Blog Content:
- Introduction
- Target Audience
- Why: SPLA license
- High-level Journey Diagram
- Journey Phases
- Other Materials/Assets
Introduction:
This blog discusses the process that partners can undertake to transition on-premises customers into the cloud. Partners currently hosting customers with SPLA licenses in other providers' data centers must initiate the necessary steps before September 30, 2025, to facilitate the migration to Dynamics 365 Online.
Target Audience:
Partners in the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) -Hoster program.
Microsoft is making changes to the SPLA program, starting in October 2022, to better align with the program’s intent, and with other commercial licensing programs. To strengthen the hoster ecosystem by focusing the program on breadth hosters and encourage traditional outsourcers and datacenter providers, we are changing the SPLA terms to remove the ability to outsource SPLA licenses on Listed Provider datacenters. Traditional outsourcers and datacenter providers will benefit from this change, and it will help foster the hosting partner ecosystem. Any SPLA partner impacted by this change has until September 30, 2025 to transition from a Listed Provider for SPLA outsourced hosting or to license directly from the Listed Provider outside of their SPLA.
For more information review the below post:
https://blogs.partner.microsoft.com/partner/new-licensing-benefits-make-bringing-workloads-and-licenses-to-partners-clouds-easier/
High-level Journey Diagram:
This phase will help you connect with your Account team. Your Microsoft Account team will evaluate your request, and if applicable, they will engage the correct teams to start your cloud migration conversation. During this phase, the appropriate teams will help you understand your migration journey and define the next steps. At this point, Microsoft will work with you to define your new licensing and storage model, guide you on refactoring your solutions, define a Migration POC, and plan your new cloud operational model before moving to the next phase of the journey.
During this phase, Microsoft will identify the resources you will be working with, and your planning sessions will begin. As part of the journey to the cloud, you will need to assemble your team, provision, or prepare your sandbox environment, execute multiple activities, and start the path you will follow to have a successful migration.
Your first step will be to become familiar with the new D365 licensing and storage model. Microsoft and your team will work together to identify the personas and licenses you use on-premises, and the equivalent online licenses you will need to purchase for your customers. This is a critical step, as there are significant changes to the cost and storage allocation related to the new licensing model.
As you progress beyond your first step, there will be multiple parallel activities that you and the Microsoft team will work on together. Significant changes and improvements have been made to the D365 online platform, and your custom solutions deployed to your on-premises Dynamics customers' environment will need to be refactored. This step is crucial and can be time-consuming, as it depends on your customizations and how closely you follow Microsoft's guidance around customizations. If this becomes too complex, Microsoft offers Premier Field Engineering (PFE) support at an extra cost (consult with your account team for potential ICEF funding). The PFE will review your custom code and provide a detailed report on the required changes to ensure your solutions work in the cloud.
As you progress, your account team will nominate you for FastTrack support. The FastTrack team will work with you on a proof of concept (POC) to migrate some of your on-premises databases to the cloud. This phase will allow you to become familiar with the migration process, conduct end-to-end testing, test your refactored code, and plan for when your company is ready to move to the execution phase.
While you work to refactor your solutions and execute your migration POC, your Microsoft account team will set up multiple sessions to discuss your new operationalization model. You will need to understand how and what tools to use to handle existing or new customer deployments, and how to use the ALM processes to deploy your new or updated solutions to your customers' online tenants.
As you complete your migration POC, refactor your solutions, finish your end-to-end testing, and document your operationalization model, you will need to start identifying your migration waves based on your customer priorities. At this point, you will re-engage with your FastTrack team to plan your cloud migration based on your waves.
