RSMUS.comFrom your monthly phone bill and Netflix subscription to your car insurance and monthly rent, the amount you pay for different services changes frequently. I also one hundred percent agree with you that it is difficult to keep up with all these changes sometimes. Microsoft recently announced changes to their pricing and licensing that impacts both Dynamics 365 and Common Data Services (CDS). RSM is here to help you with any questions you may have. We can also assist with evaluating your current licensing model seeing how it impacts your business or how you can possibly even save monthly costs.
First off, data usage globally is increasing exponentially due to financial investments by many corporations in areas like AI (Artificial Intelligence), IoT (Internet of Things) and many others. This alone should help explain why your internet provider is always adjusting your plan for streaming video content all the time, and this is also why Microsoft is making changes to their licensing model. For Microsoft to provide a scalable and modern solution, it needs to not only comply with rules and regulations but also enable your business to grow both in scale and embrace new business scenarios for your day to day operations.
In today’s current model, you are very limited to what is offered by Microsoft in database storage. They are looking to change this to support three different storage capacity management structures, that include Database Capacity for the core data and entity tables, File Capacity to manage files such as audio, photo, video, documents, etc., and Log Capacity which includes data for reporting and analytical purposes.
So what exactly is changing? This past April, Microsoft introduced the following:
- The ability to create additional instances with no need for separate licensing in prod/non-prod environments
- A new report to analyze your organization’s storage capacity
- An increase in storage overall by separating out the file and log capacities with the 4 terabyte size limit not applying
- Transitioning to a new platform capacity which allows existing APIs to be backward compatible and no other form/UI changes
Figure 1: Source via Microsoft
Below you can see the new models for both Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement and PowerApps Plan 1 and 2.
Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement
Figure 2: Source via Microsoft
PowerApps Plan 1 and 2
Figure 3: Source via Microsoft
The benefits to this include stability and growth, freeing up space in other areas, support for a variety of other data types, and the flexibility to create and modify existing instances as needed. When you’re organization is introducing new functionality to your existing system and you need additional instances, this will be a more efficient process to create a new sandbox for additional testing.
Let us take a look at an example from Microsoft on how these changes could impact your organization.
Figure 4: Source via Microsoft
A quick break down of this customer: 45 users, 54 GB total database size, and 2 instances. Previously, they were paying $170 a month for their total storage but will now be paying $800 with the new structure breaking it out into the three categories of Database Capacity, File Capacity, and Log Capacity. This charge comes from an overage in their database storage at $40 per GB. You will also note above that this customer has two instances (1 production and 1 non-production) that ran about $700 a month previously but now will cost $0 in the new model. For this scenario what was previously costing the customer $870 a month will now be $800 specifically for storage only costs saving them $70 a month.
This scenario above may not be the case for everyone but please reach out to us so we can provide you an accurate analysis for your organization and see what your new licensing structure will be. Please reach out or comment on this blog if you have any questions.
To learn more about how your organization can take advantage of this new licensing structure and other Dynamics 365 features, visit RSM’s Microsoft Dynamics 365 resource. To make sure you stay up to date with the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Community, subscribe to our Microsoft Dynamics Community Newsletter. For more information on Microsoft Dynamics 365, contact us.
By: Brian Jason Smith – Florida | Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales | Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Field Service
