March Preview: Big month for Microsoft Partners
March Preview: Big month for Microsoft Partners
As March is closing in fast on us, I want to highlight a few big things that will land for our partner community in the coming month.
Price increase:
We communicated this back in August straight after Microsoft announced them. But price increases will land on March first. Now, remember that it is not for all SKUs just 6 of them will be impacted. They are as follows:
These are the new RRP’s:
Business Family SKU’s
- M365 Business Basic will now cost €5.10
- M365 Business Premium will now cost €18.80
Office 365 SKU’s
- Office 365 E1 will now cost €8.40
- Office 365 E3 Will now cost €22.60
- Office 365 E5 will now cost €37.40
M365 SKU’s
- Microsoft 365 E3 will now cost €35.40
NCE is here: Seriously! It really is here!
With March hitting us, another two deadlines come into effect relating to NCE. As of March 1st, any of your new CSP licence based (O/M365 and Dynamics) subscription will go into NCE by default. So please make sure that you have done 2 things in relation to NCE.
- Sign your amended terms and conditions that MWH have circulated and return to [email protected]
- Have your own terms and conditions with your clients in place for NCE or at least have explained and documented in writing what NCE means for your clients in terms of their commitments to you the partner.
You will need to manage your legacy renewals also from this point, as Microsoft will not migrate them for you. So please watch your “soft renewal dates” or you could have a nasty surprise when a client is locked out of their tenant.
The second date is the 31st of March. This is when the current 5% partner promo or as we call it the carrot is due to expire. Microsoft have said they may extend this, but this is not confirmed yet. So, if you want to squeeze a small bit more from the NCE deal, act fast.
Note: if you are looking to secure your client a deal on the above increased SKUs and lock them into NCE terms but lock the price as it is today, for example Business Premium @ €16.80 you will need to do that before March 1st. This obviously allows you to help your clients avoid any price increases if they have any of the above-mentioned SKU’s and locks them into you for 12 months.
Service Updates: M365 Defender for Business is General Availability (G.A) in March.
Last week on a modern work and security webinar Jared Spareto confirmed that March will be the month that Defender for Business will go into general availability. This will mean that new M365 licences spun up in March should see Defender for Business included in the services. For existing subs, it will start to appear in subscriptions as the weeks/months roll on.
Partners should start to think about how to manage this. If you are positioning another next gen AV tool from a preferred 3rd party, have your value-add story ready for clients who may become aware that Defender for Business is in their licence bundle. (It comes with M365 BP & stand alone as its own service). Microsoft will be going big on marketing with this, so expect your clients to know about it.
Partners who are considering offering Defender for Business can talk to us in MWH to get GTM assets, sales enablement and we are working on technical enablement also which we hope to confirm very soon for March some time.
For now, see here for guidance: Defender for Business Technical Deployment guide: Microsoft Defender for Business documentation | Microsoft Docs
Partners considering this solution should if not already done, start to consider how they will manage deployment and management of this service. Please feel free to organise a Build With session with myself here:
https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/[email protected]/bookings/s/Zeu7nQT6GUCfpc3FfNBAGg2
On the latter point of management, Microsoft also announced another service to go to GA in March.
Lighthouse 365 will go General Availability (G.A) in March.
The long awaited relative of the popular Azure lighthouse is finally coming into G.A this March. Microsoft have also expanded the SKUs that it works with. Lighthouse 365 now works with the following:
- M365 Business Premium (as in early preview)
- M365 E3
- M365 E5
Microsoft also showcased its defender integration with Lighthouse 365 which delivers partners one pane of glass to manage all endpoints across all tenants. This looks like a good addition to the MSP’s kit bag, and it is free for partners. You can sign up to start testing with your own Business Premium customers here Sign up for Microsoft 365 Lighthouse – Microsoft 365 Lighthouse | Microsoft Docs
More info on the service be found here: https://aka.ms/M365LighthouseDocs
PARTNER PROMO’s
Microsoft are always trying to drive business growth with Partners and as such constantly run Promo’s to try assist with that. Some of these are useful and others! Let’s say they are confusing at times and leave it at that. These current ones are interesting although, they are aligned to services we are not seeing huge traction in currently. Partner feedback on why that this is the case is always welcome.
Teams Essentials Promo:
Partner can earn a 25% discount on Teams essentials licences when sold annually (upfront) in NCE. This promo will be live in March and will run till Microsoft year end. Microsoft are informing us that Teams Essentials across western Europe is growing 10 times faster that M365 Business premium, and is winning clients over from Zoom, Slack and Google Hangouts. Partners will also be able to get insights form Microsoft on compete solutions via propensity data at request.
Teams Essentials Information here: Compare Microsoft Teams Options | Microsoft Teams
Teams Essentials Tech Docs: Microsoft Teams Essentials QuickStart guide for small businesses – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs
Windows 365 for Business Promo:
Partners can now offer a free 30-day trial to clients of Windows 365 for Business. This offer from Microsoft will allow partners to offer the trail as a POC. Please remember however that in NCE trial SKU’s will auto renew after the 30 days, so be careful on this one. Mange your time frames.
In Summary:
Huge amount happening this month, so please if you have any questions in relation to the above, reach out to the cloud team.
The team and I are very excited to see what our partners do with the Defender for Business Service and how they will look to use Lighthouse 365. I can say that partners who have been playing with both have so far given quite positive feedback on both.
As always, if you have any questions on the above, reach out direct to me, or anyone in the Modern Work & Security team.
Regards,
Guido