Dynamics 365 license guide full#
No longer could you buy a CRM essential, basic or professional CAL, you had to buy a Full Plan 1 CAL, or a Sales CAL, or a Service CAL. To justify the licensing, Microsoft started investing heavily into the development of the underlying platform, taking a cloud first approach and building what we now know and love as the ‘Power Platform’. This coincided with the release of the newly branded ‘Dynamics 365’. Microsoft followed suit with the introduction of new role based licensing in December 2016. SalesForce and others didn’t licence horizontally, they licenced based on modules of rich functionality they provided. Most people considered essential CALs for read only or light users, basic CALS were a good fit for the vast majority of users, and Professional CALs were for super-users.Ĭompared to the likes of Salesforce and its other competitors, Microsoft was cheap as chips. Sure, you had to licence servers separately and you could buy either an essential, basic or professional CAL, but for the most part you didn’t need to worry about what end users were actually doing. So, you could use Dynamics for Sales, Service, Marketing and not need to buy a specific Client Access Licence (CAL) for each subset of business functionality. What do I mean by horizontal licensing? Well, users were licensed on generic features included across the entire product. If you haven’t got the time to do so, read on for my highlights.īack in the days of Dynamics CRM 4.0, right up until Dynamics 2015, we had a horizontal licensing model. You’d better set aside a day or two to fully digest and understand the changes. The hills are alive, with the sound of people downloading the new Microsoft Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide October 2018, just released today! Ok, so apart from me, most people don’t get too excited about software licensing, but there are some fundamental changes coming for Microsoft Dynamics customers, so be aware. How do you solve a problem like team member?