November 1st, 2016 is looming closer and closer, and anyone who is working with Dynamics CRM should be aware of the importance of this date. Dynamics 365 Enterprise will be officially released on this day, replacing all existing Dynamics CRM Online pricing/licensing offers for new customers. Existing Dynamics CRM customers & partners are starting to get a clear vision of what the product offering looks like, from a licensing and pricing structure. I am eagerly looking forward to getting my hands of a trial instance of Dynamics 365 so that I can take it for a whirl. But for now, I wanted to publish a post that takes a look at the most interesting aspects of Dynamics 365 Enterprise, its release and my general thoughts on what we can hope to expect in the months ahead:
Tiered Pricing
The new tiered pricing structure of Dynamics 365 presents one of the major areas where Microsoft can challenge their competitors in the marketplace, as well as driving high volume license sales for their Dynamics 365 Enterprise plans. How it basically works is that the more licenses you consume for a particular plan, the cheaper each license in that plan will become. The following image from this really interesting article from ZDNet provides an excellent summary of how this will work:
Those who currently subscribe to a high number of Basic, Essential & Professional licenses for CRM Online will, therefore, benefit greatly from moving across to Dynamics 365 as soon as possible, in order to take advantage of the very high levels of price reduction - in particular, for Team Member and Enterprise Plan 1 licenses.
Team Members
Under Dynamics 365, the previous “light-use” Essential & Basic licenses have been replaced with the new Team Members license, that provides a standard set of user rights across the entire range of Dynamics 365 apps. They come in at about £10 less per month compared to the current £18.70 for Basic Licenses, potentially going down as low as approx. £3, thanks to tiered pricing. In terms of what they provide from a user access point of view, functionality appears to sum up as Essential + Basic = Team Members, covering typical record access requirements for most users in an organisation.
Free Portal and Non-Production instances!
Previously, you would have to purchase at least 25 Professional CRM licenses to get a Sandbox (i.e. Non-Production) instance of CRM for free, or alternatively, cough up £93.50 per month for a Sandbox. Portals, introduced earlier this year, have also been a paid add-on until now, for a significantly higher price of £311.60 per month!! With Dynamics 365 Plan 1 subscriptions and higher, your subscription will automatically include the following alongside your Production instance:
- 1 Sandbox Instance
- 1 Portal Instance
Given that there is no minimum seat requirement for Enterprise 1 plans, the above could represent a significant saving on average, particularly when you take into account tiered pricing. It also presents a major opportunity to drive increased adoption towards CRM Portals in the months and years ahead.
More database storage
It is pleasing to see the minimum database storage rise to 10GB as opposed to 5GB. One of the (potentially) hidden problems over time as part of any CRM deployment is storage being slowly eaten away by entity record types. I have blogged previously about one of these entities in question, and it is something that customisers and administrators need to be acutely aware of when designing and planning the system. The increase in storage goes some way towards mitigating this, but I would question whether a further increase could be warranted; particularly given the cost of storage on Azure for SQL databases being so much cheaper in comparison.
And it’s goodnight from MDM…and Parature
Perhaps the most significant announcement as part of the above is that Microsoft Dynamics Marketing (MDM) and Parature will no longer be sold to new customers from November 1st, 2016 onwards. Microsoft has already announced that Adobe Marketing Cloud will become Dynamics 365 for Enterprise’s preferred marketing solution, but this has been confused further by an additional follow-up announcement regarding the Dynamics 365 Marketing App for Business, coming up Spring 2017. For Parature, no successor product to has been announced, indicating that existing Parature users will eventually need to migrate across to some of the recently acquired service-focused modules within Dynamics 365, such as Customer Service, Field Service and Project Service Automation. I am unsure of the exact, specific numbers when it comes to Parature and MDM sales, but the above demonstrates clearly that not all Microsoft acquisitions are destined for success and products that are perceived to be “too different” from the core CRM/Dynamics 365 experience can and will be dropped. I cannot speak for Parature, but I have had some experience with MDM in the past and, although it does provide some useful and effective campaign automation tools, seems to be too bloated as a product, desperately trying to do everything but not in a particularly effective way. Microsoft’s mixed messaging in regards to what can be considered MDM’s true successor product means that it is prudent to perhaps wait before upgrading or moving away from MDM immediately. Hopefully, by Spring 2017, we will be able to see how both offers compare from an integration point of view with Dynamics 365 Enterprise.
Generous upgrade pathways for existing CRM customers
Up to 47% discounts when upgrading to Dynamics 365 from Dynamics CRM Online. Microsoft has already published a list of promo codes that can be used for early adopters, so if you are itching to move across to Dynamics 365 next week, you can very quickly get upgraded.
Is Dynamics 365 Enterprise actually a “major” release?
Looking carefully through the following TechnNet article on how to access the new Dynamics 365 apps, and I noticed the following tidbit:
What is “Dynamics 365 - custom”?
“Dynamics 365 - custom” is the app name for all online organizations with a version 8.1 and lower as well as the default app on 8.2. The name for the 8.2 default app can be changed by the administrator.
My reading of this is that the version number of Dynamics 365 Enterprise is 8.2, as opposed to 9.0. This is a minor thing, but interesting that Microsoft does not consider the Dynamics 365 Enterprise release to be a “major” one. This potentially raises the prospect for a further release in 2017 that adds in a plethora of new features - something that ties in well with the expected release of the Dynamics 365 for Business in Spring 2017.
Conclusions or Wot I Think
The Dynamics 365 release looks to be a major reset of a number of base assumptions surrounding Dynamics CRM - including, most crucially, the price. Some of the very early scenarios I have seen from a migration point of view look to point to a very definite price rise for those moving across to Dynamics 365 (assuming you follow Microsoft’s recommended migration pathway). This is mitigated somewhat if you have a high number of licenses, thanks to tiered pricing, but I am troubled about where this leaves small to medium size businesses who currently use CRM Online. I have highlighted previously my worries and concerns that Dynamics 365 for Enterprise could be seen as an adoption barrier for these type of businesses, so the reaction to these businesses to the new pricing will be an important bellwether for Dynamics 365 Enterprise - and whether businesses decide to just ditch it altogether when it comes to the eventual, forcible upgrade to the new plans; or look at moving across to Dynamics 365 for Business instead. The sooner we get some clarity on what this offering looks like, the better.
Something else to add into the mix, solely for UK-based customers, is the announcement that Microsoft’s cloud services prices will rise significantly in the new year, in a move that has been linked to the current state of Pound Sterling following the Brexit vote. To my knowledge, exact pricing for UK customers of the new Dynamics 365 plans have not been released (although we can do a rough currency conversion from US Dollars), so we are unable to exactly determine at this stage what the prices will look like at launch and whether they take into account the above price rises. If not, then it would add a degree of urgency towards migrating across to Dynamics 365 sooner rather than later, in order to lock in your prices for another 12 months.
All said and done, Dynamics 365 presents some interesting opportunities and challenges for organisations who work with the product - lets hope that it’s weighed more towards the latter in the months ahead 🙂