Availability of Microsoft Academic and Nonprofit SKUs in NCE

The Microsoft CSP education, nonprofit, and US GCC per-user offers are becoming available in the new commerce starting March 1, 2024.

Many CSP partners have been maintaining two different systems to support their legacy and new commerce business. The launch of education, nonprofit and US GCC offers in new commerce will enable partners to optimize their operations and reduce costs. Additionally, the transition of their customers to new commerce will allow partners to present new product offerings and take advantage of long-lasting incentive opportunities through the Microsoft Commerce Incentives program (MCI).

AppXite encourages partners with education, nonprofit, and US GCC customers to prioritize migrating their customers from legacy to the new commerce system from March through June 2024, before Microsoft-led migration begins in July. Currently, Microsoft is doing the CSP commercial migration, and it plans to migrate the education, nonprofit, and US GCC offers that remain in the legacy system to new commerce on the offer renewal date. The migration initiative by Microsoft will begin on July 1, 2024, starting with the public sector renewing offers. This transition will then extend to cover the renewals of all offers throughout the entirety of the calendar years 2024 and 2025.

AppXite is committed to aligning the offer availability with Microsoft's launch strategy rolling out these offers in four waves as soon as they become available, as shown in the following table. AppXite will ensure that partners have access to Wave 1 offers with the highest customer volume as soon as they become available. We will also diligently prepare for subsequent waves, ensuring that partners can seamlessly access and add the offers to the catalog once they become available in the AppXite platform. 

As a CSP partner, you might have some customers using commercial SKUs and some using education, nonprofit, or GCC SKUs. While Microsoft will migrate all offers remaining in the legacy system to new commerce in 2024, the timeline for Microsoft-led migration of commercial offers is different than the timeline for public sector offers.

If you are a CSP indirect provider, we kindly request that you share the information regarding the launch of public sector per-user offers in the new commerce platform and the Microsoft-led migration schedule with your reseller partners. This will help ensure that they prepare their customers for this transition. 

• Retiring offers: There are several public sector legacy offers that will not won't be migrated to new commerce. Partners can see the detailed list of public sector legacy offers scheduled for retirement in the CSP Offer Retirement Guide. 

• Naming: Be aware that CSP Public Sector legacy offers may be assigned different names within the new commerce system. Find the information in the Legacy Offer Matrix in the Partner Center Pricing workspace, to look up the name of their legacy subscription and map it to the new name in the new commerce system.

• Price: There are a small number of CSP Public Sector offers that have different price in the new commerce system. The price partners pay can also be impacted by FX rates, depending on regional FX rate fluctuations. Partners can access precise pricing information for offers sold within the new commerce system in the Partner Center Pricing workspace.

• Billing and invoicing: In terms of billing, invoices and reconciliation files will be accessible by the 8th day of each month in the new commerce system. For a deeper understanding of the billing processes within the new commerce system, partners are encouraged to visit the Billing section, which provides insights into both one-time and recurring purchases.

• Incentives: CSP partners will be able to earn legacy incentives till December 31, 2024. See the next steps section for information about the new commerce Microsoft Commerce Incentives (MCI) program.

Nonprofit CSP customers who fulfill the Nonprofits Grants & Credits Eligibility criteria and are in the process of transitioning to the new commerce will qualify for new promotional offers on specific Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform SKUs. These promo offers will provide a 16.67% discount to nonprofit customers who choose to start in new commerce with a low-risk monthly commitment to any of the listed products. The promotion period is January 1 to September 30, 2024. More about promotional offers: Global Promo Readiness Guide Collection.

To help partners prepare for CSP public sector per-user offer launch and migration, we recommend taking the following steps:

• Learn more information about Microsoft-led migration.

• Review billing differences in the new commerce system.

• Read about scenarios involving add-ons and base SKUs.

• Explore which Microsoft Commercial Incentives (MCI) might be right for you.

• Lead your customers to Licensing.com blog post, to learn about the migration to new commerce.

• Review the update to the Global Promo Readiness Guide Collection, to discover promotional offers for Nonprofit customers.