As Academic and NFP customers may not be acquainted with the concepts of NCE yet, we recommend that partners initiate collaboration with customers early to educate on the difference vs legacy CSP, even before the offers become available. This will help ensure that customers customise subscription terms to suit their preferences.

For customers who prefer monthly terms in NCE, the manual migration mentioned above should be undertaken before the automatic migration of legacy CSP academic and NCE subscriptions to NCE.

How Partners can prepare for these changes

How Partners can prepare for these changes

As we approach this important phase, consider the following as you plan the next steps for your customers.

  • Review customers’ remaining Legacy CSP subscriptions, utilising the comprehensive reports available within your PRISM Portal Reports section.
  • Discuss the preference of Monthly vs Annual subscriptions required or ratio of the two.
  • Review customer contracts to align with the preferred approach and terms

For guidance on migrating legacy subscriptions to NCE in the PRISM portal, refer our article here.

In essence, Microsoft’s next steps in the transition to NCE are attention-worthy and warrant strategic planning with your customers. We encourage you to start preparing now and please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any questions you may have.

Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

CSP education, nonprofit, and US GCC offers will launch in the new commerce system starting on March 1, 2024. Due to engineering constraints, these offers cannot be released all at once on March 1, 2024. Instead, Microsoft will release the offers in monthly waves or batches from March to April 2024. Wave 1 will contain offers with the highest customer volume.

Microsoft-led migration is the process by which Microsoft engineering team will move CSP subscriptions remaining in the legacy system to the new commerce system on the subscriptions’ renewal date in 2024. The ideal scenario is for the CSP partner to manage the migration proactively with their customer to ensure that important details such as the subscription term meet the customer’s needs. If the partner doesn’t schedule the migration and complete the process on their own before the subscription renewal date, the Microsoft engineering team will migrate the legacy subscription to an annual term in new commerce with the same billing plan and seat count the customer had in legacy. Partners will have seven days after completion of the Microsoft-led migration to change the subscription details or cancel if necessary. Review Migrate subscriptions to new commerce to learn more.

Microsoft will begin migrating public sector offers remaining in legacy starting with offers renewing on September 1, 2024, and continuing throughout 2024 and 2025 on the date of subscription renewal.

Partners should plan to schedule and complete their customer’s migration two days before the subscription renewal date. For an example that clarifies the Microsoft-led migration date and time, see the Migrate subscriptions to new commerce article.

A: Retired legacy CSP product subscriptions will not be migrated by Microsoft. Partners will need to assist customers to these subscriptions to NCE with a new product SKU with the help of Microsoft CSP Offer Retirement Guide.

Other Legacy CSP subscriptions with corresponding offers in NCE will be migrated automatically, except subscriptions under the following scenarios:

  • Scenario: Migratable base subscriptions with ineligible add-ons won’t be migrated. For example, if the base is commercial but has an education addon that isn’t supported in new commerce.
  • Scenario: A partner has already scheduled a subscription’s migration. Microsoft detects existing scheduled migrations created by the partner but not yet executed. In these cases, Microsoft-led migration won’t occur as Microsoft prioritized the partner-led migration schedule.
  • Subscriptions that are inactive.

For more details, please refer to Microsoft documentation here.

There are benefits to a partner-led migration experience. Proactively engaging the customer enables the partner to plan for details that are important to their customer, such as deciding on a monthly term versus an annual term for the subscription and making changes to seat count. Active engagement reinforces the partner’s trusted advisor relationship and ensures no surprises for their customer during the migration experience.

Yes, some offers will be retired. You can view which offers are scheduled to be retired in the CSP offer retirement guide. This guide is updated monthly with lists of offer IDs that are being retired, the dates on which they will stop renewing, and guidance for partners on how to fill the gap for subscriptions that stop renewing to new terms. You will need to migrate these retired subscriptions to NCE manually. If the customer is using one of the Dynamics 365 cloud add-on promo SKUs, they might also be eligible for Microsoft CSP-EP to online Business Central (CSP2BC)—special offer. Reach out to your Crayon channel Business Application consultant for more details.

To assist CSP partners who will transition their nonprofit, education, and US GCC customers to new commerce in 2024, Microsoft will continue to pay legacy incentives through to March 31, 2025. Microsoft encourages partners to explore incentives opportunities available in new commerce by visiting the MCI program and to enroll as soon as possible.

Partners selling CSP new commerce offers have incentive earning opportunities through the MCI program. Partners can enroll their partner location IDs at any time through the Partner Center incentives dashboard by following the steps outlined in Incentives enrollment. To check their incentives eligibility criteria, partners can review the MCI guide posted on the partner incentives resource page. Important dates for partners managing nonprofit, education, and US GCC customers:

Table of NCE incentive eligibility for CSP partners

CSP nonprofit customers who meet the nonprofits grants and credits eligibility requirements and are transitioning to new commerce will be eligible for new promotional offers for specific Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform SKUs. These promo offers will provide a 16.67 percent discount to nonprofit customers who are:

1) New nonprofit customers purchasing Microsoft 365 for the first time

2) Existing nonprofit customers upgrading to a more premium product

3) Legacy CSP customers renewing on the new commerce experience.

The promotional period is March 18, 2024 to December 31, 2024. Details are available in the Global Promo Readiness Guide Collection.

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