Microsoft has foreshadowed significant price rises for its Dynamics 365 cloudy business applications.

Microsoft's corporate veep for Business Applications and Platform, Bryan Goode, announced the change last Friday, and justified the price rises on grounds that "each year, we release hundreds of new features and enhancements."

Goode singled out "AI-powered, real-time customer insights for marketers, sellers, and service agents; as well as … optimizing operations and mission-critical processes with data insights, supply chain visibility, and end-to-end automation of financial processes" as improvements that make a price rise reasonable.

A list of price changes details increases of between 9.26 percent and 16.67 percent.

That's less than cumulative inflation over the last five years, and for some Dynamics 365 products a bigger increase than that introduced by Salesforce in 2023.

The new prices come into effect on October 1, 2024 - meaning users have almost half a year prepare for the whack to their wallets.

Here's the list of changes:

Microsoft's posts don't explain why some prices increase more than others.

But the two posts we've linked to above - and another on the news feed Microsoft offers its channel partners - reveal the price rise will be staggered for US government users.

"To comply with local regulations, US Government list prices for the same products will increase by 10 percent effective October 1, 2024, followed by another smaller increase effective October 1, 2025, to bring parity with commercial pricing outlined in this article," the post states.

Goode's post suggests those who read it visit Microsoft's Dynamics 365 Release Planner to learn of the new features coming to the platform.

When The Register read it, the document listed seven upcoming features - among them two that add Copilot facilities, and one described as "select columns downloaded on mobile device" - plus four features due later in April and 22 added since October 2023. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/04/15/dynamics_365_price_rises/