Oct 15, 2020

Bippity Boppity Boo! Is a Business Central Cloud Upgrade For You?

Updated: Aug 17, 2021

The short answer is...yes you should upgrade your Microsoft Dynamics NAV software to Dynamics 365 Business Central. What about Dynamics GP, should that be upgraded too? Absolutely! However, because this article will focus primarily on upgrading NAV to Business Central you should refer to our article It's Time to Upgrade your Dynamics GP to Business Central to learn why GP customers should upgrade.

Why should you or anyone other corporation running Dynamics NAV upgrade to Business Central? Microsoft's transition promotions. Currently if you transition to Business Central Cloud (subscription pricing) from Dynamics NAV on-premise you will receive a 40% discount on named users. So for example let's say you need 1 Business Premium user license, the original price is $100 but you would pay the discounted price of $60. But wait, there's more!

Microsoft CSP-EP Promo

Active customers can renew their Enhancement Plan (EP) through the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program and receive online licenses. What does this mean? Well according to Microsoft, some offer details are:

Licensing program: CSP
Product: Dynamics 365 Business Central (online)
Segment: Commercial/Public Gov only
Offer length: June 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021
Offer duration: one-year initial agreement and two optional one-year renewals (three years total), or one-year subscription with one-year auto-renewal option
Offer availability: Offer subject to CSP country availability
Price: The CSP-EP renewal offer provides a price point that is 60% lower than the standard commercial list price. For example, the CSP-EP renewal offer list price for Dynamics 365 Business Central (online) Premium user is $40 compared to the $100 list price for the CSP standard commercial price list.
Licensing requirement: Customers must purchase Dynamics 365 Business Central (online) licenses with an annualized total that is greater than or equal to their EP renewal amount. For example, Let's imagine your current yearly enhancement plan is $12,000 per year. Take this enhancement plan amount and divide it by 12 months to show how much your monthly subscription would be. $12,000 / 12 months = $1,000 per month that needs to be spent in subscription user licensing. This means that you need to spend $1,000 per month on users. How many users does this equal? Let's take the most expensive Business Central cloud user, the Premium version, which is $100 per user. With the discount from this promo the user costs you $40 per user. $1,000 per month / $40 per user = 25 premium users. This should be a significant amount of more users than what you currently have!

To sum up this Microsoft CSP-EP promo, you are getting a 60% discount on Microsoft Business Central cloud user licenses and do not have an enhancement plan anymore!